by Vic Broquard
By late January, he had one rod holding the proper protection spell, but now the question became: how can it be tested to see if it works? He needed to hold it and stand before a dragon that would shoot his or her breath weapon at him. Of course if the rod failed to work properly, he’d become the late Archmage Karel. On the other hand, he could not proceed until he proved that the rod would protect the wielder from a dragon’s breath weapon.
He chose Renata as his test subject. Why? He figured that Emil might be more reluctant to help test a weapon that may ultimately be used against dragons, though certainly not against golds. Besides, he and Renata had trained together under Archmage Oldrich. The other aspect for choosing her was her age, she was still a young dragon, as dragons go. As a dragon ages, the strength of their breath weapon, such as a cone of fire from a red, increases. If he asked Aldrick to shoot his flaming breath at him and if the rod failed to work properly, he would more than likely be burned to death. However, he coldly calculated that if it failed and he got burned from Renata’s flames, he just might not be killed.
Carrying his precious rod and an entire bag of healing potions just in case, he visited Renata in her cavern high in the mountains. “Wow, you sure have a spectacular view from your entrance, Archmage Renata.” He began by complimenting her view. The snowy peaks were quite breathtaking, rugged and jagged. “You are looking well.”
“Karel, what is this that you need my help with? I’ve known you long enough to know that you are not big on social pleasantries. Out with it,” she chided him and he grinned. She certainly knew him well.
“Okay, I need you to breath your fire onto me. You see, I need to test the new rod of mine. As you know, the reds have been wiping out entire villages with their flames. Baron Zoran is reluctant to have all of us stand and fight them because we can be killed by their flames and such. So I’m trying to make a simple device which they could hold and have it provide them some protection from the red’s flames. If I can get it to work properly, then Zoran and the rest of us can stand up to the reds when they attack again. I’ve brought along a stash of healing potions just in case it doesn’t work. You should have seen the carnage at the Fall High Council when the red shot its flames out towards all of us in the audience. If we had not had those few seconds of forewarning, hundreds including ruling barons would have died, not just six Advisors. Please, will you lend me your breath?” He teased her a little.
She readily agreed if he would tell her all about what had happened at Petr Falls and what had happened to the abducted women. Renata wanted more facts than Zoran had relayed to her father, Aldrick, and thus to her. Karel agreed. He conducted three tests. First, he stood at the extreme limits that her fiery breath would reach. His rod activated properly and he felt nothing. Next, he stood in the middle of her cone of fiery breath. Once more, he was fully protected. Encourage and excited, he then stood directly in front of her, taking her breath fully on him. Once more, the rod fully protected him. Karel was elated and Renata was very much impressed, vowing to tell her dad about this interesting new magical invention. Karel then told her the full story about the dragon attack on the village and the rescue of the kidnaped women. She was keenly interested in the interspecies breeding, though, and asked him numerous questions, most of which Karel couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. Thus, in a roundabout way, Aldrick learned that magical items that could protect the wielder from the power attack of dragons were being made. This unnerved him a little and he thought long and hard about this new twist.
That night, an elated Karel picked up his wife, Chika, and twirled her around in circles. “It works! It works! I stood right in front of Renata’s fiery breath and didn’t get the slightest burn! I wasn’t even hot! With this, we can stand and fight the raiding dragons!”
“Incredible, dear! Make me one, please. Now if it could only help me attack one, that would be great. As you know, I only have mage status and hardly ever can best the dragons on that grey plain, unlike you, my love,” Chika both replied and hinted.
“Coming up, dear. That’s the next step. Here’s the problem. If I have these rods shoot a Disintegrate spell, there is always a chance the dragon will dodge it. If I have the use a spell that causes some damage to the dragon, as strong and powerful as some of these are, it may take a bunch of those attacks to actually kill it.”
“Well, I’d prefer the certain route, dear. If it can’t harm me with its breath, then I can hold my position and strike it many times, knowing that with each strike it is slowly being wounded and will eventually succumb,” she pointed out. He took her opinion to heart and opted to install damage causing spells instead of the chancier die or no effect type spells.
However, he was limited in what he could cast. Of all the Archmages, he had actually mastered the fewest of the more powerful spells. Karel’s pride prevented him from asking other Archmages to join him and cast their spells into the rods for him. No, these rods were his masterpieces and his alone. Karel hated to have to share the limelight with other Archmages. He always had.
Now came hard research. One of the topmost power spells and Zdenka’s favorite was the Crushing Hand. The giant magical hand appeared around the head of the victim and began pounding on it. At first, the amount of damage inflicted was small, but it increased each minute that the spell continued to operate. After a few minutes, it reached its full power and continued to deliver crushing damage for many minutes after that. Karel estimated that if the dragon did not attempt to try to dodge it and took the full amount of damage each minute, even old Aldrick could be slain within say six or eight minutes! Though, it would deliver a certain kill, something that Chika greatly desired, still, in terms of the battles, six minutes was a very long time indeed. He rightly figured that anyone who was not an Archmage would likely feel the same way. Unfortunately, only one of the rods was going to be able to hold such a powerful spell in it.
Hence, he backed down to lesser power spells. He rejected the Stun spell at first, but later came back to it. After all, if they were in a fight and the dragon was stunned for even a couple of minutes at most, that would give the blade wielders enough time to hack it to death. Over half of the rods could accept this spell.
In the end, he reverted back to the tried and true damage causing spells, Ball of Fire, Bolt of Lightning, and Magical Missiles. The rods simply could not hold the same levels of power that he could conjure when he cast such spells. For example, when he cast his Magical Missiles spell, he could conjure into existence ten of them simultaneously. The rod would only be able to shoot six at the same time. Similarly with his lightning bolts. The rod would only be sixty percent as effective as he was. Still, these spells will cause damage and eventually, after enough were cast, kill the dragon. While there were numerous other variations of damage causing spells that could be used, Karel decided to keep it simple. These spells could easily be stored in the rods.
Just as he was about to commit to the spells that he chose, he realized that the dragons could just as easily be casting spells at the wielder of the rod. “Duh! I forgot all about that! I will have to put some defense against other magical spells into the rod as well.” After a good deal more study and calculations, he decided to infuse the rods with the defense spell that blocked all Balls of Fire and Lightning Bolt spells and those of even lesser power. All of the rods were good enough to hold that enchantment; few could hold even more powerful defensive spells. “The rod’s no good if it can’t protect the wielder,” he declared to himself.
The rods would have to be specifically tailored to the specific type of dragon it was meant to kill. For example, if the target was a Red Dragon, shooting a Ball of Fire back at it was utterly pointless. They loved fire; it would cause them no harm at all. Similarly, shooting a Lightning Bolt at a Brown Dragon would be useless, since the brown’s breath weapon was a bolt of electricity. However, only the browns and golds could breathe out these bolts of electricity. All other types of dragons would be severely harmed by such spel
ls.
He also had to consider the playing field. If the rods were shooting out their own balls of fire, then the wielder would have to make certain none of his friends were in the area to be affected. Thus, he ruled out putting Ball of Fire in the rods, too dangerous.
At last armed with just what spells to use, next came the question of just how much magical energy could one rod hold? With each use of the rod, some of that initial energy would be drained off. Of course, later on, a mage could cast magical energies back into it, recharging it to its original full potential once more.
The topmost power spell that provided the wielder his or her protection from the incredible breath of the dragons would consume ten percent of the total charge that a fully charged rod could hold. That is, if the wielder did nothing but use the rod to protect himself, he could take ten such dragon attacks before the rod needed to be recharged. The defense against magical spells used only six percent of the full charge with each usage, similar to all of the attacking spells, which also used up six percent each time. Thus, if the wielder did not need the breath weapon defense and used the rod solely for attacking, the wielder could get off seventeen such attacks before the rod would have to be recharged again.
Finally satisfied, Karel began the arduous work of enchanting the ten rods. It took him until mid-April to get all ten finished. He decided to call these Rods of Dragon Slaying. His intention was to present these to the other ruling barons at the Spring High Council meeting.
Archmage Jakob spent the long winter on his inventions as well. He and Karel had conferred about the need to enchant the protection from the dragon’s breath weapons into any of their inventions. His giant diamond received this enchantment first. However, from this shared starting point, Jakob chose to follow a different path. A diamond did not make a rechargeable device, because it had no gold core within it. Rather, this diamond would retain its singular powers and each could be used but once per day, recharging or rather recovering its potential energy overnight via vibrations of its crystalline structure.
Unlike Karel who wanted dragons dead, Jakob wanted to control the horde of incoming dragons, thereby deflecting them from their original purpose. He spent long hours choosing just the right spells for his gem. When it was finished in April, it could Charm a Dragon easily and had a good chance of Charming up to five at one time. It could temporarily Blind a dragon or Stun him or her for a few minutes. The wielder had a good chance of being able to totally Dominate a Single Dragon, forcing it to the wielder’s will. It could Stupefy a Dragon for a few minutes. The wielder could make a Group Suggestion of a horde of dragons and via the spell alter somewhat the original purposes of those dragons.
However, it’s most powerful action was to permanently Imprison a Dragon by placing it in suspended animation some hundred feet under the ground. Jakob had an expensive but secure golden chain made so that the wearer could display it on his or her chest, much like a necklace. He named his new item the Gem of Dragon Control. He too secretly tested his invention on the nearby golds, but was careful to only ask those whom he controlled to do some slight things for him, just enough for him to know that it was working.
Jakob planned to show this to Baron Zoran and then take it to the Spring High Council and demonstrate it to the other barons. If he could get orders for more and could get such exquisite gems to use, he would both become famous and wealthy at the same time, as well as helping the overall fight against the dragons.
Archmage and teacher Zdenka had her own problems to face. Normally, she kept around twenty students in her tower, training them to become Adepts, mages, or Archmages. Each year at the Spring Picking, she added eight more new students, carefully chosen. Four were chosen to become Adepts, that is, they had the capability of learning all the really useful introductory type spells, such as Clean and Polish. Normally, these folks would take nearly the whole term to learn some three dozen such spells. Certainly by early spring, these men and women would then take positions in the city as Adepts and make a good living using these spells.
The other four that she chose each spring were real mage candidates. They would usually pick up these three dozen useful spells in short order and spend most of their first year learning real spells, as they always called them, such as Sleep and Magical Missile. In January, she had these usual eight students whom she’d picked last spring. Additionally, Zdenka had four second year students, four third year students, three fourth year students, and two who were in their fifth year of studies. These last two were struggling with the higher power spells. All of the fourth and fifth year students were already officially mages and had their sights set on becoming an Archmage. Of course, she knew that possibly one of the six might actually achieve that power ability. These were the students who had been twinned with the seventeen women who needed so much help in daily life.
Now suddenly her conservatively arranged world had been turned upside down. She’d added Neda easily enough. The young eleven year old had learned the useful Adept spells far more rapidly than the usual student of magic and here in late December had joined up with those other four who had started last spring, learning as they said, the “real spells.” No, her world was flipped by the addition of the seventeen armless women who had been abducted by the Red Dragons, raped, and whose lives had just been saved.
Oh it was just a simple matter to twin each of her other students with one of these women. That easily solved the physical handicap of the seventeen women. No, that was not Zdenka’s problem or real concern. Rather it was the incredible rapidity with which these seventeen had mastered the basic useful Adept spells: two weeks! She was extremely thankful the Verushka had volunteered to lend her a hand with these women. It was almost impossible to keep up with their incredible rates of learning.
True they all didn’t learn at the same rate of speed. So far, Danika was going the fastest, but the slowest was only a day behind her speed! Somehow their carrying a dragon fetus to full term had infused them with an incredible ability to master magic! Alarmingly so, Verushka continually claimed.
Of course, these women had to have an enormous amount of physical help as they tried to learn to live with and adapt to their unfortunate situation. Verushka speculated more than once that if these women were not learning magic and learning it so well and fast that they might succumb to their situation and become depressed or suicidal, living without any hope for the future. Magic was giving them a new purpose in life and new goals — stellar goals for these once simple village women. “Look, they are so excited about learning magic and doing so incredibly well with it, that they are paying very little attention to the fact that they’ve lost their arms and are so physically handicapped now,” she pointed out to Zdenka.
“Right. And that is going to allow them to adapt and eventually live useful, productive lives, to flourish and to prosper,” Zdenka added.
However, there were limits to the twinning approach. She could not pull these other students off of their studies just to be the constant arms of the seventeen. That would be unfair to them. Instead, the other students helped the seventeen get dressed in the morning, to dine, and to deal with the mundane things that needed to be done from time to time. During the long study hours, the seventeen were basically on their own. Verushka assisted them, retrieving the next book a woman needed and helping them with the occasional restroom needs. Right from the start, she insisted that they use their feet to hold the books and flip the pages. From the beginning, of necessity, she was forcing the seventeen to adapt and use their feet as much as possible. Thus far, it was working out. The other students didn’t mind helping the seventeen as long as that didn’t detract from their own studies.
However, now that they hit the “real spells,” both Zdenka and Verushka were kept constantly busy helping them. Four students on these spells were about all that Zdenka could easily handle, along with all of the other students. With seventeen more added and with those going at an alarming rate, the two women were swamped.
They desperately needed help.
Zdenka knew that she dare not attempt to pull others off of their work to help her out. Zoran needed every last one at this point. On the 1st of January, she at last told Zoran about her problems. “Dear, do you suppose that I could impose on your two sisters? Would it be acceptable for me to ask Lida and Rayna to come here for several months and help me with the seventeen?”
“Oh I don’t see why not. Look, you trained their daughters to Archmages. They owe you big time, my love. I think that they would look upon this as a way to pay you back for all that you have done for them. Plus, Rayna would also likely consider this a humanitarian aid situation, helping those particular women. Come on, let’s find out,” he suggested, happy to have an excuse to visit with his two sisters once again.
Lida’s response was, “Zdenka! I am so thankful that you thought of me to help you with them! I would love to help them. Thank you. When do I start?” Her surprise enthusiasm took Zdenka by surprise. She’d expected to have to make a real pitch to get Baroness Lida to volunteer. Rayna was even more thrilled to help out. On the 2nd of January, the two arrived and were introduced to the entire student body. All thirty-nine students were buzzing over the fact that they now had two baronesses helping them out as well! They were most impressed. Lida and Rayna were put to work with the seventeen that very day. Zdenka and Verushka alternated their days with the seventeen and the regular students. That way, each could keep close track of the progress of the seventeen and Neda.