by Andrew Smith
“We go,” said Mary.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for Hunter and Voz? I would just feel a lot better having them around,” said Leila
“We would have to wait quite a while,” Wyyla announced. “I saw them headed towards the edge of town. I think they were headed for the forests.”
“Why would McLenen run for the forests?” Mary wondered.
“Actually, he was chasing them. Or at least Hunter. I didn’t see Voz anywhere.”
“Very odd, indeed,” Mme. Rumella remarked. “But the question remains. Mary, we have your vote. What about the rest of us?”
“Personally,” Wyyla piped up, “I think we can take him.”
“I’ve already taken on one Necromancer tonight. What’s one more?”
Everyone chuckled at Grace’s little joke. Except Leila.
“I may as well go if everyone else is,” she said resignedly. “I’ll be cannon fodder.”
“Stop that, pet.”
“Sorry.”
“And Benny go home.”
“What? Auntie, you can’t be serious!” Benny protested.
“I’m perfectly serious, thank you. Now go.”
“I won’t. You need my help.”
“You are far too young to be involved in this,” Mme. Rumella calmly explained. “And I won’t have your parents hating me forever because I’ve gotten you killed. Now leave.”
“I won’t,” Benny repeated.
“You will or I’ll tell them about the marijuana I found in your bag.”
“What? There’s no marijuana in my bag.”
“There will be if you don’t leave.”
“Come now, auntie. You don’t know any drug dealers.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I don’t care. Do you think my mother would be all jolly with me if I ran and hid while her only sister was turned into the walking dead? I’m going with you.”
Mme. Rumella narrowed her eyes at him. “Do as you must, then,” she said, and walked off.
It wasn’t long before the hill came into view. The Palatine Hill and the neighboring Capitoline Hill had both appeared in the city around the same time, along the Forum Romanum between them. The Forum area and the other hill had slowly been pushed to the city’s First Quarter, and the Palatine to the second. There was now a sharp drop off on the opposite side. The hill was green and spotted with trees and the ruins of ancient baths and palaces. There was a mainly intact house, many stories high with archways of various widths.
And there was an unnatural light emanating from the top.
“Unless there are a whole lot of welders up there, I think we’ve found him,” Leila commented.
“Come,” said Mme. Rumella. “We’ve much to do.”
The Palatine Hill
Mary went into an Incantrance. Wyyla appeared much larger, and glowed Kelly Green. In the distance, there were some strange lights, brownish, scuttling. She looked at the light from the top of the hill. It shone horribly bright in her trance state, and moved in ways her mind couldn’t quite grasp. She had to look away. All around the hill was quiet. From her previous experience with Ruin, she had expected safeguards of all kinds. He was rather the paranoid type.
It was possible they were there, and she simply couldn’t see them in her trance state because they were stationary. She doubted it though. Stationary safeguards were all well and good indoors, but in a space the size of the Palatine Hill, there was a more sensible solution, one that covered more area. They were called Motes. Tiny sorcerous points that orbited on a set path. Once they struck a target, the spell effect would be initiated, and someone would get a seriously unpleasant surprise. A swarm of Motes would give anyone pause. Even Mary. Maybe. She looked back at the strange light in the center of the hill. She could swear there was a sound reaching her ears. A song, she knew, but not like any music she had heard. She again was forced to look away, and began to blink off the trance state
There was a tickling sensation, like a loose hair playing at the back of her neck. “You hear it too, don’t you?” Wyyla asked her
“Yes, I do. I did. I can’t now.”
“But you heard?”
“Yes.”
“Did you understand?”
“No,” Mary replied.
“Then you’re lucky. And we’re lucky to be here now, while we still have a chance of stopping him.”
Mary turned to the other. “I think he knows. I think he’s activating it as we speak.”
“He is,” said Wyyla. “I can feel it.”
Leila and Grace exchanged slightly panicked looks. Mme. Rumella closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath and tried to block out all the horrible imaginings forcing their way into her mind.
Mary thought strategy. There was a spell she remembered, one that became very useful when fighting Ruin’s horde of ancient, reanimated warriors. It would make the perfect overture for what was to come. “Everyone, take up positions around the hill at intervals. I’ll do something to distract him. You’ll know it when you see it. Just don’t be too close too early.”
Everyone nodded their assent and moved silently away. Mme. Rumella grabbed Leila by the elbow and led her away to the left. Benny whispered ‘Icarus’ and hovered, a mere inch above the slope, in the opposite direction. Grace followed, wincing each time the ground under her boot made the slightest noise.
Mary removed her long coat and dispelled it. Now that the safeguard had been set by Mme. Rumella, she could not set it inside the barn, but instead aimed for the roof. She just hoped it wasn’t raining.
She raised her baton to the sky and envision the area at the top of the hill, the ruins of ancient palaces. The spell was powerful, not Alta-Signa powerful, but still required more than a one word incantation. It was from the order of sorcery known as ‘the distance’. It was the sorcery that inhabited the spaces between the stars. Some of the more basic spells of this class were actually ubiquitous in the city, though people rarely knew the order or origins of the sorcery they used. “Dark is the sky and spaces between, and bright is the fire which draws the heavens together,” she said.
A meteor rose. It appeared from the tip of Mary’s Focus and erupted forth with a blazing trail even as it expanded, the same shape, only scaled up in size from pebble to boulder. It flew upward with a slight arc in, and exploded over the top of the hill.
The meteorites blazed down in their dozens, hammering the ground and spreading flames over building and tree. Mary quickly cast the feather spell on herself and leapt in. As she did, she saw Benny flying in from her right. Mme. Rumella walked calmly in, wand leveled.
“Ruin, my dear misguided young man, I’m afraid we’ve come to stop you.”
Leila and Grace had positioned themselves behind a standing portion of wall, and apparently Ruin had yet to develop the reflex of looking up for flying people, as Benny was hovering mere yards above and behind. From the impact of the meteorites, dozens of small fires had started. For the moment at least, they did not appear to be spreading
“We who?” Ruin spat.
Mary touched down lightly a few feet away. “I think she must mean me.”
“Are all your coffee shop buddies here too?” Ruin sneered
“You’re really unpleasant,” Mary informed him. She took in the scene. All around were patches of burning rubble. Near Ruin was a raised marble slab that resembled an altar. Mary was relatively sure that it was not in the original plans. On it was the Standard of Uruk. It was strangely quiet. There was still a visible glow, white, tainted rose, but nothing like what she saw in her Incantrance, and for that she was grateful. There was a longsword laying there as well.
“Oh my,” said Mme. Rumella, and Mary followed her gaze.
There was the Crusader, on his knees and strapped down to the ground with a hundred chains, so many he was half-covered.
“Yeah, he’s handy,” said Ruin. “I’m not sure his masters know how much knowledge he has. If they did, I doubt
that they would have sent him. He knows all about the Standard, including how to read it. It was rough, getting it out of him. The mind of a sorcerous construct is a weird damn place, I’ll tell you.”
“So that was your swarm of creatures outside the shop,” Mary remarked. “What’s the matter, then? Can’t even get the dead to do your dirty work any more?”
Ruin grinned. He was the very picture of smugness.
Mary sighed. “Oh what is it? Come on, then, what asinine plot have you cooked up this time? There’s the ancient sorcery, obviously,” she said, gesturing at the Standard, “and given your history I can only assume you’re going to start messing with dead things in a moment.”
Ruin shrugged, still smiling. “I guess we’re all creatures of habit.”
“Young man, if you’re still alive after tonight, I fervently recommend a dialogue coach,” Mme. Rumella said. “One thing you could say for Lionel was that he at least had a little panache.”
“Panache-less though he may be, he does have a point,” Mary said. “I am, after all, in the habit of kicking his ass.”
“Do it, don’t do it. It won’t matter.”
“Won’t it?” Mary asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The Standard is already activated. Can’t you feel it?”
They were forced to admit that they could. It was like tension, like something creeping around in their veins, through the air, testing
“The sorcery written on this thing is an Alta-Signa, the most ancient one I’ve ever heard of, much less experienced.”
While Ruin spoke of the high sorceries, Benny touched light down behind him. Using Voz’s double field force trick, he created a silent area around him and the Crusader and began breaking the chains that bound him.
“It could rewrite reality in a snap,” Ruin went on. “It was just waiting for someone to use it.”
“And how, precisely, do you know that?” Mme. Rumella asked, skeptical.
“It told me.”
“And why wouldn’t it?”
Ruin glared at her. “Shut up,” he said.
“Dialogue and manners as well,”
“General etiquette,” Mary added. “I bet he doesn’t know which fork is which.”
“Okay, I’ve had about enough of you two. I’m about to learn the secrets of the universe here.”
“Pardon?”
“We’ve all wondered the nature of life and death. Don’t pretend you haven’t.”
Mme. Rumella sighed again. “Alright,” she said.
“I won’t,” said Mary. “But I will note that your work on the subject has been hazardous to a great many people.”
“Right. I care so much. That’s why I did it in the first place,” was Ruin’s sarcastic reply.
“Just finish your explanation,” Mary ordered. “I’m anxious to see to your cartoonish and embarrassing death.”
Ruin held his tongue. “Like I said, we’ve all wondered the nature of life and death. That’s why I went into necromancy. I can tinker around with it, but the greater mystery is still closed to me. But now, with this,” he indicated the Standard of Uruk, “I’m going to crack the universe open and take a look at what’s inside.” A manic glow appeared in his eyes. “I’ll finally know the answers, the real ones, the ones to the ultimate concerns. And you know what? If I don’t like them, I can change them. I can look at all the rules, take them, break them, shuffle them around. People will live and die at my slightest whim.” He smiled feverishly at them
“I think you should have said ‘every caprice’ instead of ‘slightest whim’,” said a thoughtful Mary. “Or perhaps I’m just partial to the sound.”
Ruin appeared a little crestfallen at not being taken seriously. “This is serious,” he said.
“Of course it is,” Mme. Rumella chimed in. “I think what Mary is trying to tell you is that you won’t get a chance to use it. Because she’s going to hurt you severely.”
“I’m already using it,” Ruin pointed out.
“Of course you are, young man. That’s why we’re all still alive and standing,” Mme. Rumella returned. “Though you may soon not be. I’m afraid there’s someone you’ve rather put out.”
Benny had released the Crusader and downed the fields that silenced them. The Crusader grabbed his longsword from the slab beside Ruin. He brought it up above his helmet and swung down, but Ruin heard the noise and dodged.
It was at that point that things got out of hand.
Leila and Grace rushed out as Mary and Benny took again to the air.
Ruin yelled something unintelligible and the Crusader was thrown through the air and through a crumbling archway. He hit the ground and rolled down the hill a ways.
“Proteggere!” Leila shouted. A blue glow appeared and tried to surround the Standard, but it was banished by the rosy white from the artifact.
Ruin round on her and fired a force-of-light orb from his finger tips, just as Grace used the same protection spell on Leila that Leila had tried to use on the Standard. The two effects reached her at the same moment and cancelled each other in a flash of blue. Leila stood, shocked and staring.
Mary landed lightly atop a standing column, sending twin jets of flame at the necromancer. He flung his arm in her direction, and a miniature gray pellet hit the column as she leapt away. She swore, not because of her close call with what was almost certainly a disgraceful necromantic attack, but at a detail she noticed. She was sure the Mme. Rumella had noticed it too, because that was what Mme. Rumella did. Ruin wasn’t using a Focus. His wand was nowhere in sight. Spell effects were launching themselves straight from his fingertips. Mary had a sinking feeling in her stomach. He must be tapped into the power of the Standard.
Grace was darting towards the frozen Leila. Ruin turned to follow her. Grace grabbed Leila round the waist, forcing her to run backwards. “What?” Leila asked.
“Nice of you to join us,” Grace said as they ran. A stream of gray pellets hit the ground behind them, the impact forming clouds of dust that rose from the dirt and stone of the floor. Grace pulled them both at an angle and they dove over a pile of collapsed column
One of the pellets hit Leila in the leg while she was airborne. She screamed in pain. Grace tugged at her pant leg to have a look. Beneath, the skin was becoming withered and gray. “Jesus,” she said.
There was a clink on the ground next to them. A vial of smoke had appeared. Grace unstopped it and placed it under Leila’s nose. She inhaled it eagerly. The leg remained as it was. “Did it work?” Grace asked
“The pain is stopped. I don’t feel it spreading anymore.”
“Alright. You just stay here.”
Leila fixed her with and forbidding gaze. “But then I’ll be late for my date at the roller disco,” she said.
“Hush you,” Grace replied. She peeked up over the hopefully-protective screen of fallen stone. Mme. Rumella, stationary in her position from before the fighting started, gave a friendly wave. Grace mouthed ‘thank you’ rather than draw Ruin’s attention.
Mme. Rumella’s greatest strength, in her opinion, was to go unnoticed in a fight. With a seven-foot-high suit of armor and Mary, Queen of Scots running about trying to kill you, the innocuous tea shop owner was certainly of secondary concern. Up until the point when she broke open the very ground beneath you.
The spell effect was jagged as it sprang forth from the tip of her wand. Mme. Rumella had found the spell convenient on more than one past occasion, and therefore had a bit of practice at it, but it was still difficult to aim. It traced a seemingly random path, the weakest parts of the soil. The sudden chasm broke right between Ruin’s legs, forcing him to straddle it as it grew wider. Ruin pushed off with one foot. He managed to get his weight far enough over the he was no longer in danger of falling. Mme. Rumella made a disappointed noise and waved her wand. The chasm snapped shut, clipping a half inch of sole from Ruin’s boot. There was no sense in leaving it open. There were far more of them to get hurt.
Ruin started for her, face full of rage. Mme. Rumella held her ground. Grace, looking on, thought she had frozen, like Leila, and jumped up to intervene. She fired an orange force-of-light orb, the highest she could. It slammed into Ruin’s shoulder but, thanks to his large size, he wasn’t thrown nearly as much as Lionel had been.
“Knives,” he said, and four of them flew at her from no where.
Two of them hit. Pierced in shoulder and stomach, Grace fell to the ground
“Mary!” Mme. Rumella called
Right on cue, Mary touched town behind Ruin and kicked at the back of his knees. Mme. Rumella ran to Grace as he fell.
The Crusader had righted himself and found his way back up the hill. Mary knit her hands together and made to hit him at the base of the skull. Something happened. The world stopped making sense and she froze. Ruin pulled himself up and backhand her across the face. She fell stiffly to the ground and lay there in the same position in which she stood.
“Thanks, Mary. I think I’ve finally got the hang of this thing.”
The Crusader charged him, sword leveled at his midsection. Ruin held out his hand and brought the Crusader to life. The metal of the armor became malleable, melting, changing. Changing to flesh. As the armor became a man, it began to scream. The screaming voice was the same tinny soundit had always been. The man that had been the Crusader fell to his knees, dropping his unchanged weapon. It clattered loudly on the few remaining floor stones, though still drowned out by the screaming. Ruin walked over and kicked the naked form in the face. He fell silent.
Through a gap in the rubble, Mme. Rumella watched. “Oh my,” was her only comment. One healing vial had failed to heal Grace’s wounds. Mme. Rumella through down her purse. “They are obviously more than ordinary knives,” she told Leila, still laying on the ground with her mummified leg. “Give her two additional vials, no more, then we’ll bring her to the Hospice, once this mess is taken care of.”
With everyone in sight apparently taken care of, Ruin’s attention had turned back to the Standard. Tendrils of a bloodysomething tainted the rosy light emitting from the artifact. There was a crackling noise, and a suggestion of another place, flashes so fast the conscious mind almost could not take them in. A starry sky of dusk violet, a marble tiled floor, stretching into the distance. Mme. Rumella’s mind flashed to the House of Folly. The statues. Mary.