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___One boy jumps from the nearest pack, scampering up a nearby crate and thumbing his nose at the charging brigand; who alters his course accordingly. Jian is straining for speed…but now he will be even later, by more fractions of a moment.
___The infantryman must pull to a halt to stab at the boy, spears not being the best for passing strikes, and the brigand not being a model of skill.
___The boy is crouching on the crate, making himself as small as he can—but even this lout will be able to hit him. The boy sticks out his tongue, blowing in rude defiance.
___As I race on, I give the highest epitaph I can:
___I could have used a man, with the courage of this boy.
___The brigand bugs his eyes and howls, combining with the rising roars of Jian and of the shoulderbeast, plunging the spear ahead and down to spit the boy, under the chin, between the knees, through the chest and out the back—
___—except, instead, the boy leaps up, as the villain commits his thrust, heaving his legs and body above the spear, staggering slightly in midair—then stomping the shaft, pinning it to the crate!
___“Ha-HAAH!!” the child is trumpeting, planting his hands upon his hips. The villain’s expression is priceless.
___“Ha-HAAAAHH!!!” echoes Jian, charging past behind the foe, slicing his sword entirely through the back of his neck.
___“HAWWRRRR!!!” Tumblecrumble roars, punting the remnants across the ground, and dancing on the pieces.
___I stumble to a stop, laughing at the scene. Jian has slid to a halt himself, and spins once more to face me…
___…but, his face then flashes from grin to grim; and he charges—straight at me!
___What am I supposed to make of this?!
___He hurtles toward me, his body lowering, fully striving—the earth itself is thundering, with encroaching mass as he approaches; and as he throws aside his sword I think:
___…does he intend to smother me??
___The past few moments have been too bizarre…I calmly watch my fate, trying to sort the meanings, to take the proper action.
___But as he hurls himself, I’ve only managed to think:

___Let him come—he shall find me no easy prey!

___and…why is the ground still shaking?
___Then he has wrapt me, indeed with force but gently, enfolding me and twisting, the thunder rising in crescendo, puffs of air buffeting us, and he grunts as I land on top, our momentum rolling us over until I come to rest beneath him…
___How must my wounded pride have appeared!—eyes still wide; face still frozen in amazement; gulping air like a fish. Jian is finally face-to-face with me; his eyes are shining with mirth and success.
___And then he kisses the tip of my nose!!
___The effrontery! I cannot slap, or even sputter, before he spryly states: “You are more than welcome!” and with a spin he has rolled away, rising to stand with a shake of his head, perhaps to clear some dizziness.
___Without much grace, I scramble backward to my feet, trying to reckon my situation…

❖ ❖ ❖

___Portunista’s brigade, meanwhile, had not been idle.
___Seifas had now subdued—or otherwise removed—any remaining enemies scattered uphill. Othon and others had counterstruck their blows, driving hard against their enemies—who lacked expected shoulderbeast support and had to stumble through a pile of their own fellows.
___The enemy commander had slain two of the northern pickets during his infiltration of troops into the area; but surviving picketscouts, having flanked the fight around the clearing, now were setting up positions just inside the northern treeline, cutting off retreat.
___Consequently, as the attackers attempted a rout, whistlefletches flew in their faces.
___Yet their commander, the magus Gemalfan, remained unchecked.
___Having failed to trample Portunista with his shoulderbeast—despite her being distracted by the battle’s oddities—he now could read the writing of his fate upon the field.
___So, Gemalfan madly urged his beast—onward toward the children!—the shortest line to safety for him lay across their mangled bodies…!

___—one of his sub-apprentices hastily scrambled up the shoulderbeast, almost smeared across its side within his lacquered wicker-rider—
___when an outraged Tumblecrumble intercepted Gemalfan’s charge!

___The impact staggered the older shoulderbeast, which bellowed and spun to counterattack.
___An eardrum-rattling duel erupted: the mammals swiped and butted, trying to break the other’s trunk-wide forelegs, pummeling chests and jaws and sides.
___But Tumblecrumble lacked experience; also his elder’s power and size—who, himself, was lacking resolve to defend the guarded helpless…unless perhaps he counted the screaming men upon his back!
___On the other hand—one of those men was Gemalfan: a former Cadre apprentice.
___Leaning forward, he jotted outward shot after shot of pentadarts.
___The materia streaked in short sharp bursts to seek the heart of Tumblecrumble.
___The mammal’s leather hide, however, thick and tough and nonconductive, made for some defense.
___They only hit with hammerforce—instead of blowing apart his innards.
___Both onslaughts, mundane and magical, drove the younger shoulderbeast to his knees, his breath torn loose in gasps.

___…and Portunista found that she was not prepared to let the creature die!

___Each new burst of raw materia seemed to float quite leisurely from Gemalfan’s fingertips, as Portunista watched with racing mind…sinking the enemy shoulderbeast to its knees in vitalized earth would hardly stop the pentadarts…time was slipping, life was slipping…!
___Portunista felt her limitations settling chainlike down upon her—together with the implications of this single fight: her first real duel against a rival mage.
___Over the year, she’d skirmished against some squads, even against a company once or twice; always letting her subcommanders lead the troops while she safely stood behind the lines, jotting a few effects.
___Now she was fighting a rival: a magus with his own brigade.
___And…she had done well! So well, she had forgotten she had never done the like before.
___So well, she had forgotten that her rival might know more than her; might be more clever than she was…
___might take something from her after all…

___Every sickening thud of energy into the hide of the shoulderbeast, became a personal insult to the maga.
___Tumblecrumble needed a shield.
___Portunista gave him one—the only one that she could give.

___Focusing her intent, the maga whistled as she inhaled, the cool air slipping between her lips and through her teeth—fusing Aire and raw materia needled in a ball-sized globe.
___The wisplight drenched the beasts in bluish-white suffusion, mirroring the maga’s chilling fury.
___She bound the sphere into existence; with her will she threw it into the line of sight between the magus and his target.
___Right in line with his—

___—her head rocked back—punched above her eyes!—

___The shock snapped Portunista’s time-perception back to normal—but the wisplight hadn’t failed.
___It had been kicked aside.

___She angled it back into the line, bracing for the impact—!
___And again. And again. And again…

___A corner of her mind protested: how long could she bear the backlash…how long ‘til her willpower cracked…how many darts was she even stopping…?!
___But, she did stop that one. And that one.
___And she refused to lose this duel!

___If only she could hold on…maybe the infantry-line behind her could find a way to help…Feeling stronger even as her strength wore thin, she threw the wisplight in defiance at the face of the larger beast, driving the creature back through bluff, bouncing another dart.
___Gemalfan, meanwhile, found this feat a rude surprise! He had never seen a pentadart defense—never had imagined one existed!
___In his own near-panicked focus on the creature attacking him…he had forgotten the maga he had failed to trample.
___The maga who had single-handedly ruined the charge of his upper line…
___If she could do *this…*what else could she do…?!

___Gemalfan spat a command, ceasing to clatter his pentadarts; his sub-apprentices started jotting again.

___Portunista felt her intention snap! apart like a strand of elongrass, winking out the wisp. She ground her teeth, in frustration, even with the strain relieved.
___Now she knew what those servants had been doing: jotting dissipation spheres.
___They couldn’t intentively bind into place a sphere impervious to intention; but so long as they chattered, their master and his shoulderbeast would be immune to direct attack from magic.
___Gemalfan could jott out, if his sub-apprentices heard his percussive effects and stopped their own in time. But his lackeys still were near to panic, unlikely to register subtleties; and he certainly wouldn’t command them directly to cease, where his vicious and clever rival could hear!

___But, Gemalfan believed he still could slay one enemy.

___He told his mahout to gain the flustered attention of their shoulderbeast. It rose upon its hind legs once again—for the finishing blow on the fallen Tumblecrumble.
___And Portunista was out of plans.

___Reluctantly sighing, she gave up the shoulderbeast for lost.
___She had failed.
___But, she would devote the pain of this loss, to removing that man from the face of Mikon—!

___And then—with a leap of her heart…
___…she saw that others had not given up on Tumblecrumble!

___There, around the side of the lumbering animals, darted Seifas!
___Here, on the other side of the pair, stood Jian!
___And the fair man was holding…
___the sword-jumper ball!

___While Portunista stared in blank amazement, the fair man tossed the elongrass-netted ball up-over the pawing trunk-like legs of the older shoulderbeast, holding the other end, to which he’d tied an empty kettle of roughly equal size. Seifas caught the ball midair, and in a pre-planned move the two men ducked a crisscross run beneath the creature’s stomach, pulling the fibers to fullest tension—releasing the weighted ends with a flip, back under the shoulderbeast.
___The spinning bands were humming, as the ball and kettle flew into a twining knot between the animal’s two front legs; not enough to trip, but hampering it, confusing it further, while it entangled itself, instinctively trying to guard its somewhat vulnerable underbelly.
___And as it stumbled and thrashed—Portunista suddenly shouted in victory, recognizing a path to her vengeance!
___She converted her cry to a boiling growl, focusing several wristlengths into the ground below the animal; then she struck her fist into her bleeding palm: the conventional Yrthrip technique.
___The earth did ripple beneath the shoulderbeast!—globbing undulations, supercharged by Portunista’s emotion and will.
___The dissipation spheres could only block intention of effect; they couldn’t block mere physicality.
___With a mewling hoot, the older shoulderbeast fell over.
___The magi and the mahout had a moment and a half, to throw themselves to safety as the massive mammal keeled—
___—whereupon they learned a lethal physics lesson…

Next chapter

Notes from the real author…

Farewell, Gemalfan!–we hardly knew ye!

Despite his brief appearance in the story, his importance is disproportionately massive: it isn’t an exaggeration to say that everything else which happens in this book, and much of what Portunista does in the next two books, depends directly on Gemalfan’s choice to attack her here in camp and being defeated in the attempt. But more on that in Section Two.

This chapter was my first opportunity (pun not entirely intended! ) to put the system of technical magic to work. (I also included an effect or two in my original draft that didn’t fit with the system I had developed, and so I eliminated them later.)

Readers may have noticed already that the system involves the manipulation of matter at a distance by willpower, varying the effects through phases of matter, combined (usually) with an infusion of a quasi-living primal form of phased matter.

While the system thus contains a nod to the philosophy known as vitalism (a type of philosophical naturalism related to pantheism where the fundamental particles of reality are actively alive but behave without intention until they sufficiently congregate in the proper fashions–proposed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an explanation of natural evolutionary processes as well as of psychic abilities), the underlying precepts are actually closer to the principles behind one type of the theistic Argument from Reason: willpower is supernaturally different from and substantially superior to reactive nature, allowing us to manipulate nature without our causation being entirely resultant from prior natural causation. What we introduce into the system is more than what we receive from the system. But since it is also evident that our willpower is in various ways conditioned by the natural system, we ourselves are not the fundamental source of this active willpower, but only receive it derivatively from a fundamental source upon which we and the natural system both depend for existence. (This isn’t exactly how I deploy the AfR myself in a progressing metaphysical argument, but I won’t go into the technical differences here.)

In effect, any real-life action we do at all is magic (even if the distance of effect is restricted to a few scattered inches, or even less, here and there in our brains).

In the novels I posit an ability to extend this influence by the ability to borrow and direct living but not specifically intentional energy underlying all natural material. (Which has connections to an important part of my overall real-life metaphysical arguments, but again I won’t go into the technicals here.) The source of the energy is called the “Puria” later in the book, but it manifests in the Mikonese natural world in phases parallel to phases of natural matter, thus as types of “materia”.

While some of this materia amounts to forms of raw energy (such as kinetic force in the pentadarts), there are solid (yet still vitalistically active), liquid and gaseous forms, as well as a form corresponding to heat energy. So when someone talks about Yrthe (for example), they aren’t talking about a simple single “element” of “earth”, but about a phase of supernatural material. Still, the connection to the classical four elements should be obvious.

Another thing to notice is that sometimes Mikonese magic involves a direct competition of will: thus the Dissipation, which is a far more fundamentally magical effect than manipulation of matter.

A lot of the plot effects, and the underlying religious concepts, are connected to what the magi are doing in my novels, but keep in mind that Portunista (and Gemalfan for that matter) serves as an early example that magi can do these things while not being on good terms with Mikonese deities (lesser or the Greatest). Magi are technicians, who are mainly concerned with using power to cause effects. That doesn’t mean they can’t be religious, but in their studies and their work they aren’t primarily thinking in terms of interpersonal communion either, and such habits of thinking can lead (quite naturally!) to problems in interpersonal relationships.

Meanwhile–yeah that kiss on the nose is going to lead to trouble later. And if you’re thinking, “Wait, slicing through the back of someone’s neck with a crappy shortsword shouldn’t be all that easy”–good thought!

If you’re also thinking, “Those magical effects sound a lot like low-level D&D spells!”–yep, I’m one of those people who amused himself while playing D&D coming up with effective ways of using low-level D&D spells, like Earth to Mud and Silence X-foot Radius (which has some brutal side effects I’ll be working out later in the book). While being amused at how wildly overpowered Magic Missile was.

One of my corollary concepts for the Mikonese magical system is that mages cannot directly initiate effects out of line of sight, and have trouble keeping the effects operable beyond line of sight. They also have trouble with distance limitations: they can’t just zorch acres of ground, for example, because it’s likely they’ll have to be close enough in doing so to be zorched along with it! There are ways (some more problematic than others) to get around these limitations of course, but Portunista is only still an apprentice. It does at least explain why mages don’t all just slaughter their opponents with pentadarts: the severe range limitations for that jotting make it more like a shotgun.

Anyway, thus ends the first climactic action scene, and the primer to Mikonese magic. (The “lethal physics lesson” will be quickly revealed next chapter.)