Guild Mage: Apprentice-Chapter 159. Landslide

Liv walked over to where Arjun knelt next to Rosamund, examining her shoulder with not only his eyes, but his fingers, as well. The dark haired girl winced whenever he probed her body, but managed not to make any noise other than a few hissed intakes of breath.

“Is she going to be alright?” Liv asked.

“I pulled the arm back into place while you were fighting,” Arjun said. “But I don’t have enough mana left to heal it all properly. She has torn ligaments, at the very least. Even after I finish treating her, she’s going to have to wear it in a sling for a while. Also, she’s exhausted from mana depletion.”

“We can do something about that, at least,” Liv said. She dug through her pockets and came up with a wrapped piece of smoked jerky - a recipe familiar from her years in Whitehill. Julianne, Matthew and Triss had brought Forester jerky, though Liv imagined it had been hunted by Emma, rather than her father, at this point. Kale must be sixty years of age, by now.

“Thank you,” Rose said, accepting the smoked meat in her left hand, and letting her fingers brush Liv’s briefly. She took a bite, and Liv watched while she chewed and swallowed.

“Good.” Liv glanced over to where she’d last seen Wren, and couldn’t find the huntress for a moment. Then, she turned to the corpse of Calevis, and saw the dark-haired woman crouched over his chest, her face buried in the bloody ruin of the dead man’s neck.

“Everyone take a moment,” Liv commanded, since it was clear her friends couldn’t press on immediately. Still, she wouldn’t feel completely at ease until they’d regrouped with the other half of their raiding party, and learned what had happened with all the stored Antrian war-machines.

When Wren lifted her face from the dead body, her mouth was smeared with blood. Even wiping at it with her sleeve didn’t help much, and Liv understood now why the woman preferred to purchase bottled animal blood from butchers.

“That was a lot of pressure,” she said, once she’d made her way across the chamber to join the other three.

“Authority,” Liv said.

“Your sessions tied down with the Ward girl finally paid off, then?” Rose asked. With the entire strip of jerky gone, she got her boots under her and lurched to her feet, though she swayed unsteadily for a moment. Before she could think better of it, Liv put a hand on the dark-haired girl’s shoulder to steady her.

“The practice helped, I think,” Liv said. “But the final push was knowing what would happen to you all if I didn’t stop him. Failure simply wasn’t something I could allow. Anyway,” she continued, “I want to follow Julianne’s group and make certain they’re not in trouble.”

“Sounds good,” Wren said. She strode over to the doorway, and the other three followed. Liv finally released her touch on Rose, somewhat reluctantly. This time, the other girl seemed to be the one who’d come out of a fight the worse for wear - on the one hand, it was nice for Liv not to be waking up in a bed again, missing days or weeks; on the other, it was a disconcerting experience to be the one worried about her own friend.

Once they were out into the night air, Wren rose up on flapping wings, disappearing into the darkness in her bat form. Liv knew that the huntress would find them again as soon as she’d located their companions. In the meantime, she did her best to backtrack to where the two groups had split up, and then lead Arjun and Rose in the general direction the other half of the party had set off.

Wren found them a few moments later, beneath the hissing and clanking machinery, landed on two feet, and pointed the way. “Their fight’s over, as well,” the huntress said. “I turned back to collect you all once I saw no one was dead.”

And it was a good thing she had, Liv was forced to admit within a few moments. By the time they’d reached the complex of war-machine docks where Julianne’s group was tending their wounds, it was clear that Liv would never have found them on her own. The entire Foundry Rift was something like a labyrinth, crowded with not only strange shapes, but sounds.

When they arrived, they found Triss wrapping a bandage around her brother’s ribs. Bliant’s jack of plate had been removed and sat off to one side in the light of the great ring overhead; Liv saw that it had been shattered on one side, as if by the strike of some powerful beast.

Julianne stood near Sidonie’s shoulder, while the young woman adjusted her spectacles at the tip of her nose and traced glowing sigils on a screen of glass attached to one of the dock buildings, just inside a ruined door. Matthew seemed to have appointed himself to stand guard, and he nodded to Liv and her group when they approached.

“I hope you all had as much fun as we did,” Liv’s adoptive brother said, with a rakish grin. He swept his one good arm out around him, to indicate the half dozen broken and smoking war-machines that marked the sight of a small battle. There was an Elden man, as well, leaning against the wall of one building with a hand clutching the bloody ruin of his belly. From the ash-gray tone of his face, Liv guessed that the enemy soldier was already dead.

“We killed Calevis,” she responded. “What happened here? From what Wren said, there should have been a lot more Antrians than just this.”

“What she means is that she killed Calevis,” Rose spoke up.”I thought I knew what you were capable of, Liv, but blood and shadows.”

“I couldn’t have done it without all the rest of you fighting, as well,” Liv pointed out. “Only the very end was me alone. Anyway. What happened, Matthew?”

He grimaced. “Ah, they were already moving the troops out by the time we got here, Liv. We made too much noise coming in. There were two of the Eldish soldiers sending them through an open waystone, down that way.” He pointed down a sort of corridor or road that ran between two of the buildings that held row upon row of cradles.

“Which means,” Julianne said, turning away from whatever Sidonie was doing, “that while we interrupted their operation here, and killed the leader of this group, Ractia’s people now had seventy or eighty Antrians to throw into battle somewhere else.”

“Varuna,” Liv said. “I need to get word to Keri and my father, to warn them. But what I don’t understand is how they have so many - where are they getting the brains to put inside?”

“I can answer that,” Sidonie said, turning away from the sigil-lit glass she’d been examining. “I believe there are at least three kinds of war machines. Three general categories, at least, with multiple designs that could be categorized within those general parameters.”

Matthew blinked with the same look he’d gotten whenever Master Grenfell launched into magical theory when Liv and he had been younger.

“Broad strokes, Sidonie,” Liv said. “We can dive into theory later.”

“Alright.” With one finger, the other girl pushed her spectacles further up to the bridge of her nose, and everyone gathered around to listen. “First, there are machines like those that scavenge the valley, or the ones that were marched out of here tonight. They seem to be entirely mechanical, with no living components whatsoever. As a result, they don’t seem to be very intelligent. More like the sort of magical constructs I’ve seen both you and Archmagus Jurian create, Liv.”

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“That’s nothing like Karis, though,” Liv pointed out.

“No, it isn’t,” Sidonie agreed. “I would put him in the second category. Dying soldiers loyal to the old gods, put into new, mechanical bodies. I can’t imagine there would ever have been very many, but they would be much more dangerous, combining true intelligence and reason with all the power that comes with bodies of enchanted steel and mana stone. Finally,” she continued, “You have something like what they were doing with Calevis. I’m guessing they didn’t simply take his brain out of his skull, did they?”

“No,” Arjun answered, shaking his head. “They used mechanized parts to replace his lost limbs, but left every part of his natural, undamaged body alone. Perhaps that is why he was able to use his magic, Liv.”

“I never saw Karis use magic at all,” she mused. “Only the enchantments worked into his machinery. Which leads me to some of our current difficulties.”

“Your daring escape from Coral Bay,” Matthew said, taking a seat on the armored metal leg of one of the broken Antrians.

“I had to use Luc when I fought Karis,” Liv said, turning to Julianne. “I’m sorry. Merek Sherard’s seagull spies told him about it, and he brought it to Genevieve Arundell.”

“I suppose keeping a secret for a year isn’t a complete failure.” Julianne stepped forward and wrapped Liv in her arms. “It’s alright, dear girl. We’ll deal with it. But in the meantime,” she said, turning her head to address Sidonie, “What would you say is the best way to make certain that our enemies can never use the Foundry Rift to make more soldiers?”

“Bring all of this down,” Sidonie said. Liv released Julianne and stepped back in time to see her friend wave an arm to indicate the entire complex of machinery that filled the shoal of the rift. “Wreck it badly enough that it's no longer useful to them.”

Matthew let out a low whistle. “With what, ice? Lightning? Ters certainly isn’t going to do it.”

“No,” Liv said, turning to Rosamund. “I think we have someone much better suited to that kind of mass destruction. You think you could bring an avalanche down on this whole place, Rose?”

“I need a better look at the mountains at this end of the valley,” Rose said. “And in actual daylight. But if you can get me close enough, and give me the mana I need - probably.”

“We pull out of the shoal until dawn, then,” Julianne declared. “There’s been quite enough exposure to raw mana already, and I can just imagine how many black veins I’m going to see in you all come daylight.”

“This way,” Wren said, and turned to lead the raiding party out of the Foundry.

☙

Dawn found them sitting around a small fire, which helped to ward off the chill. The light broke over the western mountains, casting the shapes of the foundry buildings in long, distorted shadows out across the plains of the valley.

As Julianne had predicted, Matthew, Triss, Bliant, and herself all were showing black veins from the very beginnings of mana sickness. Arjun went to work, extracting excess mana and dumping it into the pommel of Liv’s wand, her set of rings and bracelet, and every spare pearl or piece of mana-stone jewelry they had. No one commented on the fact that Liv, Arjun, Rose and Sidonie didn’t happen to require treatment, and Liv hoped no one would press her for an answer as to why.

When there was enough light to see, she conjured a gyrfalcon construct using Aluth, and both Liv and Rosamund climbed up onto its shining back. Because Rose was taller, Liv ended up in front, with the other girl pressed into her back, and it reminded her of riding double with Matthew when she’d been younger.

“I’d recommend you all get back as far as you can,” Rose said, nibbling on the last of the jerky. They’d been stuffing her like a prize pig the entire time they waited for the sun to come up, so that she’d have enough mana to bring the mountains down. “Once I start this, it's not going to be the sort of thing I can stop - or even really aim very well.”

“How far is far enough?” Matthew asked.

“As far as you can get,” Rose said.

“A quarter mile? A half a mile?” Matthew asked, but at Liv’s intent, her conjured gyrfalcon beat its immense wings and carried the two young women up into the morning air.

It was cool, and the higher up they went the more Liv missed the comfort of the fire below. She considered using Cel, just to get enough waste heat to warm the two of them up, but she was wary of what they might find when they made it back to Valegard: after all, Coral Bay was only a single trip by waystone. So instead, Rose wrapped her arms around Liv’s middle, and they shivered against each other.

The mountains at the east end of the valley were pitted and scarred from extensive mining, rearing up above the machinery in steep, bare cliffs. There were pits and cuts in the rock, where masses of ore and stone had been removed, and Liv didn’t see a single tree growing on any of the slopes facing the Foundry. It reminded her of Bald Peak, north of Whitehill, save that instead of a single mountain being mined, this entire side of the valley had been cleared for the extraction of resources.

Great chutes led down from the pits and cuts to the Foundry machines below, carrying broken stone down at an angle into the machinery. More of those spider-like Antrian scavenging machines crawled all over the cliffs and cuts of the near mountains, carrying stone or ore from the mines over to the chutes, where they deposited it.

“They do all this without a single living person giving orders,” Rose shouted in Liv’s ear. “Probably just going along on the orders they were given a thousand years ago.”

“Can you bring it down?” Liv shouted back, turning her head over her shoulder.

Rose nodded. “Borrow your wand for a moment?”

Carefully, Liv pulled the bone wand from her leather holster and passed it back to her friend. The last thing she wanted was to drop it somewhere below on the mountainside and then have to spend the entire day searching for it.

The gyrfalcon wheeled through the sky, carrying them around in a great circle, as close to the cliffs as Liv could bring them safely. Behind her, she could feel Rose shifting, and then the other girl’s voice shouted an incantation into the wind.

“Cement Æ’Velia!” Liv could feel the mana pouring out from the girl pressed into her back, focused on the length of the wand, and then down into the mountain cliffs below them. For a moment, nothing happened, and she worried that what she’d asked was too much - that it was beyond what Rose could accomplish.

It began with pebbles and smaller rocks, rolling and skittering down the slopes to the cliffs, and then over the edges. A great shaking began beneath them, and one of the mines collapsed. All at once, it was as if the entire mountain were made of ice that first melted, and then ran like water.

The dirt and rock seemed to move deceptively slowly, or perhaps it was merely Liv’s own perception of time, distorted by the enormity of what her friend had begun. The collapses accelerated, with great chunks of the cliffside falling away, carrying the spider-constructs which had harvested the mountains for so long like so much spring flotsam in a swollen river.

Centuries of mining and quarrying must have crossed the cliffs and the foundations of the mountains with tunnel upon tunnel, cut upon pit upon mine, and now it all came tumbling down. At Liv’s intent, the gyrfalcon construct rose, keeping the two young women above the great cloud of dust that rose in the wake of the growing collapse.

The avalanche fell upon the Foundry like a herd of stampeding cattle, like spring flood on the banks of the Aspen River. With great screams of twisting metal, the smokestacks and scaffolds and chutes, all of the machinery below crumpled as if they had been no more than a child’s bundle of sticks.

Liv turned the gyrfalcon west, toward the tiny figures of their friends, who had set off across the valley toward the wall of Valegard.

☙

The rest of the morning was taken up by the long, slow march west. Now, with Rose too exhausted to transport them, there was some speculation as to whether it might not have been better to bring along a few horses, after all - which Liv considered foolishness. Even the attempt to imagine Steria riding a great slab of stone atop a rushing wave of earth was ridiculous.

There were a few encounters with Antrian scavenging spiders, but having Wren in the air to scout for them meant that most fights were avoided, and that when they were forced to engage, they had plenty of warning. At which point, the party of nine brought enough magic to the fight that short work was made of the lone machines.

When they finally came in sight of the wall that stretched across the gap, protecting the people of Valegard from the threat of the rift, it was a great relief. Every one of them was tired and footsore, not to mention hungry for a good meal and desperate for a bath. Their eagerness to cover the final leg of the journey was thoroughly crushed, however, when Wren swooped down from the sky and landed in her human form.

“We’ve got trouble,” the huntress said, and Liv felt her belly roil with anxiety. “There’s three sets of colors up on those walls - Summerset, Crosbie, and King Benedict’s new army.”