by Philip Blood
“Do you think Medrod is here?” I asked Hydan, who was prone on my left, on the other side of Toji.
He was watching the flying creatures curiously, “I'm not sure, but I wonder if those flying beasts are one of his creations?”
“If he is here do you think he would have brought Ziny as well?”
He shook his head, “I don’t know, though I doubt it; I think he would have taken, or sent, any mage prisoners to Mystical Island, so his wife could start turning them to their side.”
I nodded, and then said, “That outer wall in the river seems fairly intact, has the siege only recently started?” I asked Toji, who was to my left.
He was also prone, and shading his eyes with one web-fingered hand. Toji answered, “No, I think this has been going on for some time.”
“But then why aren’t the walls damaged?”
He pointed at a big trebuchet which was just whirling around and sending its heavy load high into the air, across the meadow, over the canal, and then down into the city wall. The big boulder struck the wall about five feet from the top, and the wall stones blasted inwards in a shower of debris.
“That’s more like it!” I said, and then added, “Not that I want the walls damaged.”
Toji nodded, but said, “Keep your eye on that broken wall.”
It was about a half hour later when I saw the wall suddenly repair itself. Now, I don’t mean the original bricks piled back up in reverse, what I mean is the broken hole was just suddenly gone, and bricks were back the way they had been originally.
“Holy crap, wizardry, I presume?”
Toji nodded, “Your father is probably there, only a Third or higher would have the power to reach that much area.”
“So he can just keep fixing the walls forever?” I asked.
Myrka was to my right and said, “Not forever. Remember my collapse during the battle in the tower? If a mage uses all their power, they cannot continue to function, and may perish.”
Toji added on, “So if the enemy can keep damaging the walls swiftly enough, eventually the mage in there will tire, and be unable to keep up. They just need enough siege weapons to overwhelm his recovery speed.”
“I see,” I said.
We could make out teams of the enemy chopping down trees while others worked to build new siege weapons. There was a kind of industry built up, something they must have been working on for some weeks.
I pointed to the river, “Can we just swim in and get to the city that way?”
Hydan replied, “It may be true that their necromages cannot get in the water, but they have many living troops as well, and I’m sure they have posted many sentries underwater to block such an ingress.”
I nodded, “OK, other ideas?”
Myrka replied, “We fight our way in. We go in well after dark when they are tired and then we kill the sentries. Then we fight our way to the wall. We slaughter any of the enemies who dare oppose us.”
“OK, that’s an idea, but with Medrod and his necromages around, not necessarily a good one,” then I added, “Any ideas which don’t get some or all of us killed or captured?”
Hydan grinned, “We can fly in.”
“Fly? What? Turn ourselves into flying creatures and just wing our way in?” I said sarcastically.
He shook his saeran head, “There are several problems with your plan.”
“I wasn’t serious,” I replied.
“I am,” Hydan noted, and added, “However, mages can’t really turn themselves into other things.”
I was puzzled, “Wait, I’ve seen you turn three or four creatures at once into chickens or snogfish! And technically, we all changed into saerans when we came here!”
“That’s true, but let me explain. You see, a mage has what we call a Self Image; it’s why we look like ourselves, even when we go to another world and change bodies. Now, the reason we change bodies is because we have entered a world which has its own imposed reality. This was done millennia ago before the Archimage took physical form. The reality they imposed back then was not bound by their current physical limitations; it was back when their power was almost god-like. Lower Tier mages have nowhere near enough power to overcome the rules the Archimages imposed. So when we arrived here, we didn’t change ourselves into saerans; we were changed by entering this sphere of reality created by the Abal Archimage. We had no choice.”
“I see, sort of,” I answered, “Though you will have to tell me more about this Archimage physical body thing.”
“Let’s talk about this later. For the moment just accept that this is why we changed to saeran bodies. Now, the reason we can’t change away from a saeran body is due to that Self Image I mentioned. Mages have a zone of reality around them, which both protects them, and limits them in form. It protects them from things like explosions, or missiles of any kind, like bullets or arrows. These things enter the sway of the mage’s reality and are automatically changed to that reality. This reality is set by the mage and then handled by this sphere of influence. But to change our form on an Archimage’s World, we would have to override the Archimage’s Reality. It would just require too much power for any mage below an Archimage, and even they can't change another mage because of their Self-Image plus the Archimage reality of this World.”
“But you did it to those necro things!”
“Those weren’t living mages. The necrosouls I changed on Earth were just mundane corpses, reanimated by a necromancer pulling a soul from the Ether. Then, the shades I changed in the tower were not using their own bodies; they were creating bodies by assembling objects, bones, armor, etc. I didn’t change their bodies; I changed the objects they were using as bodies. There is a big difference!”
“What about necromages?”
Hydan shrugged, “I’m not sure, they are re-animated corpses again, but they are also the souls of mages, so perhaps they can’t be altered, or perhaps it is just hard. They could be like the shades, or they could be much more difficult. I’d have to try to change one to find out if it is possible. Remember, these necromages are a relatively new creation. I didn’t even know about them! From what Toji says, Morgain came up with how to create them recently, and not much is yet known about the process.”
“OK,” I said, drawing out the two letters, “So, you can’t change a living mage into something else.”
“Nope,” he agreed, “Nor can you change yourself, it just requires too much magic, it’s that simple.”
“So no flying creatures,” I lamented.
“No, and no invisibility either, same problem,” he added.
I hadn’t thought of that anyway. Then I asked, “Right, so why did you bring up flying in if we can’t change to flying creatures? Were you talking about riding a flying beast?”
“We could do that, but we’d likely be shot down by the defenders, or attacked by the enemies own squads of saerans on flying creatures.”
“So, what did you mean then?”
“I said ‘fly in’, but I did not mean as, or on, a winged creature. Perhaps I should have said, ‘arc in’.”
We all looked at him blankly for a moment.
Hydan pointed at the larger siege engines. “Those trebuchets are quite powerful. They are lobbing large boulders nearly to the top of the wall. I, therefore, assume they could fling lighter things further, like us, for example.”
I lifted up slightly to see over Toji to make sure Hydan could see me staring incredulously at him, and said, “Hold on, you want us to become ballistic missiles and land somewhere in the town, likely smashing into a wall while we do our best impression of a squashed house fly?”
Hydan laughed, “Minus the squashed house fly part, yes. The speed we would be flying would far exceed any winged creature, so our enemies can’t stop us, and anyone shooting at us from the walls would have a hard time hitting us, besides, we have no mount to shoot down, and their missiles can’t hit a mage.”
I couldn’t believe he was serious, and exclaimed, “Are
you insane?”
Hydan smirked, “That is yet to be determined, though I think the current consensus is ‘definitely’.”
Toji was sizing up Hydan’s plan, like it made some kind of sense, “I’m assuming you want us to fix our landing, and come in light, just like when you fell from that waterfall?”
“Exactly,” Hydan exclaimed.
I sighed, “I’m not so sure I want to try this as I may not be able to make myself light if I am worried about it, and even if I was willing, how would we get a trebuchet to launch us?”
“Well, we’re going to have to appropriate one,” Hydan noted.
I looked at him dubiously. “I think we need a better plan.”
Myrka looked at me and blinked, and then said in absolute seriousness, “We can start killing our way in right now.”
I sighed.
I was still muttering under my breath about insane Friares as we snuck our way through the woods toward one of the clearings where they had built a trebuchet. When we reached the edge of the trees we could see a field of stumps, where the attackers had cut down trees to use in the making of the siege weapon, and then out in the middle was the very large trebuchet. It had two tall triangular A-frames which went up to the pivot point at the top, as well as two lower A-frames for support. There was a long tree trunk attached to the top of the tall A-frames near the base of the long trunk, and then a large basket attached to that, filled with rocks.
I’d heard of trebuchets before, of course, but I’d never really watched one work. The principal was actually pretty simple, they use some ropes in a block and tackles setup to winch down the long arm, lifting the counterbalance of stones in the big wood basket. Hanging from the end of that was a sling, which is where they loaded the missile. Firing a trebuchet was as simple as releasing the arm. The heavy weight of the rocks in the basket made that fall, which pivoted the arm on the A-Frame, and that whipped the sling around on the end of its rope, which described a parabolic curve, and released the missile with amazing velocity.
Hydan wanted us to be that missile.
I watched the enemy launch a missile which must have weighed as much as a car, and it flew several hundred yards to reach Ouroboros.
There were about three hundred or so saerans around, but distant trumpets sounded the attack, and most of the enemy marched off toward Ouroboros. Only about fifty saerans remained; these were the ones involved in working the trebuchet. I looked around and finally spotted one who looked kind of drawn and dry at the face, obviously the necromage in command. Fortunately, there seemed to be only one of them.
I whispered to Hydan, “One necromage, there.”
He nodded, and then spoke softly. “Myrka, you and Nick clear the way to the sling, Toji and I will deal with the necromage.”
Myrka looked at me and said, “Do not get between me and my targets.”
“Oh trust me, Sweetheart, I learned that lesson,” I agreed.
“My heart is no sweeter than…”
“Just an expression,” I muttered and she quit speaking, though she did give me a very nice scowl.
I turned back to Hydan, “What about my issue with making myself light, meaning, if I don’t?”
“Just believe you are light, and you will be,” he retorted.
I nodded, “Right, easy for you to say.”
“You have been doing well on changes to your clothing,” he reminded me.
I almost laughed, but I kept my voice quiet, “That takes a lot of thought on my part, and I’m not trying to save my life while hurtling through the air like some water balloon headed for a brick wall!”
“There is no difference, you just have to believe in what you know is real.”
I shook my head, and thought, I believe that if I survive this I’m going to kick that smiling bastard in the head. Then I said softly, “Look, what if I screw up?”
“Stay close to me, I will try to make you light if you fail,” Hydan suggested.
‘Stay close’, he says. I’m going to attach myself to him like a leech, I thought.
But, it was accepted, crazily, this was the plan.
We were waiting for the moment when the crew cranked down the trebuchet arm into the loading position, but before they started to load the missile. Toji was gauging their work, and lifted a hand, and when he brought it down we all leaped up and ran out of the trees. Toji and Hydan immediately angled off to our left, trying to flank the necromage, while Myrka and I headed straight for the trebuchet sling.
They were busy, so they didn’t spot us for a few moments, which let us get through most of the stumps and onto the grass meadow before one of the saerans pointed and started to call out.
Not that anyone heard him, Myrka disintegrated him to dust with a blast of power, but her blue flash of light was like a beacon and did a much better job of getting everyone’s attention than some fool yelling.
At the sight of the charging sorceress and her flash of blue energy, not strangely, and much to Myrka’s disgust, most of the saerans turned tail and ran.
But the necromage turned toward her with a scowl and raised his hand.
That’s when Hydan and Toji came at him from the side.
Hydan gestured, and nothing happened. I guess you can’t change a necromage into a snogfish.
But Hydan wasn’t done yet, just as the necromage started to run toward Myrka and me, a whirlwind of dust kicked up around him in a small tornado, effectively blinding the necromage.
He tried to stagger through, and started to cause the dust to blow away, but in that moment of blindness, he didn’t see the pool of water which seemed to flow up out of the ground in front of him.
He fell into the pool of water with a splash, and then he started to howl and scamper backward to get out of the water.
He wasn’t dying, not like the Wicked Witch from Oz, but his skin was starting to get saggy and was sliding off the bones in places.
Just as he managed to get out of the pool, Toji stepped up behind him and slashed with his right tanto, severing the head of the necromage.
It bounced to the ground, and then into the pool of water.
The body collapsed a moment later.
“To the sling!” Hydan boomed out to us.
We all met at the loading spot for the trebuchet sling and got inside.
Toji brought the release rope with him, and once we were in he said, “Is everyone ready?”
I had been in a constant battle with myself over whether I was crazy or just stupid, and decided suddenly it didn’t matter. “Hell no!” I replied, “And I’m never going to BE ready! This is insane; I’m getting out of this slingshot!”
That’s when Toji pulled the rope.
I madly grabbed for Hydan, like he was the life ring and I was a drowning man who didn’t know how to swim.
The centrifugal force was stunning, and I nearly passed out from lack of blood to the brain. I was thrown against the canvas of the sling and lost all hope of grabbing Hydan. I added Toji to my shit list, which I would be using should I survive this insane ride.
I heard Hydan whoop with pure glee and added him to the same shit list.
It was only a moment later that the sling released and I found myself tumbling through the air. I had a flashback to some dream where I’d been flying and died on impact with the ground. But this wasn’t a dream. I was flying at high speed toward the hard walls of Ouroboros. I immediately started praying to the gods of flight that we would clear the wall. I had this flash of an image of Wile E. Coyote smacking into a desert cliff, and then sliding down, except I wasn’t a toon.
Below us, as they spun into my crazy view, I could see the Island Witch’s army, several thousand warriors, charging the river, though some of them had stopped to look up at the nut cases flying ass-over-teakettle above their heads.
We reached the top of our trajectory path, and started to fall; the wall coming up swiftly looked mighty hard, but then I could see we would clear the top of the wall, which left
the landing. I looked, but Hydan was a good ten feet away, and in that instant of vision before I spun around again, I saw that the bastard had righted himself, and was now flying with his arms out to his sides, like damned wings, and he was grinning like a freshman on his first date! I hated him.
As I continued to tumble like a sock in a dryer, I started thinking, hard, about just how light I was, but I guess I didn’t really believe myself, because as soon as we cleared the walls, I seemed to accelerate past the other three, which really meant they slowed and I continued at ballistic speed.
I heard Hydan call out, “You are very light, Nick!”
“Screw you, Hydan,” I called back.
I concentrated, and kept concentrating on being light right to the point where I hit, hard.
OK, so a few survivors of danger are smart and the rest are lucky, well, I must be an idiot because I’m damned lucky. Somehow, through no plan of mine, I landed in a large canal; not that my landing didn’t hurt. I hit the surface of the water at an oblique angle, which, combined with my excessive velocity, made me skip across the surface like a stone across a still pond. I hit the water a second time, which slowed me a little, and then skipped again. A wall was approaching fast, so the next time I came down to hit the water I tried to enter the surface in a head first dive, hands out in front of my head. This briefly seemed to work, my arms penetrated, but then I tumbled and now I was rotating in a flurry of spinning arms and legs, throwing up splashes of white water. I guess this slowed me enough to keep me alive, because when I hit the canal wall, which brought me to a sudden, abrupt and painful stop; it only broke two bones in my left arm and one in my leg. I was now clinging to the side of the canal with my good arm. I was in shock, with half my mind amazed I was still alive and the other half planning my revenge on Hydan and Toji; hell I threw Myrka into my plans for revenge just on general principal.
Hydan and the others found me a few minutes later, likely following my sad mewing sounds. They hauled me up out of the water, and while Hydan healed me, I’m pretty sure I was saying some really nasty things about what I was going to do to each of them.