Authors: Vincent Trigili
We moved quickly and nimbly through the forest, only stopping briefly to fill the jugs at the stream. Once we reached the clearing, I could see the woman was right where I had left her, but she was still cloaked and had fallen asleep.
“Where is she?” the man asked.
His comment stirred her, and she awoke and called out, “Craig!” This broke her hiding spell, and he immediately ran to her.
When he saw her condition he turned to me and demanded, “What did you do to her?”
“Craig, no, he saved my life,” she said. She then told him how I saw her being attacked, drove off her attackers, and stood watch over her while she slept all last night.
“Craig, I must see to her wounds, and she needs food,” I said, picking up on his name from her.
“Shea, you stay with him, then,” said Craig, then he turned to me and said, “I will go hunting and meet you back here by sunset.”
“Thank you,” I said. I then turned to Shea and said, “I have clothes and clean bandages for you. Let me see to your wounds, and then you can get changed.” I began cleaning her wounds with the water from the stream. Craig had picked some plants that I did not recognize and included them. I figured they must be some kind of local medicine, so I asked Shea about each. She turned out to be very knowledgeable about them, and with her help I was able to more fully treat her wounds.
Once I was finished, I turned my back so that she could change, and she asked, “How is it that you know so much about treating injuries, but don’t know the most basic of healing plants?”
I was not sure how to answer that. I felt I should be careful about how much I told her. I needed to focus on my own survival and figure out how I was going to get off this planet, but I really wanted to help her. My feelings were mixed, but she needed some kind of answer, so I said, “None of these plants grow where I come from.”
“You must be far indeed from home then, Dusty,” she said. “You can turn around now.”
I looked back at her. With a fresh set of clothes and her wounds properly bandaged, she looked a million times better. She had returned to her seat by the tree, and I guessed that all that exertion getting changed had probably drained the little strength she had regained. Now that she was properly dressed and cleaned, I could tell she was a bit older than me, with probably a quarter of her life behind her. Even given her age, she looked like she was in much better physical condition than most human woman I had seen.
“What happened back there?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she replied. That seemed like an odd question.
“Well, someone attacked you, that’s obvious, but who and why?” I asked.
“Oh, only the gods know,” she said. “This kind of thing happens around here from time to time.”
I really did not know how to respond to that. Instead, I offered her some water and drank some myself. Eventually Craig came back and started a fire to cook whatever beast he had killed. I watched him cook in silence. Eventually he broke the silence and said, “Sorry I threatened you back there, but I’ve never seen your kind before and it was not exactly the best of times to sneak up on a person.”
“It’s fine. I am just glad Shea has help now,” I said.
My kind?
I wondered to myself. I guess that meant they had never seen a Parrinian before. They appeared to be typical humans, and all the bodies back in the town were also human.
“Indeed, it seems we are in your debt for saving her,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
“No, any decent person would have done the same,” I said.
“Possibly, but decent people are rare in these parts,” he said. “Speaking of which, what are you doing here?”
“Trying to find my way home,” I said.
“I have never seen your kind around here, nor heard tell of it,” said Shea. “How did you get here?”
“Long story, but I need to get back somehow,” I said. It was then that I realized I had no ideas left. I was lost on an unknown planet with no way to call for help and, based on the town I had just seen attacked, possibly in the middle of a war.
“Perhaps we can help you, then. Shea needs to rest for at least another day before she can travel, so we have time for your long story,” said Craig.
I thought about that comment for a while and decided that I needed help, so I said, “Well, the short version is that I was on the Dust Dragon fighting some pirates when a group of necromancers showed up. I had been separated from the rest of my shipmates and was no match for the necromancers, so I tried to sneak away. In the process, another pair of magi showed up on the scene and killed the necromancers. I had never seen them before, and they managed to trap me and bring me to this area, but I escaped from them and have been on the run since.”
As I was telling the story, I saw Shea nod off. I told Craig I would take the first watch, and we wrapped things up for the night.
As my watch passed, I tried to figure out what I had gotten myself into. My instincts told me that Shea and Craig were decent people, but still the whole situation was strange. My magically heightened awareness told me that Shea was not a magus, yet she had some understanding of magic and possessed what looked like multiple magical rings. That presented another problem: I had learned in school that only magi could use magical items, yet she was able to call up that simple camouflage spell. There was more to this Shea than was apparent at this time.
Then there was Craig. Where did he come from? Everyone else in that town was dead or dying when I showed up, and yet he looked unwounded. When I surprised him, he was on edge, which was understandable; but he seemed to move too quickly to trusting me, way too quickly. There was something odd about him, too. With my magically enhanced awareness, mundanes always looked a little fuzzy, but magi were well-defined, and I could see power around them. Craig was different. He was fuzzy like a mundane, but he had a glow to him, a glow that I could not see in the full sun of the afternoon, but now that darkness had overtaken our camp, I could see it. It was a pure white glow.
Then there was that town. I could see no evidence of technology anywhere. It looked just like what I would expect of the place where the Korshalemian wizards might live.
No! It can’t be
! I thought to myself as I jumped to my feet. I looked up at the night sky and searched it for anything that might be familiar.
Fool, you could be on any planet in the galaxy and the sky would look just as alien,
I thought to myself, but I knew better. These people had never seen my race, they have no technology, and then I realized, O
f course, that is why their language sounded familiar! The Korshalemian wizards speak it!
I had heard them many times while sneaking around Alpha Academy when they were conversing only among themselves.
I cast a higher form of my awareness spell and looked again at Craig and Shea. The improved vision let me see what I had missed: Shea was a magus, but her energy patterns were so alien to what I was used to seeing that I’d missed them with the lesser spell. Craig was unchanged, still just that pure white energy, however I could now see that his weapons and clothes were infused with power. I began to doubt that I was as safe as I thought I was when I first met him. I had not cast this higher form of the spell last time because it required more energy, but that seemed to have been a bad decision.
I looked across the camp into the woods for a while, trying to figure out my next move. Being in a completely different realm meant I was truly alone, and I would have to save myself somehow. I mentally went through my inventory of supplies and realized that without access to food and water I would last a week at best. I had nothing of value to sell, so I could not buy food. I would have to learn to hunt, it seemed.
While pondering that, a noise caught my attention from the woods. I froze and poured my enhanced awareness into the woods and saw something, but I could not tell what. I could only make out that something was there. I slowly moved back towards Craig and gently laid my hand on his shoulder. His eyes popped open, and I whispered, “We have company.”
He got up and looked in the direction on which I had focused, growled a little under his breath and said, “Goblins.”
“I assume that is bad,” I said.
“Could be, they move in packs. One at a time they are fairly weak, but as a pack they can mob you and overwhelm the best of warriors,” he said.
“I assure you, that I am not,” I said with a bit of fear.
“I suspect you have more power than you admit,” he said as he poured water on the last of the fire.
“Umm, why did you do that?” I asked.
“It blinds us and gives them the advantage. Without it our night vision is, well … human night vision is almost as good as theirs,” he said.
I thought that sounded like a valid point. I looked at Shea and said, “If more than a few come we can’t keep her safe.”
“Wise words for someone that claims not to be a great warrior,” he said. “Can you use your magic to hide her?”
“Yes, but they can already see her, so it would not be hard to figure out where she is,” I said.
“Wake her, cast your spell, then she can move to a new spot, right?” he asked.
“True, okay,” I said and then did as he suggested. I cast a cloak on her that should keep her invisible until daybreak, and then I saw her struggle up a tree. Once up there she seemed to get as comfortable as she could and waited. I turned back to Craig to let him know all was ready, when I saw what I knew as Green Skins come out of the forest towards us. “Green Skins,” I spat.
“Around here they are called goblins,” said Craig, who had drawn his weapon and moved between me and the approaching creatures.
“Where I come from, these always have sorcerers controlling them,” I said.
“Aye, they are favorite pets, but they also run wild in these woods,” he said.
We had no more time to talk, as they began to charge with screams and yells. Moving quickly, I summoned up Wind of Frost and slammed it into their front lines, pushing them back, yet they continued to charge. They were quickly surrounding us. I cast another Frost Wind towards the Green Skins behind Craig, while he charged those closest to him. With a warrior yell he swung that oversized knife, cutting down the creatures left and right.
I could not watch, as my position was in danger of being overwhelmed. There were just too many of them, and I could get no time to cast any of my more powerful spells. Somehow I needed to put more space between them and me. I glanced over my shoulder while running and casting the relatively weak Frost Wind spell, saw Shea nervously watching from the trees, and got an idea. Moving quickly, I broke off my counter-attack and sprung up a tree. The Green Skins predictably charged the tree, but their clumsy attempts to climb gave me enough time to cast the one spell that would make the difference, my flight spell. Soon I was surfing an icy wind in the sky and could cast something more useful.
“Thyella pagou!” I called out as I turned to face the bulk of the attackers. Instantly razor-sharp chunks of ice were flying from my hands and tore through the Green Skins. It was as Craig had said: they were fairly weak and many fell dead under my first attack. I cast it a second time at a second grouping, and soon what was left of them were in full retreat. I rode my icy wind over to assist Craig, but the group he was facing lay dead at his feet. With a 180-degree swoop I landed next to him, which canceled my flight spell.
“Well done, ‘Mr. I’m Not a Great Warrior’,” said Craig.
My head felt light and my stomach queasy as I looked at the surrounding scene. Piles of partly frozen and mostly mutilated bodies lay around us. An overwhelming sense of weakness came over me, and I started to fall, but Craig caught me.
“Easy there,” he said as he propped me up against a tree.
“Sorry,” was all I could manage as I tried not to look at the carnage around us.
“We will have to move as soon as you are able. The scent of blood will draw predators,” said Craig.
“The sooner the better,” I said, stumbling to my feet. My head was spinning, and my vision was a bit blurry. Leaning against a tree allowed me to catch my breath a little.
“Where is Shea?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry, she is up that tree over there. I’ll end the hiding spell,” I said.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, well, I will be,” I said. I realized then that I had been keeping my magic going non-stop for days. The fight with the Green Skins had overextended me. I was again helpless, and would have to depend on Craig until I could get some decent rest. “But I won’t be able to cast for a while.”
While Shea worked her way back to us, Craig packed up the camp, and we moved out. Shea was too weak to move very fast or far, so Craig mostly carried her. He wanted to get as far from that camp as we could. I was drained from the fight, but I pushed on, trying to purge my mind of the carnage I had caused. As we ran, I could hear the howls of strange animals around me. A panic was trying to rise up in me; it was all I could do to focus on following Craig through the pitch-black woods. My heightened awareness was not helping. It only allowed me to sense that more Green Skins were in pursuit and other predators were circling, hoping to get an easy meal. The only thing I had to hang on to was the white glow of Craig in the gloom in front of me.
“Shadow, the Aleeryon bombs are incoming. We need to jump now!” called out Flame.
“Spectra, we are out of time. Get Dusty out now! Flame, get us out of here,” I ordered. I had instructed the navy to begin their bombing run when Dusty told us that the pirates had discovered the plans. The problem was that Dusty was still on the carrier, and if we stayed around none of us could survive the attack. We needed to get clear immediately, but we also needed more time to get Dusty out. I had delayed as long as I could, hoping Dusty could get to a place where Spectra could safely pull him out.
“We need two minutes to clear the gravity well of the fleet, but those bombs will be here before that,” said Flame.