Dan spent the next couple of weeks in the gym trying to perfect a fire aura spell. He couldn’t control anything about the situation on Earth, and even thinking about it stressed him out, so Dan tried to focus on what he could control. Improving himself. Meditation and training weren’t the perfect solution to the constant well of anxiety that was terrestrial news, but they were a welcome outlet for his stress, aggression, and anger.
He hadn’t had the downtime to work on runes or magic in a long time, and improvement was sorely needed. Unfortunately, the station didn’t have the runecrafting resources for him to do much more than short circuit the control runes on the rest of the crew, but there was still plenty of work to be done with his raw spellcasting.
At least fixing the runes had helped endear him to the nineteen other humans living on the station. Most of them were still afraid of him, treating him more like an elf than a fellow human after his initial display in the gymnasium, but at least they would make eye contact while talking to him. Baby steps.
Not Amelia. She still shook like a leaf in a hurricane every time Dan tried to interact with her. It might have been the way that Jennifer had to hold him back from killing her when they first met, but the woman was petrified of him, and Dan couldn’t think of a way to rectify the situation.
Even though he focused on his training, he couldn’t help but worry about how things were working out in his everyday life. He was sure that his mother was worrying herself sick about him. She was already angry at him for disappearing for a year while he was on Twilight with nothing more than a cryptic note that he would be ‘out of contact’ for the near future. Even before that, he’d only called once every month or so while he had been training.
Deep in his soul, Dan knew that his mother and her collection of busybody friends would have heard all about the charges leveled against him. Strangely, despite everything else that was going on, dealing with her again was almost something he feared more than confronting the government.
The worst of it was that he couldn’t even contact Earth to defend himself. Although the scrying equipment let them listen in on conversations and television programs, he had no way of interfacing with the satellite network and explaining his case. Technically, he could simply teleport back to Earth and explain his position in person, but he didn’t feel comfortable teleporting into the Thoth Compound.
That feeling of discomfort wasn’t helped by scrying on the compound. Ibis hadn’t taken kindly to the charges of treason. Jennifer and Dan had listened in on more than one board meeting that devolved into ranting and screaming about how ‘his’ senators didn’t even have the decency to stay bribed.
More recently, those meetings had taken on a darker tone. Dan recognized more than one of the Starshield candidates who had been drawn from the security forces. Given the distance between the Thoth compound and Brazil, that meant the soldiers must have been withdrawn almost immediately after the ambush.
As for the content of the newer meetings, it became less about how the government had wronged Ibis, and more about getting even. The chairman and his cronies discussed their defenses, postulating how long they would need to hold out before a mysterious package arrived.
None of them could figure out what exactly the package was. Dan wasn’t sure if Ibis was being paranoid, that he was speaking in euphemisms because he was afraid of being recorded, or if the chairman was insisting on being his usual needlessly-dramatic self. All he knew for sure was that it was “going to change everything,” a statement so ominous that Dan half-expected to hear thunder in the background every time Ibis uttered it.
Then, the FBI came to serve their warrant, only to be turned away with gunfire. They came back with a helicopter, only for the Thoth compound to reveal that it had an old 88 mm anti-aircraft gun hidden under a tarp on the roof. The chopper managed to escape the compound, but with a number of new holes in its armored frame.
Ever since then, the FBI had been in a standoff with the chairman, steadily bringing in more and more units to besiege the compound, but refusing to move until they were good and ready. In the meantime, Ibis toured the talk show circuits via a remote link, his usual charming and larger-than-life self as he laughed and cracked jokes about how the government was just trying to steal his secrets and punish him for his success.
As much as the chairman should have been a natural ally to Dan, Henry was still a bit of a bogeyman. His doubt of Ibis’ motives aside, Dan could only be pretty sure that he’d removed the control mechanisms in his System with Sam’s help. He wasn’t keen on testing that proposition.
Outside of checking up on their former Allies, Jennifer and Dan would use the scrying stone to get updates on what was happening on Earth. The battle for the landing site was a muted success. The coalition forces took advantage of the gap they blew in the defenses to plow through the Tellask forces. It was hard to tell from the handful of images that every channel was playing, but it looked like the initial attack had been a resounding victory.
Once the Tellask reinforcements were shut down, things changed. The reports were fragmented, but it sounded like the elves panicked. They opened fire with their heavy artillery, mostly the ballista-like, magically-powered rail guns that Jennifer and Dan had seen on their way into the landed ship. The coalition forces pushed harder, trying to silence the cannons before they could do too much damage to the human armies’ armored assets. Then, a quartet of wyverns made a break for it.
The elves must not have realized that satellites were tracking the wyverns’ every movement, because it was only a matter of time before they were engaged by carrier-borne fighters. Without the satellites, the wyverns probably would have escaped in the confusion created by the artillery bombardment. Instead, with the number of satellites staring at the battle, the coalition forces had all of the time they needed to equip, organize, and launch a full task force of fighters to intercept the creatures.
Still, the wyverns did a number on the jets. A press helicopter was near enough to the fight to film and broadcast it to the entire world, much to the coalition’s chagrin. Each wyvern carried three to four elves, and between them, they had more than enough mana to make the conflict interesting.
Compared to the jets, the wyverns moved at a glacial pace, making them easy targets for missiles. Unfortunately, the elves seemed more than capable of shooting down missiles with diffuse area of effect spells. Even from a distance, just watching the spells unleashed by the elves revealed them to be the leaders of the invasion. The elves alternated shooting down the missiles, but each spell struck with at least a millennia of force and precision. The recording of the battle lasted almost a half hour. Really, to Dan’s eyes, it just looked like the elves eventually ran out of mana.
The rest of the battle was an action movie’s worth of special effects. The battle began with a spray of technicolor lights blasting from a Wyvern as an advanced spell swatted a jet from the air with distressing ease. The planes scattered as follow-up spells blasted through the air they once occupied. A pair of fighters curved around and fired missiles from extreme range. At first, there was no response from the elves as the missiles slammed into a Wyvern’s spellshield in an explosion of light and violence. After the first volley, the elves didn’t take any more chances. Waves of electricity and force periodically pulsed out from the elves, prematurely detonating or shorting out any missiles that came too close.
Eventually, the jets stopped firing missiles from extreme range. Despite the weapons’ speed, a combination of time dilation runes and area of effect magic quickly rendered them moot. Two pairs of jets closed range and slowed down to begin a strafing run with their autocannons. Almost immediately, the wyverns exploded into a rainbow of magic as a torrent of magic ripped the planes from the sky.
For a short time, the two sides continued in an uneasy stalemate. The coalition jets circling the slower moving wyverns, unable to do anything but fire ineffectual missiles at them but likewise out of range for any effective magic. Then a fighter accelerated toward the wyverns, juking back and forth as it closed the distance before opening fire with its autocannon while moving at full speed. Not many shots hit, but the return fire was equally inaccurate.
After the first jet blazed the way, the entire task force scattered and followed its lead, twisting and jerking to avoid incoming spells while flying toward the Tellask spellcasters at full speed. As powerful as the elves were, they struggled to keep up with modern jets moving faster than the speed of sound. Even if most of the coalition jets’ shots missed, the elves were left with no other option but to fill the air with enough spells to force the fighters to periodically back off.
Finally, one of the wyvern’s spellshields failed and 25 mm shells pounded up its side. Almost immediately, the creature screamed and began losing altitude. Then, without the fire support of their companion, the other three wyverns were shot down in short order. It took almost 12 F-35s and F-18s to bring the creatures down, but the coalition forces didn’t take any chances on the elves escaping. Only one of the wyverns even made it to the ground. The other three were blown apart by long-range missile fire once the beasts were injured and separated from the rest of the group.
The failed wyvern escape should have been the triumphant end of the battle, but the elves had other ideas. In the midst of the final battle to seize the rail guns, barrels of death bloom burst all around the void ship, inundating the battlefield with the spores. Imperial and coalition soldiers alike quickly succumbed to the weapon and began mindlessly attacking anything in sight. Dan hoped that the French soldiers had followed his advice and worn their hazardous material suits into battle.
Thousands of soldiers on both sides lost their lives to the gas before the coalition forces were able to don protective gear. The Imperials had no such equipment, instead universally succumbing to their masters’ biological attack. Even after the gas itself lost its efficacy, it still took the better part of a day to bring up the soldiers needed to clear the zombie-like husks from the landing site.
In the meantime, the United States’ attempts to seize Henry were going poorly. He sealed himself into his compound and periodically gave cryptic statements about how the United States government was leading the people astray. Knowing both participants in the argument, Dan wanted nothing to do with it. Really, his only interest in the dispute was the fact that apparently some of Henry’s security had access to what looked in news reports to be powered battle armor. Dan couldn’t help but wonder how useful that armor would have been to the Starshield candidates who didn’t survive the entire debacle in Brazil.
As best Dan could understand via the talking heads on television, the United States population was skeptical of the government’s claims regarding Ibis. The accusations were vague, and Henry had enough friends in the media to get his side out. Namely, that Henry was trying to research ways to use the aliens’ technology that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t make progress on. That all of the magic performed by Earth-born humans could be traced to Henry, and to a lesser extent, Dan.
It was fairly strange to see talk show hosts trying to opine on his life. Once Dan’s name was mentioned in conjunction with Ibis, he received some attention, but after Henry decided to resist arrest, the networks began researching him in earnest. It was only a matter of time before his ex-girlfriend, professors, and casual acquaintances from college began showing up on TV and talking about Dan like they were best friends.
Seeing his ex again hurt the hardest. Both her appearance and personality were almost exactly the same as when he had last seen her almost three years ago. She still smiled and complemented everyone while steering the conversation to the topics she actually wanted to talk about. Even the reporters were helpless before her, their interviews about Dan’s background rapidly turning into promotions for the private wealth management company she was apparently running now.
Dan managed to resist turning the scrying stone on her. It would have been as simple as changing his focus while using it, and he would have been able to listen in on her every conversation. Although part of him wanted to know how she was doing, Dan knew that pursuing the answer to that question would be immensely self-destructive.
Instead, he redoubled his training. He burned himself badly more than once trying to create the fire aura. Without the System healing him, learning the spell would have taken months at a minimum due to the delays necessitated by his recovery. Despite his advantages, the aura was still tricky to learn. The hardest part was finding a way to consistently layer fire around his body without letting it actually touch his skin. After all, his fire-resistance rune could help him with the residual heat from the spell, but literally setting himself on fire seemed to be a step too far.
The rest of the world seemed to settle into a holding pattern. The troops in the Amazon tried to clean out the last of the husks. The standoff at the Thoth Foundation continued unabated as the local police decided that starving Henry out was a better option than attacking the heavily-fortified compound. The station’s crew continued on performing their duties as if the station’s ownership had never changed. Jennifer trained her affinities and spells while occasionally sparring with Dan.
Before too long, Dan phased out watching television via the scrying stone entirely. If something major happened, either Jennifer or a crew member would contact him. Instead, he focused himself entirely on learning the new spell. Finally, after two weeks of nothing but practice, he finished the spell.
Well, Dan thought, looking at the pale orange flames licking up and down his arms. Maybe “finished” was a bit of a strong term. At the moment, he could only cover roughly a quarter of his body in what he believed to be fairly cool flames. The good news was that Dan had pretty decent control over the size and shape of the fire aura. It was far from perfect, but anyone approaching Dan at melee range would have to reckon with a decent portion of his body being on fire when they tried to strike him.
Dan was confident that eventually the spell would develop to the point where he could cover his entire body with it. It was just a matter of time and practice, but until then, the System recognized and saved the spell.
