Dreams of Jupiter

Part 6 - A Motley Company

Myles was still working when he heard Steve return. 

"Myles? Where are you? I have the company waiting in the main hall, ..." 

The sorcerer's voice abruptly trailed off. Then he was stepping into the store room, eyes wide as he did a slow scan of the room ending on a dust-covered Myles. 

"When I said find something that suits you, I was referring to the armor and weapons. Not a previously unknown hidden chamber filled with relics of Vandium before the Fall!" 

"You didn't know this room was here?" Myles asked, looking up from the device he had assembled. Steve shook his head. 

"The king gifted this keep to me. In truth I spend very little time here." He took another quick look around the room. 

"However, I can see that's about to change." 

Then his attention was dragged to the device Myles had in his hand, which had begun to hum after the young human made a couple connections. 

"You actually got one of them working??" he asked, clearly astonished.

"Yes and no," Myles replied, looking down at the device in his hand. "This isn't one of the machines here. Instead I assembled it from spare parts." 

"Still, an incredible feat," Steve said with a smile. "Exactly what I was hoping for. What does it do?" 

Myles lifted the coil assembly up and pointed it at an empty wall. 

"I was about to find out, actually," he said. Then he was pressing a stud on the side. 

Snarling like an enraged tiger, a ripple of blue light washed down the coil, miniature tendrils of plasma dancing this way and that before the device discharged a lashing cable of illumination and fury at the wall, blowing a massive, jagged hole into it. 

Myles thumbed the device off, a pleased grin on his face. 

"Well, it was a bit more energetic than I expected, but that was awesome!" he said with a laugh. He looked down at the assembly. 

"I think I'll call it a shock lance. 

Wearing a wry smile of his own, Steve nodded in agreement. 

"Awesome indeed, and quite a fitting name. How many more of those can you make?" 

Myles had four lances assembled, along with a handful of other cobbled together devices, by the time several armed warriors tumbled into the room weapons ready. 

"Stand forth, dragon!" one cried in a voice that sounded like stones rubbing together. He was a monster of a man armored in half plate and mail, a massive two-hander in his gauntleted hands. 

"Show that pretty face so I can make my mark on it!" 

"Don't be a buffoon, Volgan," the slender female figure in dark hooded leathers beside him hissed, her voice strangely melodious despite the obvious venom. "There's no dragon. This is a sorcerer's keep. There's obviously magic afoot." 

"Yet I am sensing no magic nearby," the third member of the small party said, a grey-skinned humanoid male with a dark shock of hair, a high-collared, sand-colored tunic, white shirt and baggy trousers with sandals. 

"Perhaps it's already dissipated, Markis," a woman of the same race beside him, said. But where Markis was dressed for comfort, this woman was dressed more like the massive Volgan in breastplate, metal-backed gauntlets, and heavy, metal-shod boots, wielding an axe and a scarred and dented shield. Her black hair was cut short, as if worn beneath a helmet and she looked ready for a fight, her eyes bright as they swept over the room.