Chapter Thirteen - An Enemy Felled

  51st Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden Era

  Shorefarm Lighthouse, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

  "E e e e e," Red laughed as she slowly climbed back to her feet and picked up her short sword.

  The light that had been blindingly illuminating the interior of the lighthouse was fading now, slowly returning to something more peaceful and ordinary.

  The lighthouse keeper spun his mace around and regarded them all warily. Blue had moved around so that she was next to Green, with Red just a bit behind them and still recovering from her tackle... and laughing mockingly in the mechanical, reverberating way that their voices forced on them.

  "Dog," Blue accused the man.

  "I am a keeper of the light for dragon lord Thalmyrion. I am no dog," the keeper said.

  "Dog," Green agreed. It wasn't just an accusation, she realized. It was a tactic.

  Blue moved right. Green moved left.

  The man eyed them both, then he reached over, hand covered in blood from where it had dribbled down the cut on his bicep. He cupped the top of his mace and muttered something, then, raising the mace high above his head, he shouted. "The light of Thalmyrion shines eternal, and you will burn in its glow!"

  The head of the lantern-shaped mace roared to life, then the flame abated. There was now a small ball of fire within, no larger than a closed fist. It burned brightly, however, and Green suspected that magical fire wouldn't be good for someone whose body was made of wood.

  Still, this was a dog, and something had to be done.

  Blue poked towards him, a teasing attack that did little but make him swat his mace at her sword.

  Green moved in from the other direction, ready to stab.

  Which is what she tried to do when he lunged towards Blue, flaming mace swinging from above. She ran in, arm cocked to stab... and then the man stopped and flung his leg back at her. The heel of his boot caught her in the chest, and Green discovered herself falling backwards to land with a clatter.

  "Green!" Blue shouted.

  The man had turned and was now moving towards her at speed.

  She dropped her sword, grabbed the floor, and pushed herself back and out of the way of a slam. She didn't quite make it.

  There was a heavy crunch as the head of the mace crashed into her lower leg, and Green watched with strange detachment as her leg snapped like an old, rotten table leg under the blow.

  Blue got a quick cut in as repayment, but the damage was done.

  "Ah," Green said. She looked up, but now the man was refocused on Blue. To be fair, was she even a threat anymore?

  "Sword," Red said.

  Green looked over, then caught on. She grabbed her short sword and tossed it up towards Red who caught it out of the air.

  Now armed with twice as many swords, Red rushed towards the Keeper. He parried her swings, but they didn't tire, and even if they were clumsy, they also didn't bleed.

  Green tried to stand, and discovered that only having one leg was something of a detriment to that. Still, the fight raged on just a few paces away. Blue kept trying to get a stab in with Red swung and swung, her arms a whirling blur that occasionally created sparks when her swords clashed with the haft of the mace.

  She waited. She might have been somewhat useless, but that wasn't entirely useless. The fight shifted, came closer...

  Green launched herself forwards. She crashed onto her front, but skidded forwards along the ground.

  Her arms snapped around and gripped onto the man's leg. She dug her blunt-ended fingers in as hard as she could into the meat of his calf, then shifted and tugged him as best she could to unseat him.

  The man roared, and Green felt a hard blow strike her back. No pain, but the impression of a hard impact against the wood of her torso.

  The distraction was worth it, however.

  Blue lunged forwards from the man's off side, and her sword dug a handspan into the space between his lower ribs. Black-red blood came pouring out of the wound as she tugged the sword out and then she got a quick swipe in before he swung his mace around to make distance.

  Red used that opportunity to close in, and with a body-spinning slash of both swords, she left two deep slashes along his back and side.

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  The fight was over at that point. The lighthouse keeper stumbled away, tripped as Green pulled his leg out from under him, and his flaming mace clattered away.

  Red put him out of his misery a moment later, shoving her swords into his chest. His last gasp came with a final prayer. "Thalmyrion... forgive me... the light... fades...."

  The three of them stopped, then Green found Blue running over to her. "Ff...ffire," Blue said.

  "Fire?" Green asked. Then she noticed the flames licking up at the edge of her vision. "Fire!"

  Blue ran around the room for a moment, and quickly returned with a large piece of cloth that she threw atop Green, extinguishing the flames.

  Red laughed, then started to tug at her chest. "Eat," she said as she deployed her siphon. The rods holding it in place were a little crooked, but it seemed functional still.

  Green looked at the lighthouse keeper's body, then nodded.

  While they did their gristly work, and she watched her essence numbers tick up past 200, then into the mid 300s, she considered what to do. Her leg was shattered about mid-calf, the wood nothing but splinters barely hanging onto her articulated foot.

  Her reader stopped at a respectable 384. One lighthouse keeper was worth a dozen peasants, it seemed.

  "Wood," Green said as she turned over and sat down. "Need... wood. R-rope."

  "Fix?" Red asked.

  "Yes," Green said. "Going... fix."

  She couldn't. Not really. The leg and foot were too complex by far, but a temporary fix might be possible. She eventually pointed to the high-backed chair the keeper had been sitting in, and with judicious use of his mace, one of the legs was ripped off.

  Some rope, found in one of the small storage rooms along the edge of the open space later, and Green was the somewhat proud owner of a peg leg.

  She wasn't sure it would hold under even a long walk, but when she stood, Red gave her the mace, and it was just long enough that she could plant its head into the ground and use it to keep her weight off the peg leg she'd fashioned.

  Given better tools, she imagined she might be able to do better.

  "Let... us go... up," Blue said.

  "Up," Red agreed.

  There was a spiral staircase running up the interior of the tower. It was quite a lot of steps, each one treacherously small, and with no handrail, but at the very top was a door into the room at the height of the lighthouse, and they wanted to see what was there.

  The others helped her up, even if it might have been wiser to stay below.

  It took a solid half hour to climb, but, once they arrived at the top, the view was almost worth the effort.

  The room at the top of the lighthouse was wide and circular, with large, open windows on all sides. The light of the sun, now much lower than when they'd entered, spilling in and caught on an array of mirrors in the centre of the room.

  An egg floated there. It was round and smooth, its sides unmarred by anything, and it glowed from within brightly enough to rival a bonfire, and yet there was no heat, just pure light.

  Surrounding it, inscribed into the floors, were hundreds of runes written in concentric circles.

  Some sort of complicated magical array, Green supposed, but she knew nothing about it.

  Instead, she stumbled closer to the edge and looked out across the ocean.

  The Gentle Tidings was moored out in the distance, sails tucked away and the ship bobbing on a gentle afternoon wave.

  The golden fields of Yellowfield stretched endlessly to the horizon, interspersed with the glinting blue of distant rivers. The village below looked tiny and insignificant, a scattering of rooftops amid the wildflowers.

  "Pretty," Green said.

  "Pretty," Blue agreed. "Down?"

  There wasn't much here to take.That egg was larger than they were, and likely difficult to move besides, but they could report that it was here... once they got back to the village below.

  Green looked at the trail she'd have to walk. She decided that she wasn't looking forward to the trip at all.

  "Down," she said at least, because while it may be painful, it at least promised some comfort at the end, and hope was a stronger guide than any lighthouse.

  ***