29: Eilian the Golden

Grace moved quickly, her hand plunging into one of the pouches at her hips. She took something out, something so jarringly out of place that it took my brain a second just to figure out what it was, even though I had seen its like plenty of times before. It was her phone.

She lobbed it wide with a hasty flick of her arm and it went sailing off to the side of the huge, menacing mechanical monster. The reaction from the robot and its charging weapons was immediate. It swivelled and shifted its position, each weapon coming to bear on where the tiny device had landed. There was only a split second’s hesitation before each weapon tore into the phone and the ground around it like a battleship firing off a full broadside.

What the hell? Had Grace known it would do that? As one, my armoured friends rushed to the side away from the guns as they poured still more fire into the ground where the phone had probably long since ceased to exist. Rather than raise their weapons again, my party stared at it helplessly. There was no point, they couldn’t do anything.

Grace didn’t stay still for long however, as she turned and picked up the sword of a downed soldier. Hefting it, she moved forward towards the robot and proceeded to jam the sword into one of the leg joints where it met the chassis.

“Ryn!” she called urgently. “Can you hammer that in with your telekinesis?”

Taking mental stock of myself, I realised I still had a little energy to give, and it was refilling rapidly. Too rapidly, it didn’t refill this fast even when I went full shrubbery mode. Was the storm somehow effecting my energy reserves?

Rather than ponder the reasons for it, I shrugged and formed my mental vines into one huge knot, then crashed it with all my might into the pommel of the sword. There was a grinding sound as it was hammered into the machine, and the leg went abruptly limp.

“We got a leg!” Grace exclaimed triumphantly, right as the Steel One turned its football shaped head around to stare at her.

Before the guns could come to bear on them, what was left of the knights came back, their lances ringing the metal of its chassis like a gong. Except this time, the machine staggered slightly and the sword that was wedged inside it ground just a little deeper with the movement.

“Good job friends!” the man at their front called as he galloped past with his now broken lance still in hand. “Damn good job! Let’s see if we can’t do some damage to this thing before it takes us all eh?”

There was a ragged cheer from what remained of the ground troops, and they rushed it again, swords questing for the joints as Grace had done. Damn, they were brave if nothing else. Kinda like my team and I. The beams and autocannons fired again, but with so few people left standing, they weren’t as effective. It seemed accuracy hadn’t been a priority in this thing’s design.

I was about to capitalise on a sword placed by Adam, when I heard a single set of pounding footsteps on the road behind me. “Oh, by Gosbari’s tits,” a feminine voice swore behind me in an accent I’d never heard. “Fuckin’ late and now people are dead all over the fuckin’ place. I knew that last pint was a bad idea. Always decline the last pint.”

I turned in surprise at the words, my eyes falling on a woman next to me. She wasn’t a human woman however. She was pretty, in an angular sort of way, with large golden eyes that shone in the sun. Her hair was just as golden and almost offensively bright, its metallic sheen leaving after images in my sight.

Sprouting from the sides of her forehead were two twisting golden horns that arched back over her head. She wore a well tailored but rumpled black suit with silver accents, the trousers of which ended in… in hooves rather than boots. I could see golden fur on the back of her neck and around her hooves, as well as the backs of her hands.

“Well, better get to work huh, gorgeous?” she asked me with a wink, disappearing out of thin air with the thump of displaced air.

She reappeared above the steel one, somehow having drawn a cavalry saber in the process, the edge of which glowed with a dark edge. She swung, the arc of her blade cutting straight through one of the smaller autocannon arms like it wasn’t even there.

I clattered to the ground, but she wasn’t done. The other guns swung up as hard as they could in an attempt to blast her out of the sky, but she was gone again, wrapped in dark energies that spirited her away to safety.

She landed nimbly in the dirt near where the phone had been, her sword at the ready. The steel one was just as quick to take aim again, but she simply stood there with a cocky little smile tipping the edge of her lips. All three remaining weapons poured fire at her in a deadly volley of energy, but in that exact same moment of peril, she thrust forward with her sword and a magical shield the colour of silver flashed out in front of her.

Every crackling bolt or beam that hit that shield flew right back at the steel one in a destructive wave that tore great glowing rents in its armour. The other autocannon arm was blasted from its socket, twirling through the air to land several yards away in the grass. Somehow each of the reflected attacks had missed all the gathered people attacking it too, which had me raising an eyebrow.

Her sword seemed to extend, blue glowing magic increasing its length by a considerable amount. Not wasting any time, she dashed forward in a line, straight under the legs of the machine, twirling in a circular slash that cut each of the four limbs in half. She was out the other side as it crashed to the ground with a groaning sound, stumps flailing as it tried to twist itself to face her.

Summoning the dark edge to her sword again, she approached it with a casual stride. Wandered up to it as it struggled, she tilted her head to the side and promptly drove her sword dead center into its chassis. It stopped moving immediately, every limb going limp as the internal workings that kept it moving ceased to function.

Silence descended over the battlefield as she yanked her sword free, the dark edge gone, replaced by the mundane silver of steel. She inspected her blade with a frown, brushing her finger over the flat of it. With a slight nod of approval, she flicked it back into the sheath at her hip, and turned to survey the carnage around us.

“Well, that’s a load of shit ain’t it?” she called to no one in particular as she surveyed the dead. “What in the hell is this bastard doing in the middle of Aberg lands anyway? Didn’t you lot get rid of all of them? I mean granted, he’s a small one, but still!”

“Aye, we were just as surprised as you were, my lady,” the lead knight called as he trotted up near her.

I slowly began to pick my way through the bodies towards my friends as they spoke to each other, but my attention was most definitely focused on this conversation.

“Lord Dinveria, greetings,” the non-human woman said, giving him a nod. “Apologies for my late arrival. I had a rather long night last night.”

“I am well aware of the reputation of Eilian the Golden,” he chuckled, just a slight note of bitterness in his voice. “I was planning to have to hold out until the afternoon.”

Eilian’s response was a snort of amusement, and then her eyes fell on me with a spark of interest. My party was making their way over to me as she stared at me, and soon the Lord was turning to watch me too.

“And who would you be?” she asked with an open smile.

“Uh,” I squeaked, feeling very self conscious and off balance both by her self confidence and the death that was littered around us. “My name is, um… Ryn.”

“Ryn? I’d have heard of someone with such perfect beauty as you possess. Where do you hail from?” the lord asked curiously.

“Avonside,” I replied as my party members came to stand with me.

“Ryn of Avonside eh? And this lot?” Eilian asked, gesturing to my friends.

Damn, this mage chick was just so damn confident. Even her posture as she surveyed us was just casually commanding in a way that drew the eye of everyone around us. She seemed to be almost… good? At least not an asshole like Fennimore. She wasn’t going for my throat or anything, so that was nice.

Turning to the people in question, I gulped and whispered in english, “They’re asking who you all are.”

“Crap, do we really need to think of a name?” Grace asked.

“Order of Eleos,” Kit blurted, and we all turned to him in question.

He gave a sheepish laugh and shrugged. “I’m a history nerd, there’s an old greek deity called Eleos. She represented mercy and compassion, which is kinda what we want to be about right? So… the Order of Eleos.”

Troy gave a nod, “It’s irrelevant what we call ourselves, so sure, go ahead. We can come up with real names if we need them later.”

I kinda liked it though, and it felt like more than just a name to hand over in the here and now, this moment felt important to me. Like we’d just unofficially decided to be something new, a beginning that might one day turn into something great.

Turning back to the mage and the lord, I told them, “Uh, the Order of Eleos.”

“Well, I extend my thanks to the Order of Eleos,” Lord Dinveria smiled. “That was a timely intervention. We’d have all been slaughtered long before Lady Eilian turned up if it weren’t for your timely aid in delaying the beast’s rampage.”

“Uh, cool. Yeah, no problem,” I smiled, still feeling exceedingly awkward. I mean, I was talking to a hotshot mage chick, who was also just very attractive, as well as some old looking lord dude wearing a very brightly polished set of armour.

“You’re a mage right?” Eilian asked, pointing to my hair. Uh oh, here we go.

“Yup,” I replied warily, suddenly feeling like maybe this was a dangerous situation all over again. Possibly more dangerous than the huge robot.

“That was an impressive use of raw power there, but if you’d like I think you could do with some… pointers,” she said wryly, but there was a note of something else in there, something… almost flirtatious in her expression.

“Let me ask my friends?” I asked worriedly. What kind of pointers was she interested in giving me?

Beside me, Grace shifted to stand closer, and I glanced over into her reflective helmet visor. Damn helmet, hiding her expression from me. Had she noticed the weird way the mage was talking to me?

“What’s she saying?” Grace asked quietly.

“She wants to give me… um, magic tips,” I replied, trying to keep my expression neutral.

“That could be beneficial if she isn’t being disingenuous,” Troy hummed, tone thoughtful.

“Should I accept?” I asked them with bated breath.

“I’d say so,” Troy nodded. “I doubt we could stop her if she has any intention to do us harm anyway.”

“True,” I sighed, then turned back to the alien mage. “Sure, that would be nice. Thank you.”