The Isle of Magic

by SwordTune

Wild Raids

The loyal clans of the Kingdom of Water are the source of its power. We rely on their lands for growing kith, and we must do everything in our power to maintain the peace.

~ King Aquablue "The Mad"

Waeve River slunk through the cracks in the ground that snaked up the cliffside to the Mistforms' territory. They were devout loyalists to the Sea Throne, and as such, it was the responsibility of the Waterforms to keep them safe. A few hundred other soldiers moved with him up to the foggy plateau that the Mistforms used to create their young. The mist was unlike anything else of the Isle.

Icy clouds from the distant mountain peaks carried cold winds to their land, warming up and turning snow into light showers and fog. The ice was frozen black water, filled with enough life energy to fertilize the valleys below the Mistforms' plateau.

They were on the watch for Blooders, bizarrely violent ponies to the east whose bodies were made from the blood of other animals. They, who were always in conflict with giant beasts for their blood, did not have fertile land, nor did they have much black water to speak of. That made the Blooders desperate for kith sap from neighbouring clans.

Waeve reformed at the top of the plateau, waiting for his fellow soldiers to arrive. As a scout, he was used to leaving the main force behind, but today every pony had been given orders not to break away from the primary formation.

"I hate this place," said another scout, Shellfome, as he reformed from a split in the ground. "It makes me feel weird."

"Why's that?" he asked.

"Mistforms make themselves from mist, don't they?" Shellfome waved a leg around in the air. "This place is full of fog! I feel like I could be walking through some pony's body."

"If it keeps you on your hooves, I don't see the problem."

Waeve slunk low along the ground, coming up to a tree growing from an outcropping of rock. The black water that had pooled under the large stone and created a place where life could thrive. Dipped himself into the blackened, fertile soil, letting his body melt into the tree's roots. He felt its water channels dragging him up, stretching him to every leaf and branch, and it took a strong will to not let its natural forces pull him apart.

He reformed himself at the highest branch that could support his weight, looking off the edge to try and see a little further. The small, beady crystals of ice that made up his pupils worked hard to cut through the fog. He knew there had to be Blooders. The fact that there was a tree, one not replaced by a kith tree, was a sign that the area had been abandoned generations ago, long before the war with the other kingdoms officially began.

And finally, in the distance behind a low-sitting bush, he spotted a flicker of red. Waeve waved to the other scouts, sending silent signals by hoof to relay the enemy position.

Rendevous point, 9 miles, reminded another scout in the tree across from him.

Their job was not to engage in open skirmishing, but to reach the Mistform village at the centre of the plateau. They needed to move unseen until they reached a defensible position.

Hammerhead advance, ordered the commander of the two companies. A standard formation for an open landscape like the plateau, First Company would make a defensive line in the front, covering more ground it identify threats. Second Company stayed in the centre, able to reinforce any part of the front and offer additional fighting strength.

But, as a scout, Waeve's duty was to alert First Company about anything he saw. In the dense fog that the Mistforms loved to live in, that knowledge was essential.

He descended from the tree and hurried ahead, keeping his body flat to the ground as a slithering sliver of water. He reformed behind a boulder and checked around him. The red speck in the fog was still there, but it had moved away as well. The question was whether it was running away, or retreating to a larger group.

Blooder scout, left flank, he relayed with a hoof signal. He waited until he received the acknowledging hoof signal and then pressed forward.

The light shafts shining through the fog helped pick out distant movement. Still rising, the sun cast long beams of light that flickered every time something ahead passed through them. Waeve counted the movements, reporting at least six enemies, all larger and faster than the average Blooder.

One of the other scouts hurried up to Waeve. "You think they'll attack us?"

Waeve frowned at him. "You're asking this now? You should be at the left end of the formation."

"But I can't see anything," he replied. "I came to check what you've been seeing."

Waeve shoved him off. "First Company needs to know our information, we can't swap around enemy movements and confuse them. Now go do your job."

"I-"

An explosion erupted from the left flank of the formation. Through the dense fog, Waeve could see the rose-petal red flickering through the air. A Blooder had taken his own life, releasing the magic in his body and splattering the blood that made up his body into a fine mist.

"Oh no," panicked the scout, running back to his position.

Waeve kept his guard up, peering across the plateau for more attacks. By now the army was probably shuffling its forces, engaging the enemy. He couldn't make out details from his position, but that wasn't relevant. He had to hold his ground now and call out any other enemy movements.

He tightened his hoof and charged a heavy droplet with magic. Silent signals weren't going to get the message across in the middle of battle. The protocol was to send out a flare to warn others about incoming danger.

"What are you standing around for?" Another scout, Coldflow, crossed over to his area. "They split the army in half, we need to reinforce them."

"That's not our job," replied Waeve. "Watch for more hostiles, that's what we do."

"There's no way the Blooders have more troops," he snapped. "Protocol doesn't plan for situations like this."

"I'm not going," Waeve insisted. "We have positions for a reason. We have to trust our formation."

"Stubborn ass," cursed Coldflow, leaving him to run toward the fighting, like many others were.

They were falling out of position now, helping the First Company surround the Blooders, trapping them from the outside while the Second Company engaged them inside the formation. But scouts were few, no more than two dozen of them. In a skirmish of a few hundred, what help were they?

He almost got distracted in his conflict to stay or join. In the corner of his vision, he spotted more movement. Large, but not slow, they moved like nothing he had ever seen before. At the very least, he had read about them in basic training.

Stonehounds, their large, beady-eyed fanged heads were double the size of their body, their bite big enough to swallow a Waterform whole. There was a lot of them.

And they were charging from the inner plateau. Without hesitation, Waeve swung up his hoof and let his orb of magic and water shoot up and explode. He felt the force of the blow from the ground and the light from the magic lit up the fog-covered sky as if a star had been pulled down from the heavens.

What should have been ample of time to react, however, was useless when his fellow scouts failed to relay the warning to the right flank of the army. Where the battlefield was darkest, that was where the Stonehounds struck, tearing up their ranks and turning Waterforms into dead mist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waeve kept marching ahead, sticking close to any cracks in the ground that he could hide in if the enemy came. A number of other scouts that had been at the edge of the battle also made it out with him, following close behind with unnerved eyes.

Their little lights of magic-filled water wiggled about in their aqueous heads, flicking from rock to rock as if any of them could be a stonehound. Which, strictly speaking, was possible, even if unlikely.

"Is it dangerous?" asked a young scout. Diz Oliver was his name, or it was close to that at least.

Waeve shook his head and crept out behind the tree where they had taken cover to pick the next spot. A boulder, three times their height, looked good enough. He waved them forward as he skirted along the ground in a stream-like fashion.

"We should be heading back to the staging ground," Shellfome said. "Away from the Mistform village, where the reserve guard is waiting. You know, reinforcements!"

"Forty more soldiers who've never seen combat won't change the situation," Waeve replied.

Shellfome wanted to protest more but Waeve was already drifting ahead to the next tree. As far as he could see, the village just a mile ahead was empty of enemies, both Blooders and their stonehounds. But what concerned him was the lack of Mistforms as well.

The village was a small hillock in the centre of the rocky plateau, an artificial hillock, four miles in radius. According to Mistform myth, their kind descended from Waterforms, moving away from the northern shore in search of rich soil to grow their kith.

Instead, they found a rocky landscape, consolidated all the soil they could into one mound, and settled there. Underneath them was a source of magic, a secret only the King and his court was privy too. All Waeve knew growing up was that the Mistforms were valuable assets to the Kingdom of Water, and that's all he needed to know.

He signalled Diz to circle to the right with five other scouts. He took the other six and crept slowly, but directly, toward the village.

It was hard to discern buildings from the ground. Mistform culture believed that soil was the most sacred thing in nature, even more than black water or kith sap. The made their homes out of the dirt, creating little mounds that could only be accessed by their kind's ability to seep through almost any permeable surface.

"If the Blooders killed them, do you think we could be headed for an ambush?" Shellfome's surface bristled at every sound they made. The fact that the only thing he could hear was his own steps brushing across the grass put his senses on edge.

"Only Mistforms can go in and out of their homes through the soil." Waeve pointed around them. "Unless we see holes in the mounds, the Blooders can't be here. And you can forget about the stonehounds, we'd be able to see those massive things coming."

The only visible structures above the soil were the pulleys that burrowed into the body of the plateau. The assets of the Mistforms. There, around the stone base of the structure, were buckets of a kind of crystal. They glowed mostly yellow, though a few were clear white or red.

"Think they're down there?" Shellfome asked.

"Possible." Waeve turned around to where Diz and his scouts were coming, galloping quickly to reach him.

"We came across a crater on our way here," he said, pointing back. "From the looks of it, it was a house that was dug up."

"Sounds like stonehounds at work." Shellfome looked back the way they came as if worried they'd have no way to escape.

Waeve nodded, then picked up a few samples of the crystals. They were too dense to simply float in his body, so he loaded them into a bucket and set it on his back. The military was not in the know of what the Mistforms offered to the kingdom, but if they wanted to succeed here, there was no choice but to bring it back to their staging grounds and figure out what their enemies wanted.

They turned around a mound of soil to find the crater Diz mentioned right at their hooves. Tucked between other mounds of soil like a valley between mountains, the crater was invisible almost invisible to anyone just passing by, despite being enough to hold a small army of Blooders.

But the camps set around the crater hinted at another group instead. Blooders, like all other ponies, had no need for campfires to cook food supplies. Stonehounds also didn't need tools like shovels to do their work. Neither of them needed to drink water, either. But those things were plentiful inside the crater.

Waeve slid down and examined the first firepit he saw. Leaves piled into beds and chairs had shovels next to them, the tools of the Breezies who slept in them.

"The Blooders were running away when they met us," he realized. "Breezies ambushed them here, drove them out, and harvested anything they could find."

"They couldn't have gotten all the Mistforms," Shellfome said, looking at a long tubular object that laid by the charred ashes of the campfire. Going by many names, the instrument doubled as a weapon that let the Breezies harvest magic directly from a pony's body.

Waeve frowned and kicked it away when he noticed it too. Breezies were not like any other creature on the Isle. They weren't made of magic, even though they could eat kith sap for its magical powers. They preyed on living things like trees, plants, mushrooms, and even other fleshy animals like them, using up precious life to sustain their own.

But to have crept so close to the Kingdom of Water was not expected. The Blooders were at constant war with the Breezies, since their kind was made from the blood of fleshy animals. The King allowed their little raids with the other clans for the simple fact that Blooders were the only ones who were keeping the Breezies from attacking the other kingdoms.

"We're going back," Waeve decided, finally. "We can't do much with just the twelve of us. Besides, General Rapids probably wants to know that there are Breezie attacks within our borders."

"About damn time," Shellfome sighed. "First sane thing you've said so far. Let's go."

He turned and started climbing out of the crater when a spear of blood burst through his back. More followed, weapons made from the bodies of Blooders, captured and contorted into violent shapes.

"Move!" yelled Waeve, pushing Diz up the way they came. The Breezies started to emerge from the ground. Short things about half Waeve's height, they made up for their stature with their swarm.

The camps weren't abandoned at all, they dug trenches and buried themselves in the soil to hide. Waeve covered the other scouts as they escaped over the cusp of the crater. He picked up a pot of water from the nearest campfire and splashed it onto the dirt. With a burst of magic from his hoof, the mud grew up into a wall, breaking the line of sight.

"Get Shell up!" he shouted to the scouts, who were still covering their heads from the spears launched at them. They tried, but his body had already been mixed with the spear's blood. Contaminated, his energy was too conflicted with the remains of the Blooder to make a cohesive body, and he began to sputter out into the dirt, nothing but a puddle.

Waeve moved back and started up the crater as well. "Damn it, Shell," he passed him by. It took hours to purify a body back to a healthy state, but they didn't have a minute more to spare.

More Breezies were flanking them, throwing dry material like dirt and sand from slingshots to slow them down. One scout took too many hits and fell apart into water before his body to form back together, and others were already limping with muddy limbs.

"Diz!" Waeve shouted while he condensed the mist around them into a thin barrier of water. "You're the fasted runner we have. Run back to base and tell them the Mistforms were taken by Breezies."

"Sir, there's no way out," cried the young scout.

"We'll cover you," he replied, turning to the rest of the scouts. "Whatever you do, make sure this stallion gets out of here alive. We have to get the message across."

"I can't ask them to die for me," Diz protest was cut short as he flattened out to duck from a ball of soil.

"You're not," Waeve pushed him ahead, moving the scouts to safety behind a stumpy hill. "I'm asking them to. Now run before we all die for nothing."

"We got this Diz!" shouted another scout, throwing out a ball of water charged with his own magic. "I'll get you a souvenir, don't worry."

Breezies approaching, Diz nodded to Waeve and split from the group. He kept low, slithering along the ground like a piece of a river. The scouts covered his path, throwing out droplets from their own bodies to catch the spears and dry soil that went his way.

They took a position on a hillock with a few bushes on it as cover. Behind them, Diz ran like hail in a storm. Their enemy, numerous and unrelenting, pressed ground and moved closer to their position. Even behind the bushes, Waeve felt his shoulder and leg drying up from the scattered dirt and sand.

He grabbed a bundle of branches off the nearest shrub and pumped it full of magic, dampening the plant with a thin coat of water. The branch launched like a thunderbolt and cracked open five or six Breezies charging up the hill together. He threw the second branch and broke another bundle of them.

The other scouts did the same, as much as they could with their bodies slowly falling apart and turning to mud. The Breezies slowed down their attack until Waeve couldn't see them at all. The only thing around them were lines of rising dirt as trenches were dug around them.

Waeve flattened out and slithered around to the other side of the hilltop, seeing the same on the other side. The Breezies, he realized, turned their defensible position into a deathtrap. Surrounding the scouts on all sides, they were happy to dig in and wait for them to surrender or, more likely, run out of water fighting.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Where did you get the cover art?

[SwordTune]

9161700
Google images, but I added the link to the wiki that it came from.