Metal Mage 4

by Eric Vall

  “Yeah, I’ll need you and Korion to keep running the circuit from the other two mines,” I said with a nod, “if you’re not tired of it.”

  “My dear, you have this old woman running a speeding ton of metal through the countryside,” the Ignis Mage giggled. “What in the world is there to be bored of?”

  I laughed as Bagnera boarded the empty train car. As she charged up the engine and began her own journey back, I looked over the rest of the Ignis Mages.

  “You want to weigh in on this?” I turned to Aurora. “After all, on the train ride over here, you shared an elemental connection with each of them.”

  The half-elf nodded and let her emerald eyes move over the crowd. She settled on the girl with the long silky hair and almond-shaped eyes.

  “Come on, Mina,” Aurora said as she held out her hand to the girl. “I can use your energy to keep this engine going.”

  Mina bit her lip, unsure, but then she nodded and came up onto the platform.

  I looked over our crew. Ten of us, five men, five women.

  “Pindor, will you do the honors?” I turned to the kid with a smile.

  “All fucking aboard!” the young Terra Mage shouted

  Chapter 4

  The route east by northeast took us through green pastures, farmland, and past quaint little villages of stone walls and thatched roofs. I focused my attention on my task and used my power to lift tracks onto the ground the three Terra Mages had leveled and ground into subgrade, before I dropped ties every few feet. Behind me, however, I could hear Cayla as she gave travel commentary.

  “We’re passing Faybury,” came the princess’s enthusiastic voice. “They are known for their leatherwork. And that’s Gyrcreith you can just see over the hill. Some of the buildings are over four hundred years old and have been in the same families since they were built.”

  “Is there any place in about sixty miles where we should put in a depot and spend the night?” I asked with a glance back at her.

  “Not really,” Cayla said with a frown. “It’s just wilderness.”

  I looked to Yaxin and Dughir. As traders, they were the experts on markets in the region, but I got nothing but a couple shrugs.

  “Tasson,” Aurora added simply.

  “Oh yeah, I guess Tasson counts,” Dughir said with a nod.

  “I’ve never even heard of it,” the raven-haired princess replied with a raise of her eyebrow.

  “There’s no reason you would have,” the half-elf said with a slight smile. “I think it was a military encampment long before our time, and after the army left, the locals kept it up as a trading post. It’s a little like Durch, but in the east instead of the west, right on the border between Cedis and Illaria.”

  “I’ve been there once or twice,” Yaxin mused. “It’s the sort of place you stumble on. No one there has much, but they share what they can.”

  “You’ve been there before?” Mina asked Aurora curiously.

  “Not since I was younger than you are now,” Aurora replied, and I could see the memories form in her emerald eyes. “They were … kind.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” I said with a reassuring smile to my half-elf. “Just let me know if we’re going in the right direction.”

  That turned out to be pretty challenging a few hours later when an afternoon fog rolled across the valley we travelled over. It lay thick and deep, so we could only see a few meters ahead of us. I only just saw the tree in our path a moment before we struck it.

  “Mina! Burn it up!” I shouted.

  I smelled the scent of evergreen fill the locomotive as Aurora joined her power with the young Ignis Mage, so the blast of blue flame Mina unleashed instantly reduced the tree to ash. Pindor, Jovion, and Zerla swiftly launched their own combined power into the ground to shred the tree’s roots.

  “Shoshanne!” I called out urgently. “Can you do anything about this fog?”

  The Aer Mage stood behind me, set her jaw in determination, and I felt the breeze as it blew up around her. It whirled through her curly hair, whipped her robe around her slim body, and then flowed out before us in a wave. The fog before us billowed out and parted to either side to show our path.

  “Great job!” I congratulated Shoshanne. “Can you keep it flowing for a few more miles?”

  The healer gave a slight smile at the compliment and nodded.

  Trees became more and more of a nuisance as we entered into a forest. The perfume of evergreen permeated the air a moment before Mina, with support from Aurora, began to dispatch everything in our path.

  We moved slowly, and loudly, through the forest, hour by hour. In my ears was the rumble of the wheels on the tracks, the rush of wind, the roar of flame, the grind of earth overturned, the thud of tracks against the ground, and the metallic crash of ties against the tracks. I knew the half-elf had extraordinary senses, but I still didn’t know how Aurora heard what must have been the one different note in all the sounds which made her cut the engine.

  “Everyone, be quiet,” the Ignis Mage hissed as the train ground to a halt.

  Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing at the urgency in Aurora’s tone. With the clamor gone and the fog back to surround us, the forest was so quiet we could have been in space.

  Then we heard what Aurora heard. Screams. Steel against steel. The sounds of battle, and not far away.

  On my signal, all ten of us quietly stepped out of the locomotive and into the misty woods. None of us said a word while we listened to the noise and tried to discern which direction it was coming from.

  “This way,” Aurora whispered as she gestured northward.

  “That’s Tasson,” Yaxin added under his breath.

  “Give us a little visibility,” I said quietly to Shoshanne, and the Aer Mage nodded.

  As our group moved as quickly and as noiselessly as we could through the underbrush in the direction of the battle, there was an almost imperceptible breeze around us, just enough to clear the way so that we didn’t walk into any brambles or face first into a tree.

  I pulled out my revolvers, and Cayla did as well. Yaxin and Dughir both unsheathed their blades. But it was Aurora who got the first kill.

  The bandit came out of the fog, seemingly as startled to see us as we were to see him. He was a big, fat, ugly dude, bald as an egg, and covered in boiled leather armor. At the same time as he raised his sword, he started to give a cry of alarm.

  The sound had barely left his throat when it was cut out, together with the rest of his neck.

  Aurora used her sheath to wipe the blood off her blade as the bandit’s head bounced past our group like a basketball, and I heard Shoshanne stifle a gasp, her hand held over her mouth.

  There were blurry lights in front of us, torch light diffused in the fog. Obviously that was the direction of the action, but they seemed sporadic, only enough for a small group of people, not for a community.

  Yaxin clapped my back as he observed the direction I faced, and when I turned, he pointed upward.

  Through the disorienting mist, I could see light up above. Blazing light like the sun, but dotted in various spots at different elevations among the trees.

  “Tasson … is made of fucking tree houses?” I hissed.

  I knew it was a little compound, but I didn’t think it was this little. But it didn’t matter, it was under attack, and we were there to defend it.

  Now that we were closer, I could get a better view of the situation. Tasson, up in the trees, was under attack by a group of bandits. It was hard to see in the mist how many of them there were, but I was willing to bet the odds. My gang of ten versus their group of however many.

  “Shoshanne, blow it all open,” I whispered to the Aer Mage. “These are the kinds of dudes who will hide in every nook and cranny.”

  On my word, I saw the wind blow up first around Shoshanne, throwing her curly copper locks around and causing her robe to twist around her, until she released it around us. A blast of wind shook the l
eaves from the trees and blew the fog away from us in all directions.

  Shoshanne also caught an arrow in her windstorm before it hit my neck and sent it into the ground. I didn’t have time to thank her, because we were suddenly under attack.

  Without the fog, we could see the ground at the base of the trees was stained with blood and littered already with bodies of about a half dozen bandits in the same leather armor the brute Aurora killed had worn. Another few unarmored bodies, some of the inhabitants of Tasson, were also sprawled across the forest floor. Bandits crouched on the branches of the trees around us, and another twenty on the ground near us rushed forward, blades drawn.

  I fired my gun at the bandit to my right and blew a hole through his ugly face, and then I pivoted to find my next target. As I did, Cayla cracked off a shot from each of her revolvers to drop two more guys, one through his chest, the other straight through his eye.

  As I unloaded my second bullet into the skull of a bandit behind Zerla, I saw Yaxin, Aurora, and Dughir repel attacks with parries against the bandits with their own blades. Mina shot a fireball into the nearest tree to strike an archer before he could draw his bow. He fell screaming to the ground and was killed on impact.

  “Don’t use more flame than you need to,” I cautioned the young Ignis Mage. “We don’t want to start a forest fire.”

  Seven arrows rained down on us, and I heard Jovion bellow in pain as one found its mark in his shoulder.

  “We’ll cover you!” Yaxin shouted. “Take out--!”

  The trader’s words were drowned out with our gunfire because Cayla and I didn’t need to be told what to do, and three dead archers hit the ground in rapid succession.

  “What do we do?” Pindor yelled.

  I realized my fellow Terra Mages had not faced combat like this before. Yes, they all three had been with me at the battle with the flame beasts, but they were almost always on defense. They needed a little hand holding on how to use their Terra spellcraft to knock bandits out of trees.

  “Do this!” I said as I sent a flex of my power into the ground around us and sent a shower of rocks into the trees.

  Jovion was already on his ass, ever since he was hit by an arrow, with Zerla by his side. They both put their hands to the ground and were quickly joined by Pindor. I felt their energy as a fellow Terra Mage as together all three sent a rain of stones up into the trees.

  Bandits fell to the ground hard as I turned my attention to the clash of metal on metal behind me. Aurora, Yaxin, and Dughir were outnumbered two to one and were forced on the defensive by the last of the bandits. With a pulse of my metal power, I weakened the bandits’ blades one by one, so they shattered on impact.

  Once they realized they were defenseless, the bandits’ eyes opened wide, but only for a second before they were sliced to ribbons.

  I heard the twang of an arrow released, and I whirled around to find the source. All the bandits in the trees had been knocked down, so it must have been someone hidden. Suddenly, a bandit who had been hidden in the bushes fell out, an arrow in his chest.

  Then silence fell over the forest as we realized all the bandits were dead.

  “Hello!” a voice suddenly cried out from the platform above.

  We looked up, and a young man with a bow in hand waved to us from the edge of the platform. He threw down a rope ladder and climbed down to join us.

  “The gods must have sent you,” he said when he reached the base. “Those men were just minutes away from reaching us. My name is Bromweg. Welcome to Tasson!”

  I shook Bromweg’s hand. He had a wide, round face with deep set brown eyes the same color as his untidy hair that was pressed against his forehead with sweat.

  The fog began to roll back in, and I turned to see Shoshanne was focused on Jovion and his shoulder injury.

  “I’m sure the gods had something to do with it, but still, better not tempt fate anymore,” I replied with a grin. “Let’s get some elevation. Jovion, will you be able to climb?”

  Jovion nodded confidently, and even though it had only been a few moments, Shoshanne had removed the arrow and staunched the wound with linen and salve.

  One by one, we climbed up the rope ladder to the platform in the trees above, and then Bromweg pulled it up behind him.

  Tasson was a series of structures built into the branches of the trees, accessible by bridges and rope ladders. The fog settled back below us, so it felt as if we were on ships in a harbor above a white sea. The buildings were rough hewn, patched up, and clotted with moss, and as I looked them over, the inhabitants began to emerge, just as curious as we were. Men, women, and children in simple tunics who had obviously watched the battle from above.

  “I’m Mason Flynt,” I said with a friendly smile. “We are building something new called a railroad through Cedis and Illaria, all the way up to Orebane. It will help transport goods and people quickly and safely throughout the region, and we can build a station right here to help your trade.”

  The townsfolk of Tasson looked to one another, bewildered, not sure what to say.

  “We can also help make sure you’re not bothered by any bandits,” Pindor spoke up eagerly. “Some of us are Terra Mages, and we’ve been creating stone walls to protect villages.”

  “Why would you do all this for us?” Bromweg asked, astonished.

  “I suggested we come here,” Aurora said as she stepped forward. “When I was a girl, many years ago, and I had nowhere to go, I found myself here and was offered shelter and protection. I remember there was a woman in charge named Gaveedra who took me under her wing. This is my way of paying you and your community back for your kindness.”

  “Gaveedra is my grandma,” a little red-headed girl said excitedly as she ran over and took Aurora’s hand. “Come on, I’ll bring you to her!”

  The rest of us hurried to keep up with the girl as she dragged Aurora over a swinging wooden bridge to a platform on a neighboring tree. There stood a two story house, weathered from the wind and rain. Standing in the doorway was an old woman, her face as wrinkled as a prune, but her hair was short and neat. Gaveedra smiled widely at the sight of her granddaughter, and her eyebrows raised when she saw the rest of us.

  “Grandma, this lady says she knew you when she was a little girl,” the red-headed girl announced. “Do you remember her?”

  “It was so many years ago …” the half-elf quickly began to speak, but she was interrupted.

  “Aurora, is that you?” Gaveedra asked, her eyes sparkling. “Come here, let me see you!”

  The old woman quickly pulled Aurora and the girl into an embrace the moment they were close enough. The Ignis Mage had always acted so tough, but I could see joyful tears in her emerald eyes.

  “Grandma, they’re here to build a roadrail and a wall around us to protect us so the bad guys can’t get us,” the girl burbled. “She says it’s all because you were nice to her when she was little like me!”

  “Oh, she was a special little girl, just like you, Nieryl,” Gaveedra chuckled proudly. “Show her the mark on your hand.”

  Nieryl shyly held up the back of her hand. There was a mark of an empty triangle, identical to the one Aurora had.

  “Grandma says it means I’m a … Ignorant Mage,” the girl said with some puzzlement.

  “An Ignis Mage, sweetheart,” Aurora corrected as she tried to suppress a laugh. “She was the one who told me what my mark meant too, and then she sent me off to Serin to the Order of Elementa so I could learn how to use my powers. She gave me a purpose I never had before, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.”

  “I don’t want to go to Serin,” Nieryl pouted. “I want to stay with my family.”

  “You have to find your own path,” I chimed in with a comforting smile. “I’ve pretty much learned to control my power on my own. It’s not the easiest way, but it works for me.”

  Aurora gave me a grin and then turned back to Nieryl. “You’re still young. How about I make this promise to you? We’ll be
back when the railroad is finished, and I’ll take you to Serin for a visit so at least you know.”

  The little girl frowned as she considered the suggestion, and I thought it was best to give her and the reunion some space.

  “We’re going to go and set up a station and all that,” I said as I laid a hand on Aurora’s shoulder. “You stay here and catch up.”

  The half-elf smiled as I led the rest of the group back across the bridge where Bromweg waited for us.

  Chapter 5

  The hospitality of the people of Tasson had been overwhelming. They didn’t have much, but what they could share was ours.

  Before the sun set, we built tracks to the base of the tree where the main platform was set, and then we added a juncture and a switch. Shoshanne kept the fog at bay so we would have no surprises from bandits while we worked.

  Faces peered down at us from the platform in wonderment as we began to construct the small depot. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a platform and a roofed structure to be used as a warehouse, but we could hear a collective gasp from the townsfolk as Jovion, Zerla, Pindor, and I joined our power and pulled bedrock up from the earth to build it.

  Finally, we had to build a wall around the community to protect it, as we promised. For this, I needed some input from the locals since the standard round or square shape wouldn’t work in a heavily forested area.

  “Bromweg!” I shouted up to the platform. “Come on down and help!”

  The young man flew down the rope ladder with practiced speed, and I signaled for him to join me.

  “What could I possibly do to help?” Bromweg asked, bewildered. “I’m no mage.”

  “You know your forest and your community,” I explained. “I need your insight so we do this right.”

  Bromweg nodded seriously and accompanied us as the Terra Mages and I made a circuit around the perimeter of Tasson.

  “What we don’t want,” I said as we stepped through the undergrowth and squeezed between trees, “is a wall that buttresses up against a tree, so all you have to do is climb up the tree to get in. We can pull down some trees if necessary, but it’s going to be up to you guys to keep the clearing from getting overgrown.”