Her mind had expanded to incredible dimensions, but she was still limited by her sole link to the aythar provided by the dragon, limited by the physical bottleneck of one frail mage body.
The enemy had given up. Faced with a foe that could suborn its troops at will it had taken to outright retreat. The people of Halam ran before her, trying to outdistance the advance of her new soldiers. She was slowed by the amount of time it took to stop and remove the parasites from those she had already taken, before moving on to take new hosts. With the enemy running, it became difficult to advance, because once she had removed the parasite from someone and moved on, the person in question was left unconscious. She needed a constant supply of new people unless she was going to simply hold the ones she had taken already, or create new spell-bodies from pure aythar.
And she was already at her limit.
Moira was forced to keep the bodies she currently had while advancing, in some cases continuing to animate the corpses of those already slain by her foe, which required a much larger expenditure of energy.
They can’t run forever. There’s only so much space in that city, she told herself. They can’t win. What do they hope to achieve? Then she felt a tremble in the aythar feeding her great composite self. The body of her original was beginning to fail. Or perhaps they can—if they stall us long enough.
The smallest part of her, the heart, still living in the small fragile body of a young woman outside the city, began to know doubt. She drew apart slightly, finding her individuality once more and fighting down a rising sense of panic. I have to slow down, decrease the flow, or this will kill me, she thought.
No! her larger self cried, pulling at her with a will that was difficult to deny. We can’t stop now. We will lose.
Moira felt the fear in that thought. It was a primal emotion, and it went beyond winning and losing. Her new creation was also afraid of dying. That realization brought her new worries. Anything with enough life in it to fear dying, would fight to preserve itself. She quickly suppressed that thought, hoping that her larger, composite self hadn’t noticed it. Moira had enough problems without letting paranoia start an internal struggle with her other selves.
To compound the problem, it was then that she finally understood the enemy’s response. While they appeared to be retreating, the enemy forces were actually escaping from the gates on the other side of the city. No, ‘escaping’ wasn’t the proper word, they were circling around, streaming back toward the side of the city that Moira’s army had entered from. Boiling outward like ants from a mound that had been kicked, they were heading toward the true source of the assault—Moira and her companions.
Shit.
She didn’t know what to do. Which did nothing to help the fact that her body was already trembling from the strain of handling so much power for so long. If she didn’t lighten her load soon, she might collapse. Or burnout—or die.
“We have a problem,” she said aloud before she realized the words were on her lips.
“What is it?” asked Gram anxiously. He had been watching her in worried silence for almost half an hour, quietly dying from ignorance of the situation. Chad Grayson sat a short distance away from them, and he simply stood and strung his new bow. He had ‘acquired’ it during the week of their convalescence.
The ranger looked at the baron, “Told ye—Gerold.” He managed to make the nobleman’s name sound like an insult. He didn’t bother with honorifics either, but the baron was too tense to notice.
“Half the city has run out the back gates…” Moira informed them, “…they’re running around the outside walls and back toward us, I think.”
Alyssa and Gram looked at one another, but neither said a word, although Alyssa began reflexively examining the weapons she had managed to acquire over the past few days. Chad began counting his arrows.
“What will we do?” asked the baron.
“I was hoping one of you might have some advice,” suggested Moira.
Chad finished his count, “Unless ‘half the city’ adds up to less than about a couple of hundred, then we should probably get on the dragon and fly our happy asses out of here.”
“You don’t have that many arrows!” blurted out Gerold. “Nor could you shoot so many before they reached us.”
The hunter gave him a disdainful look, “Don’t be so sure o’ how many I could shoot. It may be that I only have seventy-three shafts, but I’m figurin’ the lad here could handle quite a few before they get to our princess. Assumin’ he ran out to meet them. Either way, the point, Gerold, is that we should make ourself’s scarce.”
Gerold looked at the older man with some astonishment, “You truly think Sir Gram as puissant as that?”
Chad laughed, “He could probably kill ‘em all if they’d be so kind as to wait around and let him stop to take a piss break now an’ then, but we’d all be dead days before he was done.” He moved toward the dragon, “No sense waitin’ around, let’s get moving.”
“I don’t think I can move, not and keep this up,” said Moira. “I don’t think Cassandra could fly either, even if I could.”
“Then let it go,” suggested Chad. “No skin off our teeth after all, just some magic soldiers. You can make some more an’ we can try somethin’ else in a few days.”
“It isn’t that simple,” she replied. I don’t think I ‘can’ stop, she thought. Already she was turning her troops back, giving up the pursuit of the enemy and moving directly back toward their entry point, following the shortest route toward their mistress. They wouldn’t make it in time. They might catch the bulk of them with some luck, though many of the enemy would get there ahead of them. Moira tried again to reduce the amount of aythar she was channeling, but her spell-made allies held onto her mentally, clutching at the energy she fed them like a newborn, suckling desperately for milk.
“I can’t stop,” she added.
Chad’s eyes flicked to Gram, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement. The young warrior began to drift casually closer to her. Their body language gave nothing away, but even as occupied as she was, her magical senses read their intentions almost as clearly as if they had shouted them in her ears.
Gram’s path was blocked by a magical shield that sprang up around her.
“I didn’t do that,” she blurted out. “The shield—that wasn’t me.”
It was us. We can’t let you stop yet, the voice came from her larger collective self.
“I can see them,” announced Alyssa, still watching the city. “They’re coming around the sides, running in this direction, thousands of them.”
“How long do you think we have?” asked Gram, keeping his eyes on Moira.
“A quarter of an hour before the bulk of them get here,” answered Alyssa tensely. “Ten minutes for the faster ones in the lead, maybe.”
“They’ll have to spread out,” said Gerold. “They don’t know for certain where we are.”
Chad sighed, “Unfortunately, that’s not true either. When Gram and I were tryin’ to hide from them last week, they had some way of homing in on us. I think they can smell magic. They never lost us, until we separated.”
Moira’s eagles were flying back to their position to aid in their defense, but the rest of her forces would be far too late. She tried once again to stop the flow of aythar but found herself blocked. The collective wouldn’t allow that.
You’ll kill us, came their thoughts.
We’ll all die if you don’t let me reorganize things, she responded silently.
Another voice intruded, that of her internal ‘assistant’ who had remained with her, I have a suggestion, if I may.
All of them waited, and her assistant continued, Use the aythar of the hosts. It is small, but it renews itself, and there are thousands, one for each of you currently. It should be enough to maintain you. That will allow us to produce a defense here, until you can catch the enemy from behind.
Can they do that? asked Moira. As far as she knew, spellbea
sts could only use aythar provided by their creators. While her spell-twins were much more flexible than ordinary spellbeasts, she didn’t think they could surmount that limitation.
Yes! they cried, but Moira hesitated. She was no longer fully in control of her own abilities, but somehow this was a decision they couldn’t make without her consent. It felt wrong. Well, it felt ‘more’ wrong, everything she was doing was already in the darkest shades of gray, morally speaking. Taking the bodies of the people they were rescuing was one thing, allowing her minions to attach themselves to the life-source of the people they were controlling was a step further, a deeper violation.
Still, she could see no other choice. Do it, she commanded reluctantly.
Immediately she felt a gut wrenching shift as her spell-twins clamped down on their hosts. The wellspring of aythar, the core of a living being’s life, was called the aystrylin. Some considered it the ‘soul’, and it was the main thing that differentiated a spell created mind from a true living person. Black nausea flowed back through her link to the collective of thousands whom she was connected to, as her alternate selves seized the power at the heart of the people they were controlling. This is wrong, she thought, and she knew it was true—true at a level that was beyond doubt, an act of evil without any possible excuse or redemption.
Within seconds most of her victims had surrendered, but some, the stronger ones, struggled for almost a minute. Bile rose in Moira’s throat as she felt her surrogates crush the independence of those last few, and then it was done. The drain on her aythar lessened, dropping off to a fraction of what it had been as they began using the life-force of the people instead. Moira redirected the extra energy from Cassandra to her eagles, who had just landed nearby.
“Is she crying?” asked Gerold quietly, looking from Moira to Gram. There were tears running unheeded down her cheeks.
Gram clenched his jaw, feeling uncomfortable, “Move to one side and ahead a little. They’re almost here. You can fight can’t you?”
The baron nodded, “I’m still weak as a kitten, but I’ll do what I can.” He drew his sword.
Moira’s eagles changed form, becoming young women, each a perfect likeness of the mage who had created them. They spread out in a long line in front of the group, spacing themselves twenty feet apart, their bodies glowing with power as Moira continued to funnel more aythar into them.
Alyssa looked at Gram, and he nodded, “We’ll take anything that makes it past them.” Chad moved without comment, positioning himself even farther back behind Moira and the dragon, his bow at the ready. Methodically, he began placing arrows point first in the dirt around him.
We have the enemy now, commented Moira’s internal advisor. We need only hold them here long enough for the main force to catch up with them from the rear.
Maybe, she replied. It was only luck that we were able to get this far. It was a mistake to commit everything to the initial invasion. Now we’re rushing to keep the enemy from turning our folly into an utter defeat. What if it has something else in reserve?
The fastest of the citizens of Halam had gotten within a hundred yards when Moira’s spell-twins began to respond, freezing them in place and preparing to continue the strategy they had used in the city itself.
No! she commanded. Stop as many as you can, or block their approach with a shield—no more twinning. She had already lost almost all control over her force approaching from the city, the last thing she needed was a second army of magical clones taking the initiative.
As you wish, they responded mentally. Creating small, knee high shields, they began tripping the people running toward them, slowing their advance to allow the main body of the enemy to catch up to them. As the numbers increased they created a longer, solid shield across the length of the field, completely blocking the advance of the thousands who pushed against it. Moira continued channeling more power to fuel their efforts.
They only needed to hold them for another ten minutes to allow her main force to catch up to the enemy’s rear. Then it would be over, but for the lengthy chore of freeing the people of their metal parasites while trying to minimize casualties.
“If I can save most of them, perhaps it will excuse some of the evil I have done today,” Moira muttered to herself.
Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan.
In the distance near the city gates a large plume of dust and dirt rose into the air, obscuring their vision of a small area, but Moira’s magesight saw the metal monster rising from the ground where it had been hidden. It was another dead, metal monstrosity like the one they had encountered before—like the one that had nearly killed Grace.
It had arisen in the midst of her spell-twin possessed allies, and it wasted no time as it set to work. Leveling one of its strange arms, a heavy sound like the buzzing of hornets crossed the distance to her ears. A small gout of flames flickered at the end of the strange arm, while dust began puffing up from the ground wherever it pointed. Anything between the metal creature and the area where the dust was exploding upward simply fell dead. It swung the weapon in a slow arc, scything her troops down like grass before a farmer’s sickle. A mental scream filled Moira’s head as her collective self felt the deaths of hundreds of its hosts.
It swung the weapon in the direction of Moira and her defenders and they flinched as their shields shivered with many unseen impacts. Some of the enemy’s own soldiers fell as the weapon’s invisible hornets tore through them. Then the weapon swung away as the metal creature turned it to kill those on the other side of it.
Chad’s mouth was agape, and then he spoke, “That thing is three quarters of a mile away…”
Moira’s possessed allies tried to fight. Some used what remained of their aythar, and all that of their hosts, to channel blasts of fire at the strange monster, but it simply ignored their attacks, seemingly impervious to flames. At close range, its weird weapon roared and any flesh and blood body that entered its path simply collapsed, frequently in multiple pieces.
Some of them created shields to defend themselves, but their efforts were in vain. The thundering weapon destroyed everything that sought to block its aim.
Gram ran forward, covered in shining steel. Thorn was in the form of two long swords now, one in either hand as he charged. “Open the shield!” he yelled.
Moira’s spell-twins near the center of her defensive line did as he asked, and the enemy began rushing through as the barrier before them vanished. Gram slew any within reach as he passed, his blades flickering out to cut into legs and throats, leaving a bloody swath of the dead behind him.
The shield went back up after he went by, but some twenty of the citizens of Halam had survived Gram’s passage. They charged toward Moira and Cassandra, but they started falling immediately as feathered shafts began appearing in chests and throats. One of her spell-twins froze the few who remained and seconds later arrows finished those as well. Chad drew his long knife as soon as the danger was past, moving forward to salvage what arrows he could from the dead and dying.
Gram continued his charge, slipping through men and women with such grace and speed that few even tried to stop him. Those who did manage to block his path found themselves dead before they could react. He ran through throngs of parasite controlled citizens, trusting their bulk to shield him from the vision of the enemy he sought.
Half a mile went by in a flash while the beast slaughtered the spell-possessed minions who surrounded it near the city gates. Gram broke free of the crowds and continued running, but the thing turned its attention toward him then. Dirt erupted from the ground on his left and he zigged to the right, but even his enhanced speed was not enough. Before he had made another ten feet he felt sledgehammer blows thudding into his armor, throwing him down. The chattering roar of the metal creature’s weapon followed a split second later.
Moira’s heart quailed when she saw Gram go down in an explosion of dirt. The dust hid him from view, but her magesight never lost him, his body lay still
on the cold earth.
“No!” screamed Alyssa, running forward to press against the shield that held the rest of the enemy back, as though she would fling herself into the press to get to Gram’s side. She pounded her fists against empty air that felt as solid as stone. “Let me pass! I have to help him.”
The glowing defender closest to her turned a grief stricken face toward her and answered in a voice that sounded identical to Moira’s, “I’m sorry. I won’t let you throw your life away too.” Hundreds of bodies were pressed against the shield just a few feet from where they stood, straining to reach them.
The strange metal beast returned to killing Moira’s minions as it advanced steadily toward their position. Sweeping left and right, it slew men and women by hundreds and then thousands, and Moira felt each death with a stab of pain and despair.
What do I do? What?! She felt paralyzed by fear and doubt. Moira knew that she was out of her depth. The enemy’s champion was killing her newly made army and approaching steadily. Her own position was now completely surrounded. Her defenders had retreated into a circle using their shields to keep the thronging horde of people at a distance of only fifty feet from where she and her companions stood.
In the distance, her minions continued to assault the metal beast, throwing blasts of fire and simple force against it to little effect. One of them had the bright idea of pulling the ground from beneath it, but the tactic only worked for a moment. The beast targeted that one next, when it clambered from the pit that had appeared under it. They were scattered and fleeing back toward their creator now.
She was defeated. She had been a fool to think she could liberate an entire city, much less do it bloodlessly. I’m just a stupid girl, playing at war and thinking I could save people. Now they’re all dying—because of me. There was nothing left. Their only hope was to accept defeat and take wing. That was assuming they could even escape. There was every chance that the demonic beast would shoot Cassandra out of the air as they took flight.