“That’s Gotter, Miss Koboi,” corrected the gnome, forgetting himself.
Opal’s stroking fingers froze, then gripped a handful of the silken cloak so tightly that it smoked. “Yes, Gotter. You shot my younger self?”
Gotter straightened. “Yes, miss, as ordered. Gave her a nice burial, like you said in the code.”
It occurred to Opal that this fairy would be a constant reminder that she had sacrificed her younger self for power.
“It is true that I ordered you to kill Opal the younger, but she was terrified, Gotter. I felt it.”
Gotter was perplexed. This day was not turning out at all as the gnome had imagined. He’d nurtured images of painted elfin warriors, their bone-spiked braids streaming behind them, but instead he was surrounded by human children and agitated wildlife.
“I don’t like those rabbits,” he blurted, possibly the most monumentally misjudged non sequitur of his life. “They look weird. Look at their vibrating ears.”
Opal did not feel that a person of her importance should have to deal with comments like these, and so she vaporized poor Gotter with a bolt of plasmic power, leaving nothing of the loyal gnome but a smear of blackish burn paste on the step. A poorly judged use of plasma as it turned out, because Opal certainly could have used a moment to fully charge up a second bolt to deal with the armored shuttle that suddenly appeared over the boundary wall. It was shielded, true; but Opal had enough dark magic in her to see to the heart of the shimmer before her. She reacted a little hastily and sent a weak bolt careering to the left, managing only to clip the engine housing and not engulf the entire craft. The errant magic flew wild, knocking a turret from the estate wall before collapsing into squibs that whizzed skyward.
Though the Cupid was merely clipped, the contact was sufficient to melt its rocket engine, disable its weapons, and send it into an earthbound nosedive that even the most skillful pilot would not have been able to soften.
More avatars for my soldiers, thought Opal, pulling the star cloak tight around her and skipping nimbly down the tower steps. She climbed the crater wall and followed the furrow plowed through the meadow by the mortally wounded shuttle. Her warriors were close behind, still half drunk on new sensations, tottering in their new bodies, trying to form words in unfamiliar throats.
Opal glanced overhead and saw three souls streaking toward the smoking craft, which had come to an awkward rest crammed into the lee of a boundary wall.
“Take them,” she called to the Berserkers. “My gift to you.”
Almost all of the Berserkers had been accommodated by this point and were stretching tendons with great relish, or scratching the earth beneath their paws, or sniffing at the evening musk. All were catered to except three laggardly souls who had resigned themselves to a resurrection spent cramped and embarrassed inside the bodies of ducklings, when these new hosts arrived inside the circle.
Two humans and a fairy. The Berserkers’ spirits lifted. Literally.
Inside the Cupid, it was Holly who’d fared best from the crash, though she had been closest to the impact. Faring best, however, is a relative term, and probably not the one Holly would have chosen to describe her condition.
I fared best, she would probably fail to say at the earliest opportunity. I only had a punctured lung and a snapped collarbone. You should have seen the other guys.
Luckily for Holly, absent friends once again contributed to her not being dead. Just as Foaly’s Sky Window bio-sensors had prevented a calamitous collision in the shuttleport, her close friend the warlock No1 had saved her with his own special brand of demon magic.
And how had he done this? It had happened two days previously over their weekly sim-coffee in Stirbox, a trendy java joint in the Jazz Quarter. No1 had been even more hyper than usual, due to the double-shot espresso that was coursing through his squat gray body. The runes that embossed his frame’s armor plating glowed with excess energy.
“I’m not supposed to have sim-coffee,” he confessed. “Qwan says it disturbs my chi.” The little demon winked, momentarily concealing one orange eye. “I could have told him that demons don’t have chi, we have qwa, but I don’t think he’s ready for that yet.”
Qwan was No1’s magical master, and so fond was the little demon of his teacher that he pretended not to have surpassed him years ago.
“And coffee is great for qwa. Makes it zing right along. I could probably turn a giraffe into a toad now if I felt like it. Though there would be a lot of excess skin left over. Mostly neck skin.”