Whispered Spells and Elvish Steel - an Anthology of Fantasy SD Shorts

Part 4 - The King of Nothing

It was another anxious few minutes that saw them traverse to the side street.  Seeing that it was quite a bit more narrow than the broad avenue that marked the city's border, and by default less open space to cross, Severn prepared to feel a little less tension as they stepped around the corner and onto it.  Only to find his tension jumping through the roof when they found themselves facing a colonial checkpoint not but a hundred metres away.

No less than two dozen white and gray armored forms were on the ground manning a makeshift barricade.  And behind them, balanced on focused washes of supercharged energy, were two hovering gunships, sheathed in the same white and gray metal as the troopers and trying to point their restlessly moving cannons in every direction at once as if expecting an attack at any moment.

"Perfect," Severn quietly said before heaving a sigh.  Then Longyear was staggering around the corner, thoroughly winded.

"Why are you stopping, tin man?" he asked in a loud voice.

Instantly the armored heads that had been busy staring down the handful of scavengers that were bottled up at the checkpoint come up to swing in their direction.  At the same time Longyear looked up and spotted the checkpoint.

"Damn," he said hoarsely, stumbling to a halt.

"You'll pay for that, if I discover it was deliberate," Severn ground out between clenched teeth.  Then they were both falling silent as powerful energy rifles were brought up to bear on them.

"In the name of the Colonial Reclamation Authority, hold it right there!" a voice barked as several of the armored forms began to stride towards them.  Seeing how they walked, and how they were much more narrow in the body than the rest of the colonials, Severn quickly guessed they weren't human at all.  Instead they were technology's version of a golahm, something the humans called droids, or AI.  Whatever they were, they were as heavily armed as the others, their weapons trained directly at them as they advanced.

"This is a quarantine zone, citizen," one of the approaching droids said in an almost human voice.  "Please state your authorized reason for being here."

"Well," Severn began, searching his mind for a plausible explanation even as Longyear remained steadfastly silent.  "It's like this, officer ..."

"Sir!" one of the colonials at the checkpoint suddenly shouted, interrupting Severn's stumbling words.  "Scanners are picking up a massive surge in extra-dimensional energy!"  'Extra-dimensional energy?' the golahm wondered upon hearing that.  'Isn't that what the mage hunters called magic?'

"What?" cried the voice that had ordered them to freeze.  "Do they have a location?"

"Right on top of us, sir!"  Then the trooper was jerked to the side as a blast of red light chopped through his body, nearly cutting him in half.  A heart beat later blasts of red light were raining down all around the checkpoint, taking out both troopers and the scavengers they had been holding with equal devastation.

"It's an ambush!" the colonial leader cried, snapping his own rifle up to fire into the buildings around them.  "All units, return fire.  Comms, get me the nearest mage hunter unit here on the frickin' double!  Uhhh!" The leader's body, pierced by no less than four separate bolts of light, spun once before dropping limply onto the ground.

As the droids in front of them twisted to fire up into the buildings, Severn took a cautious step back.  His own senses had felt the surge in magical potential an instant before the soldier had reported it.  And now they were dancing as he felt wave after wave of spells being cast from unseen mages in the buildings around them, their might descending like a hammer of justice to smash the checkpoint into dust.