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The following morning, Pannych is up at dawn while the boys are sleeping in. She goes downstairs and finds Alice about to head out the door.
“Oh, hey. Figured you’d be sleeping in,” Alice says.
“Nah,” Pannych says, “I sleep real well after a day of activity. It’s slow days that make me need more sleep. I’m weird like that.”
“Well, I have some errands to run. Care to tag along?” Pannych says Yes, retrieves her outfit from the Laundromagic, then changes out of her robe and heads out with Alice.
[image forthcoming]
“So what’s on the agenda,” Pannych asks.
“I have a list,” Alice says, flashing it helpfully. “First, we head to the markets. I need to arrange for some supply deliveries. Nearly everything’s gone bad while I was gone.”
“How long were you gone,” Pannych asks.
“Months. Second, I have to check on some of my old employees, see if they need or even want their old jobs back. And third, I need to stop by the papers to get out the word of our ‘grand reopening’.” She says the phrase with something less than enthusiasm. “Finally, I’ll need to stop by the bank and make sure they know I’m back in town, so everyone gets paid when they go looking for money.”
“Jeez,” Pannych says, “Busy day.”
“Busy morning,” Alice corrects. “I just don’t know what I’m doing this afternoon, since that’ll depend hugely on how these next few things go. I’ll send you back after the markets to meet the deliveries. Hopefully, I’ll be back by the time everything shows up, but maybe not, so you’ll be making yourself useful. And you’ll get to see where everything goes, so that means you’re in charge of breakfast for everyone.”
They walk in silence for some moments before Pannych speaks up again. “Say, why were you gone for so long? And how’d you end up down below Fort Roguelike?”
Alice sighs and says, “Long story.”
“I mean, we seem a ways from the markets yet,” Pannych says, looking around. “I think we have time.”
“All right,” Alice says wearily. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I used to be tight with Rayla and Aqu. We go way back. They were very different people when we met, though. Back then, they pretty much ruled the world - and they did a good job of it, too. Held regular tournaments to keep all the Big Bads in check, had a strong justice system that no one but them was above, kept the roads safe and in good condition, built & funded great schools, nationalized healthcare, top-notch disaster relief, free-ish press, all of that.”
“That seems downright benevolent,” Pannych says, confused.
“That’s because they were benevolent,” Alice clarifies, “Benevolent dictators. Don’t get the wrong idea: they ruled with an iron fist, and any kind of dissent was met with swift and lethal force. But they also kept one key fact in mind: happy subjects don’t revolt. And so they kept the world happy for the most part, stayed out of the deep end of the Despotic Cruelty pool, and let people do pretty much anything they wanted - as long as what they wanted didn’t include having any real political power.”
“So if they were so insidious, then why’d you ally with them?”
“Because the alternative to their benevolent dictatorship wasn’t a progressive and inclusive republic, it was a malevolent dictatorship. Bad as things were under the two of them, they would’ve been even worse under any other regime. You should’a seen the assholes who ran the world before them - that’s sorta how we met, in fact.
“Rayla and Aqu came to power as a result of prophecy, and their fall was also prophesied, so they hired me on to be their seer. I set up The Loaded Die years ago to be a base of operations for them to reestablish themselves. But I had no idea just how hard they’d fall. By the time it really hit me, we had just holed up in Noob Cave; so I started talking with the noob menders. But I got found out, so Aqu dragged me to the fort and paid the goblins to kill me if I tried to escape; then he helped Stewart get the Pearl of Transversion so he’d keep an eye on me.”
“Yikes,” Pannych says. “Big favor. Was Stewart some kind of badass? That stalactite got him before he really did anything.”
“Ha,” Alice scoffs, “Only in his own mind. Guy thought he was inherently better than everyone else, some kind of ‘superior breed’ or some shit. Came under the idea that the reason he didn’t have multitudes groveling at his feet, was because all the ‘little people’ had ganged up on him. Like they have some dastardly ‘Master Plan’ to destroy all greatness and achievement.” She makes a rude gesture with one hand as she blows a raspberry. “So he set out to make his own multitudes, which really takes the fun out of it if you ask me, but whatever - his crazy, not mine. Hey, here we are.”
Pannych looks around at the morning market and says, “Wow, is it always this busy first thing in the morning?”
“Beats the midday heat,” Alice says, approaching a stall.
After introducing her elocuen companion to the various vendors, Alice sends Pannych back to The Loaded Die to meet the deliveries, then goes her own way to run the rest of her errands. Pannych has a few minutes to poke around the kitchen before the first of the deliveries arrives, and then helps get everything squared away.
Phyr and Vector are awakened by the shrill whistle of a teakettle. They come downstairs and are greeted by the smells and sounds of bacon and eggs frying in cast iron skillets. “Morning, boys,” Pannych says as they enter the kitchen.
Vector says, “Hey.” Phyr grumbles.
“Why don’t you guys get changed, and we’ll have breakfast?”
Alice arrives just as they’re all sitting down to eat, and Pannych goes to dish her up a plate. “Oh, no thanks,” Alice says. “I don’t eat or sleep. Zombie an’ all.”
“Oowa vobbie,” Phyr asks through a mouthful of food.
“Uh, yeah,” she replies. “My ghastly pallor and hollow gaze aren’t for funsies.”
Phyr swallows and says, “Well, I don’t know! People here are all colors of the rainbow!”
“That’s because permanently changing skin color is a simple spell,” Alice says. “Some people change it for their job or other reasons, but most people don’t care and just go with how they’re born.” Which is nothing at all like how skin color affects a person’s identity in real life, but this is a suburban white teenager’s Medieval Fantasy World, and her misconceptions translate directly into material reality (see also: “crumpets”). Moreover, it’s one thing to know how problematic this is, and another thing entirely to fix it in a conscious and sensitive way. So let’s leave it at that: with a Yes This Is Bad But Trying To Fix It Would Probably Make It Even Worse.
“You don’t really act like a zombie, though,” Vector says.
“That’s because I didn’t die before I zombified,” she adds. “My soul wasn’t consumed by the void, I just flipped over to undead.”
“How’d that happen,” Pannych asks.
“Same thing that busted up Rayla and Aqu’s power: a prophecy put a hole in the world and upset a long-standing balance. Being a mystic, my life force is tied to the state of the world, so that imbalance manifests in me - as zombification.”
Pannych says “Are all the mystics like this?”
“There are no other mystics. Rayla and Aqu had them killed after they hired me on. Didn’t want any competition. Erm, so I guess yes, it’s just that I’m ‘all the mystics’.”
“But is there any way to fix it,” Pannych asks.
“Yes - but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
“Right,” Phyr says, “We gotta go see Jim, let him know what happened yesterday. Maybe we’ll get more XP!”
They finish breakfast, and then the three adventurers head out to find Jim while Alice stays behind to ready the tavern for business.
At the town hall, the adventurers have to wait for a moment because Jim wasn’t expecting them, but they are soon sent in. He stands to greet them as they enter his office, and says, “Welcome, welcome. Please, have a seat.” They do, and he continues: “The town is abuzz with tales of your deeds. I was just about to send for you, in fact - I wanted to hear it for myself.”
Vector summarizes the previous day’s events, rolling well on Speech to surreptitiously leave out certain unflattering points. Jim thinks nothing of the missing details, and says, “So after meeting with Tom the Prophet, you killed almost half a dozen noobs by yourselves, fought Grayl and lived, cleared the goblins out of the fort, put an end to Stewart, rescued Alice, and dealt with a small noob army - all in one day?”
“I killed a couple bandits, too,” Phyr says, raising his hand.
“It was a long day,” Pannych says.
“Well, that’s all very impressive, if true - not to impugn your honesty, I just hope you understand that many would exaggerate such heroic doings. Then again, you seem to be downplaying it, if anything, so I’m inclined to believe you. Still, we’ll see for ourselves soon enough. I’ll have the guards garrison some troops in the fort - or what’s left of it, anyway. Probably never should have left it go, honestly. I’ll also have them maintain the doubled patrols, just to be safe.”
As if on cue, a voice sounds from a rack of speaking stones on the wall behind Jim’s desk: “Noobs at the crossroads! I repeat: noobs sighted at the crossroads, inbound to Noob Town!”
Another voice says, “How many?”
The first voice responds, “I - I don’t know! A whole lot of ‘em, easily several dozen, maybe even more! I couldn’t get a head count.”
Jim’s look of shock quickly gives way to deep suspicion. “What is the meaning of this?”
Pannych says, “Whoah, look - we just tricked them! Which sounds bad, but they were after our souls! There were a lot of them, too.”
Jim says, “Be that as it may, you could have started a war.”
Phyr says, “Look, maybe sometimes we start wars by accident, but we always end them on purpose.”
“Then here’s your chance,” Jim says. “Get to the gates as fast as you can. I’ll tell the Captain of the Guard you’re coming. Just - help out however you can.”
The adventurers rush from the town hall to the gates. They make contact with the captain, and follow her up to the parapet. When Pannych also follows, the captain asks her, “Wouldn’t you be better suited to the front line?”
Pannych says, “Front lines are no place for a ninja - I’m much more suited to single combat than regimented.”
“Seems a fitting place for a demigod,” the captain replies. “Especially one of fear and anxiety. Sow chaos in the ranks. Seems to be your wheelhouse.”
“I prefer to sow chaos from a distance, preferably from an armchair next to a roaring fire with a mug of hot cocoa.”
“Suit yourself,” the captain says with a shrug. “Long as you’re useful, you can fill in however you want.”
When they reach the parapet, Phyr and Vector set about checking their gear. Pannych looks around for a ranged weapon, and seeing none, asks for a bow. “Can you even use a bow,” the nearest guard asks.
“Yes,” she lies, and rolls 1 on Speech. She says it with eyes wide as dinner plates, nodding slowly. “I use all the bows,” she adds unconvincingly. “Like, I’ve used bows you’ve never even heard of. In my sleep.”
“Dead gods and stars above,” the guard mutters. “Do you have any ranged training? Do you know how to load a crossbow or a rifle?”
“Flintlock, lever-action, or bolt-action,” Pannych asks.
“Flintlock,” he says. Pannych narrows her eyes and purses her lips. “Ugh, just get downstairs and form up with the others outside the gates.”
Out front, Pannych approaches a particularly in-charge-lookin’ guard and asks for a spear. H turns to look her up and down, then hefts the spear in his hand. “You even know how to use one of these?”
Pannych sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose with one hand, while resting the other on the knot of her obi. Then in one smooth motion, she grabs the spear with both hands on either side of his, then twists and pulls as she steps back, drops her weight, and turns her body all at once. The guard is thrown face-down on the ground, and Pannych spins the spear around with a flourish before planting the head scant inches from the guard’s helmet. “Seems I can use this one,” she says with a smile.
Tense silence grips the town guard as they wait in formation; the rushing breeze over the stump-riddled plain is the only sound. Soon, the sound of thunder is heard from the forest, a rumble growing just a mile away. Over several minutes, the rumble diminishes, and soon a lone noob is seen approaching from the forest, waving a large white flag high in the air. The noob walks along the road on two legs. Soon, there is an explosion from within the town gates, and long seconds later, a plume of earth erupts in the no-man’s-land. The warning shot leaves a wide crater some forty yards to the side of the road, halfway into the empty plain between forest and town.
“Yo,” Vector says to the Captain of the Guard. “I think they wanna negotiate. Don’t you wanna send someone out to parley?”
The captain replies, “Yeah, right! We don’t ‘negotiate’ with noobs!”
“Look, just gimme ten minutes to talk to this guy. It’s a white flag, for cryin’ out loud.”
The captain hesitates for a moment, then says, “Fine. Ten minutes, and not a second more.” Her hand goes to her belt and she hands him a speaking stone. “Take this, so you don’t have to walk back and I can start shelling when you fuck it up.”
Vector grumbles as he pockets the stone and descends the wall with Phyr; Pannych joins them as they pass through the gate. The three of them jog out to meet the noob.
“Hey,” Vector shouts as soon as they’re in earshot. “We’ve got like five minutes before these guys start shelling, so make it quick!”
They draw up short to catch their breath as the flagbearer says, “I am Stig of the mountains - I speak for Tilda of the mountains and Gerta of the forest. Our brethren have fallen in battle last night, and we are here to find out what happened, if we can - or to take vengeance for our fallen, if we cannot.”
“Whoah, battle,” Pannych asks. “We did not fight any noobs last night. I mean, in the day we did, but not last night.”
The flagbearer looks askance at her. Vector says, “How do you know it was a battle last night?”
Stig answers: “Our menders carry speaking stones that are not linked to yours. They told us they sought the souls of Pannych and Phyr, and informed us so that we could be wary of foul play. Later in the evening, we heard that they had returned triumphant - but then we lost contact. In the wee hours, we found their corpses strewn about their grounds, all bearing the gruesome wounds of a hard-fought battle. Birgit of the Valley is no more, and her troop was almost entirely slaughtered - even her young son was struck down.”
Pannych says, “That wasn’t us. They were sent after our souls by Grayl, and I suspect that’s who killed them. The three of us are also enemies of Grayl.”
“But why would Grayl kill them if they succeeded?”
“Because,” Pannych says with a sigh, “We are Pannych and Phyr. And we tricked - Birgit, you said her name was?” Stig nods. “We tricked Birgit into thinking they had stolen our phylacteries, when they actually hadn’t. So Grayl may have punished them for the failure, which... I mean, we honestly didn’t think about that.”
Birgit and her troop return in the dead of night to find Aqu waiting near a small fire at the mouth of Noob Cave.
“We have done as you asked,” Birgit says, producing the Orbs of Destiny and extending them to the hooded man.
He draws back his hood and, on seeing the familiar useless orbs, sighs heavily in disappointment. “You are mistaken,” he says. “Go now, and try again - kill Pannych and Phyr, and bind their souls to the crystals my friend gave you.”
“Our menders are skilled soulbinders,” Birgit says. “There is no mistake: this orb contains the soul of Pannych, and this one, that of Phyr.”
“These are Orbs of Destiny, useless to us. This… is our fault,” Aqu says, hanging his head. “We really should have been more specific.”
“No,” Rayla fumes, stepping out from the shadows of the cave’s entrance. “I told you specifically to kill them and to capture their souls in the crystals I gave you. Not only did you not do that, not only did you let them go, but now you stubbornly insist that your counterfeits are the genuine article?”
“Hey, now,” Aqu says.
“Enough,” Rayla spits. “I have had it up to here with this bullshit! Those fuckers took everything from us!”
“They took our levels,” Aqu says in an attempt to mollify her. “Our empire is still intact. Or it was, at any rate. If we didn’t abdicate-”
“Then we would have been overthrown! Our might was the glue that held the House together! Do you think that General Mephistopheles would have faithfully executed our orders, if he thought he could stage a successful coup? Do you think Edric Nadab would manage the treasury honestly, if he thought he could get away with embezzling? Or High Priestess Morrigan - does she preach loyalty and servitude, or righteous uprising, now that our power has been shattered and scattered?! Vipers all, just waiting for a chance to usurp the Broken Throne! And without all of them undergirding our empire, united only by fear of the two of us, do you think Garv will continue to keep his hordes at bay? Or will he see a ripe opportunity?”
“The dragon hordes are not a problem right now,” Aqu says.
“But for how long? How long until the world is whole and Garv takes wing for the mainland? Do you know? Because I sure as shit don’t! We built a mighty empire, but we are the cornerstone on which it was founded. Crush that cornerstone to dust, and the whole edifice crumbles!”
“Alice set up a-”
“Alice! That traitorous bitch! Don’t you get me started on her! We found her, protected her, rewarded her, trusted her, and this is how she repays us?! By consorting with the noobs the very moment our backs were turned?!”
“But the noobs-”
“The noobs, the noobs, the poor, defenseless noobs! They’re so downtrodden, they’re only TWENTY-FOOT-TALL MAGIC-WIELDING SAPIENT BEARS! If only they-”
“Dammit, Rayla!” Aqu shouts in her face as he grabs her shoulders. “Get a hold of yourself, woman!” The noobs have been watching in stunned silence, the revelation dawning that they stand in the presence of Rayla Har’tei and Aqu Abbe’nei, High Monarchs of the Nine Provinces, Arbiters of Justice, Bulwark Against the Dragon Hordes, Butchers of the Last Gods, and sole survivors of their lost clans. To know that the desperate, unhinged vagabonds in their midst are in truth two fallen rulers striving against prophecy is, in a word, unsettling.
Rayla regards him coolly for a moment, then says with stony calm, “Unhand me.”
Aqu says, “I will - if you let me finish one sentence!”
Another moment, and she nods, saying, “Choose it wisely.”
Aqu takes a deep breath and thinks for a moment more. At last, he says, “For someone whose downfall was prophesied and who had centuries to prepare for it, I would think you’d be a little more accepting of your fate by this point, so you’d be able to roll with it when things go predictably tits-up at every step we take in defiance of our destiny.”
Rayla sniffs and says, “Destiny. Yes, even when we defy destiny, we fulfill it. Tell me, what good is life, if it’s all laid out in advance, like a book that sits whole upon your shelf?”
“You can still enjoy a book, even though it’s all laid out already. Hell, you can even erase words from the page, or write down your own, provided you have…” he trails off.
“The right tools?” Aqu sighs as she finishes his thought. “Yes, yes, I take your point. But in this book of destiny, whose words do we propose to erase and re-write?”
“The gods, I suppose.”
“Well, the gods are all dead now,” Rayla says. “You and I even put a few of them down, ourselves. Tell me, Birgit: didn’t you have a god?”
“Yes,” the noob chief answers. “Ignis, god of fire. He led us here. He-”
“He did a buncha things, I got it,” she interrupts. “But did he ever swear an oath to you? Did he ever fail to keep such an oath?”
“All his words came true. So he spoke, and so it was. Except…” Birgit furrows her brow and looks away.
“Except?”
“He did promise to protect us in our darkest hour. And if the human colonization of our island doesn’t qualify, then I am not sure what could be a stronger contender.”
“I’m not interested in the whys and wherefores,” Rayla says. “I have just one question for you.” She draws her spear and asks, “Where is your god now?”
The noobs roar in pain and fury throughout the night, their anguished cries echoing throughout the valley. One by one, each voice is silenced.
“Our menders are skilled soulbinders,” Stig says pensively. “How could two young humans like you manage to trick them?”
“That is a long story we don’t have time for,” Phyr says. “But suffice to say that we’re demigods and we have our ways. We could’ve killed them, if we wanted to, but we decided in our mercy to let them go. Grayl, unfortunately, wasn’t so merciful. But we can kill you guys, too, so you’d better back off and leave the town out of this.”
The noob looks down at the dwarf with narrowed eyes and asks, “Just how many of us do you think there are in these woods behind me?”
“It kinda doesn’t matter,” Phyr says, “We’re demigods.”
“Arrogance is a foul fragrance, and divine arrogance all the moreso. Demigods are mighty, but they can die - even the gods themselves have died. Your youth, fresh faces, and jaunty garb tell me that you are not seasoned warriors. You would do well to remember that we are closer to you, than you are to your town’s walls.”
Phyr is about to retort, but Vector puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. They came to us with a white flag, we should try to work this out peacefully.”
Phyr says, “Nah, fuck all these guys,” and draw his blasters. While the others roll for turn order, he gets a surprise round, and he fires on Stig with both weapons for double damage. Stig’s torso erupts in an explosion of blood, guts, and flaming fur; his lifeless legs and pelvis fall over backward with a resounding thud!
Pannych screams, “You idiot!” as smoldering chunks fall to the ground around them. They all get 2 XP.
“Can it,” Phyr says, holstering his blasters. “I refuse to get bogged down in the boring-ass details of negotiating peace between a bunch of stupid NPCs! I came here to kick ass and take names, and if you don’t like it…” He trails off as the sound of thunder rolls from the forest ahead of them.
“Let’s maybe handle this later,” Vector says, and he turns to sprint back to the town gates. Pannych and Phyr share a cross look for an instant before following. Vector takes out the speaking stone and shouts into it, “Fire at will! Fire at will!”
“Belay that,” the captain shouts over him. “Fire on my command, and focus on the road in a retreating line. Cover the demigods!”
Pannych risks a look back and sees that dozens of noobs are emerging from the trees, running swift as horses on all fours. The adventurers are about three quarters of a mile from the gate, and the noobs are only a quarter-mile behind them. “You guys,” she says as they run, “I don’t think we’re gonna make it!”
Phyr and Vector look back at the noobs pouring into the no-man’s-land and share her conclusion. Just then, the captain’s voice comes over the speaking stone and shouts, “FIRE!” In a few seconds, an enormous rippling explosion sounds from the direction of Noob Town, and long seconds later, the volley of shells lands along the leading front of the advancing noobs, with devastating effect. The adventurers look back and see bodies flying amid earth and gore - but they see also that the noobs emerging from the forest now number in the hundreds.
Two more volleys are fired, each taking out a chunk of noobs in the lead, but the others swiftly close ranks and resume pursuit of the adventurers. With the last explosion, they can feel chunks of dirt rain down around them. “OK, that’s close enough,” Vector shouts into the speaking stone.
“Dammit, keep this channel clear,” the captain shouts at him. “I’m keeping them off your backs! Just keep running!”
As they do, Phyr extends his hands behind him and shouts, “Flame!” He pumps five thousand mana into it (receiving 4,500 in refund after a half-second delay), and a cataclysmic conflagration erupts behind them. The adventurers feel the heat on their backs as several thousand square feet of grassy earth erupt into a blazing triangle of fire, with them at the tip and a bunch of roaring noobs caught in the middle of it.
Pannych shouts, “No, dammit! Grassfires are fast as fuck!”
“Shit,” Phyr shouts. “OK, Chill!” With another five thousand mana, a sub-zero blast now takes the flames’ place, and he sustains the spell for a second turn. The earth and grass are frozen solid as the flames snuff out, as are the noobs in the former blaze, and the next artillery barrage shatters several of them into shards of frozen meat.
The rapid heating and cooling of the air, coupled with the impact of the artillery shells, makes for some freak air currents that buffett the adventurers about as they try to keep running along the road. Suddenly, Phyr says, “Vector! Tell them to stop firing on our position! We gotta stop!”
“Are you insane,” he shouts.
“Insane genius,” he says. “Trust me.”
“Pause! No, you run this by us right now before you get our asses killed!”
Phyr briefly explains his idea, and while Vector is skeptical, Pannych assures him that it will, in fact, work. When Pause wears off, Vector shouts into the speaking stone: “We have to stop! Stop firing on our position!”
“Are you insane,” the captain shouts. “Keep running! We have you covered! And keep this channel clear!”
“No time to argue, just stop firing within a hundred yards of us!”
“You’re still over half a mile out! Shut up!”
“I KNOW! JUST DO IT!”
“Your funeral,” the captain says. “Fire on the advancing line, anywhere but near the road!”
The adventurers slow to a stop, and Phyr gets to work, sustaining a very intense flame in a concentrated area on one side of the road. The noobs give the fire a wide berth, but are closing in from other directions. In three turns, everything flammable for twenty yards has been completely consumed, but the rim is still blazing. Pannych and Vector rush from the unburnt side of the road into the charred area, spent cinders crunching under their feet.
Phyr then gives the other side of the road the same treatment, crisping up a few noobs that were charging directly at them, and now they have a forty-yard-wide burnout surrounded by a blazing grassfire. He gets as near to the edge as he can bear, then casts Chill in a wide, flat fan aimed high up in the air - but with one hand only. With the other, he casts Flame in the same wide, flat fan, but aims it parallel with the ground. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he repeats as the hot and cold air mix and the blaze continues below.
The chilled air is condensing, sucking the surrounding air into it. The hot air expands, pushing out around it. Where the two mix, there is turbulence, as the hot air wants to rise and the cold air wants to sink, and as the two thermal regions sort out their differences, an air current forms in a spiral like water swirling down a bathtub drain - also known as a tornado. Except when that tornado touches down over a fire - then, it’s called a firewhirl.
“Yes. Yes! YES! I AM A GOD!”
Pannych shouts over the roaring blaze, “Demigod, at most!”
“Whatever,” Vector says, “Just let him do his thing.”
Phyr starts several more firewhirls, and uses his spells to manipulate airflow with low and high pressure areas, sending them off in crazy directions. Then he starts casting Bolt at the sky repeatedly between bouts of maniacal laughter.
“I get the burn out,” Vector says to Pannych, “And I accept the firewhirls. But what’s all the lightning for?”
“It’s just for show,” she says impatiently.
By this time, almost all of the noobs have charged past their position, so Phyr directs the firewhirls side-to-side along the no-man’s-land. Wherever they travel, they spread the wildfire, burning the plain and roasting the noobs alive. They keep charging in a sometimes-broken, quickly-reforming front, stretching as far as the eye can see in either direction. But with the thick smoke of the wildfire darkening the sky, growing black clouds above shot through by only occasional shafts of golden sunlight, and the flaming tornadoes twisting hither and yon, “as far as the eye can see” isn’t all that far.
After a couple minutes of this, the Captain of the Guard says over the speaking stone, “OK, we’ve thinned their numbers enough, and they’re getting real close to the wall. You can turn off those flaming tornadoes now.”
Phyr blinks in surprise and says, “Turn… off?”
Vector says to the captain, “OK, we’ll figure it out.”
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