Fan Fiction ❯ Kingdom Come ❯ Foolish Foes ( Chapter 6 )

Moving down the hallway to her quarters, she wondered why the only window in the corridor was at the opposite end as her rooms. After reaching, and removing the heavy plate armor, she changed her mind about a rest - she was perfectly fine, after all, and decided to visit the new scouting command. Since she heard that they were using the old air deployment center, she headed up there first. When she entered the large room, the first thing she saw was one of the field commanders sticking small red arrows on an enlarged version of the map Eferlon had given them. There were enemies on the move.

 

"So they won't give up." she murmured. "Nothing big .. send out ranged units, just in case, but get a messenger over there first to warn everyone." As two messengers opened the large access door slightly and left, Talia and Kisha entered though the door at her back. Turning around upon hearing the door open, Alavaria saw that Talia and Kisha had joined her. The former was holding a rolled-up piece of paper. A map?

 

Remembering to hide the map a little too late, Talia sighed and tucked it away casually. Kisha gave her an annoyed glance before speaking. "Since we should try to visit the large cities first, I see no reason to spend what would easily be several days going to this naval base and trying to talk sense into military personnel, most likely getting nothing for our time. We were going to head there after seeing the preliminary scouting reports which cover about half of the way."

 

Alavaria blinked. It was quite a good idea, all things considered. There was no danger in splitting up, no matter what Eferlon said, provided both groups took proper escorts in case some unforeseen complications arose of course. Giving them a short nod while leaving quickly, she decided that since it was their decision, she wouldn't get involved. She paused a while, wondering how to convince them of that.

 

"I suppose that tomorrow, Eferlon will be very annoyed that you've gone off without telling him, but then again, you'd be a couple hours away. You will want to get some of the elite troops to go with you quietly. Hope the base isn't a waste of your time."

 

She exited too quickly to hear Kisha commenting to Talia "That was easy. Ok, how many should we take with us?"

 

Alavaria had herself been planning a nighttime trip, but to a much closer area - Eldon's home. She calculated that, if she hurried to and from there, there should be about an hour's margin, even if she spoke to him for a couple of hours. Grabbing at her sword as it caught on the small frame of the window she chose, Alavaria set off towards New Silversea. It was a rather short flight, about forty-five hours at an easy pace. She was looking at the moon, which was a very neat crescent shape, and admiring its bright glow when, with a whirring sound, something knocked into her.

 

"What?!" she shouted, caught embarrassingly by surprise. In a heartbeat she had her sword clear of sheath and in hand. Realizing that the object had hit her head, she immediately swerved, dropping in a large spiral while scanning the skies for any possible target. She cursed mentally, remembering that chain mail would be nearly worthless against arrows. Where is it? Spotting a small dark figure above, she darted upwards, sword lashing out, but only cutting through air. A small movement to her right showed the shadowy figure zooming away silently. As it flew into a ray of moonlight, she got a good look at her elusive foe.

 

"It's just an owl," she laughed. After making a small light and confirming that it was indeed an owl that had collided with her, she put away her sword and resumed her journey. A little further on, she remembered .. "My hair!!"

 

"Ergh, evil birds," she grumbled, grabbing a comb of Air and pulling it through her tangled light brown locks, which was slow going since she had to keep a watch for other flying animals. Finally getting everything straightened properly, a difficult task given her curly hair, she did a quick check. Judging by the town lights, she'd deviated a tad in the dark, but in a manner of minutes landed in the open town square. Knocking on Eldon's door, Alavaria was let in rather quickly, which wasn't too surprising seeing that her host had been unable to sleep. In no time at all, they were in his sitting room making small talk.

 

"You know, I don't understand why you would visit me rather than Faust." Eldon was saying. "If you have any business with the town, you have to speak with him."

 

Alavaria leaned forward slightly. His next reaction was crucial. "How would you like to have your own town? City? State? Nation maybe?"

 

"What!" He jumped up, spilling his wine. Moments later, Althea entered through the door to see what the commotion was.

 

Alavaria casually relaxed, carefully hiding her pleasure in response that had been solicited. It clearly confirmed a good choice. "It's simple. No matter what we do, the majority of you humans won't take kindly to following us. Clearly, one of you has to 'lead' if we are not to drown in the rising tide."

 

"Why not bring that proposal to the capital? Surely they will have some idea about what to do?"

 

"You said it yourself. The capital is full of bickering nobles. They'll only unite if the whole of hell came raining down on them, and that's a loss scenario. Come on, don't try to tell me you think that they can get their act together. There's no time to play around here."

 

"But..."

 

From outside shouts could be heard. Annoyed, Alavaria turned her head towards the window, catching a few words. "My fault again," she told Eldon, grabbing her armor with several threads of magic as she jumped off his balcony. "I need to deal with them. Be back shortly."

 

"Them?" asked Eldon, to no one in particular.

 

"Must be the raiders." Althea replied from behind. Spinning slightly, Eldon caught his wife by the hand and impulsively hugged her. "Would you mind having a king for a husband?"

 

She laughed. "We better check on Elias before thinking about bigger things like that."

 

Once out of Eldon's house, Alavaria put on her armor, something easily accomplished with magic, and then headed over to where she thought the shouts were coming from, quite displeased. Those raiders .. they just had to mess up things. An actual attack? Apparently they wouldn't give up their murdering, pillaging ways .. she would have to finish off the lot of them after all. Still, it was a pity that they hadn't the intelligence to take her seriously. She watched as a scout flew off towards the Temple.

 

"Where are they, and how many of them are there?" she asked a guard, who simply pointed to the guardhouse, while directing the villagers to take cover. Moving there, she was gratified to find that early reports put the enemy force at only about ninety or so of them, with only five mages. That still made roughly twenty men and a mage to a boat, before any losses earlier. Why did they use so few ships?

 

As she left the town, headed north, with a small flick of her wrist, Alavaria tossed together a small light and sent it into the darkness. The Lightball illuminated a large area around it while moving. Nothing showed up but trees and bushes. Pulling it back by means of a Wind tether, Alavaria sent it off in another direction, and then another. Shifting to another spot, she continued to probing the darkness from different angles. After a while, she thought that there was a slight movement a little to her left. Sending her light that way, however, showed it to be empty. Then she saw something else, but when her light went there, is also clear of raiders.

 

Ah, hide and seek is it? Of course! It was so simple .. she willed more magic to her control and then produced several more luminescent spheres. Sending them out into the darkness, she fixed them in place one by one until the had a lit arc of ground. "Come out, come out," she told the shadows. "I know you're there. If you're so eager to die come out and have at it. I'm very pressed for time as it is, without having to stop you from raiding innocent towns."

 

A soft sound pulled her gaze to the side as a small fireball darted up from behind a bush. With a set of long Cold threads, Alavaria hacked at the magical construct, which neutralized upon contact with her own, more powerful, creation. Without hesitating, she stabbed swiftly at where the spell had originated. A bush cracked and exploded as it was frozen. Darting to the side she flung up a shield of swirling gale-strength winds that blew away the arrows rushing at her. Raising hands to the still-dark heavens, she summoned a rain of small fiery coals, which pelted the area in front of her. Flushed from their hiding, the raiders abandoned stealth and rushed at their solitary foe. The mages with them called on the skies in turn, bringing lightning crashing down. She moved casually to the side and the lightning slammed uselessly into the ground.

 

"How to go about this," she wondered. "Without leveling everything nearby." Several arrows whizzed past her, from the wrong direction, so she had archer support. Opening her right hand as she moved it from left to right, as though she was sowing seeds, Alavaria sprayed forth a deadly mist of swift Heat darts, each one smoking slightly as it flew through the air. Anything that 'mist' passed though was shredded. One mage, caught in the open, desperately recited his memory aid, bringing up an ani-magic shield. The small bits of magical shrapnel bounced off it, keeping him safe while around him other projectiles ripped into his soon-to-be ex-comrades. Seconds later, he joined them as one of Alavaria's darts swerved around the shield and turned back, piercing the back of his head. His shield faded as his life did.

 

Alavaria was trying to remember small-scale area spells, but couldn't remember any. Noticing the warm glow of the town streaming from behind her, she took hold of it, adding magical energies and redirecting it into the battlefield. In seconds, the darkness of night was flooded with the brilliance of a noonday sun. Many men were blinded by the sudden light, only to receive an arrow to the chest. Switching again, Alavaria dragged into existence several hundred filaments of Cold, sending them into the dark. The sight of an angry mage floating several feet above with ground with hundreds of magic threads radiating from her hands was too much for many of them, who promptly broke and ran. Others foolishly tried to charge the solitary figure and received for their foolhardiness a snap freezing.

 

When Alavaria finally returned to the town wall, she leaned a while on it, surveying what was left. There was quite a good deal of charred and frozen ground, which thankfully was not someone's farmland. There was also thousands of small holes left by her last attack, each one surrounded by rock hard ice. A day or two in the sun could fix that. There were also many new ice sculptures dotting the plain, and half-frozen raiders. She decided that someone else would have to deal with that, as she rushed back to the Temple before she was missed. Minutes later she was opening the plans room door.

 

"So Kisha and Talia have taken off.." Eferlon was telling Maero and Maeror. "Oh there you are Alavaria. The messenger I sent missed you?"

 

"Apparently." she told him casually. "But it isn't his fault that the Temple looks the same all over." Eferlon chuckled.

 

"Sure, sure. First thing's first - we need a group of the Engineers, along with a guard, of course, to check out the beach area." She ignored Eferlon, who was clearly trying to edge a word in. "The only place we haven't any presence in is the capital. It'll take maybe five days to reach there, so we should set out with a sufficient - very sufficient mind you - honor guard, consisting of as many crack troops as we have, of course."

 

"Well, I suppose .."

 

"Great! Good thing the deployment orders were already sent out, or we'd have to wait for them."

 

Eferlon blinked. Maeror gave his brother a grin. "You know," added Alavaria. "We really do need a better place to meet, a little higher up maybe? I'll think on that when we get back."

 

Eferlon tried vainly to regain control of the situation as he was skillfully led up and out of the Temple, where they were met by a contingent of elite air force troopers, fifty in total, as well as two of the Engineers. One hurriedly whispered something to the other and ran off before Alavaria's group reached them.

 

"They're sending four to five over to the abandoned town on the coast." he informed Eferlon, when enquired.

 

"Excellent," commented Alavaria absently. "I see you've thought of everything. In that case, everything should be all done by the time we return."

 

"In one and a half weeks? Cities take years to build!."

 

"Nah, don't worry. We can make a sizeable town there, given the resources, and the quality of human architecture, or lack thereof. They won't find the town lacking, except for the wall that won't be there. Coastal defense walls can wait until after winter. No attacks are expected until then, though we'll have some troops stationed there."

 

Minutes later, the four of them had taken to the skies, hovering over the long beaten road that led to New Silversea. "East!" exclaimed Alavaria cheerfully. "We'll meet the road going south-east if we go cross country."

 

With that they set off, flying together with their escort spread out around them. "For a while they were silent, admiring the mountain rising gracefully to their right as well as the sight of New Silversea against the glittering sea. Several dark specks appeared over the side of the mountain, swiftly moving towards them. Their guard's point man drew his sword, making several small sparks jump up as he pulled it free in one smooth stroke.

 

"Relax." said Maero, who was looking in the same direction. "Figure they're just birds. Mortals can't fly, and they wouldn't be ambushing us anyway."

 

"What about dragons?" asked Maeror, as the sword was silently sheathed. Alavaria laughed softly, but even so, she could still feel something shaking the air around them. "Who's ever heard of dragons around here?"

 

"Well, by that token, we don't exist either."

 

"Granted, but dragons are solitary creatures, going by the legends. I wouldn't worry about any of those grouping together to ambush us."

 

When they met the road, there were a few small buildings outside New Silversea's town wall that could be seen. Further down the road, there was what looked like more buildings.

 

"We're not going to do anything big in those towns." Eferlon said firmly. "If we're going to make a long trip to the capital, doubtless we will have to move more slowly than on a long trip. Stopping to rest and such. There's not time to get involved with all of these people."

 

"No objections here." Alavaria said. "Personally, I was afraid you might do just that." Eferlon snorted. Alavaria ignored it, continuing in a patient tone. "However, it is good to see that you realize the importance of good reports from humans. Still, if we spend a little time with them, it establishes good faith on our side. You never know when a little thing like that might come in useful."

 

"Indeed." commented Maeror dryly, observing their 'discussion' closely. "It would work much better if you didn't argue so much that you missed that town coming up in front of us and all the gawkers. And archers."

 

"We were not .. !" shouted Eferlon and Alavaria together. Maero laughed at the responses his brother's jab had elicited. Still arguing, though in lower tones, the small group of angels landed just outside the town and took their time walking in.