Car Race, Skyship
The first of the nights's activities involved a thunderous race across the desert in an old jeep-like vehicle. Our Jeep was painted bright red. My navigator and mechanic kept changing from scene to scene. At one point on the trip we were zooming across a straight hunk of road that went from the horizon behind us to the horizon ahead of us. We were passing tanker trucks at over 120 MPH. We had to slow down next to one and refuel at one point. (AH and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about in drive refueling for the Hummer 2.) Then we were away into the off-road part of the race. A twisting turning climb up a mountain full of rocks. There was a path, but it was very twisty. You could cut off five or six miles by going off road. At least until you neared the boulders at the top of the mountain. I drove us up the side of the hill, barely keeping us upright. We missed the entrance to the boulder field, so I went around and we doubled back since the checkpoint was closer to the exit. Then we climbed out of the rocks and shot down the side of the hill, jumping over gullies and only taking the bits of road where they were actually headed in the direction we wanted to go.
This morning I was sailing a ship, two masts it looked like. T-Rex, a cat, was on the bow watching out over it for a place to land. I sailed over a city with all of its domes open, and castle like buildings high in the air. T found a landing spot just outside the city dome. I veered low over an ornate bulding and jumped over the gunwale, giving T instructions to stay with the ship. I had some sort of levitation belt that allowed me to land gently on the outer balcony of a large auditorium. I found from the first passerby I met that I was in a college hall dedicated to performing magic. No one was allowed in without magic abilities. "So, how did you get in?" was the question.
I'd flown in, of course. So that was how I'd answered. I followed a pretty blond woman into the amphitheater area where a couple of black haired Chinese looking 90 pound women were tied in the center of the lecture podium. The lesson was apparently to determin if one, or the other, or both, were evil. I couldn't help jumping into the conversation. I pointed out that holding these two against their will, without cause, made the question of whether they were good or evil moot. The whole situation had to be tainted with evil intent, so would cloud what ever detection magic you might use.
The professor didn't like what I had to say and asked his class to turn their detection spells on me. He's not magic I heard more than one of them say. While they were doing their incantations and zapping me with their wands to see how I would react. I made my way over to the twins. I could see now by their dark maroon irises that they were natives, (their race had lain in dormancy in a kind of suspended form, waiting for life to find them and rescue them. They were a kind of chameleons life form that was able to sample the DNA of the life forms that were smart enough to open their containers, and then to be reborn in our image, mostly. They were all able to funnel and use magic, and were able to teach a small and rare part of humanity the same ability. They were other, and different from us, making them suspect. We had eventually driven them out for "unnatural" uses of magic. I asked if they would like to get out of here.
They nodded enthusiastically, "but what if we are evil" one of them asked. I looked into her eyes. I knew immediately why they were in the position they were in. Sexual magic was considered evil. I turned to the professor. By your definition they would be considered evil. So I think I should get them out of here before they corrupt your impressionable students.
"How can you do that, you've no magic yourself."
"True, but I do have this." I drew a stun pistol, and a knife from my waistband. I cut through the silver chains binding the two elflike women. They stepped free. On of them thanked me, "that was magic, wasn't it." It was, but of the smallest variety, in fact, unless I was actively using it, no one but a master could detect it.
"Hold a moment!" the professor shouted to his students. "Who enchanted that blade for you?" he spoke to his students, still not willing to believe that someone without a magic aura could do so.
"What enchantment?" I tossed the knife hilt first to him.
He scanned it, looking through it to the members of his class who'd grown silent and slightly afraid, most of them having noticed the stunner. I felt the tug of a couple trying to disarm me. I looked at them and shook my finger at them. "Naughty, naughty." I resisted the urge to stun them.
The air pressure changed slightly. I felt a familiar ripple up my spine. I activated the belt and shot up into the sky. "Leave them alone" I sent on a silver thread of magic to the mind of the professor. Before breaking the link I felt his stunned suprise at my ability to speak to him that way. I could hear him telling his students why they couldn't tell I was magic.
I looked out over the city. In the distance I could see jet black clouds forming. I could see the zipper seems lacing them together I could hear in my mind the cloud zippers binding back the wild energies that flowed in those clouds. I also knew that my presense and the unleashing of the two captives had drawn it to this city. The planet protecting its own. I freefell to the last 20 feet then decelerated sharply. "Zipper clouds, headed for the city. Get your college under cover, you've got less time than you think. "Does any one wish to go with me?" I was really asking the former captives, who I knew would agree, but was hoping to get a couple of the cuter students to come along. Only the blond who'd first found me and the dark eyed teaching assistant volunteered. We raced out of the building. "Why don't we just fly away?" the blonde asked.
"The zipper clouds are nearly on us."
"That would draw them here faster," added one of the elfish twins. Her voice would make any mages's heart melt.
"They've enchanted you to rescue them." accused the TA. I turned to watch her bounce along as we ran.
"I planned to rescue them as soon as I saw them. You're the one's who are enchanted."
The twins gasped, wondering how I'd known that. They released their enchantments simultaneously. The women stopped running and looked back to the college. The dome was already rising over it as the campus dropped simultaneously into the red earth. A group of other citizens were running for the docks as well.
"Take us with you, we can't get back to cover." I wondered why the alarms had not sounded. Just then they did. Anyone could see the zippers beginning to rise into the sky. I shouted to T-Rex to "Heat her up, fire warnings across the other's bows." Lightning ripped from the four cannons hidden in the bow of my little ship. I accessed the radios of the twenty or so vessels preparing to bolt from the sky harbor. "You will take on passengers to your limit, or you will weather the storm on the ground." I sent to them all. A mages pleasure yacht attempted to make a break for it. I grabbed on of the rising zippers and yanked it open on myself. There were shouts from the ground, the twins leapt up into the air after my, trying to save me. Lighting poured out of the zipper, trapped in a bell shape around me, I rocket higher into the sky. The mage was standing on the back of his yacht, holding a shield. He was the only one aboard. Greedy bastard, I yelled at him, then grounded his boat and stripped away his shield. He whimpered as I floated above him lighting still arching around me in the shape of the scarlet sky dragons that would accompany the real zipper storm when it got here. The other vessels lowered their gang planks and ropes. I harnessed the lighting, instantly allowing the captains to volunteer how many they would take, and then sending guides out to the closest ones.
Many of the captains had under stated their capacity, I let them know I knew, but told them it would be enough. "I'll be leaving last, anyone who can't wait, choose another guide and go."
T-Rex started mouthing off about it. Soon everyone was loaded and the ground had released a couple more zippers. I rounded them up to me. T-Rex howled instructions to the people on board, but only the twins responded, working very hard to raise the sails and push out the lift rods. My boat climbed into the sky next to me. I bound the zipper dragons to the hull.
"Isn't that dangerous."
"Completely." I told the TA.
"I should have chosen another ship." she sat down against the wheel house and covered her head with her arms. In contrast the blonde was hanging over the rail watching the captive dragon coil angrily about the hull. Several of the other passengers joined her.
"I'd lean back here, they can take your head off still." Everyone jumped back to the center of the ship.
As we climbed into the air, the black zipper clouds began to bear down on the city. I had never seen them move so fast. The twins must have been very powerful to warrant that attention. Then I saw what was attracting them. One of the City's domes had failed a third of the way closed. The residents were frantically trying to use magic to force it closed and to set up a barrier. It was not going to work, it would cause the clouds to focus on returning the magic to its natural state.
"T-Rex, take us to the other side of the dome." He chirruped in question. "A hundred thousand of them, twelve of us." I stood out over the bowsprit as we crossed the dome.
I shot the lightning down into the dome, shattering the lifting spells, finding the problem, blasting it. There would have to be major repairs to open the dome when this was over. I used the power of the zipper dragons to tear down the protective spells, they liked that. Then told the citizens to lower the dome all the way and bring it back up again. The thirty foot thick stone dome began to drop back into the ground. "No more Magic, it draws them." My captive Zipper Dragons flashed through the sky as testament. We continued to the other side of the city, several of my passengers baled out. Trusting that the city would now be safe. The students and a couple of others stayed with me. I'm not sure why. I looked at the twins, they just shrugged their heads and signaled that it wasn't them.
T-Rex sat at the bow, hissing and growling, very unhappy about the coarse we were on. I released the Zipper Dragons with thanks. They made for a moment like they were coming back to us, but everyone had their magic shut down to almost nothing, and I still had the zipper lightning arching around me. I planned to try to distract the zipper storm from the city by making hundreds of little spell domes in the desert. I knew I couldn't get the storm to spend all of its fury on the distraction. I just hoped it would be enough to allow the dome behind us to close all the way.
Oh, Yeah, and this:
This morning I was sailing a ship, two masts it looked like. T-Rex, a cat, was on the bow watching out over it for a place to land. I sailed over a city with all of its domes open, and castle like buildings high in the air. T found a landing spot just outside the city dome. I veered low over an ornate bulding and jumped over the gunwale, giving T instructions to stay with the ship. I had some sort of levitation belt that allowed me to land gently on the outer balcony of a large auditorium. I found from the first passerby I met that I was in a college hall dedicated to performing magic. No one was allowed in without magic abilities. "So, how did you get in?" was the question.
I'd flown in, of course. So that was how I'd answered. I followed a pretty blond woman into the amphitheater area where a couple of black haired Chinese looking 90 pound women were tied in the center of the lecture podium. The lesson was apparently to determin if one, or the other, or both, were evil. I couldn't help jumping into the conversation. I pointed out that holding these two against their will, without cause, made the question of whether they were good or evil moot. The whole situation had to be tainted with evil intent, so would cloud what ever detection magic you might use.
The professor didn't like what I had to say and asked his class to turn their detection spells on me. He's not magic I heard more than one of them say. While they were doing their incantations and zapping me with their wands to see how I would react. I made my way over to the twins. I could see now by their dark maroon irises that they were natives, (their race had lain in dormancy in a kind of suspended form, waiting for life to find them and rescue them. They were a kind of chameleons life form that was able to sample the DNA of the life forms that were smart enough to open their containers, and then to be reborn in our image, mostly. They were all able to funnel and use magic, and were able to teach a small and rare part of humanity the same ability. They were other, and different from us, making them suspect. We had eventually driven them out for "unnatural" uses of magic. I asked if they would like to get out of here.
They nodded enthusiastically, "but what if we are evil" one of them asked. I looked into her eyes. I knew immediately why they were in the position they were in. Sexual magic was considered evil. I turned to the professor. By your definition they would be considered evil. So I think I should get them out of here before they corrupt your impressionable students.
"How can you do that, you've no magic yourself."
"True, but I do have this." I drew a stun pistol, and a knife from my waistband. I cut through the silver chains binding the two elflike women. They stepped free. On of them thanked me, "that was magic, wasn't it." It was, but of the smallest variety, in fact, unless I was actively using it, no one but a master could detect it.
"Hold a moment!" the professor shouted to his students. "Who enchanted that blade for you?" he spoke to his students, still not willing to believe that someone without a magic aura could do so.
"What enchantment?" I tossed the knife hilt first to him.
He scanned it, looking through it to the members of his class who'd grown silent and slightly afraid, most of them having noticed the stunner. I felt the tug of a couple trying to disarm me. I looked at them and shook my finger at them. "Naughty, naughty." I resisted the urge to stun them.
The air pressure changed slightly. I felt a familiar ripple up my spine. I activated the belt and shot up into the sky. "Leave them alone" I sent on a silver thread of magic to the mind of the professor. Before breaking the link I felt his stunned suprise at my ability to speak to him that way. I could hear him telling his students why they couldn't tell I was magic.
I looked out over the city. In the distance I could see jet black clouds forming. I could see the zipper seems lacing them together I could hear in my mind the cloud zippers binding back the wild energies that flowed in those clouds. I also knew that my presense and the unleashing of the two captives had drawn it to this city. The planet protecting its own. I freefell to the last 20 feet then decelerated sharply. "Zipper clouds, headed for the city. Get your college under cover, you've got less time than you think. "Does any one wish to go with me?" I was really asking the former captives, who I knew would agree, but was hoping to get a couple of the cuter students to come along. Only the blond who'd first found me and the dark eyed teaching assistant volunteered. We raced out of the building. "Why don't we just fly away?" the blonde asked.
"The zipper clouds are nearly on us."
"That would draw them here faster," added one of the elfish twins. Her voice would make any mages's heart melt.
"They've enchanted you to rescue them." accused the TA. I turned to watch her bounce along as we ran.
"I planned to rescue them as soon as I saw them. You're the one's who are enchanted."
The twins gasped, wondering how I'd known that. They released their enchantments simultaneously. The women stopped running and looked back to the college. The dome was already rising over it as the campus dropped simultaneously into the red earth. A group of other citizens were running for the docks as well.
"Take us with you, we can't get back to cover." I wondered why the alarms had not sounded. Just then they did. Anyone could see the zippers beginning to rise into the sky. I shouted to T-Rex to "Heat her up, fire warnings across the other's bows." Lightning ripped from the four cannons hidden in the bow of my little ship. I accessed the radios of the twenty or so vessels preparing to bolt from the sky harbor. "You will take on passengers to your limit, or you will weather the storm on the ground." I sent to them all. A mages pleasure yacht attempted to make a break for it. I grabbed on of the rising zippers and yanked it open on myself. There were shouts from the ground, the twins leapt up into the air after my, trying to save me. Lighting poured out of the zipper, trapped in a bell shape around me, I rocket higher into the sky. The mage was standing on the back of his yacht, holding a shield. He was the only one aboard. Greedy bastard, I yelled at him, then grounded his boat and stripped away his shield. He whimpered as I floated above him lighting still arching around me in the shape of the scarlet sky dragons that would accompany the real zipper storm when it got here. The other vessels lowered their gang planks and ropes. I harnessed the lighting, instantly allowing the captains to volunteer how many they would take, and then sending guides out to the closest ones.
Many of the captains had under stated their capacity, I let them know I knew, but told them it would be enough. "I'll be leaving last, anyone who can't wait, choose another guide and go."
T-Rex started mouthing off about it. Soon everyone was loaded and the ground had released a couple more zippers. I rounded them up to me. T-Rex howled instructions to the people on board, but only the twins responded, working very hard to raise the sails and push out the lift rods. My boat climbed into the sky next to me. I bound the zipper dragons to the hull.
"Isn't that dangerous."
"Completely." I told the TA.
"I should have chosen another ship." she sat down against the wheel house and covered her head with her arms. In contrast the blonde was hanging over the rail watching the captive dragon coil angrily about the hull. Several of the other passengers joined her.
"I'd lean back here, they can take your head off still." Everyone jumped back to the center of the ship.
As we climbed into the air, the black zipper clouds began to bear down on the city. I had never seen them move so fast. The twins must have been very powerful to warrant that attention. Then I saw what was attracting them. One of the City's domes had failed a third of the way closed. The residents were frantically trying to use magic to force it closed and to set up a barrier. It was not going to work, it would cause the clouds to focus on returning the magic to its natural state.
"T-Rex, take us to the other side of the dome." He chirruped in question. "A hundred thousand of them, twelve of us." I stood out over the bowsprit as we crossed the dome.
I shot the lightning down into the dome, shattering the lifting spells, finding the problem, blasting it. There would have to be major repairs to open the dome when this was over. I used the power of the zipper dragons to tear down the protective spells, they liked that. Then told the citizens to lower the dome all the way and bring it back up again. The thirty foot thick stone dome began to drop back into the ground. "No more Magic, it draws them." My captive Zipper Dragons flashed through the sky as testament. We continued to the other side of the city, several of my passengers baled out. Trusting that the city would now be safe. The students and a couple of others stayed with me. I'm not sure why. I looked at the twins, they just shrugged their heads and signaled that it wasn't them.
T-Rex sat at the bow, hissing and growling, very unhappy about the coarse we were on. I released the Zipper Dragons with thanks. They made for a moment like they were coming back to us, but everyone had their magic shut down to almost nothing, and I still had the zipper lightning arching around me. I planned to try to distract the zipper storm from the city by making hundreds of little spell domes in the desert. I knew I couldn't get the storm to spend all of its fury on the distraction. I just hoped it would be enough to allow the dome behind us to close all the way.
Oh, Yeah, and this:
posted by Fermius Firefly | 2:17 PM
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