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“I mean, seriously, what has crawled up in his ass and died?”
Ivy and Meredith were walking the green outside the fairgrounds. A tent city separated
the cabins from the entrance to the festival, and wrapped around to behind the
warehouse buildings to the west. People of all types were around their tents,
talking and laughing, the area brimming with life and the socialization that
comes from close living quarters.
Ivy and Meredith stopped at one of the communal fire pits. Two
women were finishing cooking their families’ dinners. A young child was
roasting sugar fluff on a stick. Others were just gathered, enjoying the fire’s
heat, listening to a man play guitar while a woman sang. Ivy and Meredith listened
to the music for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts.
“I could Look for you.”
Ivy shook her head. “No. You know how I feel about that.”
Adina ran up to them. She got a few odd looks from people
around the fire, because she was still dressed in the clothes she wears for archery.
Her braid buns had slid down, and looked like earmuffs. “There you are!”
Ivy raised an eyebrow “What are you doing?”
She paused, catching her breath. “Trying to find you. I
found out what’s going on!”
An explosion rocked the area, causing many people in the
area to scream in fear and surprise. The friends looked to the sound, to see
smoke coming from behind the warehouses. Meredith grabbed her friends hands,
and broke into a run toward the smoke.
Ivy stumbled, pulling her hand back, running beside her
friend. “What in the emptiness was that?”
Meredith’s eyes were completely unfocused, she was running
blind. “He made the decision!”
Adina’s eyes widened in fear. “I thought we had him
dissuaded against that!”
Meredith increased her speed. “Something changed! But Elliot
and Samuel have been exposed, too! Run!”
In
the cabin, Elliot and Samuel were sharing a pint, not really talking or doing
anything, just drinking. An explosion shook the door and windows, closely
followed by the sounds of screaming. Elliot and Samuel both stood, Samuel
knocking over his chair. Elliot was in and out of the bedroom, suddenly armed,
and they bolted out of the cabin together, not even shutting the door behind
them.
The girls took cover behind a wagon. A large, black metal
and glass slug of a thing floated on a cloud of colored light, gliding around
the midway. The smoked glass hid whomever was inside, but panels on the sides
had slid open, exposing black metal tubes. The tubes would make a spitting
sound, and a flame bright projectile would fly out, ripping through whatever
was in its path, starting fires and explosions.
“Meredith, what is that thing?”
Her eyes had turned solid white, she was no longer working
here. She was in, what she called, the weaving. “It’s a hovercraft. A two
person chariot designed to have a driver and a gunner? Archer? It’s a like a
archer.”
Adina nodded. “2 person chariot, driver and fighter, got it.
So who is driving?”
“No one. The tech has its own intelligence. No real thread
to follow, because it doesn’t have much decision making ability. Its goals are
to continue existing, and do whatever it has to do to keep power. That’s the
problem now, its running out of power, and trying to flush out someone that is
an appropriate power source. Crap”
Adina took her eyes off of the machine for only a moment. “What
crap?”
“Its power source is UEF. It runs off of the driver’s access
to magical energy. If Devon was a trained magical user, as long as he was in
the vehicle its power would be nearly limitless, but since he isn’t, it’s using
his life force for power. Without magic, he has no control over it, and it’s
killing him.”
Ivy eyed the device. “Would it consider US appropriate power
sources?”
Meredith shook her head. “Only as a very last resort. Its
priority is a male.”
Adina huffed. “Well, it’s going to be looking a long time,
then. C’mon, let’s get on this.”
Adina and Meredith ran out from behind the wagon, both of
them moving as a fluid single unit. Adina threw a flash of sparks at the device
to grab its attention. Meredith could warn Adina of every shot it would take,
before it could take it, so she was easily able to deflect and defend as it
focused on the women. It was a machine built for war, and though they were
considered unarmed females, they were the only ones able to put up the kind of
fight it understood. Adina focused intently, hurling her own glowing
projectiles of raw energy, though they bounced harmlessly off of the machine’s
armor. She tried another option, and pulled energy up from the earth to pound
into the undercarriage of the vehicle. It wavered and jolted, but recovered.
Adina moved in a beautiful dance, throwing raw energy in complicated patterns,
its light intensifying, and then heat. With a scream of rage, Adina finally threw
her own flame bright ball, not much larger than a cherry. It slammed into the
elongated glass dome, cracking it.
As Adina and Meredith tried to find a way to defeat
the device, Ivy tended to the injured. Her gift gave her the ability to know
where any living person was near her, so she found people who were not badly
injured, and had those people help her get the more heavily injured people to
safety. She could hear Meredith and Adina cussing and shouting directions to
each other in the Scion tongue, Adina’s energy blasts becoming laced with spell
power from the ancient language. Then Ivy heard something she was only daring
to hope she would hear. Another woman, shouting in their language, was running
down the open isle of the midway. Ivy called to her, and she came to Ivy’s
side, crouching down and helping with the wounded.
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