After the evening meal, I begged, pleaded, and
generally bugged the snot out of Julian until he agreed to take me for a spin
in his “whizzer.”
A whizzer was basically like a personal airship. It
was tub-shaped with two pairs of insect-like wings. The “cockpit” had a series
of confusing and complicated buttons, knobs, levers, wheels, and assorted
gauges. With three pairs of landing gear, it looked like a giant metal bug.
When I mentioned as much to Julian, the elf laughed
and replied, “Insects were our inspiration. When desiring to fly, it is best to
copy something that already works.”
I clambered in behind Julian. That was no easy
task, as the whizzer was made for fey folk, not lanky college kids. My knees
were a bit cramped, but I was determined to fly in that thing.
As I pulled my goggles over my eyes, Julian started
up his whizzer. The wings buzzed to life, and began to beat. The whizzer
crouched, then fully extended its landing gear. We vaulted over the side of
Tyren’s airship.
I let out a yell—not a scream, mind you, I’m far
more manly than that—as we plummeted. At first I thought the elf had lost
control of his little contraption. Then over my own screams—er, yells—I heard
him laughing. Julian pulled up, and we leveled out. I was left gasping and
giggling from the adrenaline. Julian had done that simply to freak me out. I
would never have guessed he had a mischievous side.
We zipped around, diving in and out of clouds.
Julian seemed to think the most exciting thing ever was to suddenly steer the
contraption into a nose dive, then pull up when I thought I was about to die.
He even threw in a few loops that freaked me out, until I realized that the
laws of physics would keep me from becoming the next splat on the roads bellow.
As we whizzed around, I understood the origin of
the little airship’s name. It sounded and moved like an overgrown bee. It also
made a “whizz!” sound as we darted in and out of cloud banks.
Just as I finished musing on the noise of the
whizzer, I noticed something in the distance. It was small and red. I couldn’t
think off the top of my head of any red birds of this size. Unless it was a
dragon—which I highly doubted—we could be flying straight at trouble.
“Hey, Julian,” I yelled over the little airship’s
engine. “What’s that?”
The elf muttered something that I couldn’t
understand. Then, louder, he yelled, “It would appear to be a demon. Odd that
one would be out so early—it’s not quite fully dark. Light drains their energy,
you know.”
This was so not the time for a detailed musing on
why a demon would be out before nightfall. “What happens if he sees the airships?”
I yelled back.
“We would have a serious issue on our hands.”
“Does this thing have weapons?”
“What?”
“Does it have guns? Like, something that shoots
magic blasts, or lasers or something?” I mean, I’d even take good, old,
bullet-shooting guns.
“No!”
“Bow and arrows?”
“You will have to shoot him down with magic!”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was reminded of my failed
attempt at shooting with Tatiana. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn
standing still on terra firma. How the blinking silver was I supposed to hit a
small moving target while flying in a giant clockwork bug? Besides, what was I
supposed to hit it with? The demons with wings were a powerful lot. I couldn’t
just shoot my usual energy blast at it.
While I contemplated my inability to hit the demon,
we were getting closer to it. In a matter of seconds, our game of chicken would
come to a head. Literally. This was not good. I was gonna die.
Julian’s voice snapped my mind out of freak-out
mode. “Hit it as it passes us!”
“With what?!” I screamed back.
“Sai tells me you are proficient with light! Use
that!”
I charged up some light. It glowed light blue
around my hand. As I focused on increasing it, it grew bigger and brighter.
“Now, M.C.!”
I looked up just in time to see the demon shoot
past us. The demon was not like the others I had seen. It had a tangle of red
hair and slimmer features. It also wore a shirt. In the shock of releasing it
was a female demon, I sort of forgot to fire my light ball at it.
Julian called something over his shoulder as he
turned the whizzer to pursue the she-demon, but it was lost in the wind. I
could not believe I had not only missed the demon, but I hadn’t even thrown any
magic at her. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Sai’s words echoed in my mind, “A distracted mage
is a dead mage. Focus, Mikhial Constantine!”
So, I did.
At Julian’s, “Here she comes again!” my head jerked
up. I focused on the demon, waiting until she was close. I would have a split
second to hit her with light as she shot past, but I trusted my reflexes better
than I trusted my aim.
The demon barreled towards us. She, too, held a
ball of energy in her talons. This would be like an old western shoot out. I
locked my eyes on the demons freaky red ones. My fingers twitched, ready to
hurl the ball of light at her.
As she came nearly abreast of Julian’s whizzer, I
flung the light at her. I was rewarded by a shriek. She hung suspended in air
for a second, then plummeted towards earth. Remembering Tyren’s dislike of
leaving bodies to be found by humans, I snapped. The demon’s corpse was
devoured in flames before it even hit the ground.
Julian returned his whizzer to the deck of Dragon Wing. As the six landing gear
touched down, Tyren, Tatiana, Sai, and Noddah all rushed over to us. My dragon
settled on my head and looked into my face. “You okays, Emmy?”
“We saw the flashes of light. What happened?” Tyren
asked.
Before I could give her a guilty look, Julian spoke
up. “Oh, we ran into a demon. But, fear not, combine M.C.’s skill with light
and mine with flying, the she-demon was no match for us.”
I blushed slightly. The elf didn’t seem to think it
important that I froze up. I gave him a grateful smile. To my delight, Julian
winked back at me. I think our little adventure secured me another good friend.
Well, one that liked the mage heir me, anyway.
Sai smiled. “Naturally. M.C. can do anything that
he puts his mind to and focuses on.”
I stared at my Oriental Dr. Frankenstein. How on
earth had he known that? Was he just guessing? I guess I’ll never really know.
“A she-demon? A scout?” This was all lost on Tyren.
“Most likely. However, I don’t think she was
looking for us. She seemed as surprised to see us as we did to see her.”
As Tyren and Julian discussed the military
implications of the demon, I punched Tatiana lightly on the arm. “That was fun.
You should try it sometime.”
“I’d rather turn into a vampire.”
“Yikes, that bad, huh?”
She smiled slightly.
I frowned. “What’s up? You seem kinda down.”
She shrugged. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Oh, come one. Don’t clam up on me now. What’s
wrong?”
She shrugged again. “Oh, it’s just that I thought
with the vampire heir with us, maybe we could get somewhere in this war, but
now…” She trailed off and stared at her feet.
“You were thinking that with Gordon with us, you
could do something about your parents,” I murmured.
Sighing, she nodded. “And now—“ she gestured
vaguely around her. “—now we have no blood-sucking heir and no proper base.
It’s useless. With him on their side, we’re only going to slip further into the
hole they’re burying us in.”
“Whoa, whoa!” I put my hand on her shoulder. “Look,
Tati, just because that garlic-munching good-for-nothing betrayed us doesn’t
mean it’s the end of the world. We still have you, me, Julian, Sai, and Tyren.”
The dragon curled up in my hair snorted smoke. “And Noddah,” I amended.
“Anyway, who needs that loser? We can defeat those jerk-faces without him. He
would just slow us down.” I had no dramatic way to end my pep-talk-speech-thing,
so I used the universal werewolf fall-back. “Let’s kick some butt and deal out
some punishment!”
Tatiana grinned. “Thanks for cheering me up, M.C.”
“Yeah, no prob. What are friends for, anyway?”
“To cover your back when your whizzer has no guns,
obviously.”
I grinned at Julian. “And thank you for believing
in me.”
The elf smiled, green eyes sparkling. “You betcha,
as Tatiana would say. Anytime you would like another ride, let me know.”
Sai’s eyes twinkled in the darkening night. “I
think this is all the fun Mikhial Constantine can handle for one visit.”
True enough. I was exhausted. Quickly, I bid
farewell to my friends. Holding Noddah in my arms, I began thinking of home.
The blue lights whizzed around me, and the airship vanished. Once again, I
stood in my dorm room. I sighed. School. I needed a break from my exciting
life.
------
Sorry it's late. It's been a crazy week.
In other news, I need a whizzer. Yes, yes I do.
Have a great week!
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