The Siege Against Tolkeen

"Change it NOW!" screamed Jack Perrin, leveling the scepter at Shaard. There was fear and hate in the ice dragon's cold eyes, but also a feeling of victory. "Teleport us back to Tolkeen!"

"No. Even if I tried, the strain would probably tear me apart."

"Then it'll tear you apart, you son of a bitch. There are millions of people who die if we stay here."

"There is a dream that dies if we go back to Tolkeen."

"Your dream is already dead! No matter what happens here, Tolkeen is going to be burnt to the ground. Shaard, you've lost!"

Shaard chuckled. "If I'm the one who lost, then why are you begging me to save Chi-Town? No, this is a case where nobody's won. My dream is dead, but so are your people." The dragon now laughed, looking inhumanly pleased. "The difference is, I have thousands of years to create another dream. But I doubt that your little city will ever be rebuilt."

At that moment, an inhuman scream pierced the minds of all present. It was a horrible, terrifying sound, the kind of sound one would expect to hear only in a demon's nightmare. In Chi-Town and the surrounding Burbs, hundreds of people suddenly went mad. Fuel containers, missile silos, and many other explosive devices suddenly burst into flames. Psychics and Dog Boys writhed in pain, their minds invaded and attacked by the sound.

"Hear that?" asked Shaard. "That's the sound of a god dying. His death is inevitable at this point. As is the explosion that his final deathscream will produce."

The alien intelligence, which had been watching the proceedings cautiously, suddenly was filled with a deep and terrible rage. It lunged towards Shaard, knocking the dragon off of his feet. The two entities rolled around on the floor, shredding each other with fangs and claws. Jack Perrin, suddenly aware of the burning pain that was shooting through his arm, had a sudden epiphany.

"I know what to do, Shaard," he said grimly. "I don't know how to redirect the energy flowing through this scepter. I don't know how to shut the process down. But I do know how to get rid of this energy without destroying Chi-Town." He aimed the wand at the two wrestling monstrosities.

"Y-you can't!" shrieked Shaard. "You'll die!" The dragon, realizing the perils of his situation, tried to teleport to another dimension, but it was already too late.

"Yep," replied Perrin, as he began channeling the scepter's energy into a bolt of force. He felt the sheer power wrapping around him, simultaneously suffocating him in its burning embrace and sustaining him with cosmic might. His feet rose off of the ground for a moment, and every brittle object in the room suddenly shattered as if hit by a hammer. His arm trembled ferociously, as the scepter began bucking and shaking violently. When the vibrations had reached a fever pitch, Perrin let go.

A bolt of crackling, blue-white energy leapt out of the scepter, enveloping Shaard, the alien intelligence, and most of the room. It burnt straight through the stone walls, shooting onwards and onwards until it burst out the sides of the pyramid. Those on the streets of the Burbs, staring up at the floating structure, saw a beautiful and terrible display of pyrotechnics, as the beam of force consumed the floating structure from the inside out. Many of the Chi-Town troops flying around the pyramid, blasting away at it in vain, were consumed by the blue flames or crushed by flying chunks of rock.

Perrin was at the epicenter of the inferno. The flames crackled all around as he hovered in the air, staying mere inches away from his unprotected body. He was dying from the inside out, but felt strangely calm. His insides were melting, his nervous system was popping like a string of firecrackers, and his flesh was falling off of him. But the raging sensation of the magic, the screaming sounds and feelings and emotions that came with controlling the force of a hundred atomic bombs, was so much more powerful than the pain that the pilot felt little agony. He raised the scepter upwards, bringing the force to bear on the clouds of the heavens themselves.

The beam was more powerful now, unencumbered by the stone walls of the pyramid. The steady blue beam shot upwards, parting the clouds around Chi- Town. Pieces of rubble from the pyramid, from the Chi-Town walls, and from the surrounding Burbs flew up around it, forming a spiral pattern around the column of energy as they burned up. The crystals orbiting the pyramid, which held the dead alien intelligence, were burnt to cinders, and the limp bits of darkness within them disintegrated by the burning light. The pillar of blue flame shot through the skies, out of the atmosphere, and into the harsh vacuum of space itself. After a few minutes, the beam began to flicker, and then faded away to nothingness. The pyramid, now a blackened and broken structure, remained hovering over Chi-Town, held up by the last remnants of the energy.

Jack Perrin sat on the hot charcoal floor now, his power all but gone. He stared at the scepter intensely, his bleeding eyes still full of grim determination. He was using the magic to keep his organs together for just a few more minutes, using crude telekinetic commands to pinch his wounds closed, to squeeze just a few more moments of life out of his heart and lungs. The alien intelligence that had been fighting Shaard was dead now, shriveled up like a slug tossed into salt water. The ice dragon, now just a blackened hulk of bones and burnt flesh, still clung onto some measure of life. Shaard managed to push his body up for a moment, and looked up at Perrin. In their current condition, the man and the dragon looked rather similar.

"You're demons, you know that?" croaked out Shaard. "No mortal could have done that. Not many dragons either, probably. You humans... must be demons. All this time I thought I was fighting men... really fighting monsters. If only I'd known..." With that, the dragon slumped over and died.

Under Perrin's mental control, the ruined pyramid made a slow descent to Earth. It was a mentally taxing task, and one that the pilot was barely up to. The pain was beginning to set in now, and he was fighting a losing battle with consciousness. "Easy now," Perrin grunted, coughing up blood. "Didn't save city from explosion, just to get it killed from falling rocks. Come on, just a few seconds more, just a few seconds..."

Suddenly, he felt the jolt of the rocks he was sitting on landing against the ground. Relieved immensely, he dropped the scepter from nerveless hands, looked up at the city of Chi-Town, its walls standing like a great concrete monolith, and collapsed.

In the CS High Command chambers, onboard a Death's Head Transport fleeing Chi-Town, there was the sound of champagne bottles clinking. On dozens of television screens, they watched their victory. There were views of civilians from the Burbs walking amongst the wreckage, and of some of the HFA fighters who had emerged from the pyramid being given a hero's welcome. From inside Tolkeen itself, they saw soldiers rampaging through the city, looting, destroying, and venting their rage on the empty town. The fact that the city was so utterly deserted seemed unsettling, but the battle-weary soldiers shown on the screens seemed quite grateful for the lack of armed opponents.

In one corner of the room, Joseph Prosek II and some of his advisors were already working on the propaganda. They were selecting images to put on their posters, inspirational messages to work into the victory speeches, planning out the parades. In another corner of the room, Cabot, Underhill, and a few other of the Coalition's warlords were plotting out what do next, trying to figure out how quickly they could secure the area and how many troops would be freed up for the campaign against Tolkeen. Emperor Prosek himself sat in his throne, staring at the screens and feeling rather empty inside. He, above all the others, realized how close his empire had come to complete annihilation. How many others were there, in the pits of Atlantis or the cults of the Magic Zone, building pyramids of their own, super-weapons of their own? He feared that the number was more than he could count. Fear gripped the emperor of humanity, as he watched smoke rising from the rubble around his city.

In Lazlo, thousands of refugees wandered through the streets, looking for help, or lost loved ones, or simply a place to buy a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Cyber-knights had taken over much of the responsibility for these displaced souls, dispensing emergency supplies, food, and aid to whoever needed it. The streets were clogged with tents, vehicles, and people. On the outskirts of town, hundreds of buildings had arrived out of nowhere, and now needed connections for water, power, and other amenities. It was a busy, frightening, tiring day, but was pervaded by a sense of optimism. Many of the refugees had been forced to leave some material things behind, but they had their lives, their friends, and their families. This was still a crisis, to be sure, but there was a feeling that not only would Lazlo survive the crisis, it would be greatly strengthened by it.

"I managed to find a store where they still had some groceries left," said Lucius Mallen, as the Wolfen walked into the tent where he and his wife were staying. "You should have seen the prices, though. Anyone come by while I was out?"

"Sir Theodore popped in," she remarked, looking through his shopping bag. "He said he wanted your help putting up a shelter today."

"Yeah, I ran into him on the way in here. I figured I'd have a bit of lunch, and then go over and do some carpentry with him. The sooner we can get those communal barracks up, the sooner we can have a real roof over our heads. And this evening I'm going to see if I can find Pete Fransisco, and some of the other guys from the station."

"Don't get that shelter up too soon," his wife said slyly, taking groceries out of the bag. "I have to admit, it's nice and cozy in this little tent. Intimate... if you know what I mean."

"Why, you wild animal," he chuckled, embracing her in his fur-covered arms.

Next Chapter

By David Haendler.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 David Haendler. All Rights Reserved.

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