The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (16 page)

I snarled, “How nice for you!” And my
head started to hurt. “Wait, if you can stop from getting
headaches, why can’t you keep from getting drunk! Isn’t that just
another perception of your personal reality?”

Hydan looked puzzled, “Why would I
want to do that? Getting drunk is the whole point of
drinking!”

“
You like getting
hangovers?” I asked.

He held up a finger to make his point,
“I get drunk, but I never get hangovers, I don’t believe in them.”
Then he smiled.

“
You are
incorrigible!”

“
That I believe,” he said
with a short laugh.

“
Now you know why I would
like to kill him,” Myrka noted with a disdainful sniff.

I sighed, “No, but I’m warming up to
the idea.”

Hydan laughed.

It was about an hour later when we
came upon the carrion-strewn battleground. It was a marshy field,
along the banks of a small river. The bodies were strewn on both
sides and floated in the water. There were several hundred dead
saerans.

Many of them were dead from
traditional types of battle wounds from mundane weapons, but there
were also many who were sliced in half, and burnt from what looked
like intense heat like someone had used a laser on them, even
though there was no such technology on Abal.

Myrka explained, “That is Derkaz
power, it was used on these mundanes. They had no
chance.”

There were two types of uniforms,
colored purple, and blue, but they were all just dead saerans in
the end. It was a sad sight to see.

Myrka was unaffected by the signs of
slaughter and just clinically studied how they were
killed.

Hydan was disgusted, muttering about
the waste of it all.

I was just sad. I hadn’t known I was
saeran until only recently, and here were my people, slaughtered.
Sure, they had killed each other, but in the end, it didn’t matter,
what mattered was a lot of good lives were ended, for nothing. We
quickly left; the bodies would soon start to smell.

A few miles down the road Hydan
suddenly stopped.

Myrka scowled, “What is it,
Friare?”

“
Sense it,” he said to
her.

Now it was my turn to scowl, “Sense
it? You mean listen, or look?”

He shook his head, “No, sense it, with
your power.”

Myrka tilted her head in a mannerism I
was starting to associate with her being surprised, or maybe,
‘noticing’ something.

“
A battle arcane,” she
stated.

Hydan nodded, “And not far
ahead.”

I continued to scowl at them, and
tried, well, concentrating. I got exactly nothing if you didn’t
count mounting annoyance. “Is that very surprising? I thought you
said there was a mage’s Civil War on this planet.”

“
Yes, but there aren’t very
many mages left, in all the time I was here before, I only ran into
one mage battle,” Hydan explained.

“
So, what, we’re lucky?” I
said.

Myrka frowned, “I would not call this
being lucky, perhaps you meant cursed.”

“
OK, so what is the plan?”
I asked.

Myrka and Hydan answered
simultaneously, with Myrka saying, “Kill them.” And Hydan saying,
“Go around them.”

“
We’ll do neither, let’s go
see what’s happening,” I said.

Hydan answered, “That might be
hazardous,” and then he added, “There could be geese.”

I did a double take, not remembering
that ‘geese’ was now his cue word to tell me we needed a private
chat, where Myrka couldn’t hear us talk. Then I
remembered.

Myrka asked suspiciously, “What are
geese?”

I turned to Myrka and replied, “I
think I heard some over by that bush over there!”

Myrka went into a crouch and then
headed for the bush. As soon as she was out of earshot I asked,
“OK, so what?”

“
Nicholas,” Hydan answered,
“this is a poor idea; I have not had time to even begin teaching
you to use your magic. If a Derkaz blast is sent your way, or an
arrow, or knife, what will you do?”

“
Dodge?” I said
hopefully.

He shrugged, “Or die. You sure you
want to test these waters right now?”

“
How about if we sneak up
and just take a look?” I asked.

“
Dangerous, but less so,
all right,” he agreed.

Myrka came walking back looking
perplexed, “I found none of these geese you spoke of, what are
they?”

“
Fowl creatures, you never
want to meet them,” Hydan said with a shudder for Myrka’s benefit,
and a wink for mine.

“
I am not afraid of any
foul creature!” Myrka exclaimed.

Hydan nodded, “All right, what are
your orders, Nick?”

I raised an eyefin but replied, “Let’s
sneak up on them, and NO unauthorized attacks, Princess,” I said to
Myrka.

“
I am not a princess, I am
a Fourth,” she replied.

“
Even so,” I
answered.

“
I will put a glamour
around us, it will keep most mages, or other magical creatures,
from sensing us, unless they get close,” Hydan
explained.

I couldn’t see him do anything, or see
any results of this magical concealing glamour, for that matter,
but he nodded to me, so I headed down the road the way we had been
going. I only got three steps before Hydan tapped me on the
shoulder, and with his body concealing his hand and finger from
Myrka, he pointed to my left, off the road. Then he whispered,
“That way, oh brave and clueless leader!”

“
Right, they are this way,”
I said louder and headed off in the indicated direction.

We moved off into the woods, and there
was a smaller trail through the underbrush. We followed it for
about five minutes, and then Hydan held up a hand and said, “OK, my
glamour won’t work if we get much closer, try taking a peek through
those bushes over there,” he said, pointing.

Myrka and I moved over and crouched
down behind the bush before parting some of the leaves to survey
the area. What we found was a battle, three against one.

A saeran male, holding two Tanto style
Japanese knives, one in each hand, was facing three creatures made
from earth and stone. Their major limbs were a series of stones,
seemingly held together by earthen joints. Their heads were a
single stone, and their torso a pile of smaller stones. Each stone
had some kind of petroglyph carved in a rectangle.

They moved with uncanny speed for
something which was heavy enough to dent the ground each time they
took a step.

“
I don’t think knives are
going to do much to those things!” I hissed quietly.

“
No, but Derkaz magic
might,” Myrka whispered. “Shall I kill them?”

I looked at the Tarvos sorceress
frankly, and whispered back, “Can you?”

“
Of course,” she
replied.

I turned my gaze back to the battle.
The saeran male feinted left, and then moved right, diving forward
under the arm swing of one of the creatures. As he passed by, the
saeran struck at the elbow, between two of the stones. The knife
passed through and the pieces which made up the arm of the creature
fell, losing all cohesion, becoming just rocks and dirt, but the
creature seemed unaffected in overall health.

As the saeran came back to his feet,
the one-armed creature dropped to a knee near the stones which had
been its arm, and those stones reattached. When it stood it was
whole again.

The other two kept the saeran busy
dodging attacks.

I liked the saeran; he wasn’t backing
down even in the face of these magical creatures he could not seem
to kill.

“
OK, take them,” I said to
Myrka.

The first hint of a smile I’d ever
seen her display appeared and then was gone just as quickly. She
didn’t leap out and challenge the monsters, instead, she moved
stealthily to a thick tree trunk, and then slipped to the next one
when the monsters were facing away. She quickly got behind them,
and then she stepped out boldly, raised both hands and chanted
three quick words of a language I didn’t understand. That was odd;
I’d understood all other languages we’d heard or seen. Then I
remembered she had said something else in this language back in
Chichen Itza when she had called down the blue energy to her
knife.

This time, streaks of blue energy
lanced out and struck the two nearest stone creatures. They
instantly exploded, with bits and pieces of stone and earth going
everywhere. I hit the ground, hoping the shrapnel didn’t take me
out. I glanced sideways to see Hydan standing there, unconcerned,
watching the whole thing with interest.

The blast didn’t seem to affect the
third monster, or the saeran, but all the debris obscured his
vision. I saw the third monster raise his two arms and move
forward, ready to smash the semi-blinded saeran to mush. I ran out
of hiding, yelling at the top of my lungs to try and distract the
creature.

The stone monster heard me and
swiveled to face my charge. I dove at it, coming in under the
downward plunge of those stone arms, and tried to tackle it to the
ground.

Oops.

It was like tackling a tree trunk. I
hit, and it didn’t move. Try running at full speed, and dive
forward into a telephone pole, you’ll get the idea. Actually,
don’t, not unless you want to go to the hospital. I kind of spun
off of the creature and landed in an undignified heap to the
side.

But my little distraction, and several
bruises and contusions, was all the saeran needed. He didn’t waste
a moment and leaped forward toward the third creature as it moved
over to finish me. His blades flashed and his first swing severed
its stone head, then he lopped off the arms, and started on the
legs. He swiftly cut through every earthen joint like a butcher
taking apart a carcass for market.

Once all of the limbs were separated,
it all collapsed to just stone and earth.

I lay there on my back, wondering how
many bones I’d broken; from the pain, I decided it must be all of
them.

Somewhere I heard Hydan
laughing.

That’s when Myrka attacked the
saeran.

She let loose one of those blasts of
blue energy, but it seemed to bounce off of him when he raised a
hand.

So she muttered something, and drew
her knife, and blue energy flowed down onto the blade.

The saeran narrowed his eyes at this,
and went to a crouch, ready to do battle.

I spit out some blood, trying to
speak; and just as Myrka tried to behead the saeran I croaked out,
“Stop fighting!”

She straightened up,
“What?”

“
Stop…” and I spit more
blood, “fighting!” I wheezed.

“
You said I could kill
them!” she countered.

“
The monsters, not the guy
we were rescuing!” I croaked, just about passing out from the
pain.

She looked surprised, “Oh… if you say
so.”

She then sheathed her blade. The
saeran kept a wary eye on her, and kept his distance, but he also
put away his two tantos. Then he approached me and knelt down at my
side.

I looked up into the face of the
saeran, who I think was trying to discern if I was still
alive.

“
Running full speed into a
stone golem was very foolish,” was his opening comment.

I grimaced. “It seemed like the thing
to do at the time, he was going to smash you while you were
blinded.”

“
And you saved my life,” he
replied, nodding his head as if confirming something.

“
Maybe,” I said.

He was very solemn, “At nearly the
cost of your own.”

Hydan walked up, knelt down and
started running his hands over my limbs and torso.

“
Am I supposed to tell you
where it hurts?” I asked Hydan, “Because I can save you a lot of
time, I think my left foot is passable, the rest is
toast.”

That rat bastard actually
snickered!

But, I noticed my pain went away
wherever he ran his hand past. In fact, in a few moments, I was out
of pain completely.

“
You can get up now,” he
said, getting to his own feet. “You will live to tackle a rock
another day if you should so foolishly choose to do so
again.”

I sat up, and wonder of wonders, I
COULD sit up!

“
Hey, what did you do, give
me a health potion?” I asked.

He laughed, “Hardly.”

The saeran got to his feet, and then
bowed to me from the waist, keeping his eyes locked on mine. At
this moment I finally looked at the Glyph on his left cheek, it was
not a Sivaeral nautilus, like mine, instead, it was some kind of
kanji symbol, like in Japanese writing, or a Chinese
character.

“
You’re not a Sivaeral
wizard!” I exclaimed.