Chương 32: Interlude III: Fire and Iron

Two soldiers that had taken the first steps to becoming something more, something magical, took cover inside a gaping crack in the street, one that went all the way down to the sewers. Had it been a car or even a wall, the red-hot bolts that had been pelting their cover for the past five minutes, splashing into molten, burning metal on impact, would have already reduced it to a puddle of molten slag as the soldiers had discovered in previous missions.

Doing the same to the much larger mass of the ground itself was a bit harder even with magic, which was why digging a trench rapidly even in concrete or rock was the second magical power Sergeant Sorensen developed. A trio of skeletal archers leaped into the trench. Two of them managed to find a precarious balance among the jagged spikes of concrete and brickwork that formed the sides of the trench, aided by their borderline superhuman agility.

The third didn't and toppled through the gap in the bottom to crash head-first thirty feet below. It didn't die; the two soldiers weren't so lucky. Sergeant Sorensen opened fire with his rifle that wasn't really a rifle. It was more the shape his magic took when he used it, like a fireball or a magic shield.

He had been more comfortable thinking of magic as a weapon during the three days the old hunter Dallas and the foreigner Verity had taught him and his friends, so one night it had vanished his actual rifle and taken its shape. Magic often did things like that. An unending stream of magic flew at the skeletal archers with the speed and force of a hail of bullets. Some of the hail hit nothing but empty air, passing through the gaps between the enemies' bones and drilling holes in the earth behind them.

Most of it still hit bone held together by molten metal instead of ligaments. One would think such a combination to be brittle and be lethally surprised when the enemy failed to crumble under a casual blow. Instead, it stood up pretty well against the first few blows, even the first dozen. But the magic in the shape of a gun did not run out of bullets, did not overheat, produced no recoil; the Sergeant simply held the trigger for the three seconds it took the archers to be torn apart.

The other soldier preferred a more up close and personal style. His long knife darted in and out as he jumped from skeletal archer to skeletal archer, each thrust severing a spine. Far from having to run from mere gargoyles - the flying, fireball-launching pests most people mistakenly called imps - as he'd done when he'd first arrived, he easily destroyed his opponents before they knew he was there by striking at their bones instead of the liquid metal joints.

Another squad of skeletal archers came from the gap in the half-finished wall, marching faster than most people could sprint and firing low-power shots on the move. Their arrows, bits of molten metal and magical incendiaries given shape by magic, flew in a low arc before losing cohesion over the trench and dispersing into a fine, fiery rain of molten metal.

The two soldiers surprised the monstrous attackers by shooting and stabbing them in the back, somehow having left the trench and appeared behind them in only a few seconds. Mike's second and most useful power was an ability to teleport short distances through shadows; apparently, it had grown enough to take passengers along. With the immediate enemy presence cleared out, the two soldiers walked to the incomplete tower and wall to complete the last objective of their mission.

The roughly cylindrical, black edifice loomed overhead in ominous silence, bereft of roaring magical flame or crackle of lightning. While physically completed, the Dark Mason responsible for its construction had been pulled back the moment the first resistance members had been noticed moving towards the area, leaving its enchantments unfinished. The soldiers futilely searched for the way in, somewhere to apply their limited powers to deal some damage. There wouldn't be one, of course.

The invaders did not use towers the way our ancestors had back in the middle ages. Their towers, at least the small ones being constructed around the city, weren't fortified buildings soldiers would stay in and shoot back at encroaching enemies; they were enchanted to do their own shooting instead. Basically they were oversized wands, and you didn't make a wand with unnecessary hollow spaces or structural weaknesses if you could avoid it.

In fact you made it as tough as you reasonably could, as Sergeant Sorensen found out when he tried to shoot the thing. Crude gothic decorations aside, the tower was just a cylinder of solid metal, just like the wall was a really thick sheet of it. Then the trap closed in, as we'd known it would. Dozens upon dozens of skeletal archers converged from every street leading to the city's center, more rose from where they'd been hiding behind the wall.

Sergeant Sorensen sprayed some fire on the first few ranks to minimal damage, then the two soldiers were forced to flee. Hundreds of enemies followed, slowly surrounding them. The enemy could afford to waste hundreds of troops to overwhelm a couple of resistance members; they'd murdered a city of two hundred thousand to power their war machine. Then, when Mike and Sorensen were about to die, a black-suited, golden haired missile flew through the enemy's front ranks like a meteor.

Skeletons burst apart, molten metal splattered everywhere. Then she flew back in, landed between the enemy host and the two soldiers and basically dared the enemy to come at her. Naturally, the undead horde obliged her. Their attention occupied by a far more dangerous and powerful opponent, they ignored the soldiers' actions that couldn't really hurt them anyway. It was then that the two of them drew inch-thick, foot-long cylinders of metal from their secure, secrecy-enchanted cases strapped to their backs.

Even in the middle of her fight with the horde, Maya paused momentarily to stare. The two wands beat like drums in the senses of anyone that knew how to look more than the obvious, barely containing the massive amounts of energy within. Crafting the things had been a bitch, leaving me too exhausted for hours afterwards and coming close to blowing up the safehouse eleven times.

A dozen Iron Beaks, the monstrosities Maya almost affectionately called 'Stymphalian Chickens' flew in from above, flames spewing from their mouths. They were met by bolts of crimson flames as thick as a man's torso from Mike and Sorensen's new weapons. Each bolt struck a gigantic bird of iron, engulfing it completely. Most of the enemy's forces used fire in some capacity. Flaming breaths, molten metal, homing fireballs, superheated bladed weapons and so on.

They were also highly resistant or immune to fire themselves - mundane fire and heat that is. What they weren't resistant to was a spell that produced fire by draining energy from its surroundings. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. The first Iron Beaks to be hit staggered, stalled and crashed like the twenty-ton lumps of metal they were. Fire spewed out of their beaks not because they were trying to blast an enemy but because it was pulled out of them by force.

They tried to move but they were clumsy, slow, as the inner heat that kept their metal bodies partially malleable faltered. As the crimson flames on them grew and grew, their bodies grew inflexible and brittle, froze over, and finally shattered from the strain of unevenly heating and cooling from second to second. The rest of the enemy's aerial forces soon followed and even far removed from the battle I felt the enormous rush of power fanning the fires in my soul.

The vision of the distant battlefield wavered, flickered and finally ended and the real world intruded once more. With the wands spent, there was none of my power out there for me to latch on and track and Maya and the soldiers were too far in the enemy's territory for me to Scry upon them without a link. I got up and stretched, trying to get stiff muscles back into working order even as huge amounts of sweat left my clothes a smelly, drenched ruin and my body both too dry and oily at the same time.

Next time, I was doing the scrying ritual in the bathroom. \ By the time I'd cleaned up and gotten there, the planning room was mostly empty. Only Verity was left to contemplate the map of the city, update it as the various teams advanced and tease more information out of the enemy's movements. That was just fine though; she was the one I wanted to talk to.

"Why did you send Maya with the two soldiers?" I asked without preamble.

"They barely contributed anything to the mission."

"Because they would have died if I had not," the human-shaped foreigner answered readily, having expected the question. What was under that childish mask of hers, I wondered. Did she look like a movie alien? Some fiery demon from the depths of hell? A shapeless bit of energy, or something humans couldn't ever hope to comprehend?

"And Miss Wennefer needed someone to open up to after the long week she had. Or did you miss how easily the younger of the two soldiers got her to talk about herself and forget her anger at not being taken seriously?"

"You could have sent me with her," I insisted.

"I'm her best friend! I should be at her side when she's fighting!"

"You were in no position to do battle after your latest work of artifice, successful though it was." The illusions across the city map flickered, showing the movements of several teams. Dallas' team were cleaning out a large gathering of enemy soldiers in the Mall. Jack from the city zoo group had been raiding hardware stores for his tinkers and artificers to work on a new super-secret weapon; they wouldn't tell us anything more specific.

Principal Matthews from that private school downtown had his hands full running herd on two dozen middle-schoolers with superpowers, the poor guy. And the trailer park Savages were bringing down another tower to the East. If we were really, really lucky, they'd stay away from the rest of us. More than a dozen other groups I had not even known existed carried out their own operations across the monster infested city.

None of them dealt nearly as much damage to the enemy as Maya's group or the Savages, but every little bit helped... because the city was literally full of monsters. Not dozens, not hundreds; they were thousands of enemy groups stalking the streets or flying in the black skies above. That Verity could even track that many of them at once was impressive.

"If you thought that bit of scrying and a pair of decent wands put you close to the enemy leader in power, I assure you you are sorely mistaken," Verity said as if she could read my very thoughts. Because of course she could.

"Do you still recall what I told you when you expressed interest in the magic of your enemy and I agreed to teach you?"

"That if I ever overreached out of greed or teenage overconfidence you would kill me to save both me and my friends from the horror that would follow," I quoted back nearly word for word, because how could one forget when your teacher told you they'd murder you if you failed in class?

"Indeed. Sacrificial sorcery is not to be taken lightly, even when what you're sacrificing is the enemy." Beady black eyes fixed my own green ones with frightening intensity.

"Sometimes especially when you're sacrificing the enemy. Beyond the first exposure, it is the deliberate and personal act of sacrifice that grows one's power. Do you really think making that choice again and again has no impact on how one thinks? Those that are careless, those that overreach, become like your enemies who deliberately create expendable beings for the sole purpose of being sacrificed in the altar of their supremacy."

"I... could you teach me other forms of magic?" I asked. The more I learned the less certain I became I wanted to do this, even for saving others.

"Why do you keep asking questions to which you know the answers?" she retorted in the long-suffering tone of teachers having to deal with particularly stubborn students.

"Magic has to be discovered and understood by the individual before it can be taught. Telling others how you believe it works before they form a firm foundation for themselves is invariably harmful. Not immediately perhaps, but there's a reason those schooled into it by rote never rise even close to their potential."

"Really?" Not that it was that surprising. If I'd tried to think about it like Jerry and his numerical skills I would be trying to level up my fireballs instead of being able to create just about any magical effect within the broad theme of fire. It might have even crippled my progression and I was lucky to have rejected that idea. Lucky... lucky... son of a bitch!

"Did you throw that traitor in our path when we were about to talk to Maya about monsters and magic?" I demanded.

"No," my teacher denied, another change sweeping through the map as a huge number of enemy groups started moving out of the city center. I did not pay them any attention; all my focus was on the bitch that almost got Jerry killed.

"I redirected your group into his path after you got Maya, a heavy-hitter that could also see through his tricks, but before he could forcibly convert hundreds of civilians into wraiths, before those he'd already recruited could mature into their full powers." Red enemy icons were spilling into the city outskirts in greater numbers than ever before, many thousands filling the streets to the Northwest. I didn't care; I wanted a door to slam, a monster to burn.

I settled for turning around and walking away in silence, not wanting to give Verity the satisfaction of agreeing with her. We were in a war and to win you had to make sacrifices. It was learning to use this new magic that had taught me exactly that.