by Rick Field
“Rifle the barrel?” she asked impatiently, her forehead scrunching. She motioned to the road, and started walking. They needed to get to the settlement, get horses, and ride to the Capital with all speed. If they could pick up on the postal network, they would get fast horses from one inn to the next and swap them out when they tired.
“I guess that's a no,” the foreigner said as he followed her. “Rifling the barrel means there are lines on the inside of the barrel that impart a spin to the bullet. Basically, if an object spins, it's stabilized in flight so it remains where you aim at.”
Liane blinked. “That is a very strange notion. Please elaborate,” she asked. Her body was hurting, thinking distracted her.
“It's called gyroscopic stabilization,” the pilot explained. “Do you have gyroscopes?” From the look on her face, he knew the answer to his question. “Bicycles?” he asked. Again, he had his answer before she said anything. “Ok, have you ever seen a wheel roll down a hill? Upright? By itself? Did you notice how it stays upright as long as it rolls, but fell over the moment that it stopped?”
Liane thought for a few moments, then nodded. “So, this effect is greater depending on the speed? If something spins rapidly, it will remain upright, or on its current trajectory, until it loses speed?”
“Exactly,” Steve said, grinning, happy that he had been able to teach her something.
“That is a most interesting effect, and not one we have explored,” Liane admitted. “It will open an entire new area on spell research. If we were to impart 'spin' onto our spells, perhaps we could break through the inaccuracy barrier.” Noticing his look, she explained, “Spells become wildly inaccurate beyond a certain range, it is why we always engage in combat at close range, and why swords are still being used. Both have about the same range.”
He nodded in understanding, and eagerly handed his new weapon back when she held out her left hand. She stopped walking and muttered again, making the entire weapon glow.
When it finally stopped, she was panting. “That was... a difficult modification,” she said, gasping for breath. “The diameter of the projectiles and the diameter of the barrel needed to correspond very closely. I had to modify the shape of the projectile as well; balls did not work properly.”
He didn't want to gape at her when he accepted the weapon back. He really didn't. “Magic, for those of us very closely attuned to it, will work with us,” Liane explained, taking her explanation as an excuse to ease the burning in her lungs and the racing of her heart. “I wanted the modifications you requested. It was... a sensation of sorts... yes, that would be the best explanation. It was a sensation, magic letting me know that the balls and the barrel would not create the effects they were intended for.”
“How... how is that possible?” Steve asked. “Is magic alive?”
“No, magic is not alive. Parts of it, and parts of nature, have an awareness and a sort of sentience, but magic as a whole is not alive.” She winced, her oaths on Deep Secrets alerting her to the fact that she was treading very close to treachery. “I have said too much, I am in danger of breaking certain oaths,” she added immediately.
The pilot nodded, accepting her explanation, and lifted his new pistol. He aimed at a tree. The bullet launched was a pointed cylinder, and struck the exact branch he was aiming at. The bullet bore through the branch, taking it off, and buried itself in the foliage behind.
“We must make haste,” Liane said at the sight, drawing a deep breath and cursing her weakened magic. She had needed to tie in physical energy into that last modification, and now she felt weary and tired. They started walking again, Liane struggling to achieve anywhere near her earlier pace. From the corner of her eye, she watched Steve study his new weapon.
“I must urge you to be careful,” Liane told him. “That weapon is quite capable of killing a Noble. Please do not employ it unless necessary, or I will be forced to sentence you.”
The foreign pilot looked up from his pistol, suddenly recognizing how much trust she was showing in him, building him a new weapon and trusting him not to abuse it. “I will be careful,” he promised, holstering the weapon in his old gun holster, now hidden underneath the coarse jacket that he was wearing over the linen shirt he had ripped to bandage her damaged shoulder.
In total silence, they walked on, Liane leaning heavier on Lucifer than she was comfortable with, doing her best to keep the pace as high as possible. The thick forest that framed the road urged on Liane's adrenaline, her overstressed mind conjuring up ambushes around every corner.
Close to an hour later, a multitude of hoof-beats drove up to meet them, and despite herself, Liane found herself hoping for help in one form or other. When the horses rounded the bend, the riders immediately halted at the sight of them, and Liane did her best to compose herself. After having been attacked – twice – and an hour of hard walking, she was looking decidedly less than a proper Pillar.
The three riders, one Mage and two Warlocks, studied Liane and her companion for a few moments. “My Lady,” the Mage addressed Liane.
“My Lady,” Liane answered, before looking at the Warlocks. “My Lords. We were attacked an hour back, and require assistance. I must return to the Capital with all haste, please lend me one of your horses.”
The Mage slipped from her horse without a word, holding on to the reigns as she walked toward Liane. The Pillar didn't know where these Nobles had come from, but she was all the more pleased to see them regardless. She was about to accept the reigns of the bay the Mage had been riding, when Lucifer almost literally shoved her aside.
Her keen senses felt, rather than saw, a major hex flying through her previous position. She didn't know what it would have done to her, nor did she care at that precise moment, as the two Warlocks engaged her from on top their horses. The animals huffed loudly, shifting their balance to provide a more stable platform for their riders.
The acceleration spell was active before she realized she had started casting it, and pushed Steve out of the way of a Death Magic strike that shattered the road's surface where it hit. The foreigner had been aiming at the Mage with his pistol, and more than likely would have died had she not pushed him away.
Liane didn't have time to admonish him for his careless attitude, and attempted to retaliate against the sudden ambush. She dispelled a curse aimed at her by the second Warlock, right before she was forced to dodge a glob of liquid fire thrown at her by the Mage, right before she was forced to raise a granite wall from the road's surface to block a Death Magic strike by the first Warlock.
The second Warlock shattered her defensive wall with a kinetic blast, and Liane was forced to jump out of the way of an ice spear hurled at her by the Mage. The first Warlock aimed more Death Magic her way, and Liane threw herself to the ground, a single earth manipulation spell rolling off her lips. The Death magic flew over her prone position, and the earth swallowed her up.
Whoever these people were, they were very used to working together, and pulled no punches. Her small hideout was already running out of air, and she readied herself to engage the battle once more. Before she could release her earth manipulation, she could feel the magic of the Mage above working. Immediately, she was thrown from her narrow hole, the sudden change from dark to light momentarily throwing off her senses.
Her right hand was still clenched around Lucifer's shaft, and the legendary weapon pushed her out of the way of a Death magic strike she had neither seen nor heard – straight into a kinetic blast from the second Warlock, who had been covering for his colleague and had really been aiming at Steve, who was once more trying to aim his pistol. Without the benefit of an acceleration spell, the man was hopelessly slow.
The Death Magic strike would have killed her, the kinetic blast merely grazed her and threw her through the air once more. The Mage shouted another spell, and Liane could feel the air hardening around her. The command word slipped from her lips, the road itself attempting to save the Pillar. Horses neighed frightfully
and painfully, before falling silent. Two Warlock’s shouted angrily, magic waving through the air, bringing up solid metal domes that protected them from harm. The Mage's spell changed itself mid-cast, adding power and strength.
Liane screamed when the hardened air released her to fall to the ground, her battered body exploding in white-hot agony. The explosive force of the Mage's spell blasted over her prone position, and the Pillar could feel the road's magic dying. A single spell had shattered every attacking stone, and while Liane could summon more from further away, there was no doubt they would suffer the same fate. There were precious few Mages capable of generating so much force with a single spell, and Liane resisted the urge to curse.
Instead, she cursed. The Mage's voice turned into a scream, a frightened, terrified scream. “My eyes! I can't see! I can't see! She blinded me! The horrible woman took away my eyes!”
Liane pushed herself upright, taking advantage of the distraction provided by the screaming Mage and the two Warlocks who needed to release their solid metal domes, and made her way over to Steve. Grabbing him, she pulled him to the tree-line over his protests. Angrily, she pushed one finger of her free hand against her lips in an effort to silence him, before releasing her spell.
After she and Milor had once been ambushed by Warlocks traveling through the shadows, she had done everything she could in order to recreate it. When she had finally gotten hold of the original, she had been as disappointed in its abilities as she was in her own attempt. At first, it had seemed highly impressive, but in the end, all it did was cloak a person in the shadows they were standing in.
As long as they remained inside of a shadow, they would be invisible and undetectable to magic, as long as they remained absolutely silent.
It went against every instinct that Liane had, but the time had come for her to run, and so she used the rich shadows provided by the forest to cast her shadow-travel spell. It hid her and Steve, and she repeated her motion for silence. Liane pointed, and they started walking, as quickly as silence would allow them to.
“It's just a curse,” one of the Warlocks admonished the screaming Mage. Liane winced, she'd hoped that the attackers would have needed to travel to a curse breaker. She could hear the Warlock intone standard curse breaking spells, and the cursed Mage's sigh of relief reached even to Liane and Steve.
“Where is she!? I'll kill her!” the Mage screamed. “She cursed me. How dare she curse me!?”
“We attacked her,” the first Warlock reminded the woman. “I think she used shadow-travel, highly impressive. That answers the question of why Lord Amelryck never called in. She must have killed him when he tried to stop her.”
“He always was too much of a gentleman to attack outright,” the second Warlock said, his voice barely reaching to where Liane and Steve were now making a good headway up the mountain. “Can we track her?”
“Not... mistake,” the voice of the first Warlock petered out, and Liane guessed he was hoping for her to make a mistake.
Now that they were out of reach of the attackers, Liane released the spell, and slumped against one of the trees. The shadow-travel spell wasn't that hard to cast, but it took quite a bit of energy to keep up, energy she no longer had. Her magic hurt and trembled, on the verge of petering out and solidifying. She hoped it wouldn't, it would take days for it to recover if it did.
“Where are we going?” Steve asked, whispering.
Liane pointed up Mount Sina, pushing away from the tree and starting to walk. “We are being chased. We cannot go to towns or settlements for aid. We must take the shortest route and avoid population centers.” She swallowed deeply, her right hand clenched Lucifer like a last line of life. “I don't know what is happening. This is not Kiria.”
Steve looked highly troubled, but nodded and followed. “Didn't you tell me that the druids live up there?”
“Yes,” the Pillar said. “And we will ask for them to suffer our presence in passing.”
Steve simply accepted the explanation, Liane noticed. She was glad for it, climbing the forested mountain slopes was taking all of her energy. Deep inside her chest, her magic burned with cold fire, her muscles ached; her lungs struggled for every breath. Her heart was racing. She was exhausted, magically and physically, and couldn't spare the breath to talk. How lucky the foreigner was, the Pillar thought, not to realize that there was a better than even chance that the Druids would refuse them.
The trees were thick and close together, the ground underneath their feet permanently hidden in shadows and covered only with fallen leaves, dried branches, and the occasional mold of mushroom. No plants or flowers lived in the permanent shadow of the thick forest. With each step she took, the rustling and cracking made her wince.
Her heart calmed and her breath equalized, her body still ached and felt tired, but she had managed to catch her breath at least. Her pace increased. Her legs protested, and she fell back to her previous pace, a scowl on her lips. She simply was incapable of going faster, it seemed.
Liane's eyes looked as far forward as she could, to the ever-rising ground. The trees blocked her view beyond a few dozen meters, and she couldn't see how far they still had to travel.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Lucifer pushed her aside, forcing her to slam into Steve and sending both of them to the ground. Three spells flashed harmlessly through the empty air, and Liane grunted with exertion as she pushed her exhausted body back to its feet. For a moment, she wondered how their pursuers had tracked them.
The thought vanished almost immediately, as she activated her acceleration spell in order to enable her to dodge a quickly cast spell. Her magic sight identified it immediately as a fairly low-level curse. Nothing serious, but it would have stolen the time it took her to break it.
The two Warlocks took the time to pool their magic’s in a shared casting of a Death Magic kill-strike. The Mage was covering them, chain-casting low-level spells that forced Liane to dodge and shield and cancel, preventing her from launching an attack of her own.
Suddenly, one of the Warlocks shuddered and toppled. Liane froze at the unexpected event, the already-cast hex of her opponent striking her right shoulder, sending her to the ground. Her grip on Lucifer waned through nerveless fingers, and the Pillar hit the ground with a dull cry of pain. The Mage and the Warlock were staring at their fallen companion, and Liane suddenly realized what had happened.
Taking advantage of the surprise of her opponents, she sent her own curse that was no more powerful than the ones her opponent had been throwing at her, but it was quick and took little power to cast.
The second Warlock made a strange noise and fell as well. The Mage threw herself behind a tree, tripping over a dried branched that just happened to be in her path. Her fall saved her, it seemed, as something struck the tree's trunk at the height of her head. Liane stood, panting, waiting for her opponent to cancel the small imbalance hex that had just saved her life.
The Pillar's quickened breath was brown and tasted of bitter chocolate as she waited, before finally realizing that the Mage had made a run for it, and she cancelled her acceleration spell. Liane slumped to the ground, the exertion overcoming her.
“Are you alright?” Steve asked, kneeling next to her, his weapon still out and panning the surrounding area. She nodded fitfully.
“Tired,” she whispered, rubbing her eyes. “I wonder how they found us.” She frowned, and looked at her right arm, which refused to obey her commands. Blood was running down her arm and fingers, dripping steadily to the ground. Weakly, she grimaced. “One moment,” she muttered, and placed her left hand on the injured area on her right. The hex had been minor, a little annoyance that amounted to 'may you bleed from your skin', but it had resulted in a rather substantial loss of blood.
The Mage really had been frightfully powerful in her magical spells. Liane canceled the hex, taking more power than she was comfortable with using right now. The world dimmed, the colors faded, and it took nearly five seconds before the overwhe
lming vertigo would leave her. Thankful for the momentary rest, she stayed on the ground, taking deep breaths, trying to regain both her balance and some matter of energy.
Now that he had confirmed that she was alright, Steve grimaced at the two dead Warlocks. He'd killed two men. Men who hadn't been expecting his weapon. Men who died because they were used to a different field of battle. It had been depressingly easy to kill the two Warlocks while they built up a spell together. They had been focused on Liane and their magic, and had totally ignored him. It had been like target practice. Taking human life should not be this easy. The silent weapon Liane had built him had changed the game.
Steve was a military pilot, the loss of life was part of his life, but that did not mean he wasn't human. Shooting at a person who was shooting at you was something he had expected and been prepared for. Shooting a person whose only weapons were a sword and a mystical force he didn't understand was something completely different.