The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (30 page)

I was currently lying prone on a
grassy knoll, overlooking the battleground a couple of mectors
away, and I could see Morgain’s army surrounding the city. She had
massive siege weapons arranged out in clearings in the surrounding
woods. Her ground troops were camped out beyond ballista or arrow
range of the walls, though they currently seemed to be forming up
the troops for some kind of assault.

I could see several large winged
creatures, more bat-like than bird, flying around the air, staying
up out of arrow range. They were large enough to support a saeran
rider.

“
Do you think Medrod is
here?” I asked Hydan, who was prone on my left, on the other side
of Toji.

He was watching the flying creatures
curiously, “I'm not sure, but I wonder if those flying beasts are
one of his creations?”

“
If he is here do you think
he would have brought Ziny as well?”

He shook his head, “I don’t know,
though I doubt it; I think he would have taken, or sent, any mage
prisoners to Mystical Island, so his wife could start turning them
to their side.”

I nodded, and then said, “That outer
wall in the river seems fairly intact, has the siege only recently
started?” I asked Toji, who was to my left.

He was also prone, and shading his
eyes with one web-fingered hand. Toji answered, “No, I think this
has been going on for some time.”

“
But then why aren’t the
walls damaged?”

He pointed at a big trebuchet which
was just whirling around and sending its heavy load high into the
air, across the meadow, over the canal, and then down into the city
wall. The big boulder struck the wall about five feet from the top,
and the wall stones blasted inwards in a shower of
debris.

“
That’s more like it!” I
said, and then added, “Not that I want the walls
damaged.”

Toji nodded, but said, “Keep your eye
on that broken wall.”

It was about a half hour later when I
saw the wall suddenly repair itself. Now, I don’t mean the original
bricks piled back up in reverse, what I mean is the broken hole was
just suddenly gone, and bricks were back the way they had been
originally.

“
Holy crap, wizardry, I
presume?”

Toji nodded, “Your father is probably
there, only a Third or higher would have the power to reach that
much area.”

“
So he can just keep fixing
the walls forever?” I asked.

Myrka was to my right and said, “Not
forever. Remember my collapse during the battle in the tower? If a
mage uses all their power, they cannot continue to function, and
may perish.”

Toji added on, “So if the enemy can
keep damaging the walls swiftly enough, eventually the mage in
there will tire, and be unable to keep up. They just need enough
siege weapons to overwhelm his recovery speed.”

“
I see,” I said.

We could make out teams of the enemy
chopping down trees while others worked to build new siege weapons.
There was a kind of industry built up, something they must have
been working on for some weeks.

I pointed to the river, “Can we just
swim in and get to the city that way?”

Hydan replied, “It may be true that
their necromages cannot get in the water, but they have many living
troops as well, and I’m sure they have posted many sentries
underwater to block such an ingress.”

I nodded, “OK, other
ideas?”

Myrka replied, “We fight our way in.
We go in well after dark when they are tired and then we kill the
sentries. Then we fight our way to the wall. We slaughter any of
the enemies who dare oppose us.”

“
OK, that’s an idea, but
with Medrod and his necromages around, not necessarily a good one,”
then I added, “Any ideas which don’t get some or all of us killed
or captured?”

Hydan grinned, “We can fly
in.”

“
Fly? What? Turn ourselves
into flying creatures and just wing our way in?” I said
sarcastically.

He shook his saeran head, “There are
several problems with your plan.”

“
I wasn’t serious,” I
replied.

“
I am,” Hydan noted, and
added, “However, mages can’t really turn themselves into other
things.”

I was puzzled, “Wait, I’ve seen you
turn three or four creatures at once into chickens or snogfish! And
technically, we all changed into saerans when we came
here!”

“
That’s true, but let me
explain. You see, a mage has what we call a Self Image; it’s why we
look like ourselves, even when we go to another world and change
bodies. Now, the reason we change bodies is because we have entered
a world which has its own imposed reality. This was done millennia
ago before the Archimage took physical form. The reality they
imposed back then was not bound by their current physical
limitations; it was back when their power was almost god-like.
Lower Tier mages have nowhere near enough power to overcome the
rules the Archimages imposed. So when we arrived here, we didn’t
change ourselves into saerans; we were changed by entering this
sphere of reality created by the Abal Archimage. We had no
choice.”

“
I see, sort of,” I
answered, “Though you will have to tell me more about this
Archimage physical body thing.”

“
Let’s talk about this
later. For the moment just accept that this is why we changed to
saeran bodies. Now, the reason we can’t change away from a saeran
body is due to that Self Image I mentioned. Mages have a zone of
reality around them, which both protects them, and limits them in
form. It protects them from things like explosions, or missiles of
any kind, like bullets or arrows. These things enter the sway of
the mage’s reality and are automatically changed to that reality.
This reality is set by the mage and then handled by this sphere of
influence. But to change our form on an Archimage’s World, we would
have to override the Archimage’s Reality. It would just require too
much power for any mage below an Archimage, and even they can't
change another mage because of their Self-Image plus the Archimage
reality of this World.”

“
But you did it to those
necro things!”

“
Those weren’t living
mages. The necrosouls I changed on Earth were just mundane corpses,
reanimated by a necromancer pulling a soul from the Ether. Then,
the shades I changed in the tower were not using their own bodies;
they were creating bodies by assembling objects, bones, armor, etc.
I didn’t change their bodies; I changed the objects they were using
as bodies. There is a big difference!”

“
What about
necromages?”

Hydan shrugged, “I’m not sure, they
are re-animated corpses again, but they are also the souls of
mages, so perhaps they can’t be altered, or perhaps it is just
hard. They could be like the shades, or they could be much more
difficult. I’d have to try to change one to find out if it is
possible. Remember, these necromages are a relatively new creation.
I didn’t even know about them! From what Toji says, Morgain came up
with how to create them recently, and not much is yet known about
the process.”

“
OK,” I said, drawing out
the two letters, “So, you can’t change a living mage into something
else.”

“
Nope,” he agreed, “Nor can
you change yourself, it just requires too much magic, it’s that
simple.”

“
So no flying creatures,” I
lamented.

“
No, and no invisibility
either, same problem,” he added.

I hadn’t thought of that anyway. Then
I asked, “Right, so why did you bring up flying in if we can’t
change to flying creatures? Were you talking about riding a flying
beast?”

“
We could do that, but we’d
likely be shot down by the defenders, or attacked by the enemies
own squads of saerans on flying creatures.”

“
So, what did you mean
then?”

“
I said ‘fly in’, but I did
not mean as, or on, a winged creature. Perhaps I should have said,
‘arc in’.”

We all looked at him blankly for a
moment.

Hydan pointed at the larger siege
engines. “Those trebuchets are quite powerful. They are lobbing
large boulders nearly to the top of the wall. I, therefore, assume
they could fling lighter things further, like us, for
example.”

I lifted up slightly to see over Toji
to make sure Hydan could see me staring incredulously at him, and
said, “Hold on, you want us to become ballistic missiles and land
somewhere in the town, likely smashing into a wall while we do our
best impression of a squashed house fly?”

Hydan laughed, “Minus the squashed
house fly part, yes. The speed we would be flying would far exceed
any winged creature, so our enemies can’t stop us, and anyone
shooting at us from the walls would have a hard time hitting us,
besides, we have no mount to shoot down, and their missiles can’t
hit a mage.”

I couldn’t believe he was serious, and
exclaimed, “Are you insane?”

Hydan smirked, “That is yet to be
determined, though I think the current consensus is
‘definitely’.”

Toji was sizing up Hydan’s plan, like
it made some kind of sense, “I’m assuming you want us to fix our
landing, and come in light, just like when you fell from that
waterfall?”

“
Exactly,” Hydan
exclaimed.

I sighed, “I’m not so sure I want to
try this as I may not be able to make myself light if I am worried
about it, and even if I was willing, how would we get a trebuchet
to launch us?”

“
Well, we’re going to have
to appropriate one,” Hydan noted.

I looked at him dubiously. “I think we
need a better plan.”

Myrka looked at me and blinked, and
then said in absolute seriousness, “We can start killing our way in
right now.”

I sighed.

I was still muttering under my breath
about insane Friares as we snuck our way through the woods toward
one of the clearings where they had built a trebuchet. When we
reached the edge of the trees we could see a field of stumps, where
the attackers had cut down trees to use in the making of the siege
weapon, and then out in the middle was the very large trebuchet. It
had two tall triangular A-frames which went up to the pivot point
at the top, as well as two lower A-frames for support. There was a
long tree trunk attached to the top of the tall A-frames near the
base of the long trunk, and then a large basket attached to that,
filled with rocks.

I’d heard of trebuchets before, of
course, but I’d never really watched one work. The principal was
actually pretty simple, they use some ropes in a block and tackles
setup to winch down the long arm, lifting the counterbalance of
stones in the big wood basket. Hanging from the end of that was a
sling, which is where they loaded the missile. Firing a trebuchet
was as simple as releasing the arm. The heavy weight of the rocks
in the basket made that fall, which pivoted the arm on the A-Frame,
and that whipped the sling around on the end of its rope, which
described a parabolic curve, and released the missile with amazing
velocity.

Hydan wanted us to be that
missile.

I watched the enemy launch a missile
which must have weighed as much as a car, and it flew several
hundred yards to reach Ouroboros.

There were about three hundred or so
saerans around, but distant trumpets sounded the attack, and most
of the enemy marched off toward Ouroboros. Only about fifty saerans
remained; these were the ones involved in working the trebuchet. I
looked around and finally spotted one who looked kind of drawn and
dry at the face, obviously the necromage in command. Fortunately,
there seemed to be only one of them.

I whispered to Hydan, “One necromage,
there.”

He nodded, and then spoke softly.
“Myrka, you and Nick clear the way to the sling, Toji and I will
deal with the necromage.”

Myrka looked at me and said, “Do not
get between me and my targets.”

“
Oh trust me, Sweetheart, I
learned that lesson,” I agreed.

“
My heart is no sweeter
than…”

“
Just an expression,” I
muttered and she quit speaking, though she did give me a very nice
scowl.

I turned back to Hydan, “What about my
issue with making myself light, meaning, if I don’t?”

“
Just believe you are
light, and you will be,” he retorted.

I nodded, “Right, easy for you to
say.”

“
You have been doing well
on changes to your clothing,” he reminded me.

I almost laughed, but I kept my voice
quiet, “That takes a lot of thought on my part, and I’m not trying
to save my life while hurtling through the air like some water
balloon headed for a brick wall!”

“
There is no difference,
you just have to believe in what you know is real.”

I shook my head, and thought, I
believe that if I survive this I’m going to kick that smiling
bastard in the head. Then I said softly, “Look, what if I screw
up?”

“
Stay close to me, I will
try to make you light if you fail,” Hydan suggested.