00
Dire.
Fire.
...ire.
01
“Tora! Wake up!”
“Not… sleeping.”
Without saying anything more, Mylene barged into Tora’s room and was met by a sight of the disheveled and tousled sorceress sitting on the bed.
“...”
Tora looked at her with the red eyes of someone who had very little sleep and too much hair on their head – hair that was now looking more like a sheaf of wheat, all tangled and bunched up.
“You look terrible.”
“I know. But thanks for being honest.”
“Want me to help you with that mess of a hair?”
“No…” the sorceress paused, then continued with an unexpected smile. “Or, you know what – yes. I’d love you to...”
“Say no more!” Mylene grabbed a comb, kneeled on the bed behind Tora and took to untangling the pile of straw blonde hair on the sorceress’ head.
“And here I thought you won’t have it like other people…” said she.
“Won’t have what?”
“Well… you know… the morning look.”
“Why shouldn’t I… Wait, because it’s impossible to look good immediately after you’ve woken up?”
“Exactly! You’re the sorceress after all…”
“Oh, Mylene… Ouch!”
“Sorry, sorry… I’ll be gentle…”
“At least try to. I would love to get out of this room with my hair on my head, please.”
“I’ve scrubbed out one or two loose ones, no big deal – you have plenty more left… How do you want me to put it?”
“As usual, I guess.”
“As usual? A moment then, let me find the ribbons…” Mylene looked around the room, got what she wanted and climbed back on the bed.
“You slept well?” Tora asked while patiently waiting for the rider to style her hair.
“Yes! I’ve had the best sleep of my life, as ordered, ma’am!” Mylene got the sorceress’ hair into two ponytails with the ribbons weaved in, and leaned back to get a better look at her work. After a moment she nodded approvingly. “I’d ask you the same thing, but looking at you, I don’t think I would like the answer… or even get one.”
“But now I look much better – thanks to you, Mylene.”
“You sure do! If you want, I could help you with clothes too…”
“No need for that – I’m the sorceress, remember?” Tora jumped up from the bed and in the moment between her sitting down and standing up, she was dressed up in a black dress, with a long cascading skirt split at the front – just enough to give a glimpse of her slender legs with gartered black stockings.
“See? How do I look now?” asked she.
“Excellent!” Mylene answered. “Now I understand your morning look even less.”
“Well, some things are just too impossible… even for mages.”
02
Airship, docked to the tower gave of quite a surreal impression, dwarfing the surroundings, making it all look like the cardboard models – such was its size, compared to people or, indeed, the mooring tower itself. Being filled with a gas and thus lighter than air, it floated above ground – elongated shape with the red dragon wings painted on its sides along with its name in bold rough letters: Dragon’s Fury.
From up top the tower the sight wasn’t any more believable than it was from the ground. Enormous balloon was held in place by nothing but cables and a lock on the tower’s top – it looked like the airship could crush the mast with its weight at any moment.
Only when Tora and Mylene walked on board by the narrow gangway, lowered from the nose of the airship onto the tower’s passenger platform, things started to get less impressive. Big from the outside, space inside the airship was quite cramped – as most of its volume was taken by the gas cells, keeping it afloat, and gas tanks, both to replenish possible leaks in the balloon and to power its four engines propelling the vehicle through the air.
Greeting them was captain Emest as well as the whole ship’s crew, cramped into what once was the dining hall, now converted into the main battle room – its walls being the iron-reinforced parapets that could easily withstand the gunfire and could be swung down to allow the firing of the ship’s main armament, – four batteries of harmonica guns, – and to let the boarding party through. Additional reinforcements meant additional weight, so anything else, deemed either unnecessary or too luxurious was removed from the decks and cabins of the ship, leaving only the essentials. What was the opinion of the crew and its captain on the matter was unknown, because nobody asked them.
Yet the captain, dressed in the newly adopted uniform of the Special Airship Service branch, – same uniform as the Riders wore, but in dark blue instead of dark green, and with the dragon wings and sword pin on the collar, instead of the Riders’ sword and star, – was clearly upset on some matter.
“What’s the matter, captain? What is that you upset about?” Tora asked “Don’t you like your new ship?”
“She’s a fine ship, lady sorceress.” Emest answered, holding onto the hilt of the sword he wore on his hip. It’s wasn’t a regulation pattern sword, – as there was no regulation pattern for the airship officers yet, – but something that looked more like a long narrow knife, a messer. “But I wish to express my complaint against how understaffed we are. No sane captain would lift off of the ground without at least one helmsman – preferably, two. And yet here I have to do all the steering by myself.”
“Complain noted, captain.” Tora nodded. “Surely, you understand the nature of our situation – and why the things are the way they are. If we succeed today, I could promise you, you’ll have all the helmsmen you need.”
“We have to succeed, then. Let’s not waste time” said Emest. “Rider Mylene, take your place with Rider Cai – you didn’t forget my training while you were absent, do you? Lady Tora, you’ll want to accompany me on the bridge, right…?”
“Actually, captain, I would like both riders to accompany us… me. Just… just in case.”
“As you wish, lady sorceress. There’s not much work for them until we try to board something anyway...”
03
Some hours have passed, before they spotted the Federation airship making its way through the skies.
“Here she is!” Emest clapped his hands and pointed towards small dot, dark against the blue backdrop of the sky, then announced: “Changing course to intercept! Full ahead!”
As he complained before, Dragon’s Fury was severely undermanned – she had slightly more then half the crew she needed to operate. And most of that crew were engineers running the engines, gunner crews, tasked with firing and reloading of, well, guns, and boarders. They could be expected to perform some other jobs around the ship that didn’t need much special training, but that still wasn’t enough.
Steering both yaw and pitch of an airship singlehandedly wasn’t an easy task by any stretch – and Emest made that fact known to everyone around him by the way of grunting and swearing, most of which was thankfully done in his mother tongue.
Still, soon they were close enough to the other airship for Emest to order a signal of “Halt and prepare to be boarded” to be sent across.
Federation airship halted. Stopped on the spot, still and unmoved by the winds of the high skies. Then it spun around its axis exactly 180 degrees, its propellers pushing on the air and tugging the airship away.
“It can’t be!” cried out Emest adding to that several very emotional words.
The sorceress looked at enemy vessel, throbbing and fluttering, as if it was just a mirage – and each time it shook and blinked, it jumped forward, further and further away from Dragon’s Fury. Jump after jump, blink after blink – away and away.
“What is this…!? We’ll never catch on to them like that!”
“Captain,” said Cai solemnly. “It can only be…”
“Magic!” finished Mylene his sentence.
“Grrrr!” growled Tora.
It was impossible for that airship to hang absolutely still in mid-air – it meant that there was a mage onboard – it was possible for that airship to rotate on the spot but not with such speed – so, a mage was looking for the impossibilities of the lower orders – it was impossible for that airship to get away from Dragon’s Fury, but not impossible enough to do it in one continuous motion – it meant that mage wasn’t very experienced.
Tora’s eyes flipped inside out.
...The space in and around them was filled with the translucent invisible untouchable weightless substance. Mages of old had called it an aether, while modern theoreticians adopted more scientifically sounding “impossibility field,” but at its basics it was the same – something, that was in everything, could be anything, but consisted of nothing.
This field, this aether, was usually simple and plain like a plane, like a level field – but if it happened to pass through mage it would get excited, exalted and pass this excitement and exaltation on, like a wave, which, if agitated or oscillated enough, could turn the reality upside-down like the overly enthusiastic humans do.
Right now the sorceress perceived and received such an exaltation where the Federation airship was dangling in the air like a pendulum fixed on the will of the mage, sitting inside it. It swinged forwards and inwards, pushing the balloon of an airship in that direction – away from Tora. Federation mage tried to raise the aether wave and ride it but the weight of the collective minds of the crew was too heavy and uneven and odd.
Tora reached into herself and away, fusing the gas burning in Dragon’s Fury’s engines with the aether, propellers beating the impossibility field up into butter and taking all of its spare energy to itselves.
Aether tide was rising.
Dragon’s Fury shuddered, making everyone aboard look for something to hold on to.
“Careful!” Emest shouted.
“Pardon us…” the existence that once was Tora Halfcour whispered into all the ears. “It will be over soon.”
Federation mage noticed the tsunami of impossibilities that was about to fall on him and befell him and tried to duck under his wave, hoping that when two impossible exitements will splash together they will cancel each other out and calm.
Tora’s wave mirrored itself down along the lateral axis, – or up and down of the world switched places, or words “up” and “down” exchanged meanings, – it swooped the Federation airship from below and tossed it back into Dragon’s Fury.
For a split-second two airships were one.
After a split-second one airship had become two again.
In the split-second Tora pulled Federation mage out of his seat – that is, she tried to: mage was confined to the chair with the tight leather bonds, so only his head with electrodes and wires sticking out of it was left in all the sorceress’ hands, all the other body parts, stretched and twisted, were pulled and folded through space connecting airships.
“It’ll do,” the existence that once more was Tora Halfcour said. “Cai!”
Rider didn’t need any more explanation – his Shining backsword cut the mage’s head from its neck, letting the Federation airship go from Dragon’s Fury. Head, that Tora held in her arms, had a decency to immediately evaporate.
“Good boy… was…” the sorceress uttered before collapsing on the floor.
“Tora!” Mylene rushed to her, picking her up under the arm. “Need help?”
“You two!” the captain barked at the Riders. “On your stations, starboard, now!”
“I’m… fine… go… Go!” Tora took her arm from Mylene’s hands. “Go!”
04
“Starboard side, ready boarding party! Drop the parapet!”
Emest steered the ship, which thanks to Tora’s magic was now almost on top of their quarry, matching the speeds and the altitudes of both airships.
“Starboard gunners, ready to fire the web! On my mark… Fire!”
Guns barked and the harpoons with the ropes attached to them struck the enemy airship embedding itself into its side and stretching out a web, creating a way for the boarding party to reach their goal.
Usually it would take some time for the attackers to find an opening in the hull of the opposing vehicle or to hack their way in with axes – but when your boarding party is led by two Royal riders wielding their Shining blades that cut everything like it’s nothing, things go much more smoothly.
Emest and Tora, who after a brief moment found enough strength to get on her feet, watched as Mylene and Cai bridged the gap between ships, summoned their blades and with couple cuts each created an entrance.
“Real shame we haven’t had anyone like that when we were out pirating…” Emest whistled in amazement.
They couldn’t really see what was going on on the boarded ship – rare flashes and puffs of smoke from the gunfire, that’s all. Riders went in headfirst, to close the distance with defenders as quickly as possible, to make the best use of their weapons, deadly in close quarters – and to not let the defending side use their firearms, because everyone who’s crawling on the high altitude has enough trouble holding on to the ropes and could really do without an additional task of dodging the bullets.
Last of the boarding party went in through the gaps – and now Emest and Tora could only wait to see how things will play out.
Through the gap in enemy airship’s hull Tora noticed a glimpse of the Rider’s uniform.
Sturdy figure, short burgundy hair…
Mylene...
Rider’s figure winced.
Whole Tora’s body shuddered.
It was impossible for her to see from such distance, so she saw in every little detail:
hand clutching the left side of her body
dark stain growing from under that hand
…
Mylene stumbled backwards one step,
two steps,
three
…
Tripped over and fell
through the web
through the ropes
down
where there was green fields and waist-high grass concealed all the most beautiful flowers…
“No.”
It wasn’t possible.
It wasn’t.
It was possible
not...
It was impossible for her to get shot…
...but she still was falling down from immense height…
It was impossible for her to not get caught in the web…
...yet still, with a wound like this, she couldn’t possibly get hold of a rope…
It was impossible for her to fall off the airship…
...yet she still was mortally wounded…
“So that’s how it is!?” Tora’s eyes went white with tears. She was shouting at someone high above, not paying attention to Emest, who stared at her with his hand on a hilt of his messer.
“Is that it!? Is it? Is this why you made me tell her there’s things impossible even for mages? Is this why!? Is…!?!”
This story works on tropes and cliches.
After all that’s happened between you two, after the promises you’ve made
the plot demands her to die.
You might even say
her survival
is
impossible.
“Oh… I see… I see now… Thank you! Oh, thank you!”
05
Cai was too late.
For as long as he could remember himself – he always was too late.
It was his curse.
His Shining blade cut the revolver and the hand holding it in two, but what’s the point in it, if it had already shot and found its target?
Mylene quivered and stumbled back – one step, then two and three, then tripped over…
He tried to catch her before she fell over, but, as usual, he was too late.
“That’s Rider Cai for you” thought he. “Could as well jump down too, fall down with her too, die…”
Except she didn’t.
Mylene stumbled back, – now forward, – and right into his arms.
“Here, sit down,” he told her, sitting her down on the floor against the wall. “Help’s going to be here soon… Hey, someone! Anyone! Where are everyone, anyway?” boarding party was quite sizeable, but now the Riders were left alone with a couple of dead bodies of Federation soldiers and this man with the gun who suddenly appeared, seemingly from nowhere and before Cai could react…
“Awwwww!” scowled the man, whose right hand fingers were now scattered around on the floor.
“Shut up!” Cai screamed at him, just because he wanted to scream at somebody, somebody other than himself.
“Cai…” Mylene breathed heavily. “It… it hurts… oh…”
Cai looked down at the wound, just in time to see how the deformed piece of lead found its way out of the Rider’s body – and how that wound healed itself. Mylene gasped, her body went limp – being shot and then un-shot was too much for her.
“What? How?” Cai looked around as if someone could answer his questions.
“Awwww…” scowled again the man who shot Mylene.
Suddenly the floor shook unter Cai’s feet and there was a brief moment of nausea, as if the world turned around him.
No. Not around him.
Small slender woman clad in all black stood before the man who shot Mylene.
She was as furious as a dragon.
No. Not even the mythical beast had such fury as she did.
Her ire was such that it spanned the whole universe from the largest of galaxies to the tiniest of quarks, from the first yoctosecond after the universe conceived itself to to the far away moment in time when the last black hole would die – all the time and space could feel it and it ran in fear, ran away stretching out and shifting itself into red.
Such red as she was seeing right now.
Her eyes were ablaze with anger, like two stars, two exploding supernovae, dying and birthing itself into existence again and again.
And the whole world revolved around her.
It turned once more – and she was holding that man, who was clutching his maimed hand with his intact one, sobbing, scared, dangling his feet above the thin air beyond the airship. She was holding him with her one stretched out arm. She asked:
“So, herr Schlieffen, what more could you possibly say?”
Her voice was calm and slow, like a river of a molten lava swallowing the city whole.
“Wha…? I…?” man, she was holding, stuttered. “You! T’was you I knew! Damned mage! Damned all of you mages!”
“Bold words… before the drop.”
His throat made a gurgling sound.
“But I would like to know, herr Schlieffen… what it is you were after? We had a bit of a disagreement with… with an acquaintance of mine. So, what was it? Land? Or the land’s resources?”
“Land? Resources? Nonsense for the politicians those are! Utter nonsense! What I was after you ask?”
“I do. And I would like an answer sooner than later,” she shook him a bit.
“I were… was… I was after… Death! Death to you! Death to the mages! You… You all… are… the plague! The locusts… feeding on this world! You should be… eradicated! Exterminated! All you! All of you!”
“How funny,” Tora brought the man closer, so his eyes couldn’t escape her gaze. “So much maneuvering, so much scheming… for such a miniscule personal grudge of one man…”
“Miniscule? Oh, but I’ve seen what you can do… what you can be… You’re monster! You all mages are! Ticking bombs to one day destroy our world! You…” his face contorted with a realisation. “You want… You actually want to be that! My machine – that’s what you looking for! To be what you saw back then.”
Tora brought him even closer to herself, so nobody could possibly hear what she was about to say, to make sure that he gets every word she was about to say – she whispered in his shaking ear…
I’m not afraid of what I might become.
I’m scared to death of what I am.
She let go.
06
“Sometimes I think that mister Schlieffen’s death was quite unfortunate” said the Queen walking together with Tora through the garden of her palace. “I imagine he could have told us a lot more.”
“Why are you so interested in that madman ramblings, Your Majesty?”
“Was he a madman? Is that your expert opinion, Tora?”
“Anyone who ask himself ‘How do I exterminate all the mages?’ and answers with ‘By making more mages! What can go wrong?’ is officially insane. So, yes, this is my expert opinion.”
“If you say so… At least this way I’m spared from the Federation’s ambassadors banging at my doors with demands to extradite him.”
“Exactly. His notes we found, and what was left of his machine – that’s evidence enough, isn’t it, Your Majesty?”
“Thoroughly destroyed machine.”
“Oh, it was such a hectic fight…”
“Are you sure it can’t be reactivated?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“I just wish I could see the Chancellor’s face…”
“I think we both know what he will say, Tora. He’ll puff out like an old toad and will spit out under his grand big moustache something about ‘unruly underlings’, ‘excessive initiative’ and so on… he’ll rant about how that Federation of theirs should be one unified state, an Empire, perhaps, and how none of it would happen if the king didn’t abdicate at the most unfortunate moment. And then, of course, he’ll promise to punish everyone who’s responsible for this mess. He even will punish someone – either for doing things illegal, or for getting caught while doing it… And that’s it. That’s all what would happen.”
Tora nodded. After that they continued walking in silence for a time.
“It doesn’t feel like the end, Tora. Not in the slightest – even if it is one” said the Queen in a quiet voice. “It’s like we finally achieved something, but all we had achieved – just more work to do… But now we have some time on our hands.”
“Time, yes… It’s always about time…” Tora sighed. “But you’re right, Your Majesty, this is not the end… yet. I still have at least one more plot thread to resolve before the inevitable ‘the end’ line.”
07
“So… um… Tora… about that promise… You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
“Of course I haven’t, Mylene! I do remember it all.
And it’s about time…”
THE END
