WebNovels

Chapter 106 - War Campaign: Outskirts, Part 8

I had been teleported a pretty far distance from the battlefield, though I was still outside the city of Axio.

The greenish hue that Viktor's protective barrier had dyed the sky had been replaced with a flaming red sphere.

Both Bianca and Victoria's forms solidified nearby, just outside the new flaming barrier.

"How perplexing, sister Ria."

"Indeed, sister Bia. None of the intelligence reports mentioned the heretic queen could use barrier magick."

"They have been lacking, sister Ria."

From their bemoaning, I made a quick connection that I wasn't being trapped by them—rather this barrier was something preventing them from getting to me.

I gently touched the dark metal circlet atop my head and felt it thrumming with power.

My crown must have taken their teleportation attempt as an attack and activated BLAZING BARRIER. I hadn't ever worn the circlet in combat, because of the incongruent feelings it stirred within me and I wasn't sure of its effects.

"Well," I started, "I can only imagine your desired destination wasn't the middle of a field. Were you trying to abduct me to somewhere within Axio?"

Bianca turned her nose up at me.

But Victoria seemed inclined to answer my question.

"If not for your paltry magick, His Great and Mightiness would be dispatching your head already." she sneered at me.

I placed my hand against the fiery sphere protecting me. It felt warm and relaxing to the touch.

"Hmm. I wouldn't consider it paltry if it interrupted your spell so easily," I mused, "So, what now? You kids gonna pack up and head home for the day?"

Victoria frowned, "No. Sister Bia and I will simply wait for your magick to run out."

The girl muttered something under her breath and we were enclosed within a second sphere of magick, a creepy purplish one that seemed to twist and distort unnaturally.

"Huh. I didn't consider that."

Our battle of strength had become a battle of patience. Whose barrier spell would run out of magicka first.

Mine was being sustained by Celestials-know-what through the imbuement in the Crown of Retribution—an item that defied the logic of the world per Capricorn's explanations on undefined objects—and drew on the powers of a mythical Phoenix God.

But, Victoria's magick was also being sustained in an equally unknowable manner.

I pulled her status up and her MAGICKA hadn't dipped down at all. I had my suspicions the two of them were using void magick in some fashion, but I didn't know enough about it to say for certain.

The creepy void space they manifested weapons from and this eerie barrier were enough for me to accept it wasn't any magick I knew or would recognize.

Good news; it wasn't like we were able to go anywhere, so my soldiers found us quickly and were now surrounding the girl's barrier.

Bad news; we all stood out quite a bit, and it would only be a matter of time before more Renaultian forces sallied out from Axio.

Moderately annoying news, the void twins' barrier seemed to block out sound. Julius and his reinforcements arrived soon after my guard knights and the defense team but the void barrier was also interfering with my ability to use the communirune, so I was stuck in here with no way of knowing what they were planning to do.

"Haaah." I sighed.

I should have Sara teach me teleportation magick, or at the very least get some kind of trinket that can transpose me a few feet away.

 

-✵-

 

"You kids give up yet?" I groaned up from the hard ground.

It had been two hours at this point and I was well past any feelings of worry.

I was bored.

My back hurt.

And worst of all, I really needed to pee.

Both Victoria and Bianca stared at me with looks of annoyance.

"I'm pretty sure I can maintain this barrier for days," I boasted, "But it seems like you can do the same. So, it's gonna be a race to see who passes out to hunger and thirst first. I brought snacks, how about you?"

I held a small pack up in my hands and pulled a piece of jerked meat out.

I continued antagonizing them, "I bet you didn't consider storing any supplies in that weird space tearing magick, huh? If you surrender to my friends out there, I'll make sure you get dinner and I might even let you go if you tell us why Renault is so obsessed with my family and me."

The silent treatment continued.

So too did the back pain and boredom.

I was about to give up hope on the other thing that plagued me, but my prayers were answered in an unexpected way.

A glimmer of light inside my barrier began to shine as a pocket of Aethermist formed. The mist condensed into a person-sized cloud of iridescent bubbles and with a quiet pop, burst open to reveal Akari.

"Oh, yay, I did it! Hi, Momma Airis." she greeted me cheerfully with a hug as if her materializing out of a cloud of Aethermist was no big deal.

"Hey, kiddo. What're you, uh, doing here?" I hugged her back, keeping an eye on the now-alarmed twins.

They skulked around the flaming barrier, eyeing Akari.

"More unknown magicks, sister Ria."

"We will inform His Greatness of their poor reports, sister Bia."

"Have you heard of the heretic queen having a child, sister Ria?"

"Never once, sister Bia. This complicates the mission."

"Not if we remove one and bring the other to His Mightiness."

The two of them continued to chat nonsense back and forth.

Akari and I shared a look and she stepped back from our embrace and took my free hand.

"I'm gonna take us back to camp! Hold on tight."

"Huh, you can do that? Oh Goddess my stomach is… ugh! Oh, Akari this feels—"

The Aethermist coalesced around us and I was hit with a wave of nauseousness. My stomach churned and I barely managed to keep myself contained.

We disappeared from within the barrier and were now in some dark place. The air was thick as if made entirely of Aethermist.

It was the same space Akari had once said was 'near home'.

Akari was smiling next to me, undisturbed by where we were, and a moment later we were standing in my tent.

"Well isn't that a convenient skill. Where'd you learn that, kiddo?" I asked Akari, who was running around the room excitedly.

"Dunno! I asked Hanna where you were and she said some bad guys had you trapped, so I just thought it would be great if I could make it so you weren't. Then I was there with you."

I bemoaned the fact that Akari was leagues ahead of me in practicing chaos magick. Her understanding of the concepts was lacking, but that didn't matter when the magick could literally manifest in response to your desires.

"Thank you for the rescue. I don't think I was really in that much danger but it would've taken a long time to resolve without your help."

"Heh!" she beamed, "Those two stunk like void-beasts and black dogs. I didn't like them. Oh, what about Uncle Julius? I sensed him out there, should we go bring him back to camp too?"

I tried to call out on my communirune but there was no answer. His proximity to the void barrier was probably disrupting his device now.

I nodded my head, "We should let them know to come back, but I need five minutes real quick or I'm gonna leak."

After I freed myself from the threat of embarrassment, Akari and I warped through the aetherial plane—what I thought was probably an aetherial plane at least—and materialized right next to Julius.

"Celestials above, what in the—Airis? Akari?"

"Heya, Julius. Fancy meeting you here, I… uh," I stammered, looking around and noticing a distinct lack of creepy twin assassins and their sphere of void magick, "I came back to help wrap this up but it seems I'm late."

Julius shook his head to free himself from a stupor.

"Yeah. Shortly after you disappeared, so did those kids keeping you trapped. They vanished along with the barrier.

"Oh," I said, drumming my hand against my chestplate, "Let's go back then. Did the second runestone get installed safely?"

"It did."

"Cool. Hey, Julius?"

"Yes, Airis?"

"Would you mind if I cut you with my sword real quick so I can sheathe it?"

"Yes I mind!" he shouted back at me, "Just wait till we get to camp and you can use some blood from the hunter's station."

"That's a good idea—Oh, is Alistaire okay?" My mind snapped back, recalling that while I was sitting around for hours there had been a whole battle before then.

Julius assured me that both Alistaire and Soren had been treated already and were back in camp.

My guard knights fussed over me on our way back, but it wasn't so bad. Viktor volunteered to carry my bloodthirsty sword, freeing me to walk around without worrying about burning anyone. I was beginning to get used to being accompanied everywhere I went.

-✵-

The last runestone was stood up and powered on without any issues.

It would seem the unfortunate escape of Victoria and Bianca wasn't turning out to be too bad for us in the short run.

Our scouting parties had reported an increase in active patrols atop the walls and it had become difficult for Hanna's SI-Minervia agents to bring back detailed reports today, but the trade-off was the undisturbed completion of our three runestones.

Under Julius' advisement, my guard knights and I decided to remain in the camp during the setup with the rest of my attendants.

We were on standby, ready to help if needed.

However, the entire process went smoothly. The Renaultians must have been preoccupied with devising another poor attempt to kill, capture, or otherwise dispose of me.

I didn't mind the sense of calm in the camp.

From the spine-chilling void-beasts to skulking camp assassins and divine magicka overload-induced comas, just one normal day wasn't too much to ask for.

When the runestone defense division returned with the elven artificers, it was officially disbanded and the members were given a day to rest—well deserved after being tossed around like rag dolls yesterday.

The artificers weren't so lucky, though.

Command had become quite busy. One half of the large tent had already been filled with communications equipment and strange whirling aetherline devices. In the last two days, the other half had been stacked full of what honestly looked like more of the same.

Though, allegedly, these metal boxes were all different from the other metal boxes.

Hard to believe, I know.

While the artificers and engineers from Umbraedomis were busy tuning their toys, Flik gave us a linguistics—runistics?—lesson on the third stone's primary rune: syg.

[ ᛋ ]

It stood for light or sun.

What the three of these runes together would accomplish she did not know.

Luckily enough for me, I had a brilliant younger sister who loved this kind of stuff and had become close friends with the quirky elven warder responsible for the project.

Rias and Warder Lira were engrossed in their work and didn't notice me and my retinue of knights looming over them.

Lira had some kind of map in her hands. It had a multitude of lines drawn over it, intersecting each other at weird angles.

She traced her fingers along the paper and called out orders to other artificers plugging cables and wires into their equipment, "Okay, so, cable oed-seventeen needs to be plugged into the back of the aethernet-switch alpha-one, then take the main conduit on the alpha-one switch and connect it to router upsilon-delta."

"Oed-seventeen connected, ma'am!"

"Alpha-one connected to upsilon-delta."

Two engineers from behind the stack of equipment called back that Lira's orders had been fulfilled—somehow they understood the nonsense she was speaking, even being fluent in the techno-babble themselves.

Rias' head perked up from her station, "Connection to upsilon-delta is showing up. Can we patch in the Tolin connection now?"

Lira nodded and called out another order to the technicians, "Enable the secondary conduit on switch alpha-one."

"Alpha-one secondary conduit enabled." came back a response.

Two screens flickered to life above Rias.

One showed our dwarven artificer and journeyman blacksmith, Dörien, sitting in what I recognized to be the Citadel's retrofitted Commander's Quarters.

The other showed a strange room with huge shiny metal contraptions in the background and a row of desks manned by elves.

"Signals are looking good," Rias commented, "How do things look on your end, Dori?"

"Hallo, lil' tinkerer—or shouldae be callin' ya' Princess? Hah!" Dori laughed heartily, her thick accent almost unintelligible over the broadcast, "Ever'thin' looks fine on ma' end."

This technology-laced interchange continued on for entirely too long.

I struggled to follow along.

None of my attendants understood what was going on either. Flik had helped where she could with the meaning of runes but fell flat when it came to the aethernet side of things.

The other knights were barely above my level of understanding, having been exposed to some devices in their day-to-day serving in the Divisionals.

Abeno led a fairly sheltered life in the Church.

Taryn and Nikolas were too young, having not ever attended a formal academy or private schooling.

Our only hope of understanding what was going on was to either break their concentration and ask, or hope any of the remaining attendants Julius had stuck onto me knew anything.

There was Nashe and Ellis Furia, two archnoble administrative scholars who came with us to Tolin. They were brothers who had originally worked for Adellin, but he happily transferred their responsibilities under me when Julius asked him to provide some 'desk jockeys'.

And Neya Sestia, a mednoble bookkeeper who'd been caught up in the same shenanigans and ended up in my retinue.

Unfortunately, It was a miss on all three of them.

I was about to give up hope when a familiar face entered the command tent—Matriarch Aisling shuffled in with a look of exhaustion.

Beno prepared us some revitalizing tea, spiked with his energy tonic, and I prodded her for answers.

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