by Eric Vall
Cayla pursed her lips into a frown, but she couldn’t argue with my reasoning, so she reluctantly relented with a nod.
“Then let’s go save King Davit,” I said as I looked around at my companions one last time, “and let’s give that bastard Dred some well-deserved payback.”
Three sharp, hungry grins were my response, and their teeth were white slashes in the dark shadows of their faces.
Then I took a deep breath, rallied every ounce of magic and courage in me, and turned to face the city wall of Eyton.
“Please don’t let there be a bandit directly on the other side,” I muttered to myself before I raised my arms and sent out a tidal wave of my magic.
The section of wall directly in front of us began to rumble, and then it began to ripple like water. I gritted my teeth together, flicked my wrists, and a tunnel seven feet tall by five feet tall opened before us. I solidified the stone to keep it from collapsing, and then I immediately channeled my power from the rock and into Big Guy.
The transition made my eyes cross, so I closed them, and suddenly it was like I was inside the animatron completely. The connection between us had grown all day while we trained, but this was the strongest it had ever been. The machine still didn’t have eyes in the traditional sense, but I could still somehow “see” as Big Guy rolled forward and entered the tunnel.
Whether it was my adrenaline, my desperation to save King Davit and kill Camus Dred, or another blessing from Nemris herself, I didn’t know, but I would take this gift horse, and I wouldn’t go looking for teeth.
The wall was only around six feet thick, so the animatron quickly came out on the other side. The tracks clattered loudly against the cobblestone as I turned Big Guy from side to side, but there was no one nearby. It seemed that I had carved a hole into some back alley, and the backs of buildings stretched far to either side.
I opened my eyes and immediately experienced a sense of vertigo as two images overlapped each other before my eyes. Now it was like I was in two bodies at once, both Big Guy’s and my own.
“It’s clear,” I gasped to my companions as I tried to keep from fainting. “Let’s go.”
The split screen vision was still messing with me, but I moved forward anyway. I had to tell myself purposefully to move my legs, step right, step left, but we managed to get through the tunnel quickly, and I immediately closed the entrance behind us.
“You okay?” Cayla whispered as she looked me over with concern. Sweat was already dampening my shirt, and I probably looked constipated with how hard I was concentrating.
I started to nod, but then I shook my head.
“I can’t drive Big Guy with my eyes open,” I admitted quietly. “It’s disorienting. I’ll need to close them as we work our way to the castle, so I need you to be the eyes in the back of my head.”
The princess looked like she wanted to ask something more, but she bit her lip at the last second and nodded her head.
“Can you make it to the castle?” Aurora asked as she placed her hand on my shoulder.
I looked to my right, over the tops of the buildings before us. We had entered the city closer to the castle than the gate was, but the king’s fortress was still a good distance away, and it was all uphill.
I set my jaw determinedly. “I have to. Now come on. Dawn is only a few hours away, and Camus Dred has an appointment with the reaper.”
My companions fell into line behind me, and I felt Cayla brush her hand down my spine as if in comfort or support. I inhaled sharply through my nose and closed my eyes as I let my magic pour out of me. Then Big Guy and I began to move forward as one, and there was no turning back.
We exited the alley, and I sent the animatron rolling ahead of us onto the street. The road was barren and empty, and all the houses were shuttered and dark. Nothing moved, and nothing made a sound. I sent up a prayer to Nemris, and then we skated along the shadows as we made our way to the castle.
“Go forward two blocks and then turn left,” Cayla whispered at my back as she guided me.
I nodded in acknowledgment, and then we lapsed back into silence save for the rhythmic clatter of Big Guy’s treads across the cobblestone street.
We didn’t encounter a single living soul for the first ten minutes of our journey. We did come across evidence of past chaos though. As we turned onto another road, glass crunched beneath Big Guy’s tracks. I opened my eyes for a brief moment, and my head swam as I took in the ravaged storefronts and homes around us. Windows were shattered, doors were torn off their hinges, and there was even an overturned cart in the middle of the road, its wreckage little more than a still smoldering heap of ash.
“This is probably why the people have stayed in their homes,” Mayard murmured behind me. “Dred doesn’t have the manpower to take the whole city, but he has enough to terrorize them into hiding.”
I grunted in reply since I was too focused on weaving Big Guy around the burned-out wagon, but in the back of my mind, I simply put another tally on the list of things Dred was going to pay for.
A few minutes later, Cayla brushed my shoulder.
“We’re halfway there,” she murmured. “Take the next right, and then--”
Loud and raucous laughter cut her off, and all five of us including Big Guy slid into an alleyway on her left. As we ducked into the shadows, I opened my eyes again and saw a group of five men walk around the corner to our right that we needed to take.
Even through my doubled and blurry vision, I knew they were Dred’s men. They wore ragged and dusty clothes, and each of them wore broadswords at their hips. All of them walked with an arrogant swagger, and they passed around a large flagon of what I presumed to be stolen wine given that there was blood splattered across their cheeks and necks.
“H-hold up,” one of them laughed as he shoved the flagon at the man closest to him. “Never had wine that fine. Shit’s going right through me.”
The group of men came to a stop not twenty feet from us as the one that had spoken turned his back and started to unlace his breeches. Even across the distance, I could hear the splash of his urine against someone’s front door.
Rage reared its ugly head in my chest, and my magic rushed to follow it.
I quickly surveyed the men’s position and made my plan.
“I’m going to take out the one pissing and the one holding the wine,” I muttered quietly. “Aurora, when they start to scramble, you take out another two. Leave one left alive, got it?”
“Understood,” the half-elf hissed at my back.
A dark grin bloomed across my face, closed my eyes, and then Big Guy rolled forward until he was at the edge of the alleyway. While the bandits were still oblivious, I lifted the animatron’s right arm and quickly centered my targets in my sights. The crossbow was already locked and loaded, so all I needed to do was wait for the precise moment.
It came when the pissing bandit finished up, and he took a step back as he tried to lace his breeches back up. When his feet struck the cobblestone street and he leaned backward, it brought him perfectly parallel and in line with the bandit holding the flagon.
I exhaled sharply, sent out a burst of magic, and pressed the crossbow’s trigger. There was a loud twang, and the iron bolt streaked through the air before it tore through both of the bandits’ heads in one go and then buried itself in the building opposite to us.
The two now dead bandits collapsed to the ground with identical holes in their heads, and the other three jumped back in alarm.
“What the f--” one of them started to say as he turned to face in our direction, but he was too slow.
The instant the corpses struck the ground, I felt Aurora sprint by me so fast that wind tickled my cheeks and hair. Wanting to see what came next for myself, I opened my eyes and watched the half-elf warrior work.
She darted out of the alley and was on the bandits faster than they could blink. Her silver sword flashed in the moonlight as she severed the head off one man before she spun in place
and gutted the second. The disemboweled man looked down in shock as his entrails spilled onto the cobblestone, but he didn’t suffer long before Aurora buried her sword into his heart and killed him with a savage twist of her wrist. She ripped the blade out of the now deceased bandit and then turned to the last one standing.
He must have been particularly drunk or stupid because he just stood there with his mouth agape as his comrades were slaughtered. When Aurora turned her fiery emerald gaze to him, he finally jerked into motion and tried to stumble back, but then her hand darted out and caught him by the collar. With a single fluid motion, the Ignis Mage yanked the bandit off his feet and flipped him head over heels to land with a bone-jarring thud onto his stomach. She put her foot into the middle of his back and then lowered her sword until it hovered just below the point of his chin.
“She taught me that move,” Cayla whispered with dark glee behind me.
“Wow,” Mayard added. “That was something.”
“She sure is,” I rasped with a strained grin. “Come on.”
The three of us plus Big Guy exited the alley and quickly approached Aurora and her captive.
“Why am I not killing this one?” the half-elf hissed as she pressed her sword harder into the now whimpering bandit’s throat.
“Because I have some questions for him,” I grunted as I cut the connection to my animatron avatar for a moment to conserve some energy. “Get him on his feet.”
Aurora reached down and used her elven strength to pull the bandit upright. Then she shoved him against the wall of the building his friend had been pissing on, and she kept him pinned there by placing the tip of her sword over his heart.
The bandit’s eyes were so wide with terror that they were basically all sclera. His nose had been broken when Aurora slammed him into the ground, and blood gushed down over his lips and chin. He looked from the Ignis Mage and then to the rest of us. When his eyes landed on Big Guy, they practically popped out of his head as he gargled and whimpered wetly.
“Shut up,” I growled, “I don’t want to hear a godsdamned sound out of you unless it’s an answer to my question, got it?”
The bandit clamped his lips together and looked at me as his knees shook.
Aurora pressed the tip of her sword harder into the man’s chest until it tore the fabric.
“That was a question,” she hissed.
The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed sharply.
“Y-yes,” he stammered, “I-I understand.”
“Good,” I grunted, and then I leaned forward. “Now, unless you want to end up like your friends, you’re going to tell me exactly where Camus Dred is and where he is keeping the king.”
The bandit started to shake his head. “I-I can’t. H-he’ll kill me.”
“And what do you think I’ll do?” I snarled as I got in his face. “I will have my metal soldier peel the skin off your entire body, and I’ll make sure you’re alive for every fucking second.”
To emphasize my point, I sent a pulse of magic into Big Guy, and the animatron’s left arm lifted before the sword came singing out of the gauntlet.
The bandit’s face blanched bone white, and then I heard the trickle of liquid as the sharp smell of urine reached my nose. I glanced down to find that, sure enough, the sorry bastard had pissed himself.
“Ugh.” Aurora took a step back since the asshole wasn’t going anywhere.
“Now,” I said softly as I concentrated on making Big Guy roll toward us inch by inch, “I’m going to ask you again. Where are Camus Dred and the king?”
“T-the throne room!” the bandit blurted as he tried to press himself into the wall at his back to get away from the animatron. “D-dred is in the t-throne room k-keeping the king captive.”
My brow furrowed. “Not in the dungeon? Are you sure? If you’re lying to me…” I trailed off, and over my shoulder, Big Guy raised his sword-hand in a silent threat. It was hard to keep the scowl on my face as my vision flickered and doubled, but I managed to make do.
“Yes!” the bandit yelped. “D-Dred wanted the king to watch him sit on the throne. H-he wanted to rub it in Balmier’s face.”
Cayla snarled quietly behind me, and I could practically feel the rage radiating off the princess.
I glanced over my shoulder and made eye contact with Mayard.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“I think there’s not an honest bone to share between Dred and his men,” the captain growled as he glared at the bandit, “but I know self-preservation when I hear it. This garbage has no reason to lie to us if he wants to live, and Dred’s an arrogant bastard. That sounds exactly like something he would do.”
I nodded. “Then we storm the castle and take the throne room as quickly as we can.” I turned back to the bandit. “How many men are in the castle?”
“M-most of them,” he stammered. “O-over fifty, but some of us decided t-to hit the town, see what we could find.”
“Is that how you got the wine?” Cayla growled as she stepped forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with me. Both rifles were now slung over her back, and her fists were clenched tightly at her side. “You ‘found’ it?”
The bandit’s gaze darted from me to the princess uncertainly. “W-well--”
“And where did you find it?” she asked as her voice lowered even further.
“A-an inn down the road,” the man answered. “The door was open… there was a barkeep…”
“And what happened to the barkeep?” the princess questioned, and her voice was so soft I could barely hear it.
The bandit bit his lip but didn’t respond. He didn’t need to though. The still wet blood on his boots and pants said enough.
Cayla’s face twisted into something dark and hateful, and she began to tremble against my shoulder.
“P-please,” the bandit begged as he looked to me, but it was not my mercy he should have asked for.
Between one blink and the next, Cayla lunged forward, and there was a flash of silver metal in the moonlight as she buried her dagger in the bandit’s chest.
The man’s shocked gasp turned into a gurgle as blood bubbled from his lips. His wide eyes landed on Cayla, and then they glazed over before he exhaled one last time and slumped to the side. The princess ripped her dagger from his chest, and the bandit’s body collapsed to the ground.
“Good riddance,” Mayard grunted over my shoulder, and then the captain hacked and spat on the still warm corpse.
Cayla inhaled shakily and turned to me with her face contorted.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I just…”
“It’s okay,” I replied as I reached out and squeezed her empty hand. “If you didn’t do it, I would have. We got what we needed from him, we don’t need any witnesses, and he damn well deserved it.”
“Yes, he did,” the princess agreed darkly as she glowered at the body at our feet. Then she lifted her eyes to mine and resolve shone in her ice-blue eyes. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” I said as I glanced up at the looming shadow of the castle above us, “we continue forward.”
Chapter 15
Now that we knew where Dred and King Davit were, we quickened our pace as we approached the castle wall. We encountered several more bandits along the way, but in an effort to save some time, I paused Big Guy and used my magic to crush them against the wall or cobblestone streets. Switching back and forth between using the animatron and using my Terra Mage powers was taxing and disorienting, but I pushed through it as best as I could. A sharp headache began to form behind my eyes though, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue operating Big Guy for very long. I had an hour, maybe two at best, before I keeled over from the magical drain. We needed to get this done quickly.
Finally, the castle wall rose up before us as we came to the top of the hill. My companions and I hid in the shadow of the building nearest to the wall as we went over our plan.
“Okay,” I panted as we huddled together.
My calves and lungs burned from the climb through the city, and I was drenched in sweat from physical and magical exertion. “Here’s what we’re going to do. The castle is much smaller than Eyton, and it has a much higher concentration of bandits. Being stealthy is just going to waste our time and energy, and we’ll most likely be caught, anyway. So, I’m going to cover us in a rock shield, and we’re just going to storm the gate with Big Guy on point. It looks like the bandits haven’t raised the drawbridge over the moat, probably because they have some sort of trap or ambush laid out in the courtyard, but that doesn’t matter. We press forward under the shield which will protect us from aerial attacks, and we take out any bastards in our way. When we reach the castle doors, Big Guy will cut a way through for us, and once we’re inside, I’ll seal the entrance so no one else can enter. Understood?”
Cayla and Mayard nodded, but Aurora frowned at me.
“Will you be able to control Big Guy as well as maintain the stone shields around us?” she asked in concern.
I winked and cast her a strained smile.
“I have to,” I repeated as I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll be fine. I just need you to blast a hole through the gate, and we’re going to steadily push forward. Their weapons won’t be able to touch us with the shields and Big Guy surrounding us.”
The Ignis Mage pursed her lips together, and I could tell she probably wanted to lecture me about overexerting myself, but this was neither the time nor the place, so she simply nodded her head.
“Okay, Mason,” she murmured. “We will follow your lead.”
“Great,” I replied as I looked around at my team, “then let’s get this done.”
In unison, we all turned to face the castle, and then we fell into our positions. Big Guy took the lead with me behind him, Cayla slid into place at my back, then Mayard, and Aurora brought up the rear.