The private council held a quick meeting to decide what course of action they would push at the high council.
“The Beast has to be the first priority.”
“And then the Lizzies, so that they can’t release it again.”
“The Lizzies have no power; it is the Mages' Guild who should next feel our wrath. While their strength has been consumed. And once the Mages' Guild’s power is broken, the Lizzies will stop using so much magic.”
“Are you sure? The Lizzies have not yet had power, so there’s no telling what they would do if they had it. I think your son’s situation biases you.”
“I trust the woman who brings us news, who tries to bring together our causes.”
The man laughed. “Is she lying? Or being lied to? You know how women are.”
“This woman? I do not believe so. This woman is strong.”
“Your judgment is usually sound. Your son being held…”
“Rescued,” Leopold corrected.
“Sure, rescued by the Lizzies. I fear that fact may lead you to believe things you normally wouldn’t.”
“Then let us set aside a contingent from the main force, proportionate to the Lizzies’ size, to tackle them should they cause trouble. I doubt we could even find them if they do not choose to make themselves known.”
They agreed, adjourned the meeting.
The next one would go smoothly- almost a formality.
Then it would be time for war.
30
He surveyed his territory, retched at the clutter that covered his once pristine fields. The ones that had locked him away had grown in number, in power, in viciousness.
Yet their fragility remained the same. A flick of his tail sent the beasts and their artifacts alike flying through the air, broken even before they landed. A cleanup, a restoration, would be in order. First, however, he must find nourishment and destroy those who had stolen his lifeblood and locked him away for millennia.
The energy in the ground nearby was depleted, but still contained traces of power. He scooped up a mouthful and purified it, spitting out the waste.
The spell-induced fog that had lain over his brain all these years began to clear. He was still moving more slowly than he liked, or else these beasts had gotten immeasurably faster. He scooped and purified another mouthful and the beasts slowed just a bit. It was definitely him.
In addition to his brain, his muscles were slow, unused to movement after long confinement. And his wing was torn, consigning him to the ground alongside these wretched creatures who even now lined up to fight their god.
The creatures sent a rain of pointed twigs at him, the attached metal sharper and heavier than in ages past but still little more than a pinprick against his scaly hide. Perhaps the weapons were much improved for killing their own. It did not matter. He ignored the slings and volleys until they became too annoying, then crushed one of the formations. They all scattered, almost too fast for him to see where they went, but he continued to follow them and crush their cover.
Where were the ones who used his magic? The ones who stole his lifeblood from the earth and bent it towards their own selfish ends? Those he must destroy first.
One of the metal-tipped twigs landed in his eyes, causing him to roar with pain. Then another volley headed towards him. He tried to leave the ground by instinct, but his shredded wing would not allow him. He must fight down at their level.
He faced away from the attackers to shield his eyes, then scooped up more earth, again and again, trying to ignore the pain in his eye. Slowly their speed fell enough that he could track movement. They surrounded him now, with no direction open to protect his eyes and other sensitive areas, and indeed another twig planted itself in the same eye. But he could simply swing his tail and take out a wide swath of the creatures, which appeared to distract the others long enough that he could think.
He did not have to think long. The sense of magical perversion that had been growing in one area was confirmed by the presence of a wave of blasphemers moving towards him from that direction. They let loose their fireballs, which stung more than he recalled. These mages had grown more powerful.
He would eat them anyways.
He snapped the first one up in his jaws, let the concentrated magic flow through him. So much better than simply bringing it up from the earth. A more refined version. Addicting.
Perhaps he would keep some around as snacks. Not enough to be a threat, but enough to give him that rush, and save him all the work of filtering the dirt out himself. He snapped up another, barely feeling the fireballs and arrows hitting him as pleasure surged through him.
Time did not slow down for him again — he had reached that limit by digging magic up from the earth — but his muscles felt better than they had during this whole ordeal. He was ready for anything.
There were too many of these mages, and their fireballs were beginning to bring down his spirits. Despite their tastiness, he decided to destroy many of them quickly instead of savoring them. A couple stamps of his feet and half of them were gone in a chorus of tiny screams.
New Mages came at him, massed and moving quickly. He turned his attention from the scattered ones and faced this new threat. Stretched out his neck and tried to catch sight of them, but even as they moved towards him he couldn’t find them.
Invisible mages?
They arrived, and he could still not see them. He stamped at them, swung his tail at them, but they did not squish or slow. They went past him — through him! — And sailed on.
A distraction. Meanwhile, the soldiers and mages were doing real damage to him, despite both of their reduced numbers. Time to destroy more of them.
But another group of mages started heading towards him, from a different direction. His attention was caught, and he turned involuntarily, as if to a loud noise. Another group of mages from a different direction. And then a fourth set.
He desperately looked out at the city and tried to find these mages, but they were invisible except for their magical signature.
Ghost mages?
He tried to focus again on the very real mages throwing very real fireballs into him when another set of mages, probably ghost mages, emerged. He couldn’t help himself. Every threat must be faced, and a large ghost threat pulled harder than a real but small threat. The fireballs were beginning to make progress through parts of his skin, the scales heating and disconnecting, falling off and exposing bits of flesh. An arrow hit him in one of those places and he roared.
Whatever was generating these false mages must be dealt with.
The magic field was low and intermittent.
So far each team had been able to get off a burst of fake signatures, but the traps were proving trickier. When the field went out, all work had to stop- in fact, the trap disappeared from view, and the builder had to hold the patterns in their mind until the field came back online.
This trap was already past the complexity that Terrance could hold. Natalie had lots of practice, and a brain built for such contortions.
Terrance stood on a rooftop where he could see the ongoing battle. As much joy as it had given him to see War Mages and Inquisitors torn to shreds and swallowed whole, the worst case scenario was that the beast won that battle and came after his rescues. Better to make their contribution now while the other two forces had enough strength to mop up.
The beast had already been effectively distracted by the fake magical signatures sent his way, slowed in his utter destruction of the Mages and the Warriors. Now he was taking the bait for their real plan.
The beast stomped its feet fearsomely, roared, and set off towards what Terrance suspected was their third group of rescues. The beast’s size and the distance between them made the beast’s progress look slow, yet Terrance knew that with each stride a new building was crushed. With each sweep of the tail a half dozen lives were ruined, through death, or grave injury, or destruction of everything that they owned. It tromped over the remaining ground,
tearing a path of destruction straight through the crowded inner core.
So this was what it took to destroy the Mages' Guild. It was too much. It was ripping off a bandaid and bringing the entire scab with it. A massive overreaction, much like killing someone for accidentally using magic.
Terrance almost missed the explosion. Was it small, or just far away? The beast roared its displeasure, but did little to slow down. How far had the third group been able to get? Would the beast find them?
They couldn’t risk losing more. Terrance shot off a set of fake magical signatures at the beast. On cue it turned and headed straight for them.
“It’s coming!” he yelled.
Natalie finished off the trap she was building. The biggest they had made so far. The normal considerations about civilian’s lives didn’t come into play- what were a couple more at this point?
Then they started running. The had to run directly away from it, not to the side, so that it wouldn’t change course and miss their trap. They had no way of telling how good its eyesight was and couldn’t risk it not hitting the trap. Then they would be dead for sure.
The sound got louder. It was far faster than them, especially when they couldn’t count on enhanced physicality for speed. Whatever was left in the field had to be preserved for the remaining two teams and their traps.
At least the streets were empty. Everyone else was either huddled in their homes and businesses or long gone, running to escape the city.
The crunching. This was what it sounded like when stone was destroyed. He hadn’t expected that. Or the shaking of the earth. He hadn’t expected any of this.
What was one man against this chaos from time immemorial? Civilization had captured it once, pushed it below the surface, hidden it under the government so well that only a select few still believed it existed. A select few who were hated for their actions— who he had vowed to destroy.
Could they really destroy it?
He was quickly running out of breath, and Natalie was almost falling over. They stopped.
Terrance leaned on his knees and panted. “Might as well turn around and see our fate coming.”
The beast’s approach was thunderous, gut-wrenching.
Majestic.
Terrance couldn’t help but feel awed as it got ever closer.
He flinched when the trap went off, a sharp explosion against the rumblings to which he had become accustomed. The beast’s roar, too, was more horrific up close. An all-encompassing sound that shook his very bones.
It stumbled forward- definitely stumbling this time. The plan had worked.
“Time to run again.”
The beast seemed to have stopped.
Mages and Warriors ran in parallel- loathe to mix, but both committed to the same trajectory. The Mages, of course, were faster- the Warriors’ armor slowed them down, while the Mages’ bodily enhancement protected them and sped them up. Why did the evil always get such advantages?
By the time Leopold’s regiment arrive the beast was already on the ground and thrashing, one leg a bloodied stump and the scales on the side facing the sky turned bright red with heat. Time to do their part.
“Positions!”
The Warriors climbed up on rooftops to get a better view.
“Raise!”
They put arrows to bow.
“Pull, and…. Release!”
The beast roared again as its side became a pincushion, arrows breaking through its weakened molten scales.
“Fire at will!”
Whoever had taken out that leg had won the battle, and the Mages' Guild had softened up their target, but let no man see this corpse and say the Warriors' Guild had not done its part.
31
The plan had worked.
It had actually worked.
The beast was dead, brought down by their phantoms and their traps, finished off by the Mages and the Warriors' Guild, and they had lost no more rescues in the process.
The next day, Terrance did nothing except lie in bed. Which was okay, because Anne was there. How long had it been since he had nestled against someone? How much longer had it been since he had done it with someone who truly cared?
When they changed positions, they had to do it carefully. Terrance was bruised, and although Anne’s physical bruises had faded, certain seemingly random movements caused her to tense up.
“What happens now?” asked Anne.
“I think,” said Terrance, “we should stay here forever.”
The beast had been destroyed.
Not just subdued, not trapped — destroyed.
A thought rippled through the Department of Resource Management, one with massive consequences. What if they didn’t need to maintain the field? What if, instead, they sent out mages with the magic packs they had so far only used for trips outside the city?
It eliminated so many problems, including that of the Department of Inquisition. Long tolerated due to their necessity, there would no longer be a reason for them, and they could be combined with the now-decimated Department of War. Absorbed. Nordheim would no longer have reason to hate and fear the Mages' Guild.
Destruction notwithstanding, it was an exciting time to be a Mage. Angelika heard from Klaus in the Department of Discovery that many ideas which had previously been rejected were being reconsidered, both due to the possible replacement of the magical field with individual packs and due to a general opening up, a department shaken by the need for greater innovation. No longer would they have to worry whether an invention would interfere with the Inquisitors’ job or take too much magic when misused.
There was even a radical idea, one barely spoken of in a whisper: sell magic packs and crystals to the population, use the proceeds to rebuild and upgrade.
She wished Terrance was still here to enjoy this flowering of ideas; he would have loved it.
Amongst all the excitement, routine resumed. Her budgets needed numbers, the ledgers needed to be balanced. Things would change, but enough things would stay the same.
And there was Adolfo. As strange, lovable, annoying as ever. He didn’t fit any of her checkboxes, but… he was there.
The future would be alright.
Wile had a basement full of heroic criminals and not a clue what to do with them.
Their purpose had been to take down the Mages' Guild in retribution for all the people the Inquisitors had killed, but their first shot at it had run the magic stores dry, removed the field that kept the beast of legend in check, and ended with the Palace and nearly an eighth of Nordheim destroyed.
What would a second attempt bring?
And the magic field that they had drawn on, while briefly coming back online in a weakened form during the fight, had once again disappeared. There went their greatest tool.
“You know,” said Frederick. “There are some items that other cities make that, for some reason, aren’t allowed into Nordheim. Things people really want to buy.”
“And?”
“Some other people in the Justice Guild, they have connections. Things they all agree to overlook.”
“Smuggling? Are you serious?”
“Not just smuggling— black market sales too! Very profitable.”
“Too risky.”
“You just housed a rebellion against the most powerful institution in Nordheim. Did I mention that you have, living in your basement, people who are trained in traversing the city unnoticed? Many of whom can’t go back to their families. What’s the profit margin on your shop been lately?”
“Before or after we brought all of them in?”
Frederick raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?”
Wile sighed. “I think you should start drinking again.”
Hans had been like a second child to Natalie. The other rescues too. She had tried to protect them. She had tried to empower them. She had tried to hold them together when Hans was lost… and look what had happened.
She was under no illusions. It had been her rousing speec
h, her moving tribute to Hans, that had gotten eight more of them killed.
She had tried to bring down the cruel Mages’ Guild, and it had unleashed a monstrous beast that destroyed an eighth of the city.
The apartment she surveyed now had been destroyed by the beast. Giant holes where its feet had landed, pulverizing roof and living space alike, while leaving the rest in remarkably good condition.
Lines clean where the monster’s foot had gone.
This was the room where her daughter had been conceived. A corner of the bed was crushed, making the rest tilt and sag. The dresser was completely demolished.
When they were drawing lines on the map, she hadn’t even thought about her husband, her child. They hadn’t drawn lines directly over their house, but she should have known that things wouldn’t go perfectly according to plan.
She sat for hours berating herself. Hoping they would show up. Surely, if they were alive, they would come back here.
Then she thought to check the front door.
Their shoes were there, lined up neatly, the same way they always were when they were inside. She had taken off her own and lined them up by habit without even noticing. That meant they were here. Her husband, her daughter… somewhere in that pile of dust. Smashed to bits before they knew what was happening, dead because of her decisions.
She pulled out her knife and started tracing lines on her wrist.
It could be so easy.
It could all be over.
What good was fighting when it only hurt the ones you loved?
She made a tentative, shallow cut, and the pain brought her back.
What about the seven-eighths of the city that had been saved? What about the surviving rescues who had gotten a new lease on life? The ones that still looked up to her?
Mages Must Fall Page 16