The Mortal Realms Strike Back (Again)

"Test… twenty-seven," said Marci, slipping behind the threefold barrier, checking that the other wizards were also secure, and then nodding to 'Rigs-Excellently,' a kobold woman with large purple eyes and silver scales.

The kobold pulled the lever back with a chortle of delight, which tugged on a cord that pulled the trigger of the ancient pistol that was aimed away from them and locked in position with a vice.

A jet of green energy erupted from the tip, smashing into the transparent indigo barriers that were being produced by large projectors covered in hundreds of runes. The barriers held for a few moments, before the power of the energy overwhelmed them and they cracked and shattered. The jet of green kept on going, smashing into the heavy rock and steel back plate for a moment before Rigs-Excellently pushed the lever back up.

"That held… two point three seconds," said Saoirse, peering at the arcane stopwatch they'd rigged up. "A point four second improvement!"

"It's still nowhere near good enough," said Marci, rubbing her face.

While she and a handful of the better wizards under her command, including several fairies who were still looking at their demonic co-researchers askance, could conjure shields capable of stopping the horrific green beams of death, most of the wizards and lesser spellcasters she commanded were not capable of producing shields that thick and resistant. Which was why they were trying to figure out how to make a shield specifically tuned to stop the weapons.

They weren't having much luck.

"Princess, what if we rotate the third matrix… six degrees?" asked Valerie du Marchamp, who was one of the wizards from the Legion's first squadron. Her Infernal was a bit stilted, but thankfully she and the rest of the wizards could speak the language of the underworld.

Marci considered this for a moment, before shaking her head. "No, then it would interfere with the sixth," she said. "Short it out, I doubt you'd be able to get a stable shield without another… ten or fifteen matrices to stabilise it. And that would defeat the purpose—we need a simple spell that even novice wizards can cast: rank two, at the most."

"Oh," said Valerie after a moment of thought as she studied their working diagram on a large blackboard. "Yes, I see now. Apologies, Princess."

Valerie was clearly a very experienced battle-wizard, and had shared some foundational insights into how shield magic was taught in Eladraine that had interested Marci, but she was rigid and inflexible in her approach to magic—a soldier, not a researcher—and she was clearly used to the 'standard' for wizards in the military being much higher, because she kept on proposing ideas that would turn the spell into a rank three, rather than the rank two they needed.

"It's fine," said Marci, giving her a smile. "It was a good idea. I think we all need a break." She checked her pocket-watch. Huh, midnight already? "Go and have something to eat, and then get some sleep—we'll meet back here at ten o'clock."

The others nodded sleepily and trooped or alternately flew out. Marci, for her part, turned back to the device. She'd need to rest her body soon, but she didn't sleep anymore, and Olaf was in a strategy meeting with Rafferty, the petulant Duke, and a trio of older and presumably more competent fairy commanders, with the former two non-fairies speaking through wisdom sprites.

A quick glimpse into Rafferty and her cousin's mind showed her that they were trying to figure out how Shardfort against Shardfort combat would work. Although the Keepers fought regularly, there had only been a handful of times that the Shardforts had actually ever fired at one another, and each time it had happened a truce had rapidly been called and they'd agreed to deploy their fortresses away from the front lines. They squabbled for power, but they were all aware that they depended on each other for their united front against the Infernal Council.

Rafferty was floating the idea of using shields, while Duke Jean wanted 'more cannons,' and Olaf and one of the fairy commanders, Colonel Baroness Charlotte, was concerned with defending against boarding actions. There were lots of diagrams on a blackboard, and all four were arguing quite strenuously for their positions, but Marci didn't really know enough about tactics to tell who was making the most sense. She'd just have to trust that Olaf and Rafferty were actually good at their jobs, and that they'd just invoke the seniority she'd given both of them over Jean if he was being a little shit.

So, she turned her attention back to the horrific ancient weapon, trying to hazard out how one might defend against it well enough to explore the tomb and, perhaps, get more of them. Even if she only found another hundred of these, that many fairies wielding the seemingly ammunition-less, highly destructive weapons would give her a major edge against Callum and the other Shardkeepers.

She was sure that, given natural undeads uncoordinated nature, she could just storm the place if she hadn't cared about casualties. But she did care about casualties, and not just now that she also had fairies under her command as well. The calculation, of course, was that the longer it took her to explore this place, find potentially war-changing weaponry, the more people might die in the south. The Shardkeepers were going to attack, it was a matter of when they finished preparations, not if. If she couldn't figure out a defence against these ancient weapons, could she order her troops into Headthonloch regardless? Knowing that many of them would die? Would that be the ethical thing to do in the face of the oncoming invasion?

But how did one measure one life against another? The life of one of her soldiers against the life of a poor, innocent farmer on the outskirts of Saxmoor? Marci's gut feeling was that she couldn't, that this wasn't a matter of mathematics. But if it wasn't, then what was someone in her position—a position she'd never wanted—to do? What was her ethical guiding star? Her old one had been a comet, a careening, crashing erratic mess, but that wasn't good enough anymore. She had to be better, not just for her own sake, but for the world's. Was it simply trying to do the best she could in the moment? To judge actions on their own merits? That seemed fine for someone who didn't command a legion of demons and fairies, on whose shoulder's rested potentially the freedom of the South and the fate of the whole planet, but that wasn't her anymore. She was a Shardkeeper, whether she liked it or not.

She continued to ponder the ethics of the matter as she fiddled with the device, moving back and forth between tuning the array and the protective shield. The problem, as far as she could tell, was that the gun shot some kind of blast that disrupted the natural order of matter and energy that magical shields relied on as a foundation for their integrity. You could resist the effect by using more energy, or have a tighter weave so there was more redundancy, but the fundamental problem was that the weapons were inherently chaotic in a way that undermined the necessary background order that shields relied on.

"Hmm," muttered Marci, flitting over and running a finger over the site of the last impact, which had scored almost all the way through the practice rock. Strange, warped geometric shards fell away under her fingers.

Perhaps that was the problem? Perhaps instead of trying to make better shields, she needed to make some kind of secondary spell to reinforce the foundations that the shield then rested upon?

As far as she knew, no one had ever made a 'reinforce reality' spell, probably because she'd never heard of anyone making a spell or device that weakened reality either.

The worry about ethics fell away as she started to work, chalk scratching on the large blackboard as Marci fell into her favourite thing in the world—designing new spells. Hours flew by unnoticed, and she was just putting together her third prototype spell that she was feeling good about working when one of her scouts mentally clamoured for her attention.

'What is it?' she said, somewhat grumpily, trying to look through the scout's senses only to curse when all she got was confusing echo-location she couldn't make heads or tails of from a bat-like demon.

'Gryphons, m'lady!' they replied. 'Coming in fast, trying to hide in the clouds.'

Marci's still mostly focused on research mind took several moments to turn this over in her head.

'Are they… with you too?' said the demon, a hopeful note in their mental voice.

'No,' said Marci, her eyes widening. 'No, they are not!'

Again!? She was getting attacked by the South again!?

***

There was a massed attack of gryphons coming, perhaps three thousand, around two hours away, judging by how fast they were making it past Marci's various scattered scouts. Which was a problem. A big problem.

Firstly, there was the whole 'people are going to die, and perhaps in great numbers.' Although the world viewed Marci as a monster, she was striving not to be, and she wanted neither the demons nor fairies under her command to perish, nor even any of the men and women attacking her.

Secondly, although Marci hadn't paid nearly enough attention when growing up to her lessons on the various heraldries of the noble houses of the South to know exactly who was coming to try and kill her, she recognised at least the green and gold of the Altish Kaiser, and the light purple of the Republic of the Rhür—two powerful Southern realms. That meant the force coming to attack her probably represented a significant chunk of the South's elite forces. Frankly, she was surprised they had managed to find three thousand trained gryphons—they had to be the majority of the entire tamed numbers in the South.

And thirdly, because although she was fairly certain she could have repulsed them with even just her demons, and was absolutely certain she could with the addition of her highly trained fairy troops, there was the problem that her mother's plan had been to get the South to prepare itself for war by making them think she was going to attack them, not confirm—at least in the South's minds—that Eladraine had thrown its lot in with the Underworld.

"Options," said Marci, whose wings were nervously flitting as she stood on her desk and a pair of fairy squires fitted her into the high quality mithril armour her mother had sent along, and which was far better than anything she had ever worn before. "Please."

"I am confident that we can defend the Dreadfort, your Umbral Highness," rumbled Rafferty, who was already in his battle armour. "Our defences have been expanded significantly by the Union of Kobolds-"

"We has been workings!" nodded Likes-Hammers.

"-and with the addition of the fairy legion, they will have no hope of maintaining control of the air. They will have to try to land on the battlements, where we will slaughter them, or retreat—likely at a slower speed than your fairy soldiers."

"Yes, but there is the problem that they're not supposed to know that I'm openly allied with my mother," said Marci, resisting the urge to gag at the last part of the sentence. "That's a ploy, to get them mobilised and ready to fight against the North."

Rafferty frowned.

Oh, right, she hadn't revealed that bit to him, had she?

"We're going to need their numbers to successfully destroy the other Shardkeepers," she said, telling the truth but giving it a bit of a demony-gloss-

Marci stopped that thought. 'Demony-gloss?' She couldn't say that!

"I see," he said, stroking his chin. "A dangerous ploy."

"We can keep the Legion in reserve," said Jean, crossing his arms. "Let the expendable demons take the brunt of the force, and if necessary deploy."

"No one is expendable," snapped Marci. "No demon, no fairy, no- no anyone."

Jean rolled his eyes.

"But you're going to have to choose," said Olaf, who was standing beside her desk, pink tail flicking. "Either you reveal straight away that you have the fairy troops—and potentially scare them off, or you fight them with just the demons, and take far heavier losses."

Marci swore and pinched her nose as the fairy squires finished fitting her armour, attached the long royal blue cloak trimmed with gold and etched with the du Valmont seal around her shoulders, and then placed an enchanted tiara on her head that crackled for a moment as its projected shield tuned itself around her face. Normally, she would have objected, but she was too focused on what was happening to really process that they had dressed her up like a princess.

Marci's wings fluttered, taking her back into the air. She took a deep breath and stared at her generals in turn. Rafferty would obey her if she ordered him to fight alone; many more demons would die, but it would keep the secret of her alliance with her mother hidden. Jean and the fairy legion, likewise, were sworn to her now; they couldn't disobey even if they'd wanted to, and from what she could sense from her cousin he wasn't at all put out by the idea of killing humans and dwarves and elves.

She glanced at Olaf. "I can't throw my people's lives away," she said.

He gave her a tight smile, and nodded.

"Jean, ready the Legion," she said. "We'll try to scare them off with a show of force. Hopefully, it won't come to blows."

Even as the words passed her lips, she knew that it was a fool's hope.