Thundersnow

Razha lies prone on a ledge atop a cliff on Helbender Mountain. Beneath her is Korben, she can see it all laid out, except half of it is blocked by the airship. They probably can’t see her where she is, level with the top of the ship. The damned thing is right there, but it would take a lot more than a bullet or fireball from Reverie to pierce that hull. She looks down over the edge cautiously.

What she can see of the town is enveloped in a white fog. She sees the flashes of gunshots inside the cloud and hears their reports echo through the valley, one after another so many, an intense firefight. The near side of Korben, just below her, is clearer. There are some fighters shooting from behind houses. Most of them are sheltering behind the stone walls around the temple garden and graveyard, good cover.

She thinks they are her side. The enemy is closing on them, pushing their way up the hill. They have taken a few positions from the defenders. As they climb higher up the mountain, she can make them out better. Then she recognizes something else--in white robes, an imperial wizard, casting its spells, blowing away defending positions with bolts of lightning.

They have no defense against that, only she and her alchemical rifle might contend with it, but there’s no time to walk there. She stands up on the edge of the cliff, looking down the long drop. She opens Reverie’s chamber and pours a white powder charge in. Closing the lever and pulling back the hammer with her finger, she points the rifle down and takes a deep breath. Gravity, distance, wind force--calculations run through her head. Theoretically, this should work.

She jumps from the cliff, keeping her eyes focused and her gun pointed straight beneath her. She tries to judge the distance to the ground, bad timing would be fatal. She pulls the trigger and fires an intense blast of wind from her rifle. It slows her fall substantially, and when she lands on the ground behind the temple, it’s as if she just jumped off of the roof, not from a cliff. She loses her balance and falls on her face when she lands. But it doesn’t feel like her legs were broken--good landing.

She takes off running, climbing over the walls in her way. There are women from the village taking cover behind the walls, reloading their rifles. She stops in the temple garden, seeing a woman helping Kurri carry someone inside. She looks badly wounded.

Kurri notices her and stops. “Razha! Thank Goddess you’re here!”

Razha takes cover behind the wall and reloads Reverie with a red powder and affixes a cap bearing the rune of Arkon, then stands and jumps over the last wall. Downhill, she sees the wizard moving through the streets, indiscriminately targeting any person in sight, combatant or not, blowing the walls off of houses with its power.

She shouts to all around her, “Y’all give me some cover from the soldiers. Leave the wizard to me.”

“Good luck, Razha!” Kurri says.

She runs through the gate beneath the wooden arch and down the shale steps, Reverie in her hands with its bayonet attached. The wizard pays her no notice, it heads down a side street just below her. She runs down the parallel street next to her to try and cut it off.

As she runs by on the dirt path, past barely standing shacks, people are fleeing in the opposite direction. A few children stop when they see her and put their fists in the air, before their parents pull them away.

“Get to the temple!” Razha says.

“Goddess protect you!” a villager shouts back.

Then, through the narrow alley between two houses, she sees the wizard just below her, less than a hundred Length away. She runs between the houses and it turns and looks her way.

“K! R! A!” She jumps and slides down the dry dirt hillside, leaving a trail of dust in the air behind her, and raises her gun. She fires, and a fireball erupts from the black and silver barrel. The wizard was right in her sights, but the fireball curves away from it in mid-air as the air surrounding the white-robed figure ripples like water.

Blue sparks arc between the wizard’s empty hand and a vial of silver powder it holds in the other. Razha rolls to the side, loses her balance, and tumbles down the hillside at an angle. But she barely avoids a lightning bolt from the wizard’s hand. She crashes into the side of a house as the crack of thunder echoes across the mountainsides.

Razha sits up behind her concealment and opens her powder flask, hastily pouring her charge of fine silver powder down the chamber. From the stack hanging by the vial she pulls a percussion cap, inscribed with the six marks of the rune of Zuul, and fixes it in place before slamming the lever down.

As soon as she finishes loading, she feels a sudden chill like a winter breeze. She stands and runs behind the next house as the one she was against is blown apart to splinters by a powerful freezing wind. Luckily there was nobody in it, but she can’t keep using houses for cover.

She steps out into the open and takes aim as the wizard turns to stare at her with its dark goggles. It doesn’t look or act human, whatever it is. She pulls her trigger, and as the hammer falls, an arc of electricity stretches out from the action and jumps down the silver lining of the barrel. A bolt of lightning strikes from Reverie with a thunderous boom. But the bolt diverts just before hitting its target and arcs around the wizard in a circle, continuously flowing around its body until it grows smaller and brighter, circling around its outstretched hand, with the glyph in its palm glowing.

The electricity strikes back at its caster. There it no time for Razha to move. It strikes her gun and the jolt hits her like a punch in the chest and flings her several Length away. The gun flies from her hand and slides across the dirt and debris of the ruined house. Lying on her back, Razha is stunned, her entire body wracked with pain. She tries to move her limbs--slow to respond--as the wizard approaches.

She draws her knife and points it at her enemy with a shaking hand. It keeps moving toward her, showing no response to anything. It moves like a machine. She would never believe it were a living being if she couldn’t see the white skin of its exposed hands as it raises them to strike again. Sparks begin to jump between its hand and its vial of powder. She stares it in its mechanical face as it moves to finish her off.

But it turns its head as a gunshot sounds from the hill above her. The bullet flies just past it and stirs up a cloud of dust from the dirt road. Razha looks over and sees her comrade Lein sliding down the hill, bayonet pointed ahead like a spear, aimed for the wizard. It swings its hands around toward him in a smooth circular motion and the sparks between them vanish. The blade would have pierced its heart, but it stops, suspended in rippling air just in front of the wizard.

Lein pushes harder, and the two of them resist each other in a contest of strength with nothing but thin air between them. As her vision becomes more clear she sees her comrade is bleeding, badly. Blood leaks out from under a rubber bandage around his chest. There is great anguish on his face.

“Razha!” It’s Kurri’s voice. He stumbles downhill toward her. She sits up and reaches for her aching head. She sees her black hair blowing in front of her face. Between the wind and lightning her braid has come undone and its thick black strands are blowing free. She takes a breath.

“My gun!” Razha says.

“You’re wounded!” Kurri said.

“We’ll all be dead if you don’t get me my gun!”

Kurri picks it up and tosses it to her. As soon as it’s in her hand, she pulls the lid from her powder flask and begins loading a new spell--dark red.

Lein pulls his blade free and strikes again. He thrusts and slashes with his bayonet, but an invisible force turns him away with each strike. With each move his agonized groans grow louder. Razha hurries to stuff the wax down the chamber, and finally places a cap inscribed with the rune of Arkon.

“Thanks, doctor, now get to cover!” she says.

Razha pulls herself to her feet as Lein finally lands a blow. A dark red gash appears across the stomach of its white robes. The wizard makes a noise almost human, but distorted through its mechanical mask. It hunches over in pain. But so does Lein. He falls backwards, unable to stay on his feet, and lands hard.

Razha and Kurri move in toward him, but the wizard is faster. It pulls a vial of white dust from its belt and flings it into the air towards the three of them as it raises its hand. Razha feels herself surrounded by a vortex of wind colder than any winter storm. She can’t move--her joints are frozen in place. Frost gathers on her skin as all moisture in the air turns to ice.

The wizard remains frozen in place as well, maybe it can’t move while holding this spell either. She looks down at Lein, his body tightening up. He looks like he’s struggling to breathe. She tries with all her strength to move and can only barely move any muscle in her body. She can’t even turn her head away now, or close her eyes as the freezing wind burns them. Kurri next to her looks just as bad, frozen in place. They can only watch helplessly as Lein fights for breath.

With all her strength Razha finally moves one finger enough to push down Reverie’s trigger. A long pillar of flame grows from the barrel, reaching two Length away and flowing in a steady stream. Warmth sets them free from the wizard’s spell, but Lein falls backward onto the dirt, unmoving.

“No!” Razha charges at the wizard. She swings her fire-whip back and forth, lashing at it, singeing its robes, but ultimately being turned away each time by a magical force as it follows her movements with a clear crystal in its hands.

She presses it back across the dirt road, slashing again and again with her flame, getting closer and closer each time, until it is backed up against the top of the next drop down the hill. Her next slice is met with a twisted, distorted scream of pain. Its hand flies from its arm, still clutching the crystal, severed clean by her sword bayonet concealed within the flame.

Razha kicks it in its bleeding stomach wound, knocking it to the ground. Standing over its body, she turns the barrel toward its face, engulfing its head in white-hot fire until the flame dies. Nothing remains but a blackened skull sitting atop scorched white robes.

She throws Reverie across her back and stumbles back on exhausted legs to where Kurri frantically compresses Lein’s chest, moving to listen to his heart. She feels a dread she has felt too many times before, and collapses onto her knees next to Lein’s still body.

She watches Kurri go back and forth between his motions repeatedly with no change. She watches his face grow more defeated. And she looks down at Lein’s face, frozen in absolute agony, his blue eyes wide with terror. Of all the death she has seen, there has not been one that approaches this cruelty.

Kurri looks up at Razha, wiping a tear from his eyes, and shakes his head. She already knew, but something about that gesture was piercing, as if it sealed the finality of that truth. Medics don’t give up easily. When they say it’s over, she believes it.

“Lein...” she says.

“I’m so sorry, Razha,” Kurri says through his tears. “I tried to stop him from coming. He was too badly injured. If only I could have stopped him!”

“Kurri...” Razha picks up Lein’s freezing cold hand and clutches it tight. “You never got to know Lein. When he wants to do something, the whole damn Imperial army can’t stop him.” She pulls his hand up to her cheek. “Damn it Lein. If you hadn’t come it would’ve been me. Now I gotta live with that, don’t you know that?” She looks down into his eyes as hers well with tears. “Oh, Lein. My friend.”

“Come here,” Kurri says. “I need to see to your wounds too.”

“Have at it, doctor,” she says. “I won’t resist.”