FWFW 3 - 70

Happy Friday :)

-Plum

“The town was firing on the ship?” Issa asked as she ran after Morgan toward the stairs.

“Yes, dammit. I need to get out there. Something’s very wrong!” Morgan snapped, his nerves frayed and his frustration mounting with each second. “I hope whatever they’ve done is only holding me!” He charged onto the stairs and was back in the lobby before he’d finished speaking.

“Just walk through the door?” Issa asked, looking at the tower's still-open, heavy bronze door. Morgan had already explained what was going on with his inability to leave and the strange way his void-attuned spells weren’t firing. He’d tried Azure Sight, and it worked fine, so he knew it was something explicitly blocking his void magic, which gave him hope that whatever was keeping him from leaving via the doorway was targeting him specifically also.

“Yeah, I already tried flying off a balcony—same shit is happening to me. Try the door.” He gestured, and Issa nodded, running to the door, and Morgan followed, ready to catch her if the strange barrier threw her back. It was good he took the precaution because she charged the doorway, panic and anger in her eyes, and he knew she was thinking about Ykleedra. When she started to cross the threshold, she rebounded toward him as if she’d run into the surface of a giant balloon.

Morgan caught her in his arms and said, “Goddammit!”

“Let go of me a minute here,” Issa said, struggling against him. Morgan let go, and she stood up, produced a large round lens, and began to peer at the doorway through it. “Someone has placed wards around this tower. I can see the lines of their influence. Give me a few minutes to study this.”

“You can understand what’s going on?” Morgan wanted to look with his Void Vision and again cursed when he remembered he couldn’t cast the spell. Azure Sight didn’t show him much at all, just a sheen of Energy around the doorway.

“Yes—this is the work of an Artificer. It’s thorough, Morgan. I don’t think anyone without a very strong will, and a lot of Energy will be able even to approach the tower, and I can see that barrier keeping us inside is designed to block you and me entirely. Cast a void spell. I want to see something,” she said.

“All right,” Morgan said and cast Void Vision, not surprised when the Energy left his pathways but did nothing for his sight.

“Ahh, yes! I see it now! Morgan, whoever made this trap is stealing your Energy to reinforce it! Each time you cast a spell, it gets stronger.”

“Oh great!”

“We need to get someone to go out, between the tower and the barrier keeping people away and find the wards. They have to be physical runes with large Energy stones. I don’t think they could have carved them into the tower, so there are probably stones, crystals, or something like that placed around it.”

“There’s just us,” Morgan said, but then he snapped his fingers. “Ykleedra’s sisters!”

“Morgan, they can’t even speak yet. I think it would be dangerous to send the equivalent of toddlers out there to try to mess with the wards. They’re probably trapped . . .” her eyes unfocused, staring into the distance, then she frowned and looked Morgan in the eyes, “What about Tkron?”

“No fucking way,” Morgan said. “You haven’t spoken to him, Issa. If we let him loose, I can promise he’d just leave. We’d still be stuck, and I’d be worried about what kind of evil shit he was doing out there.”

“Right,” Issa paced in a small circle, thinking.

“I have an idea,” Morgan said. “What about the portal? I could take it to the academy, then use my talisman to recall to First Landing!” He started running for the stair, but Issa called for him to stop.

“Morgan, I’m sure the wards will stop regular teleportation. The portal doesn’t connect two points in space like your void magic does; it just sends you, very quickly along a magical . . . river, for lack of a better word. I’m sure the wards will block that.”

“Well, let me try it. Won’t hurt, will it?”

“No, it won’t, but I have another idea. I’ll be in the workshop. Come let me know how it goes.” Issa surprised him by hurrying past him and going up the steps before he could reply. Morgan started to follow her, but something caught his attention—some movement outside the tower door. He turned and walked back toward the open doorway and realized someone was approaching over the grass.

A soldier, a militia member, was running toward his tower, her blonde hair flying out behind her in the wind, and Morgan knew she was running to him for help with whatever was going on out there. He stood in the doorway, willing her to make it, willing her to charge up those steps and help them out of their predicament. She saw him standing in the doorway watching her, and she started to yell something, but as she came within a few feet of the base of the steps, she simply collapsed.

She fell like a ragdoll, flopping and bouncing along the grass to lay, unmoving, at the bottom of the tower steps. “Fuck!” Morgan hissed. He thought, hoped, she was still breathing. The wards wouldn’t be lethal, would they? What kind of madman would kill random people like that?

Morgan turned and ran up the steps to the portal level, stalking directly to the one connected to Olivia’s academy. He trickled some Energy into the archway, knowing exactly how to activate and control the portal now that he had full mastery of the tower. He felt his Energy go into the arch and saw the portal stone start to glow, but as the swirling Energy gateway started to form, it sputtered and stopped. “I wish you weren’t right so often, Issa.”

“Morgan?” Tiladia’s chime caught him by surprise. He turned to see the spirit floating, hesitantly, near the stairway.

“Tiladia, we’ve got a problem!”

“I sensed as much from your words earlier. The children are sleeping soundly—is there aught else I can do?”

“Yeah, follow me to Issa’s workshop. She said she had an idea.” Morgan hit the stairs, and when he walked out, striding to where he’d last seen Issa working, Tiladia was right behind him. He found Issa, not by the smelter, which was cold, but working at a long workbench covered with dozens of thin, bronze-colored rods of various lengths. She held an etching tool in one hand and her special lens in the other and appeared to be carving tiny runes into one of the rods.

“The portal didn’t work?” Issa asked without looking up.

“No, you were right. What are these?”

“These are the rods that go inside the cast body parts I made for Tiladia. They’ll act as bones and muscles, and also the pathways for her new Core.”

“Oh shit,” Morgan said, “I think I can guess what your idea was!”

That got Issa to look up, and she grinned at him. “Yes! I can finish her body in a couple of days if I work really hard and if you help me. I still need to craft her some organs, but if I show you how to etch these rods, you can do it, can’t you? I’ve seen your notebook—you have excellent fine motor skills. You don’t need to understand any of it—just copy my designs.” She pointed to a sheaf of papers next to her.

“Yeah, I can do that. I can sure as hell try, anyway.”

“Here,” Issa said, pushing the top page to him. “See? I wrote the length of each rod and the rune pattern next to it. You can measure them with this,” she held up a metal stick that looked very much like a regular ruler, “to make sure you etch the right pattern on the right rods.” She set down her etching tool and stood up. “I’m going to start working on Tiladia’s heart and the housing for her Core. I’ll check on you when I’m finished. Tiladia come with me; I have some questions to ask you before I make your heart!”

“Um . . .” Morgan stopped talking because Issa had already rushed away, back to one of the workbenches near the forge. He sat down, picked up the etching tool, then looked at Issa’s notes. There were nearly a hundred rods, some as long as his forearm and some shorter than his pinky. He flipped through the pages and saw that each rod needed somewhere between three and several dozen runes inscribed. “This is going to take a while,” he breathed.

A hissing, wooshing noise signaled the forge being brought online, and Morgan picked up the first rod, settling in for some serious busywork. He tried to take heart, though—if they finished Tiladia’s body, she could, in theory, go out and disable the wards. Then, with any luck, Morgan could figure out what was wrong outside and put a stop to it.

#

“Report,” Maria said, coughing as the word came out.

“We struck the ship twice, and it looked like we broke off one of those masts that stick out from the side. The first shot blew up one of those big rings at the rear, too. We almost brought it down!” The young man said, doffing his militia helmet and standing rather smartly at attention next to her bed. He must have served in a military back on Earth.

“Do you think they’ll have to stop?” Maria asked, shifting uncomfortably. Dr. Gibraltar had given her meds for the pain and stopped her bleeding but wanted to wait until Dr. Cho could be found to attempt a true healing.

“We really don’t know, ma’am. When she started to dive, after we broke off that mast, the other rings all over her keel lit up brightly and lifted her up. Then she was out of range.”

“Funny how people refer to ships as ‘she.’ You weren’t even a sailor back on Earth, were you?”

“No, ma’am. I have no idea why I did that. Must be from watching a lot of VRs.” He grinned, a bit chagrined, perhaps, and continued, “We can’t get any news from the tower. We’ve sent two more people to attempt entry, and they both passed out when they got close. We can’t even get anyone close enough to pull them away—four people are now sleeping in the grass near those steps.

“All right. Clearly, those assholes didn’t want Morgan getting involved. Hopefully, he can figure a way out. In the meantime, we need to get a force together and start marching. We have to hope that ship will need to set down for repairs. Any sign of Bronwyn?” Of the First Landing council, five were captive on that ship. Morgan was trapped in his tower, Olivia was a thousand miles away, and Bronwyn was missing. Maria was all on her own, and she was bedridden.

“No sign, ma’am. We have reports of her leaving out the north gate a week ago. I’ll get together our fastest, highest leveled people and see if I can get a squad moving out ASAP.” He saluted again, and Maria held out her hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Corporal Tran, ma’am.”

“Good, Corporal Tran. Good. You’re doing damn good work. Keep me posted.” Maria smiled, not easily because of the dark thoughts running through her mind, but she managed it.

“Thank you, ma’am. May I?” He gestured toward the door.

“Yes, good luck. If you see Alice . . . I forget her last name, the lady who owns that new restaurant, um, Purple Grass, will you tell her where I am? She’s trying to get an idea of how many people we had taken tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see that everyone in town knows where you are before we leave.” He started toward the door, and Maria opened her mouth to speak, to ask him if he had to go with the rescue squad, but she stopped. It was nice having a reliable person in town, but he should go where the most people need him. Hopefully, that Alice lady would show up soon