Bandits, Oh My!

  “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” - Preserved scraps of an ancient codex, suspected Pre-Unravelling origin. Author unknown

  The sun had decided it was quite finished with its current workday, and was apparently in a bit of a rush, as while everyone, bandits and passengers alike had paused in the seconds that had passed after the still smiling elf’s proclamation, the shadows had swelled, thickening into a curtain that had already crept halfway across the now ochre sky.

  He had stopped, stock-still, at the foot of the carriage, having bypassed the remaining passengers effortlessly, flowing around outstretched feet, travel bags, courageous mice and bandit-induced panicked flailing unimpeded.

  He completed his journey in one, supernaturally smooth, uninterrupted motion almost before Kel registered it had begun.

  He stared silently, his smile receding into a bemused smirk, meeting the freshly cyclopean gaze of what Kel could only assume was this group’s leader. She certainly seemed to be, calmly glaring back at the Peacekeeper as her presumed subordinates began to panic, their scared faces a sharp contrast to hers, unflinching even with a crimson stain still blossoming from behind a haphazardly applied bandage.

  Kel didn’t blame them.

  Fighting a Peacekeeper was suicide, either on the spot, or via the noose.

  But they were bandits, and they had attacked an imperial recruitment transport. There was no escaping, no victory, unless the Peacekeeper was dead. She clearly knew that.

  “THROUGH THE WARDS! CLUSTER! SCENARIO 3!”, she bellowed, surging forward.

  Her forces reacted instantly, or as close to it as was humanly possible.

  It wasn’t fast enough. For a Peacekeeper with an Aean spellcannon in hand? Not nearly.

  *THZZZZT*

  *THZZZZT*

  *THZZZZT*

  The Elf’s arm blurred as he fired three wrist-thick translucent golden beams of energy, each one spiralling and twirling through the air, as though following a conductor’s baton, before lancing into the chests of three of the marauders.

  Then, the root-like bands of energy pulled taut, the semi-physical energy pulling just enough on reality to make one of the bandits stumble, as they condensed into thin, blazing golden strings.

  Suddenly, a pulse of blinding white energy shot from the cannon along the three brilliant threads, each one bulging like a fed snake as the pockets of snow white light flared through them.

  In less than a second, the lights reached the end of their journey.

  Then the sun apparently decided it was going to make an encore appearance located three quarters of a handspan from Kel’s eyeballs, and after an accompanying thunderous crack, it seemed the world was quite content to never make another sound again.

  Blinking open eyelids which had been clenched so tight it felt like they would pop, and a cruel ringing still in his ears, Kel looked at the spot where they had been standing.

  Had; being the operative word.

  Three smouldering pairs of boots, each one in the centre of metre-wide bloody rings painted on the ground,hissing viscera and spattered blood still bubbling. Within a half-metre from each charred pair, the ground was not only bloodless, but spotless. Utterly sterile.

  Except for where the rings had overlapped.

  The bandits, who had been standing in a rough triangle, had apparently managed to move slightly, coincidentally forming a perfect chevron just as they were, well, exploding from the inside out. Whatever spell vaporized the men didn’t seem to care about anything that hadn’t been within it’s half-meter radius circle when it went off. Like the remains of the other two former criminals.

  Which left behind a pattern in the viscera that Kel was sure he had seen before. One that seemed to pop in contrast to the rest of the world, as though somehow the pattern itself was oversaturated.

  Then, with a final flash of golden light, racing along the bloody symbol like a wildfire, the spattered remains burnt to a blackened crisp and collapsed into ashes, which blew away in the wind.

  Leaving nothing but a vaguely triangular blotch of clean ground. And three pairs of boots.

  Then the stench hit Kel’s nose with an olfactory champion boxer’s right-hook that sent him to all fours, the contents of his stomach being joined moments later by Oshin’s on the mucky ground beside the carriage, barely inside the pyramid-shaped wards.

  Eyes watering from multiple sources, Kel’s vision blurred with tears, to him the remaining bandits seemed nothing more than smears of colour, which then promptly vanished, flaring with purple light tracing their silhouettes.

  Fairly confident that the Peacekeeper’s spell didn’t do that, and you’ve smelled worse than this before… maybe, but a stench didn’t leave you with illusions of people vanishing.

  He rubbed his eyes, rising to his knees as he did so. He briefly met Oshin’s gaze, both of them having recovered enough to offer the other a wavering nod. It was survival time. Apparently Oshin could postpone whatever was to come after learning who Kel ‘thought he was’ until their lives were no longer on the line. That was good enough for Kel.

  Looking past him, he rubbed his eyes again, with decidedly more elbow grease, as clearly the previous attempt hadn’t done the job. The bandits were still gone.

  Which either meant he and Oshin, who also appeared quite vexed with the quality of his eyeballs’ polish, were quite insane, or those unlucky bastards had truly disappeared.

  The cacophonous eruption within the carriage, a dozen varying exclamations of surprise, panic and dread, seemed to agree.

  Just as suddenly as it had started, the noise was strangled in its cradle, hushed by the elf’s clenched left fist appearing above his shoulder, suddenly raised in the universal symbol for stop.

  Then, very casually, he lowered the chrome banded fist, fingers spreading just above the spellcannon’s barrel, wood-grain golden lines reappearing on the chrome band.

  His fingers drummed out a pattern, hitting off translucent golden discs which floated unseen until touched.

  A similarly gilded fibrous pattern appeared on the barrel of the spellcannon, which then twisted, uncoiling fibres of chrome white ‘bark’ revealing a golden brown interior. The barrel lengthened, before slamming back to it’s previous length, two bands of less taught fibres half-crimping, half-melting into a gnarled, v-shaped protrusion at the top of the weapon.

  From the ‘top’ of each of the two organically woven chrome stalks, translucent bronze kelp-like fronds unfurled, curling towards each other as they did so. Serrated edges slotted perfectly together, comprising the top and bottom halves of a shimmering circular readout, the glowing veins of the fronds rearranging themselves to form recognizably elvish writing.

  A few more taps of the usually invisible buttons, and a curt swipe of the hand, Kel felt a strand of Flux run through the magitech weapon, as several of the curling veins glowed technicolour, shifting and reforming into different elven runes.

  Extending the spellcannon again, the golden grain lines faded, replaced partially by wispy teal blue lights spiralling up the glossy chrome barrel. Vaporous trails grew as they reached the end of the weapon, before swirling into a roiling gobbet of teal and black flame hovering in front of the muzzle.

  Spraying out from the blob with thunderous force, thousands of tiny droplets of this liquid-flame arced through the air in a wide cone. Sticking where they landed, flickering away merrily without any damage to what they were ‘burning’.

  So they’re not invisible. Cool. Where the hell are they then? Spontaneous Existence Termination? But you remember them, so that’s not it, dumbass.

  …

  Spatial Ethos gear, I wonder if-

  The elf, who before appeared bemused, laughed aloud, now seeming genuinely gleeful, his unnerving grin reappeared, not-quite bestial, not-quite human. Fractalline flowering patterns danced in iridescent eyes, taking on a purple hue, and then his eyes pivoted in a direction that Kel could not seem to follow.

  His left hand snapped to the side, a small grey gemstone shooting from the chrome white band into a matching divot in the carriage’s floor, still attached by a thin white cord.

  Tapping once more on some invisible buttons, momentarily confusing Kel, a circle of harsh yellow and grey light appeared beneath the Elf’s outstretched hand, which he then spun a half turn.

  Oh, the buttons appear relative to the band itself, not the cannon. Gods, you are dumb

  As he did so, the floating yellow ward pyramid flared back into visibility, dozens of repeated shapes and simple symbols linked together by a framework of yellow and grey lines. It began slowly rotating around the carriage, familiar lines having reilluminated all along its body.

  As one of the opaque corner edges of the lazily spinning pyramid passed between the travellers and where their vanished assailants had disappeared from, space seemed to unzipper behind it. A misshapen oval of untouched grass, earth and road ballooned into being from within the field of flaring teal sparks, wrinkled space unfurling as the ward twisted the local fabric of reality.

  Huddled within the patch of returned space, a cluster of harried bodies answered the mystery of the disappearing bandits. With a soft pop, an almost invisible purple bubble collapsed around them, and it didn’t go unnoticed.

  Faces blanched and already harried motions sped up, desperate to complete their frantic project in time. A line of six kneeling heavily armoured fighters emerged from the throng, each one swinging a large dark metallic spike clamped to their forearms over their heads and sinking sharply pointed ends into the ground, shielding themselves behind them.

  Between the fresh row of metal posts, colour bled away, leaving the group in a washed out greyscale. The monochrome pallor was disturbed by a swirling purple corona around each post, intermittently linked together by crackling bolts of magenta lightning.

  *THZZZT*

  A single familiarly-golden ethereal root leapt from the Elf’s weapon, shooting directly for the bandit’s leader, who stood centerfield behind the defensive line her kneeling subordinates formed, bold as brass.

  And for good reason. The damn thing missed.

  The root twisted and whirled through the air, fruitlessly spiralling in tighter and tighter circles, trying to redirect itself towards her.

  But the colourless space between missile and target seemed to deny the ethereal appendage’s very existence, the tenebrous barrier twisting space in a game of keep-away that lasted until the winding spell twirled off to the side of the spatial shield, the golden projection sparking and whining as it faded away, until it disappeared with a final crackling pop.

  The leader-

  ‘Come on now, Kel, you can’t just keep calling her ‘the leader’. ‘

  ‘Middle-aged, but wearing that armour like it’s nothing, and with the bulk there’s no way it isn’t heavy. Steely grey bobbed hair, and a matching stormy iris, freshly divorced from its twin. Let’s go with Sharp.’

  Sharp continued to deadeye the Peacekeeper, before raising one of her swords and then chopping forward in the universal signal to advance.

  In a rolling wave, each of the bandits picked up their individual metallic posts, Spatial Ethos projecting the shield, only to slam it back down a few seconds later, having advanced as far as they could, before their neighbour lifted their own, never letting the shields fully disconnect.

  The elf continued firing on the spatial phalanx advancing on them, technicolour beams of

  light and ethereal white swords bombarded the advancing shields as the elf reconfigured his spellcannon into multiple strange shapes, each one specialized to assist a specific spell.

  Every impact sent a strobing violet flash through the monochrome barrier, but no matter what the Elf threw at it, the advance continued unimpeded.

  Until they reached the ward.

  The first of the six bandits making up the defensive line plunged forward with his metal post, as though to stab through the holographic pyramid. Barely a metre from where Kel and Oshin knelt, a pulse of bright yellow light spiderwebbed out from the point of impact, yellow and grey ethereal circuitry flashing with purpose.

  Steel grey lines bled from across the lit up section of the pyramid, pooling around the dark metal post even as it was restrained by the growing mesh of visible, thick grey logos.

  Then the majority of the grey lines seemed to weave together into what almost looked to Kel like an arm. Then vanishing almost entirely, leaving only a mild dark tinge to part of the web of floating yellow symbols.

  The remaining grey threads wove together into a blocky, simplistic depiction of a bearded dwarf’s head, thick of braid and brow, projected on the pyramid wall. The matte and chrome two-dimensional image seemed to shake its head, switching between three images over and over.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  That unfortunately eager bandit had stopped his blow, surprised as the ward’s personified denial of entry appeared so suddenly before him, subconsciously raising his head to take in the looping animation.

  The darkened blotch in the ward’s yellow frame trembled, until with a flash of light, the entire affected area split, hissed and rumbled. Chrome steam burst from the suddenly solid, metal and stone surface as it cracked open along artificial lines, the now more-real section of the pyramid’s face mechanically unfolding.

  A massive arm shot out of the opening, a giant copy of the briefly visible hologram, armoured in a pale drab yellow stone, charcoal grey metal visible at the joints, ending in a clawed three fingered hand. It snapped around the diligent but easily distractible bandit’s neck.

  The metal spike fell, consigned to a lopsided tilt and a sparking violet discharge as it failed to connect to its upright brethren, discarded in his futile attempt to stop the mechanomagical claw from crushing his throat, even as it sedately dragged him off his feet and into the air.

  Coughing and spluttering, his face went red, no longer able to breathe. No longer able to scream. He kicked. He clawed.

  And then with a wet, fleshy crunch, the magical construct twisted, snapping his neck.

  His face hit the ground with a sullen thump. The light distortion around the still active shield cast his face in a shadowed fuchsia pallor, no other colour present in his face. Though whether from the lack of colour or breath, Kel couldn’t say.

  The remaining five shieldbearers broke apart, spreading out in two groups, leaving a thin spot between their still connected spikes, where the desaturation of the world wasn’t in full effect.

  A truly uncertain distance behind that gap in bent space, Sharp stood to the left of the remaining bandits, who were spread out at five equal points around what looked like a giant nail. Mounted horizontally on a tripod, two metres of night-black metal as thick around as a man’s waist, yet flared at the bottom exactly like a nailhead.

  Two large handles of mismatched metal and wood were affixed around this ‘nailhead’ behind which the final bandit, a small reedy fellow, stood.

  He was frantic, foot nervously tapping as one hand, which was clawed as though gripping something, turned over and over, seemingly winding invisible springs, while the other kept a white-knuckle grip on the makeshift handle.

  Each of the five bandits encircling him was hunched over knee-high chrome hemispheres, each one with a different symbol scratched onto its surface.

  With a wave of the smaller bandit’s hand, in sync, each one opened a small wooden cage at their sides and plucked writhing forms from within. They placed them on each of the silvery domes and raised dark metal daggers into the air, poised to strike.

  “Simon! Are we ready for phase two!?” Sharp bellowed, as a shard of ice shot past her seemingly unconcerned face, her head tilted enough that the only sign of its passage was a thin cut on her cheek, which quickly frosted over. The small shard of ice had been the only piece to make it through the weakened region of their shield, but its success meant that there was now a small hole with nothing between them and the Elf.

  She did not have much time left. And they both knew it.

  “Now!” Her ordered shout sent five inky black knives plunging downward.

  Four of the knives sank home into the flesh of various small magical creatures, but as the fifth struck the translucent flesh of a glass frog, the knife skittered off with a crystalline shriek and some amber sparks.

  The mostly transparent frog turned its head, two canary-yellow monochrome eyes looking over its shoulder, directly at its failed executioner, who had lost her grip on the creature in the attempt.

  Then it shook its head at her, hopped off the sacrificial altar and disappeared into the grass.

  “Boss, we got a problem! The Earth source is bollocksed!” she shouted, eyes anxiously flitting between her compatriots, and the mounted ‘nail’. A whining noise emanated from it as four, but not five, streams of colour snaked along cables linked to each ‘altar’ which had been hidden by the grass until then.

  Except for the one connected to hers, which remained inactive.

  ‘Sharp’ finally broke away from her continued staring contest with the elf and turned her attention to the source of, and answer to, her problems.

  On the ground slightly to the side of both the carriage and the raiders, the Earth sprite still sat, nibbling on what was presumably the steel-nerved commander’s erstwhile eyeball. Watching the ongoing violence and destruction with total zen.

  It was her genuine pleasure to rob it of that.

  “Simon, sub in the Earth sprite, and do it NOW” she commanded, and the slim-built guy did not seem to be in the mood to argue. After a final dextrous twist of his hand, ‘Simon’ swept a wooden slingshot off a clip at his waist and grabbed two purple marbles from a leather pouch beside the clip. Each one trailed a small shimmering cascade of silver sparks and violet smoke, like a tiny regal comet.

  Momentarily relaxing his desperate grip on the mounted handles, he filled the slingshot’s pouch, drew, aimed and fired in one well practiced motion.

  One shot threaded between the legs of the unsuccessful bandit, hitting the sacrificial Earth altar and erupting in a plume of silver and purple smoke.

  The second marble shot across the small battlefield, exiting through the spatial shield from within unimpeded and impacting the little Earth Sprite, surrounding it in another plume of mystical smoke.

  A ghostly blue light shone from behind his eyes, as a sphere of inky black energy swirled into being above the center of the slingshot. It was enveloped by a purple corona as a thin bone-white iris formed within the crackling sphere of pitch black.

  Two bolts of purplish white lightning shot along both smoky trails in the air, connecting the two points.

  Reality seemed to bend and stretch, the two plumes of smoke moving until they seemed to be superimposed over each other. Then with a silvery flash, both plumes of smoke separated again, dissipating to reveal that the Earth elemental spirit had been transported from its position on the sidelines to the stainless sacrificial altar.

  And the eagerly waiting clutches of the apparently butterfingered bandit.

  With a corpulent squelch the obsidian dagger plunged through the disoriented sprite’s body, vitriol the shade of dead moss splattering across the engraved surface. As the fifth cable lit with a sickly yellow glow, the whining noise emanating from the jet-black spike rose in pitch as hundreds of purple runes lit up across its surface, which then began to rotate around its length.

  Sharp turned to face the Elf again, who seemed almost excited to see what would come of the bandits plan, having paused his formerly relentless magical assault.

  “Simon, are we good to go?” she called, a grim twist to her mouth as though she had bitten something sour, and knew she would have to continue eating it.

  From behind the mounted ‘nail’, which he had swivelled to point directly at the ward, Simon released one of the handles he had returned to clenching, and gave a crisp thumbs up.

  After a beat of silence, as Sharp continued to wait for a response, she spoke again, harsh reprimand in her tone.

  “Simon, if I turn my head to look at you and I see a thumbs up, and we get out of this, you won’t be able to sit for a week, am I clear?” she intoned, her freshly limited peripheral vision leaving her unable to see his affirmative gesture.

  The raised hand disappeared so fast back behind the machine’s handles that everyone present, Elves included, silently agreed it must have teleported.

  “Ahem. Good to go boss!” The slight warble in his voice betrayed him.

  She let out an exasperated sigh before speaking.

  “Do it.”

  The air screeched as a jet of burning magenta fluid blasted from the tip of the ‘nail’, drilling into the ward with a high pitched whine.

  Hollow yellow silhouettes lit up once more around the point of impact, fractures ran through holographic brickwork as the magical structure blossomed into semi-real physicality, only to be broken back down by the crushing force.

  Smashed into rapidly disintegrating polygonal debris, which flared with yellow light and disappeared as the beam continued to bore through the structure.

  The jet of magenta fluid contorted into a jagged, laminar flow and condensed for a moment, igniting into a burning plasma before widening out again. Semi-fluid flames almost bubbled from the top of the neon beam as it burrowed rapidly into the magical defences, scything a shaking and juddering line across the pyramid's face.

  Simon fought desperately to aim the DIY-cannon through its unstable vibrations with nothing more than the bolted-on handles, meeting limited success.

  The wards, well constructed as all dwarven arcanotech is, was not without recourse.

  Yellow and grey circuits lit up again, segmenting the holographic pyramid into a dozen ‘brick’ rows, each of which contra-rotated a quarter turn, dividing the damaged segments of the ward equally between the two flanking faces.

  Then the metallic grey lines swirled together once more, clustering in small pockets around the cracked brick framework in a mesh of small knots of grey thread.

  Each knot glowed with a stark white light, before shifting into small, blocky depictions of dwarves, even more simplistic than the previous animated headshot. Little more than a cluster of monochrome squares in the outline of a blocky bearded face, and a crude tool to its side, either hammer or pickaxe.

  Then, in a machine symphony, they began to demolish the shattered edges of the ward.

  Chipping away at splintered holographic masonry, swarming inwards like a hive of pixelated insects descending upon its prey. Brilliant segments of fractured yellow brickwork were crushed and pulverized, and in a flash were ground fine enough to no longer hold their form, motes of light dissipating into the air.

  A single member of the iconographic legion held no tool, and instead approached one of the damaged areas and paused.

  Another small pulse of stark white light echoed out from between where its eyes would be, had there been enough detail in the simple pictogram, before it quickly relocated to another, pausing again, like a hunting hummingbird.

  Less than a heartbeat later, zipping past a dozen lines of splintered yellow light, the sole unarmed icon paused once more.

  Again it pulsed with a sphere of echoing stark light, outlining a wisp of purple and black flame clinging to one of the fractured lines. A remnant wisp of Logos, the particular kind of spatial energy the ‘Nail’ was using, the ring of harshly-contrasting white light shrinking to contain it.

  Then two halves of a square, split at the middle, appeared to either side of the now entirely spherical orb of spatial Logos, and then closed around it. A small grey box now entrapping the swirling energy sample, the dwarf icon then zipped away from the few remaining cracks, which were already nearly entirely destroyed by its brethren.

  The small box trailed behind, as the little sprite sped over to the side of the pyramidal ward which was currently facing the still-firing weapon.

  Segments slid and repositioned in an attempt to mitigate the damage through spread, which wasn’t going to work much longer. Segments seemed to fizzle and dim, some even flickering in and out of existence.

  Pitted, cracked and scarred, the ward’s front face was barely holding on.

  And not once had the Elf flinched.

  Or even seemed startled.

  The little dwarf icon deposited the steel grey box within a slot in the intertwined yellow and grey circuit lines, before it unravelled, sublimating back into strands of metallic light. The army of dwarven icons followed swiftly behind, their jobs finished as all the cracked ‘bricks’ had been destroyed.

  Within the receptacle in the holographic circuitry, the small orb of black and magenta Logos burst. Thin streams of the spatial energy flooded the arcane wiring through a dozen symbols, looping through the entire pyramidal ward’s structure.

  Symbols and shapes silhouetted in purple light squirmed, shifting and stretching, even as the metallic grey circuits curled and reformed into a more spiralling angular structure.

  The ward’s front face turned a purplish tint, tuning its defenses against the Nail’s energy signature.

  The still intact segments of yellow wardwork thrummed with increased power, and the glowing yellow circuits inlaid in the carriage reawoke.

  The undamaged segments of the hovering frame began self-replicating, growing out of itself in a geometric, almost crystalline pattern and mechanically folded these new pieces inwards until the destroyed segments had been entirely filled in.

  The burning jet of ionized magenta fluid, no longer able to find easy purchase in the ward’s defenses, spewed like napalm from it’s point of impact.

  A torrential spray blasted outwards, the ineffective drill coating the front of the ward in viscous purple tinted plasma, hiding the bandits from view once more.

  Three glowing yellow runes appeared in front of every member of the travelling party, which then began changing, rapidly.

  'The rightmost rune changes every... half second?'

  Kel had met no more than three dwarves in his life, and had exactly zero knowledge of dwarven numerology. Fortunately, none was required to realize he, and the other members of the carriage’s party, were looking at a countdown.

  One that was moving rather fast.

  ‘Let’s see, 12 symbols in sequence, and every time it repeats the rune to the left descends in the same pattern, assuming ascending orders of magnitude… we started with 359 of whatever it’s counting.’

  ‘Because of course it started at that, rather than 360 and you just missed the first one, moron. Let’s say they tick by at… 4 every second, so…’

  ‘A minute thirty. From the start. And your silly arse has spent a tenth of that thinking this through. Well done Kellin. You’ve got a minute twenty to pat yourself on the back before the wards probably come down and then-’

  The Elf sighed, breaking Kellin’s train of thought, a deep weary sigh, still audible through the renewed panic from the carriage.

  It seemed with the appearance of the runic countdown, both the silence he had nonverbally ordered within the carriage, and his enthusiasm for the bandit’s efforts, had reached an end.

  And then he said a word.

  Just one.

  And suddenly the ward disappeared. And so too did the beam of magenta plasma, the purple runes on the nail fell silent. And the spatial shield, hushed smothered sparks no longer falling from the errant post. And even the lone little light, which still hung from Oshin’s ear, perished.

  Silence fell on the world.

  Kel couldn’t hear himself breathe. Couldn’t hear his heartbeat.

  Not a whisper on the wind, not the hum of the earth. He dropped to all fours once more, the ground tilting up at him casually, as if he simply had no business being upright in the first place.

  There was simply… nothing.

  ‘This isn’t half bad.’ the thought appeared as if from within the void of sound itself.

  Above the Spatial Cannon, the air silently pulsed and tremored, as an orb of dark sickly light, ringed in swirling vibrant colours blossomed into being.

  The still-glowing altars feeding the Nail had continued to pump their technicolour fuel into the unresponsive piece of Spatial ethos gear with no place for all that power to go. With an eerily silent explosion, a mute wall of malicious, hungry colour burst from the sphere above the cannon, a tainted aurora blasting out across the sky.

  The wave passed overhead, and sound decided to return with it.

  As the warped explosion’s chromatic shockwave passed by, it seemed the ground was in a rush to re-acquaint itself with Kellin’s face, and then he saw no more at all.

  functions like energy-adaption always just eat through battery life.

  See you tomorrow for the last daily chapter.

  And to the single follower I gained, thanks, promise I'll try and make it worthwhile.