Mathew Adderson, better known as Terri to his friends, walked alone through the forest. His stomach, if he still had one in this fairy body, felt like it was tied into knots as he contemplated what he was about to do.
When he left with Tia three years ago, her sister had warned him not to rush things. It felt bad that he’d put off things this long, but she’d said very specifically that the fey court would be alerted about them by that changeling spy.
He had seen how accurate that girl’s predictions could get. And, it didn’t take long living with Tiaren to discover that her often childish behaviors, very easy to mistake for actual childishness with her age-regressed then 2 year old body, were actually just a bit of social ineptitude on her part. If you could look past her appearance and lacking communication skills, you discovered that child had a terrifying intelligence that easily matched her sister. What’s more, she knew enough about magic to make those stuck-up fairies he was learning from before look like they were stuck in the stone-age.
Therefore, he had resolved to learn and prepare as much as he could with the kid until he was ready. She had set four goals for him, and it had taken him this long to finally accomplish them. She had persuaded him that this would be the minimum necessary to assure victory with the numbers she had seen while scouting out their current target.
“Don’t worry guys, I’ll be rescuing you soon.” He muttered under his breath. It was finally time to release his fellows from Earth who had been wrongly imprisoned for political reasons. After three years, they had probably gone crazy. But, with Tia assuring him the barrier was still holding firm, he had quietly bided his time and gone through with the kid’s training. Now, it was finally time.
There’s just one problem. The guards.
This will not be the first time killing for him. He’d fought over-seas and had to do things he wasn’t proud of. Been forced to kill before others could kill him. In this case though, he was the one taking on the role of the insurgent aggressor. It had a very different feel of moral itchiness all over it. This time, he would be the one putting them in the situation where they would be completely justified in killing him.
“I have to do this.” He reminded himself. These guards are pretty much just following orders, but they might as well be Auschwitz guards in terms of the nature of the orders they were following. In this case, ‘just following orders’ is something he would have to look at the same way a Nuremburg jury would.
He could feel the auras of the other great fairies. They were almost drowned out by the even stronger unrestrained aura from his friends, but all that training with Tia had made him sensitive enough to pick them out. There were 6 of them, arranged roughly in a semi-circle around the area. If Tia hadn’t taught him how to suppress his aura, they’d have been on top of him long before now.
“Well, time to make some noise.” He said.
With a mental command, Terri reached for the wooden wrist-band he was wearing. It morphed the very moment his hand made contact with it, taking the form of a large axe. He released his suppressed aura and allowed it to flood the area around him, and in that same moment he hit a nearby tall tree with everything he had.
The strength he had as a fairy was colossal, and this weapon had a lot more mass than it’s appearance suggested. Although it was made completely from wood, it was heavier than lead. With this combination, he hit the base of this tree like a freight train with a guillotine blade strapped to the front bumper.
The chop buried the axe deep into the tree trunk, but it was not enough to fell it. The next thing he did was to give another mental command to his weapon, causing the axe head to transform and expand inside the divot it had just cut out, adding pressure to the tree and tilting it from the inside. There was a horrible snapping sound, and then the tree began to tilt.
The tree tilted and fell with a massive crash fit to it’s massive form, and then he tilted his head back and focused on the space inside his spirit. There, he found a cluster of spirit energy with a spell written onto it.
This was one of the requirements Tiaren had for him. The ability to form and write spells, of which he needed to create a few basic effects fit for this mission.
As soon as his mind touched the spell, he released it. The spell’s effect amplified and altered his voice, and he let out a mighty scream that sounded like the bellowing of a beast that would have to be the size of a house.
The response he got was instant. Four of the spirit signatures guarding his friends broke off and were flying straight toward him. As soon as he confirmed this, Terri turned his living weapon back into a bracelet and then suppressed his spirit energy, making it all but disappear.
There was a ripple through their spirits. Of course something like that would get them rattled. A real mystery on their hands, huh? Well, the games are not over quite yet.
While the fairies were uncertain at the sudden appearance and then disappearance of the mysterious aura, all four of them continued on their way, now at a slower pace and with a great deal of caution. Under normal circumstances, they would probably have a hard time figuring out where it had even come from.
That’s the reason he had to cut down the tree. They would have no confidence in finding the spot the suddenly vanished aura was coming from, but the fallen tree gave them something very definite to look for.
Soon enough, one of them flew directly over head and spotted the felled tree.
He showed that he was was disciplined. His first act upon finding this was to call for back-up, after which he continued to observe from a distance until they could move as a unit.
Of course, Terri couldn't have them just flying down in their full formation as they planned. He would have to give them something that would change up their risk assessment of the situation. Once there were two of them in place, Terri ran out into the clearing and started waving up to them. This made them hesitate again, but the confusion this created was just enough to make them forget their caution. The two already in place descended, and the other two just catching up had to scramble to follow them.
[Master jinn, what has happened here?] One of them asked.
[Hold!] Another of the fairies said in an angry voice. [Is this man really a jinn? I cannot feel an aura.]
[Was that you who was here before?] A third asked, gesturing wildly toward the tree.
[Oh, yes.] Terri said, using the elven he had learned over these three years. [I apologize for the scare I must have given you. I saw a rather nasty creature striking at this tree. I got somewhat angry and then released all my power in order to eliminate it. I turned it into wind, so you will not find a body.] After giving that rather outlandish explanation, Terri once again unleashed the full power of his aura so that all of them could feel it.
[Is… that true?] the first fairy said, seeming quite rattled by the explanation.
[I am sorry master jinn, but I have a question.] The second more skeptical among them asked. [Why do you have wings like us fairies?]
[Yeah, wait! Doesn’t he look like…] Another said, seeming to suddenly realize something.
[Oh, yes. You found me out. My name is Mathew Adderson. You can call me master Adderson, if you would.] Terri said.
[YOU!] One of the fairies from the rear gestured angrily. [What is the meaning of this? We were warned about you! This is an attack!]
[Why would I attack you?] Terri asked. [I know I cannot win against the numbers you have here. But, I am concerned about my compatriots from my world. I have been wandering the area near the boarder. That is why I was here when I saw that nasty creature who did this.]
[He is lying about everything! Who has ever heard of a spell that can turn a creature into wind? And you expect us to believe one of YOU has learned to harness such power?] The fairies continued on angrily.
[Enough!] The one in the back who hadn’t said anything yet burst onto the scene. [There is something more important here. This man took a treasure of the queen. We must get him to tell us the location of the grey elf child.]
[Did you just refer to the kid as though she was an object to be owned? Knew I never liked you fairies for a reason.] Terri scoffed.
[That does not matter.] The lead hot-head said and then lifted up the fine shield he was holding. It had a long spike at the bottom of it that was as fine and narrow as a rapier blade, and it was being pointed directly at Terri’s throat. [Tell us where the child is!]
Terri raised his hands with a nervous expression. He could probably survive being punctured by that thing long enough for Tia to heal him, but that would completely ruin this plan. Best case scenario, they would have to retreat. Worst case, they finish him off while separating him and Tia, then take her captive.
[Alright, alright. She is actually nearby. I will call her.] He said, and then once again looked inward toward his spirit, this time finding a different spell.
This spell was quite special. Even Tia was pretty darn impressed with it. It was a combination of earth knowledge and his natural fairy magic affinity, and made possible his hard-won lessons studying magic for the past three years. The kid said it was quite likely the single most power efficient spell she had ever seen.
“Spectrum focus, 800 nanometers. Pulse set, 1 kilowatt.”
[Ghh!] As Terri was chanting his spell, one of the fairies in the back made a strange sound. The others turned back to look and the shield spike was lowered from Terri’s neck. They saw the shocked eyes of their companion, and a bloody wooden spike raising from a spot at his shoulder. Blood flowed from the man’s mouth as the last embers of life left his eyes.
Terri used this distraction to point his finger at the head of the same man who was just holding him at sword point, and then said the last trigger word of his spell. “Laser.” With that trigger word, an extremely powerful beam of electro-magnetic radiation just outside of the visible light spectrum created a small black spot on the side of the man’s head. He immediately dropped to the ground, and a second later a pin-prick of fluid flowed out of the new dark spot in his hair-line.
In the second the fairies were distracted by Terri’s sneak attack, a small creature in a simple dress sprung from behind the impaled man and latched onto the shoulder of one of the remaining two. In that same breath, Terri transformed his living wood weapon into a baton and swung it at the other. The man rose his shield and successfully blocked the attack, but he couldn’t stop Terri from raising the finger of his free hand to point it at the man’s head.
“Laser.” He said again, causing another pulse of identical infra-red energy to pierce the head of a second fairy.
The last man was struggling with his tiny assailant. He had managed to draw his living wood weapon, and was swinging it over hid shoulder to bash at a small lump of grey hair that was now protruding from his right shoulder and seemed to be attached to his neck.
Terri turned slowly to face the man, and raised his weapon. He didn’t dare to fire off another pulse from laser with Tiaren on his shoulder, so he would deal with this guy using only his living wood weapon.
The man noticed Terri squaring off against him and stopped bashing at Tiaren, more concerned about the guy he’d just seen quickly take out two of his companions using magic he didn’t understand.
It was dangerous to approach this guy now that he was fully alert, but he didn’t need to. Instead, he just studied the man’s panicked face carefully, and then focused on a much more powerful spell in his repertoire.
“Physical mirror image, copy illusion.” He said. Terri couldn’t tell if his spell was a success, but judging by the look of shock and terror on the man’s face, he guessed it was close enough.
After this, he watched the man collapse to his knees. From there, Tiaren’s feet were able to find the ground, and she bit down harder than she previously had been and tore a large chunk out of the guy’s neck.
The guy was likely quite low on blood already, and this had finished the job. The man simply collapsed as the last of his life left him.
The child with the blood-drenched chin looked up at Terri. “Looks good. Go.” She said as though nothing had happened.
Terri gave a nod and initiated the bloodline magic of his race, fairy wind, and immediately took off into the air as though he had become the wind itself.
Four down, two to go.
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So a comment about the laser spell since this sort of accuracy is something you seem to care about. Setting the spell power in kilowatts is probably not the right way to approach this, energy would be better. High power lasers tend to operate in pulsed operation where they have a continuous power level which is averaged over the full cycle (a kilowatt would be the general range of an industrial metal cutting fibre laser at 1064 nm), and an instantaneous power lever which is orders of magnitude higher. Since the laser pulse happens over such a short time period, typically the pulse energy is used instead of instantaneous power. Even a single joule is typically considered a high pulse energy. Pulse energy is also important because it largely governs how materials react. You could reduce an industrial laser’s power by a factor of ten, but if you keep the pulse energy, it will still be able to make similar cuts, just at about a tenth the speed. If however you switched said laser to continuous wave operation, not only would it take much longer to cut if it was able to cut the material at all, it would likely cause large amounts of heat damage to the surrounding areas of the material. Specifying power rather than energy would also imply that the spell should be used continuously (commanded on, held, then off), while energy would be better suited to a single shot. Now I don’t know exactly how your magic system is supposed to work, but if it does not care about how quickly the energy is released then putting all the energy into a single laser pulse could dramatically change the effects.
Thanks for this. I tried to do some quick research on the subject, but all the info I found described laser power in terms of kilowatt hours. I knew at the time that was probably not quite right, but it was still the most coherent thing I could find on the subject, so that's what I wound up using.
Now I have a better direction to go. I'll look into this and see if I can get a reasonable idea of a power scale based on energy pulses from the laser spell.
@Jemini It can be quite the topic to delve into, and his knowledge probably needs to reflect where he got his experience from. If it is a machine shop, pulse energy and a wavelength outside the range of human sight probably makes sense, maybe knowledge of eye safe wavelengths (some wavelengths can not pass through the lens of the eye, so they don’t focus and damage the retina, CO2 lasers are eye safe, fiber/Nd lasers are not, both are used in shops). If for whatever reason he knows a lot, then he should tune the wavelength to a absorption peak for water to maximize effectiveness (very narrow wavelength bands where the light might go from mostly reflected to mostly absorbed, anywhere from about a nm wide, to a hundredth of that). Don’t do UV if you want the light hidden, a UV laser will make just about anything fluoresce.
Seems rather close minded of them to not take advantage of the natural predisposition people from earth have and try to teach them. What do they expect when their knowledge of this world is 0 when they come?
Their knowledge being 0 is exactly the problem. It's pretty darn hard to teach someone from zero. It takes a very special kind of patience.
Just some fairly cursory research into early 1900s era school systems is enough to show how much our understanding of how people learn has improved in just the past hundred or so years. Early attitudes toward teaching were incredibly bad.
It takes a very special kind of disposition in order to be able to teach someone anything.
And, that's only the portion of the explanation I can give without spoilers. There's quite a bit of the story that's not been told and we've only seen the barest glimpse into via Mr. Adderson's second hand accounts. I will tell you now, you do not even have anywhere close to the full picture on this one.