by Rick Field
The barrier that had been transparent up until now turned opaque, and Marcel sucked in a breath. No longer could he see outside, it was as if the barrier now encompassed a dying world of dust and debris. The inner circle containing Liane had vanished, the skies were purples and blacks that interwove around and through each other.
Then reality shattered, the spell reaching completion. Everything Liane saw, everything within the field of her gaze, became the target of the fifth level of her runescape. Through a perversion of Deep Secrets and Ancient Lore, the spell acted upon the spark of life. Life itself was power and energy, the energy to grow, to reproduce, and in the end, the lack of power meant death. Liane had been taught to give life to inanimate constructs, to give life to blends of various creatures called chimerae. Through a perversion of her teachings, she now took life away.
Annihilation released the energy of life within Liane's field of gaze.
Her grip slipped from her staff, the runescape vanishing immediately. Lord Marcel lay, flat on his back, staring at the skies. His chest did not move. His eyes were glassy. He was dead. Around him, within a perfect cone describing Liane's field of sight, was dead and blackened grass. Beyond Marcel, a single tree withered and died, just within Liane's range of sight, the last living thing that had been clear to her vision the moment her spell completed.
Servants rushed over toward them, and Liane forced herself to her feet. Her entire body hurt; especially her chest where her magical core had taken another blistering hit from her use of the fifth level runescape. Magic did not casually act upon life, it required rituals and ceremonies and materials with which to do so. Forcing magic through the runescape allowed her to circumvent the requirements – but at a horrible cost.
It would exact a horrific toll on her body and magic.
Liane wavered on unsteady legs. She knew she should not stay here. It had been her duty, but she could not be sure the servants – or the Lord Marcel's family – wouldn't try to exact revenge. At this moment, she would be hard-pressed to fight off a ten-year-old with a butter knife. Lucifer folded back into her regular staff of office. Leaning heavily on it, she half-limped, half-dragged herself to the stables. She needed her horse and to get out of here.
Throwing up the concealing hood of her Pillar's robes, she found her rented horse, completely dressed down and standing calmly in the stable. Her entire body hurt, and she could barely keep herself on her feet without the help of her staff. Getting the horse saddled and bridled seemed beyond her. No stable staff came to her aid, which told her quite a lot in itself.
Or, it should have told her quite a lot; her brain was not operating at its usual level, the pain and exhaustion of her battle making it difficult for her to react.
She grabbed hold, dumping herself over the horse's back in the most inelegant fashion conceivable, her head hanging down one side while her legs stuck out the other. With no saddle or stirrups, she could not climb up the usual way.
The horse neighed in confusion, but held its ground, eyeing the strange human wearily as it tossed and tumbled about on its back. Finally, Nadia managed to find comfort on the horse's bare back, she ignored the fact that she sat like a man across the horses’ back. Now that she was on, she had no idea how to ride it. There were no reigns for her to hold, no stirrup for her to use.
She grabbed hold of the horse's neck, and indicated which way she wanted to go. The horse neighed again, not used to the strange method with which it was being ridden, and not sure if it wanted to comply. The rented horse was the most good-natured one up for rent, and it finally decided to comply with what the strange human on its back seemed to want, and turned to the exit.
A few nudges had it trotting forward.
Nadia gasped in pain and discomfort with each movement, and held on for dear life. She breathed a sigh of relief when she left the Lord Marcel's compound. She needed to get away. The horse went from a trot into a canter. Her vision lost and gained color several times with pain. She coughed. Blood filled her mouth. She wiped. Why was her nose bleeding? She frowned. The horse cantered easily down the road. Why was she on a horse with no saddle or reigns? She looked about. Why was her entire body hurting? Why didn't she hear anything?
Nadia's fingers came back red when she touched her ears. She was bleeding from her ears, too? What... what had happening to her? She gasped, pain lanced through her chest. She was hurting. Why was she... hurting? She closed her eyes, pulled them back open moments later. She teetered on the back of the horse, it slowed from a canter into a trot, and finally, came to a stop when it felt the human on its back sway unsteadily.
Nadia slipped from the horse's back, collapsing immediately. Her staff clattered to the ground, rolling outside her range. The sun set. And rose. Night? Day? Pain... pain...
Chapter Four
Liane's back arched with the pain blooming from her chest, tearing a tortured scream from her battered throat. Pain. Yellow. Red. Black.
Her eyes opened, staring up at an uncaring moon throwing its clinical light on the grassy ground upon which she found herself. The MagicWarper blinked, slowly, arduously. She turned, tried to crawl up. Pain pricked from her injured shoulder, triggering another explosion of multi-colored agony from her chest.
When did the sun come up? Did she black out again? She dared not move, even in the heat of the burning sun. Her body was hurting, even when stationary. She found herself in a fetal position, her legs pulled up to where they almost touched her chest, arms thrown around her knees in some effort to ride out the waves of sensation.
The injured woman closed her eyes, tried to focus on her magic and affect some measure of healing upon herself. She gasped deeply at what she found, a gasp that was a little too sharp and a little too deep for her battered body. Another wave of agony was triggered. Her arms tightened around her legs, and she tried in vain to stifle her screams.
She was on her back now. When had she released her previous position? How long ago did the sun set and the moon come up? She felt extremely weak now, devoid of food and drink for Gods only knew how long. Her body was weakening; her magic was injured. She was in rough shape. Was this how she would meet her end? Alone and deserted in some forgotten field, dying of injuries, thirst, and hunger?
She grimaced, didn't even think about rolling over and having another go at climbing to her feet. A quick glance around proved that her horse had vanished, probably a long time ago. She couldn't be sure how many days had passed since her battle with Lord Marcel, but she had seen both sun and moon on multiple occasions, in bouts of lucidity, before her injuries claimed her once more.
There was little she could do. Liane closed her eyes, focused on her magic. She knew what to expect now. Hopefully that knowledge would keep her from startling and triggering another painful attack that would render her unconscious once more.
It took her long, far longer than she was used to, to appear before her magic. When she finally dropped deep enough into her meditative trance, she gazed sadly at the remnants of her magical core. The two central anchor lines, the red vertical one and the blue horizontal one, were still intact. That was the only good news.
The grid pattern she had woven so carefully over the last years was torn to shreds, almost all of her magic surging wildly and uncontrollably through the large gaps that had appeared in her defenses. Her magic was unbound, out of control, and it was doing more harm than good to her weakening body.
The amount of magic still under her control was minuscule, far less than she had ever felt, safe for those couple of times where she had fused her core doing unimaginably complex magic at the drop of a hat. She stared sadly at the remnants of her core, regretting the loss of those abilities with the ever-increasing instability of her magic.
How much easier the fight with Lord Marcel would have gone, had she still possessed the ability to turn his blood to acid. The best she had managed was some transformation on the air, something he had been able to counter far too quickly for it to be effective
as anything more than a diversion.
Her metaphysical self drew a breath. She was going to repair her core, forget about abilities of the past that she had lost, contact the Overseer, and make her way back to the capital. Anything else was unacceptable.
She reached for the first broken thread, the first of many, and tried to remove it.
To her consternation, Liane found out that she couldn't do so with the ease she had gotten used to. What used to take a few moments with a thought-based spell now took her nearly ten minutes of near-perfect chanting to gather enough energy with which to work. She looked up, at her damaged core. There were hundreds and hundreds of broken strands. This was going to take a while.
Slowly, securely, she removed the first broken thread. By the time she was finished, she was exhausted.
And promptly lost her meditative trance. The moon was lowering in the sky, it’s cool and uncaring light seemingly taunting her. She grimaced, tried to fight off a wave of vertigo, before succumbing to it. Her empty stomach rebelled, her injured body protested, and she found herself dry-retching.
Agony burned from her chest. She screamed once more, throwing her pain to the empty skies, shouting, screaming her powerlessness to the moon that hung overhead. Why had no-one come for her? Why did no-one care for her? Why had nobody thought to follow her horse's tracks? Why was she left to die here, miserable and alone in this Gods-forsaken field?
The pain went from yellow, to red, to black.
When she came around once more, she barely had the energy to open her eyes. The sun was at mid-noon, the heat was stifling, her body aching for water. She closed her eyes, sunk into her meditative trance once more. It seemed to take a long time.
Finally, she stared at her rampaging core. Again, it took her ten minutes to raise enough magical energy to formulate her spell. Replacing the thread she had removed earlier proved far harder than it had been to remove it, but she managed it. Just. Immediately upon the completion of the first strand, a miniscule jolt of energy went through her.
It wasn't much, but it kept her in her wavering meditative trance and perked her up slightly. She looked at the second strand. Should she work on it? Should she try and get some rest and try later? What if she started work on it, and blacked out?
The Pillar found herself alone and with no options. She lifted more energy, and started work on removing the second damaged thread. Her meditation threatened to break the moment she completed her task, and she fought desperately to keep her trance together, to allow her to work on her core some more.
To no avail. Liane blinked her tired eyes open, and stared at the setting sun. She wouldn't last long enough to repair her core. She knew it, could feel it in the weariness of her body. She wouldn't, couldn't, give up, but deep down she knew her efforts would be futile. She was going to die here, and there was nothing she could do.
The Pillar closed her eyes, trying to drop back into her meditative state. She sunk away into a sea of darkness, the pain from her body fading.
Her breaths spaced out longer, becoming shallower every time.
********
The Overseer closed her office door, locked it, and shifted the documents from her left hand to her right. With decisive strides, she walked out of the wing that housed the Pillar Service, and turned to enter the deeper areas of the Imperial Palace. Five minutes later, she announced her presence to two guards flanking a single and nondescript wooden door.
The guard on the left nodded, accepted the documents she carried, and entered the office beyond. The Overseer herself waited patiently outside, not at all bothered by the continuous gaze of the remaining guard.
She was used to waiting before entering this office, and the Overseer set in for a nice fifteen to twenty minute break. Her thoughts dissected her news clinically, refraining from excess emotion by force of long habit.
Despite her efforts to banish emotions, she was startled when the second guard returned within five minutes and held the door open to her in silent invitation. She dipped her head, and walked inside. The antechamber she arrived in was spacious for the single secretary manning the single desk. The woman at said desk was nearing the end of her working life, austere gray hair made up in immaculate fashion.
“You may enter immediately, My Lady,” the secretary said. The Overseer ignored her surprise at the unusual expediency, nodded her gratitude, and opened the door to the inner office.
She walked up to the huge desk facing the door, and its sole occupant. The Lord Milor of the Thunderstorms, Crown Prince to the Imperial Throne of the Island Nation of Kiria, sat up straight in his chair at her arrival, and focused all his attention upon her.
“My Lady Annjii of the Ball Lightning, good afternoon. Please, have a seat,” he spoke with cultured tones, before picking up the dossier the guard had delivered to him. “From the fact that you hand-delivered the documentation, I am assuming this meeting is urgent?”
She sat in the visitor's chair. “My Lord, good afternoon,” she returned his greeting. “Unfortunately, you speak the truth. It appears that it is very likely we have lost one of our Pillars.”
Milor's shoulders hitched for just a moment, his spine straightening almost imperceptibly. He received dozens of 'urgent' reports every week; he did not receive news that one of the government's agents had passed away in the line of duty. Such things hardly ever happened in Kiria!
“Please continue while I read the documentation, My Lady,” the Crown Prince said, urgently perusing the folder she had provided.
“In succinct words, My Lord, we received information that one of the Great Barrier anchors was sabotaged. Said anchor was located on the lands of the Lord Marcel of the Rising Trees,” the Overseer started her summary. Milor's gaze went from the folder to the woman.
“The Lord General of the Imperial Armies?”
“The very same, My Lord,” the Overseer confirmed. “The Pillar assigned with the investigation of the anchor was dispatched to notify the Lord General and request his cooperation in the investigation. She received a less than adequate welcome, with the Lord General bringing his weapon to their meeting. The Pillar involved notified me of these events. I promised her protection should the Lord General carry out any form of legal reprisal should she be forced to defend herself verbally. That was the last communication I received from the operative.”
The woman drew a breath while Milor's eyes continued to flow over the pages of the folder. “In the afternoon of the following day, a large scale battle took place at the Lord General's estate.”
Milor stopped reading. “How large a battle, My Lady?”
“Large enough to register with the Great Barrier, My Lord. Granted, the Lord Marcel's estate is directly adjacent to the Great Barrier, but the magic involved in registering on it would still have been substantial,” the Overseer answered. “Further investigation revealed that the Lord Marcel engaged in open battle with the Pillar. The Pillar was victorious, and managed to remove herself from the area. She was heavily injured, managed to reach her horse, and rode off without being able to saddle it. The horse was discovered later, grazing peacefully in a nearby pasture. We found no trace of the Pillar in question, but we did find tracks that indicated the Pillar may have fallen from the horse. Unfortunately, it took four days for another operative to reach the Lord General's estate, so trails and tracks were cold and virtually untraceable.”
Milor had kept his focus on her during her summary. “Nadia of the Black Marsh,” the Crown Prince finally read from the file. “Can you disclose the Pillar's true name? Both myself and my father will wish to honor the person who bravely risked her life for the Empire.”
The Overseer swallowed; the action did not go unnoticed by Milor. Whoever this Pillar had been, the news would be bad. He just knew it.
“My Lord,” she said, as calmly as she could, “it pains me to say that the Pillar in question is your friend, the Lady Liane, The MagicWarper.”
Milor blinked, twice, thrice, four times, bef
ore paling rapidly. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and visually composed himself. “Missing four days after a major battle,” he whispered.
“That is correct, My Lord.”
He remembered how her magic would act up after a major battle, knew from experience how long it would take her to act normal once more. She used to cover by pretending her Assistant was being tested. Most people accepted the explanation. He didn't; he was her friend, had grown up with her, knew when she was lying or circumventing the truth. He didn't know the details, and hadn't inquired. If she didn't want to tell him, he wouldn't pressure her.
Four days was excessive. She should have been able to get a communication spell out by now. The fact that she had fallen from her horse didn't sit well with him either. Liane was hardly an accomplished rider, but not even she would go about, falling from her horse.
No, his friend had been gravely injured, had fallen from her horse, and was now missing, presumed deceased. “Find her, My Lady,” he told the Overseer, his voice coarser than he had wanted it to be. “Regardless of the fact that she is my friend, she is one of our own. She is a Pillar of Kiria. Find her so that we can either heal her, or give her the decency of an honorable funeral.”