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-Plum

32 – Gavax

“They’re on the other side of the wash, but I saw their trail,” Andy reported, climbing up the sandy berm to where Lucy and Denise waited. “They’ll come close enough for you to shoot.”

Lucy gazed into the distance, scanning for the incoming Gavax troop. “And you think they’ll come after me?”

Denise snorted. “If they don’t, then just keep shooting them!”

Andy nodded. “I’ll wait down in the wash. You two will get plenty of opportunity to punish them while I slow them down.”

“I’ll control the ground,” Denise said. “If they try to flank or if they start to push around you, I’ll discourage them.”

“Perfect,” Andy said. Before he went back down the slope into the sandy wash, he looked at both women and said, “Good luck.”

“Just remember what you said!” Lucy replied, stepping forward to grab his coat’s lapels. “If we need to run, we run—nothing stupid.”

Andy smiled, and then he took her wrist, pulling his coat free. “Get set now. They’ll be in sight any minute.” When she stepped back and switched her bow into her left hand, Andy turned and jogged down through the thick, tall scrub grass into the dry riverbed.

When he stood in the middle, his boots squelched into damp sand, and he realized it wasn’t as dry as it ought to be. He supposed it made sense, considering all the changes the desert had been going through; they’d had far more rain than usual.

They weren’t exactly trying to be sneaky, so he called back to Lucy and Denise, “Just give me a heads up before you fire your first volley!”

“We will,” Lucy replied, waving.

Andy tried to stay loose, holding Scirocco ready, but not tightly. He wasn’t all that nervous; he’d fought large groups of enemies quite a few times, and he knew his magic was particularly suited to the situation. Plus, he couldn’t ask for better backup than Denise and Lucy. Both of them had incredible ranged attacks. Given enough time and distance, he didn’t doubt the two could take out fifty enemies by themselves.

It would be different if the Gavax were particularly skilled with magic, but according to the two women, they were mostly resistant to magic. Andy didn’t have a problem with that; they might not succumb to Scirocco’s poison or lightning, but they’d feel Andy’s Balefire and his Cinderstorm. Lucy said they had eyes, which meant they had to see. He doubted they’d do as well inside his smoke cloud as Andy, even if they didn’t burst into flames.

“I see them!” Lucy called, though she pitched her voice low, and Andy barely heard her. He threw her a thumbs-up, then got himself set, watching the opposite bank of the wash. More tall grass and a pair of overgrown mesquites blocked his view, but when he listened, he could hear the thud of the Gavax soldiers’ feet. “Firing!” Lucy called, and then Andy heard and saw her fiery arrow streak through the sky overhead.

The sight made him smile. He hadn’t needed her to tell him she was attacking; her arrows were hard to miss. Even as the first arrow passed over the trees ahead, another followed, then another, and another. A discordant sound, like how Andy might imagine a tractor would scream if it came to life, echoed over the wash. Birds took flight, and rabbits scurried out of the underbrush. Then the stomping renewed, growing closer.

Lucy didn’t stop shooting, but her ammunition changed; regular arrows split the air. Andy had supplied her with a hundred of them—a small barrel filled with shafts made by Mesquite Mesa’s craftsfolk. He had five more like it in his storage ring.

When the Gavax broke through the brush, they were out of order—some slowed more by the plants than others, and Lucy’s arrows continued to pound home, slamming through their metal armor and dropping the soldiers at least half the time.

Andy lowered Scirocco into a fighting stance and shouted, “Come on!” To his delight, the alien soldiers focused on him immediately and continued to advance, weapons raised for battle. They were still ten strides from him, and Lucy’s arrows kept hitting home, then a ball of swirling fire streaked overhead and slammed into the third rank of the soldiers. It was only about the size of a baseball, but when it hit one of the Gavax’s shields, it burst like a Molotov cocktail.

A handful of the Gavax were doused in flames, and their thrashing further upset their ranks. When the front row was just a few yards from Andy, he gathered his mana, inhaled deeply, and unleashed a Cinderstorm Blast on the soldiers. Black, fiery smoke erupted from his mouth, pouring out in a cloud that expanded for twenty yards in front of him. He didn’t wait to see the result; he dove into the smoke and went to work with Scirocco.

“Hold back your wind bursts, brother!” Andy yelled.

“I will use my blade alone!” Scirocco replied, and then Andy drove him into the gap between a Gavax breastplate and helmet. The spear ripped through the wooden flesh, and Andy’s Balefire enchantment took root, rapidly spreading through the monster. Andy barely noticed; he was too busy choosing his next target, pulling Scirocco back, and stabbing him forth.

While many of the Gavax resisted the fire of his Cinderstorm Blast, it looked to him like a good half of the soldiers caught in the spell were burning. They thrashed at the flames, hitting each other with their shields and the weapons attached to their arms. Meanwhile, Andy and Lucy delivered piercing death to the soldiers.

Andy was deep in his smoke cloud, and he might have been worried that some of the Gavax would get around him, but he heard and felt Denise’s spell when she turned the sand on either side of the column into a quagmire. It was like a squelching, sucking sound, and the ground shuddered under his feet with each casting.

Trusting her ability to contain the soldiers, he pushed farther into his smoke, and when the natural breeze began to thin it, he renewed the cloud with another Cinderstorm Blast, sweeping it from left to right and setting the brush along the bank aflame.

Andy had been confident going into the fight. He’d thought they could win, but he’d been sure they’d be able to escape if not. It turned out that they utterly slaughtered the small army. It wasn’t a contest in any sense of the word, and it was over almost before he even felt like it had begun. He pushed his way through the column, up into the smoldering scrub, and when there was nothing left to stab, he turned back to look over the destruction.

Gavax lay defeated in a broad swath all the way down to the center of the wide wash, and dozens more flopped and thrashed, silently burning to death. On the edges, Andy counted fifteen or so that were slowly sinking into the suddenly wet, loose sand. The more they thrashed, the quicker they sank. There wasn’t a single foe left standing who looked capable of fighting. Meanwhile, Lucy’s arrows continued to whistle through the air, dropping them one by one.

Andy leaned on Scirocco and continued to look over the battlefield, watching as Lucy put the Gavax out of their misery one by one. “Holy shit.” He knew it was over when the System sent them a message:

**Congratulations, Andy! You and your comrades have destroyed a Gavax patrol force. Though you were heavily outnumbered, you used tactics and superior abilities to ensure victory. For your efforts, you’ve gained two levels in your Brimstone Stalker class, earning an Improvement Point and 30 maximum mana.**

Andy glanced at his status sheet, confirming his mental tally: he was up to ten Improvement Points. Once again, he questioned the wisdom of spending twelve points to break through another one of his attribute ceilings. Twelve points would go a long way toward improving his spells and abilities, especially if he considered his Axiomatic Pathfinder spells.

“Andy!” Lucy called out, running down the opposite slope. Denise was right behind her, and the two women were soon picking their way through the smoldering grass and Gavax corpses.

“That was amazing, you two,” he said as they drew near. “I really can’t believe how well that went.”

“You were something else,” Denise replied.

“I gained two levels,” Lucy said.

“Same,” Denise and Andy both replied.

“Jinx,” Denise said, winking at Andy. As he chuckled, she added, “Why don’t you fly over the Gavax settlement again—see how they’re reacting to all this.” She gestured to the smoldering corpses.

Andy looked toward the Gavax settlement. The three of them grew quiet, listening for an alarm of some sort or maybe incoming soldiers. All they heard was the hiss and sizzle of the flames. After a minute, he sent his spear into his storage ring and said, “Okay. I’ll go take a quick look.”

The two women stepped back as he cast Flight of the Cinder Hawk. He concentrated on pushing the mana into the spell, trying to make the transformation faster, and it seemed to work. In just seconds, he was flapping his great, gray wings, surging into the sky, trailing the last vestiges of his transformative smoke.

When he flew high above the Gavax settlement, not much seemed to have changed, but after he banked and circled, he thought it looked like the workers were more agitated and moving more quickly as they worked to harvest the strange trees. It occurred to Andy, then, that maybe the Gavax soldiers and workers were made from the trees. If the collective had lost a thousand troops attacking the Dondalli, and he and his companions had just killed another fifty, could it be possible that they were out of soldiers?

Andy used a good portion of his mana by flying in a wide circle around the settlement, scanning the desert landscape as far as his heightened vision would allow. He didn’t see any signs of further Gavax patrols. As he swooped toward Lucy and Denise, he wondered if maybe the fifty they’d slain had been what the Gavax had managed to churn out after their defeat to the Dondalli.

After he’d landed and returned to his human form, Andy explained his thoughts to the two women. Denise took to the idea right away. “Now would be the time to attack, then. I mean, we should at least try to get a look inside that dome!”

“Can you make us invisible?” Lucy asked.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Andy said, and Denise nodded.

“I can manage Lucy and myself easily enough. We just can’t take any hostile action, or it will cancel the spell.”

Lucy nodded. “Let’s go!”

With the decision made, the three of them used the Gavax patrol route—a well-worn trail through the desert—to hike down toward the settlement. As they walked, they made plans.

“If there are any soldiers left, they’ll be inside the dome,” Andy said.

“And what about the workers you saw? Do you think they’ll fight?” Lucy asked.

“I have no idea. If these were insects, I’d say yes, but—”

“But they aren’t insects, are they? They seem more like natural robots to me,” Denise said.

“Bella would call them golems, I bet,” Andy replied.

Lucy chuckled. “Like in a roleplaying game.”

“Yeah.”

“If they are,” Denise said, “robots or golems, then that would mean someone’s making them.”

“A wizard?” Lucy asked, eyes wide.

Andy looked at her and nodded. “Maybe.”

Their conversation went like that for a while, always circling around to the same idea: something—a queen, a wizard, or maybe some kind of Gavax fabrication machine—had to be in charge of the industrious operation. If not, if it was just a strange society of workers and warriors, then they just had to find the System Node and capture the settlement. Whatever the case, they wouldn’t know more until they were inside that giant earthen dome.

When they were near the edge of the strange forest, they paused, hiding behind a massive prickly pear cactus. The Gavax trees were a little taller than Andy had thought—about thirty feet. Their branches were universally short, though, no longer than one of his arms. Each was adorned with thousands of big, red leaves, but no fruit of any sort. The workers who moved among the trees were much smaller than the Gavax soldiers; they looked almost like children.

“We should start sneaking,” Denise whispered. “I’ll make Lucy and me invisible.”

“Okay,” Andy said, reaching into his storage ring for a length of rope. “Everyone keep a hold of this rope so we don’t wander away from each other.”

“Smart,” Lucy said, smiling at him almost proudly.

Andy chuckled and reached for his mana, casting Deepsmoke Shroud. He felt a surge of cool mana and watched as Denise and Lucy shimmered, almost like they were sinking into deep, clear water. After a few seconds, he couldn’t see them at all.

Andy picked up the rope and watched as the length lifted off the ground and appeared to float. A flaw in his plan became evident. “Uh, the rope…”

“Just be patient. Let our magic work on it,” Denise whispered.

Andy watched the rope where he gripped it, and sure enough, his smoky shadows spread over the length of it, and where it passed into the hands of Denise and Lucy, it simply faded from existence. He supposed it made sense; their spells worked on their clothes and weapons—why not things they carried?

“Okay, let’s go,” he whispered, and then he started off. The rope tugged gently before Lucy started after him, and then they were all three hurrying down the well-worn path between the Gavax trees toward a gap in their big earthen berm. As they approached, Andy scanned the top of the berm, but the giant crossbows—ballistae, according to Denise—appeared to be abandoned with no Gavax soldiers to operate them.

When they reached the gap in the berm where the workers pushed their tree-laden wagons, there weren’t any guards. They had to slow to allow a wagon to proceed ahead of them, but none of the workers so much as glanced their way; it seemed their magic was working perfectly.

Andy didn’t waste time gawking; he pulled the rope and hurried across the flat, well-trodden dirt toward the gigantic dome. One of the arched openings was just ahead, and he could see the glow of red-tinted light from the black depths beyond. As they got closer, he guided Lucy and Denise to the side of the archway and leaned there against the hard-packed caliche. He cast Flame Sight, and the spell did its work as he peered into the darkness.

“What do you see?” Lucy whispered.

Andy took it all in and then described things as best he could: “There’s a ramp leading into the earth, and workers are hauling up carts full of ore. The trees are stacked in the center of the dome, and there’s something big moving around on the other side of the stack. I can just see its head—I think.”

“What do you mean?” Denise whispered.

“Well, it’s wearing a crown, I think—black and rough with red gems—”

Andy’s whispers were cut short by the discordant voice of something massive and inhuman. It grated out syllables that were all consonants. He had to put his hands over his ears; it was so uncomfortable to hear those sounds. When it stopped after several seconds, the regular noises of the settlement sounded almost like silence.

“Andy,” Lucy whispered, “I understood it.”

Understanding dawned on him; she was still wearing the translation necklace.

“What did it say?” Denise hissed.

“Um,” Lucy said, her voice quavering, “It said, ‘Come inside, vermin—children slayers—I’ll mold your blood into the bones of the next children of Gavax.’”