113: Equalizer

“We agreed that you wouldn’t use the Red Nightmare!” Claih yelled with anger as she stomped up the slope towards us.

Grace, Eilian, Ezra, and I were all standing around the writhing body of the unnamed mage, staring at it. Ezra looked concerned, but not really put off by the whole thing. Eilian looked like she might throw up, and her gaze kept darting away from the living corpse.

For someone who looked like a total badass in her tight fitting black and gold trim leather armour, Eilian sure wasn’t looking too calm and in control right then. Even her shimmering golden hair was under control, all gently and artfully braided to keep it out of her face while she fought.

It was a stark contrast to Esra’s brown, mudstained robes and messy silver hair which floated freely in the wind. She didn’t seem to notice when it got in her eyes or tickled her nose.

“We did,” I said, meeting Grace’s eyes. “This is… horrific, Grace.”

“I know…” she winced, looking back down at the body.

“Why are you just standing there,” Claih demanded, coming to a stop beside my girlfriend. “Put him out of his misery, please.”

As though startled from a trance, Grace twitched and froze. “H-how?”

“Faerah Conflagration would be best,” the obrec woman said, nudging him with a hoof. “If you want to kill a mage from the garden, it’s best to use magic from the realm of fire and steel.”

“An excellent idea,” Ezra commented. “It appears that the Red Nightmare tried to take him, but only consumed his human body, while his hafornsu is still intact. I would further posit that the hafornsu is dying slowly as it attempts in vain to heal the human body. It must be exceedingly painful.”

Haltingly, Grace drew her knife from her boot and knelt to look at the poor guy. I had to admit, having her finish him off in such an intimate and visceral way would probably teach her a little restraint when it came to those cursed bullets. Still, it was difficult to see the one I loved have to do something hard. She came to a decision on where to put her knife, and with a sharp punch in and out of his withered skull, killed him.

Red gunk covered her hands, and I ushered her towards me when she stood up. “Let me get the mess for you, babe,” I murmured.

When she neared me, I carefully aimed a force spell at them. I made sure to release the magic from my mental hold as soon as the spell was cast. I saw what happened when that shit touched the shield of that guy. It was not pretty.

Like I was using a spray can or something, I pushed all the gunk off her hands, until they were visually clean. Then, I gave them a quick scorching blast of fire to burn off the stuff I couldn’t see.

“Should be clean,” I said, and gingerly touched her hands. Nothing happened, not even an infinitesimal tingling, so I decided we were fine and pulled her in for a long hug.

“So… that was what I thought it was then?” Eilian asked after a long silence. “Grace is some sort of… red mage?”

Partially letting go of my girlfriend, I looked over at the golden obrec and shook my head. “Nah, she somehow has every type of magic within her, and can access it with some rudimentary ability to shape it. We came up with the guns so she could imbue whatever energy type she wanted into the cartridges.”

“Alright,” Eilian said, processing what I’d told her. “Scary, but okay.”

“Speaking of scary…” I said, looking pointedly at Esra. “Can you please tell me what Fennimore meant about… you know…?”

My mage mother frowned at my question and folded her arms defensively. “Oh, so we’re just going to go an believe the words of a power hungry mass murderer, torturer, and misogynist now are we?”

“I’m serious, Esra,” I said. “I will personally hunt down and kill anyone who annihilates the inner will of others.”

Her eyebrows rose when I finished speaking, and she tilted her head at me like she was considering my face from a new angle she hadn’t seen before. “I see. Well, I have used a few spells in the past that utilise… certain herbs. Aerosolized haash plant for example. It wasn’t without some consequence, a sweet cabbage stew merchant had his stand raided by the mob and many wound up asleep in the street, but it saved the rioters from a ‘heroic’ and bloody intervention by my former student. Even so, I’m sure the ethics of such a method are still very grey, but so is shooting someone with nightmare torture bullets, or suffocating someone with magic.”

“Haash? Oh… Weed. Fair,” I sighed, deflating slightly with relief. Getting everyone high to calm them down was fine I guess. “So, can we go tell the others that things are safe, for now? I’m incredibly tired, and I think Troy will want to do a full debrief and all that.”

“I imagine so,” Esra said, her expression softening just slightly.

That was about the point that it really sank in that Esra had finally arrived in Avonside. I gasped, and a grin spread across my lips. “Also, you’re finally here! There’s so many things I can’t wait to show you! When you get a look at the library… this is going to be great!”

My sudden excitement forced a smile onto her irascible old face too, and she nodded. “Indeed. How about you show us the way to your little army, and we’ll go from there, yes?”

****

Even before we got back to Avonside, we could tell something was wrong.

Smoke filled the air and the sky. It stuck to the back of my throat like a persistent itch that I couldn’t scratch. My plant body hated it even more, recoiling like it was the thing being burnt.

A slight sense of relief blossomed within me when I saw that the buildings still stood. When we got within sight of the fields, though, I groaned in frustration. It was the crops that were the source of the smoke. Avonsiders rushed around with buckets of water, trying to put them out, but it was like trying to stop a herd of rampaging bulls with a fence made of straw.

“Fuck,” Troy swore, grimacing at the sight. “That’s not good.”

The militia captain shook his head, sighed, then turned to the militia and barked, “Get some people on those fires! We need to save as much of—”

“Don’t bother,” Esra told him sharply, and raised her hand up to the sky. Power blazed up out of her palm to seed the sky. Swirling wisps danced together to form robust ropes of mist, that congealed further into dark grey clouds that sagged under the weight of the moisture contained within. Moments later, rain began to pour down onto the fields in a light but relentless torrent.

She turned to look at the leader of the militia. “I suggest you create a perimeter around the settlement. The immediate danger appears to have passed, otherwise the fields would be burning unattended while the civilians fled. We do not know if the perpetrators of this attack are still in the woods around this place, however.”

The tall, stoic man blinked in surprise as the woman who looked like she was in her mid fifties gave him solid and functional advice. “Right. Good idea.”

I’d expected him to be, like, angry that she jumped in and told him to change his plans, but instead he just looked… melancholy?

Troy, always in touch with the morale of those around him, placed a hand on the man’s shoulders and murmured something in his ear. The captain gave him a look, then nodded. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that offer later.”

“Mages, after me, please,” Esra continued, ignoring the two men. “I suspect the crops are the least of our worries.”

I moved to follow her, when Catherine’s tiny voice spoke up. “Even me?”

Esra turned and gazed down at the small girl with her glasses that perpetually slipped down her nose. “Yes. Even you. You are, after all, a mage, are you not?”

“R-right,” Catherine mumbled, pulling her leather armoured hoodie closer around herself.

Eilian, who’d been watching, gave the girl a curious look that I knew all too well. Oh dear. Kitcat hadn’t been interested back when we first met the obrec woman, but would she be interested now, I wondered?

We made it onto the old boundary of the university within short order, and when I was recognised among our group, people pointed us in the direction of the library. My gut sank, and we picked up the pace. What’d happened there? Why the library?

Rushing through the now manually operated automatic doors, we came to a halt and looked around in confusion. Everything looked… okay? Oh. No, it didn’t.

The library of Avonside university was one of those places that looked like some architecture student had finished their doctorate with an assignment to redesign the place like ten years ago. It was all glass and stainless steel, with thin patterned carpet across every floor. A central shaft of open air went all the way up to the ceiling, and then around it, multiple floors of packed together bookshelves were able to look down at the ground floor.

The bodies were new, however. The librarians had dragged them all into the open area at the front desks. There were four in total, each with an article of clothing covering their faces while the five women and two men stood and cried, consoling each other. Their sobs put my heart in a vice, and I was moving toward them before I even realised it.

“What happened?” I asked, when I was close enough to speak using a level of volume that befitted the situation and the library.

Eyes turned towards us, and then back to each other. After a few seconds of silent communication between the librarians, one stepped forward. She was an older woman, maybe sixty or so. Her white dress shirt was damp with drying blood.

“Two… two men, with m-magic like you, they came in and started stealing books. Vince, David, and Samantha went to confront them…” she said, throat hoarse from crying. Raising a listless hand, she motioned to the bodies. “They…”

I put my hand up to stall her. “It’s okay. I think I understand.”

“This is bad,” Grace muttered, when I turned back to our group. “Like, really fucking bad.”

Eilian looked confused. “Uh, why?”

Catherine was the one to answer, and her obvious revelation poured leaden ice down my throat and into my stomach. “Because this library held all the scientific books Fennimore will need to begin teching up. All the super secret special weapons, methods, and stuff, he has it now. If James did his job right, I mean.”

My palm hit my forehead so hard I saw stars for a moment. “Ah, shit. That’s what he was doing! Of course! God. He was here to scope out the library, probably marking the best books to take for his friends.”

Grace was nodding along with my sister and I, and she added, “This whole attack was probably a distraction to get you away from Avonside so they could pull off the heist. Fennimore had to have known a normal attack might have failed with your power in his way, so he tired you out with the steel ones.”

“If that is the case, then I would wager the only reason he engaged us at the end was to stall for more time so his lackeys could finish here,” Esra mused. “It was bothering me how defensive he was playing during our duel. I attributed it to uncertainty and fear, considering how far the potency of my spells has leapt recently. This makes far more sense, assuming the list of stolen books matches what a power hungry dictator like him would find valuable.”

Oh. Right. We lacked any sort of evidence for all this conjecture. I guess it would be a good idea to ask the librarians. Assuming they were in any sort of mental state to help.

“It would appear that our work for the day is not yet over,” Esra continued wearily. “This is not the triumphant arrival I was hoping for.”

Eilian snorted and arched an eyebrow at the older mage. “Really? We came charging into a huge battle between mages, advanced alien warriors, and an army of steel ones. Despite this book thing, we won that fight too. That’s pretty triumphant.”

Esra scowled at the cocky obrec. “In a way, yes. In another way, we just lost a major advantage.” Eilian opened her mouth to speak again, but Esra spoke over the top of her. “Eilian, why don’t you go and see about finding us some food, or perhaps you could go and tend to the recently scorched fields outside? We still have much work to do, and my old bones are already beginning to ache!”

“I’ll reseed the fields,” Catherine blurted, and after a moment of hesitation where she glanced between everyone else, turned abruptly on her heel and headed for the door.

Despite everything, I couldn’t stifle a teeny tiny smile of amusement. Catherine was adorable and highly intelligent, but she also had a very odd way of thinking.

We watched her leave for a few moments. Then Esra turned to me and nodded her head in the direction of the still quietly grieving librarians. “You and Grace speak to the scribes, I will search for traces of magic.”

Oh, great. The emotionally draining task was being foisted off onto me. Lovely. Just awesome. Meanwhile, Eilian had disappeared the moment Esra’s back was turned. Smart woman.

QuietValerie