David held Jerriel’s hand as they placed her down among the glimmering flowers. Her staff next to her glowed a little brighter, but that was it.
Her life still faded. He was losing her. She looked beautiful, but she was dying inside. They ran out of time with each passing second.
Dawn would come up in about three hours.
“Sir, someone stepped in a pool of blue-violet water by accident. It flashed and sucked all the moisture out of them. They crumbled into dust. No one could help them.”
David had seen that effect before. “That won’t help Jerriel either. Keep looking. Watch out for these pools. Many of them are quite dangerous. We really don’t know what effects they’ll have.”
He looked at Jerriel. “Stay with her,” he told Stacy Keller. “I’m going to help the searchers.”
He drew his sword and rushed through the woods with the map, cutting brush out of his way. Nothing. Everywhere he turned. Nothing. They just weren’t close enough to the pools marked.
Finally he fell down in the wet grass and dropped his blades. He covered his face with hands.
He was failing her. There was just so much he didn’t know. But the result was the same.
He was letting Jerriel die.
Mom, Dad, God–anyone. Please, help us–help me save her.
Stacy Keller ran up, calling out for him. “David! Captain Pritchard? Where is he?”
“I’m here. What’s up?”
Other voices shouted out in the darkness. “Bring the wizard. Runners and riders have brought water samples from the blue pools. They do have healing properties, just like the dragon said. They’ve saved others who were dying!”
He was an idiot. Why didn’t he think of that? Bring samples of all the waters to her. What a moron he was.
“Bring the stretcher. Hurry!”
Stacy helped link them up with the runners. She handed him an old, two-liter pop bottle filled with the glowing blue water. It was like a lantern.
“Here, Captain Pritchard. This is the most potent sample we know of. Give her some of this!”
David took Jerriel in his arms and held her up. Stacy undid the cap.
Slowly he poured a little of the glowing water into Jerriel’s mouth, and tipped it down her throat.
After a moment Jerriel stirred a little, as if in sleep.
Was he harming her? Was it working?
David gave her more. She choked and spluttered.
Her eyes flickered open.
“What...? I feel so weak. What happened? Why am I chooking?”
David gasped quietly in joy, swallowed hard, and nearly wept. “You…were badly injured. Please, drink more of this water.”
She focused on it. “But...why is it gloowing blue?”
“I know. Trust me. It will heal you more.”
She drank deeply.
Within minutes she could stand up and walk.
David capped the two liter and shook it. “Get as much of this stuff to field hospital and the doctors as we can!” he shouted. “Make sure they use it sparingly, on the casualties who are closest to dying, first.”
“Where are the rest of the troops?” Jerriel asked.
Stacy stepped forward, her lacrosse helmet off and in her hands. She wept openly out of gladness. She could clearly tell what Jerriel meant to David. Her long brown hair flowed free in the cold morning wind. “They’re still helping the captives get back to town, sir.”
“We’d better join them,” David said. “There’s going to be a lot to do.” He left the two young women together for a short time and sent out orders to bring everyone back in. Jerriel was safe. He felt so thankful he could have danced a jig.
When he returned, Jerriel smiled at him and even took his arm on the way back to town.
“I think I missed something impoortant, Daeved. Stacy tells me you faced doown a dragon for me.” Her radiant eyes twinkled, her smile beaming. “Did you think he was gooing to eat me?
He chuckled slightly. Something similar had crossed his mind once or twice. He couldn’t blame the dragon for similar temptations.
“I did at first,” David said. “But in the end, he actually told me how to save you, in his own way.”
He told her the story on their way back to town. He had a great deal to tell her, and Dirk, and the town council. But with all of the fighting, and Dirk getting wounded, there hadn’t been enough time, yet. He was still trying to figure out how to put it all into words and explain it himself.
Dragons, demons, his little out-of-body adventure, the dark mages plotting against them in the shadows, magic pools. Let alone the battle this evening to free the captives. And he still felt tired, sore, and hungry on his own. There hadn’t been time to catch up on and go over anything.
But David took comfort in one very good thing–Jerriel still lived.
32
Blondie and Mason checked on the two enemy mage prisoners. No luck. The medical people told them to go away, and check back in two days.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Mishawaka and South Bend continued to have many questions for Mason and especially his friends, and kept a small team of scribes and intellectuals following hard upon their heels, taking copious notes.
Each of the scribes–or recorders, as they called themselves–had a backpack full of numbered notebooks and pens and markers. Their job was to write down anything that might be important, and then make reports and recommendations to the city leaders based upon what they discovered.
These intellectuals had been selected from the various schools, colleges, and universities in the area. Many of them were teachers, graduate students, or younger professors
They gathered valuable knowledge and intelligence on the Merge, strange new phenomena, and events as they unfolded.
From the start, they obviously spent hours asking Thulkara about the alternate world of Tharanor, and all of its peoples, cultures, and creatures. The military was specifically interested in both the monsters and the mercenaries, how they operated and made war, and what their strengths and weaknesses were.
Any vital general knowledge was printed in the daily newspapers that the authorities used to spread information throughout the Michiana area. A handful of various manual, mechanical, antique printing presses made that possible.
Thulkara endured the incessant pestering until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to get away from the recorders before she started punching people.
At times, Mason and Blondie had to shoo the recorders away from the big Amazon. They hovered around her like a cloud of gnats.
Being the only Tharanorian allied with the humans became quite a burden. Blondie didn’t count yet, because he still couldn’t remember much of anything.
After Mason and Blondie saw how the recorders hounded Thulkara, Mason had the impression that Blondie was actually somewhat thankful for his amnesia in that regard.
Over the next three days, as tensions concerning the coming war mounted, information exploded about the Merge and the other world of Tharanor.
Mason and his people were kept near the front lines.
For the first time, experts in physics, cosmology, philosophy, and other disciplines weighed in how they thought the Merge had taken place and what the overall effects were.
The general conclusion was that the Merge had occurred worldwide and most likely affected everything in both dimensions. All of humanity was most likely dealing with all of the problems and effects on a planetary scale. And in many cities, Urth people were now thrown together with Tharanorians from different lands and nations.
On their side of the dimensional reality–their half of what was now being called Urth–the planet was mixed up with what was guessed to be an equal half of the alternate, sister world of Tharanor.
Even more intriguing, it was surmised that the half of Urth that was now missing, was most likely another parallel dimension to theirs, equally mixed up with the missing half of Tharanor.
The authorities pleaded wi
th people to report any strange experiences or phenomena, to help determine if there were any temporary or permanent junctures or crossover points from one side to the other. Many felt that there might be, or even should be, such ways to do so. Such portals or gateways theoretically existed, or might one day even be created, and simply had to be either located or their secrets discovered and explored.
People were fascinated by the world of Tharanor and its cultures and creatures. Humans learned the Tharanorian names for the various monsters, and many other strange creatures that they had yet to encounter, firsthand.
Mason and everyone learned about torgs, ka-torgs, mor-kahls, and gozogs.
Dragons, for instance, were called shallavoks. Thulkara spoke freely of the existence of dragons and what a scourge they could be.
Yet, thus far, no dragons had been sighted. Apparently, there were none in the current area, but that could change. Thulkara told people to count themselves as being fortunate for that fact. Thulls did not like dragons one bit.
Next, Urth humans were fascinated by the Tharanorian use of magic, and wanted to understand it. Many wanted to learn magic.
Could more Urth people learn how to use such magic?
Then, people wanted to know all about the mercenaries of Khairun. Finally, they desired to know all they could about the New World on Tharanor, and the various colony city states that had been established in the wilds. Such city states were footholds for forces from the six nations of the Old World, as opposed to the New World of what had been North and South America.
There was renewed hope that Michiana could eventually link up with these other nearby city states someday, and form alliances with the humans and Tharanorians in those places. Together, they might be able to better defend one another against the monsters and threats of the vast wilds surrounding them.
But for now, the distances and threats between those distant enclaves remained far too great, and the threats close to home too real and dire.
They couldn’t even get through to Elkhart–let alone reach Detroit or Toledo.
But Thulkara and Mason warned them that they feared now that the Sylurrian mages of Vaejan/Chicago were somehow controlling both the mercs and the monsters, and were most likely using the event of the Merge to make a power grab. Michiana was caught in an attempt to subjugate all that these mages could seize under their power.
As the masters of magic on Tharanor, they might have even had a hand in causing the Merge itself, somehow. Nothing was certain.
Those possibilities alone made the people of Urth very, very angry.
As plans and preparations for the coming war continued, Mason, Blondie, and Thulkara did get a chance to meet the other two Urth human girls with magical powers–the Shooting Stars.
Captain Bill introduced them all to one another, one sunny day.
“Just as you have become known as the Pistolero, Mace, “We call these two brave young ladies our Shooting Stars,” Bill said. “The name has stuck and continues to give our people hope.”
Dozens of other strange cases and phenomena had been reported to the authorities and were being looked into, but thus far, Mason and these two girls were apparently the only Urth humans who had magical powers that could be directly made use of.
They looked so young. Just teens.
Minnie Patterson was a short, blond elf of a girl with sapphire blue eyes–a fierce, tiny thing, barely five feet tall, who had just turned nineteen. But all the stories claimed that she and her friend had survived many harrowing ordeals and encounters with the monsters. Only their new combined, magical abilities had saved them.
Mason listened eagerly to their story because it was so similar to his experience.
At first, they discovered their powers when they came out of the strange lake after the Merge. Minnie discovered quickly that when she felt threatened, she could somehow energize a rock or something small she held in her hands. When she or her friend threw it, the rock or small object exploded and did quite a bit of damage.
She and her best friend wiped out a group of monsters at the edge of the lake with exploding rocks. But her friend could somehow control the power in the energized stones and cast them much farther.
Minnie’s rocks were unstable and burst within two or three seconds, at most.
Her friend’s stones exploded on contact, and could be lobbed high into the air over greater distances.
Hannah Masters was also nineteen, and only slightly taller than Minnie, with curly brown hair and brown eyes. Equally slender and pretty, they were otherwise just regular girls.
Mason realized suddenly that they were both the same age as his beloved Tori.
And now they were caught up in fighting a brutal war for survival.
The Merge had caught them staying over at a friend’s house. They were then tossed into a glowing lake just as Mason had been that same morning, but when they emerged, their friend’s house was mostly gone. Probably on the other side, now. As they traveled, looking for safety, Minnie and Hannah made it home to their neighborhoods. But both of their homes and families were missing, as well.
They came across some slingshots and started using them to shoot their energized rocks more effectively. They found that they could also manipulate the energies of the magic to cause different effects.
Their abilities eventually brought them to the attention of the militia, who taught them archery and switched them over to using arrows. But the two young women insisted on keeping their slingshots and a pouch of collected marbles, ball bearings, and rocks with them at all times–as a backup.
By then, Minnie and Hannah had heard all about the infamous Pistolero, and later Blondie and Thulkara, as well.
Once the introductions were made, they all went out to the target grounds to compare notes and put on a little demonstration for the public.
The two girls demonstrated how they could manipulate their magic and cause different effects. But strangely enough, to Mason at least, their combined abilities did not seem to be affected at all by the composition of their missiles. They manipulated the magical energy itself to cause their effects.
Mason explained how his various shot and powder compositions could create his various effects. But unlike the girls, he had found no way to produce lightning blasts or cold blasts the way they could. He could produce clouds of regular smoke, but not the choking smoke–a noxious gas, really–that the girls could produce. He could affect his blasts by manipulating the components involved, but he could not directly change or shape the innate magic in him that ignited those components. That factor seemed constant in his case.
Blondie piped up and said that was because Mace was sorcerer with a very specific focus for his powers, and that he used Wild Magic instead of normal magic. Although Mason questioned how normal any magic could be.
The militia leaders had heard that Mason could cancel out other magic with his blasts. They asked for a demonstration.
“Minnie, Hannah, would you fire one of your freeze arrows at the second target from the right?”
“Sure,” Minnie said.
They did so.
Mason drew and fired a blast of his own at their glowing blue arrowhead speeding toward the target.
The power of the arrow erupted. It should have frozen everything near the target into solid ice.
Instead, the two effects cancelled each other out in a spray of inert gray dust.
The authorities determined that Minnie and Hannah would fight against the monsters, while Mason would fight against the mercenaries and their various mages. His magic negation blasts could be used to effectively counter them. The Shooting Stars had no way to do that.
“But consider this,” Mason warned. “It works both ways. Their magic can cancel out mine, also. And, there’ll be more of them than me.”
“But you can fire your pistols faster than each one of them can cast their magic,” Captain Avery said.
Mason nodded. “Timing will also be important,” he admitt
ed. “If either side is too slow, the magic will still go off. And after a while, I will still have to reload.”
“We’ve considered those factors,” Avery noted. “What if we provided you with a small team to reload your weapons for you, using your components? They would still work, wouldn’t they?”
“I think so.” Mason felt like an idiot. He hadn’t thought of that. “Let’s find out.”
Captain Avery nodded. “Good. We’ve actually had four teams of four people each, practicing with weapons and components similar to yours: black powder pistols, powder, shot, and percussion caps. But, of course, ours are now all inert; they won’t function. But at least our reloading teams have become very proficient at performing the mechanical reloading function itself.”
Avery motioned with his hands. “They can stay with you, close by, protected by heavy archery mantlets. Just hand one of your guards your empty pistols, and they’ll give them to the reloaders. The guards will slip the loaded pistols back into your holsters if they can reach them without getting in your way, or stand by to hand them to you directly when you are ready for them. Our spotters will be on hand to help direct your fire where we think it will be the most effective.”
Mason tipped his hat to them. “Sounds great. But let me try something. I want to load my components into one of those other guns and fire them with my hands. Lets see if they will work.
Mason loaded one chamber and fired it at a target.
No dice, again, the weapon just clicked.
“It appears,” he said, “that my guns and my components only work for me. All three factors must be present. Whatever happened to me and them in that glowing lake water, it affected all three factors.”
“Perhaps with the right mage or enchanter,” Blondie suggested, “you might be able to duplicate these effects someday.”
Mason shook his head. “Well, we haven’t found a way yet. But we can keep trying. I guess I’ll have to settle for being an artillery battery on the front lines.”
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