The Isle of Magic

by SwordTune

Tides of War

"Get a cup of kith sap, Diz," General Gyser Rapids said.

Diz Oliver stood there, staring at the general. He had told him everything, how their army was ambushed and destroyed, the presence of Breezies in the Mistform village, he expected the general to appear the least bit worried.

"Sir, we still have scouts under attack, shouldn't we be doing something about that?"

"You said Waeve was leading the remaining scouts, right?"

Diz nodded.

"Then if there's a chance of getting out alive," he said, "they'll make it. Waeve's the best Special Operator among the scouts. And, knowing him, he'd tell you to trust in our chain of command. We're cautious for a reason, private. Now go, I have to figure out this problem and I don't need panic dripping down to every soft-bellied rookie in my camp."

"U-understood, sir," Diz stuttered, making his way out of the general's tent and trotting over to the mess. This morning the whole camp was alive with movement. Massive tanks of water and oil had been brought from the sea and lake to fuel the hungry war machine of the Waterforms. Other ponies, in smaller numbers, walked around the camp too.

They were situated in a valley that cut through the mountain range leading to the Mistforms' plateau. Vulnerable to attack on multiple sides, it would've been a terrible spot for a camp if the valley didn't have a river flowing through its valley. Dots of bright blue and white light shot back and forth the water. They were soldiers and suppliers, keeping a constant connection between the camp and the kingdom's capital.

Most of the tanks stored oil from the sea. Unlike the main army, the Oilform forces couldn't use the river water to maintain their numbers. So, for every tank of water placed in the camp, there were three filled with slick, black oil.

Eyes cast about on Diz as he trotted to the meal tents. Word spread as fast as he could walk that he was the only survivor of the assault that was supposed to be foolproof. The odd Frostform here and there cast the worst looks. They thought they were better because they were solid ice. The North Never Thaws was their clan motto.

As he walked, Diz passed a group of soldiers he recognized from scout training. They ended up dropping the scouting program and becoming infantry, but they all still remembered the long night runs that were cold enough to freeze the water off their backs.

"Hey!" shouted Wake Sail, the only one who made it through enough scout training to qualify for the officer program when he dropped. He waved Diz over to join him. He was a captain now.

"Don't yell so loud, Sail," Diz replied, walking up to the table in the middle of the tent. The flaps of the tent were opened to their fullest, so he could see a row of jars of differently flavoured kith sap. One jar was filled with small frozen beads of amber, a favourite among the Frostforms. They crunched on them with their rigid glacial jaws, but a Waterform could also dissolve a pellet into softer sap.

"Heard what happened, but you can at least be polite," his friend replied.

Diz picked up another jar, lemon-flavoured sap made from kith grown at the base of the Frostform's mountainous home. Being across a river from the Ashling clan, the volcanic soil that blew up from the south made the soil around the mountains very fertile, growing lemon trees that flavoured over half of the Kingdom of Water's sap.

Picking up a large bowl, Diz poured his share and sat down on a waxed mat next to Wake. "I don't feel like doing anything but going back up there," he said. "I ran for so long, away from the fight and down the cliff that took hours to climb. I trickled down those rocks so quickly, I thought I'd just splash off one of them and turn into droplets."

Wake frowned. "How many Blooders were there? Word around the camp is that you were ambushed."

"Not by them though," Diz shook his head. "I think, no, I'm sure they came across us by accident. They ran at our forces like suicide even though we outnumbered them. They were fleeing the Breezies who took the village."

"Don't dry me out like that. You can't joke like that and expect me to ignore that look in your eyes."

Diz tilted his bowl and poured some lemon-flavoured sap over his head. The thick fluid clumped up in his watery body, sticking to itself. But slowly the sap glowed, little particles flying off the sap and fading into his water, charging it with magic. But the aura in his eyes was the same.

"There were so many of them, they must've outnumbered the Blooders too. And they had weapons, I think they made them out of the bodies of the Blooders. Spears of blood that could contaminate a Waterform's body."

Wake turned away and shut his eyes. "Joking would've been better. The truth sounds-"

"-terrifying."

They sat like that for a while, drinking kith sap. Being former squadmates, they knew each other well enough to communicate through silence. But they couldn't stay like that all day. As soon as the sun stretched past its zenith, some commotion started to pick up around the camp.

"Hey, time to scramble!" someone shouted from another tent. "Breezies spotted at the perimeter of the camp."

Diz's face looked up from his cup of sap, then at Wake. "Waeve didn't hold them back."

"Think so?" His friend put down his cup and started heading to his barrack. "Could be that they just missed them and came for us instead. Either way, you know the drill."

"The evacuation signal hasn't been lit," Diz followed, still holding out hope to see the other scouts again. "I'm going to tell the general that we have to-"

Diz stopped and watch the sky as an Oilform launched a gout of fire.

"There's your signal." Wake slapped Diz on the back. "See you at the rendezvous."

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

A field of slick, black fluid greased the camp. From where he stood, Diz thought it looked more like a pit than a valley. Oil dripped into the river that connected to the tents, the river that the Waterforms used to empty the camp in minutes. He knelt by an Oilform captain, using a glass lens to spy on the camp itself.

The lens was one of the few goods the Kingdom of Sand was willing to exchange with Waterforms for sap when their groves dried up. It magnified whatever Diz looked at, helping him spot the Breezies that were investigating the camp.

"They've walked about a hundred metres into the camp," he told the captain, who had turned his hoof into a charged lance of oil. "The ones in the lead look pretty curious, they'll probably get into a better range."

They waited for a better shot, for when all or nearly all the infiltrators were in their camp. Diz couldn't help but think about Waeve, but it didn't distract him from doing his job as a spotter. He may have been the rookie scout, but his training was sharp and instinctual.

"They're as far in as they're going," he noted when the Breezies started to break apart. They dug up anything they could find, mainly looking for kith sap. Some of them were armed with branches and slings, but the majority still carried spears made from the bodies of Blooders.

"Confirm it," the captain told him.

Diz nodded. "Enemies are within the trap's radius. Fire when ready."

Sizzle. Magic sparked along the surface of his hoof and ignited the tip of his lance of oil. With a compact pivot, the lance flew off, jettisoned with immense speed so that it hit the camp before the Breezies even noticed. The infiltrators didn't take any notice of the oil splattered around the camp. Assuming it was just a strange custom of Oilforms, they ignored it until their hubris blew up in the face.

Red flares glared off from Diz's watery surface. If Waeve was dead, he felt reassured that the Breezies responsible paid for it. Still, without any confirmation, he held out hope. Reports would list him as missing, so there was no reason to give up so soon.

"We better catch up with the rest," the captain said. "They're probably waiting for us to push into Mossling territory."

They packed their sap rations and the spotter lens into a water-tight case. Diz absorbed it into is liquid body, holding it on his back so it wouldn't get in the way. They started back down the mountainside toward the river.

"You really think that's why we were ordered to gather on the east coast?"

"Blooder territory is weakened, now that the Breezies seem to be striking back at them. If I were the general, I'd use the opportunity to cut straight to the Mosslings. Without their kith, the kingdom might not be able to recover from the loss of the Mistforms."

"Well well," Diz mused, "sounds like you're gunning for a promotion with ideas like that."

"You'll get there rookie. Who knows, maybe when this war's over, you'll be calling the shots."

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

When the Breezies started passing them, Waeve River knew they were trapped on the wrong side of the line. He was sad to say it, but the other scouts were dead, save for Shellfome, who clung to his back the way seafoam stuck to the waves on the coast. Wherever there was an opening, they slipped by Breezie guards together. If they went too far, they retreated behind the safest outcropping of dirt or rock.

The last four hours was the same game of hide-and-chase. Whenever Waeve found a blind spot between patrols, they'd run up too far and meet with the larger Breezie troops. They'd be forced to retreat back into the abandoned Mistform town.

"Think they finally moved on?" Shellfome asked.

Waeve shook his head sadly. "They're too encamped here. Part of their forces might have moved on, but the ones here are meant to stay."

"What more do they want? They don't need kith to live."

"Maybe if we find out, we can make a distraction that'll give us a way out."

Waeve relaxed, letting his body drop into a puddle, which turned into a stream and began slithering along the ground to the centre of the town. All-day, he had watched the Breezies bringing equipment into the town from somewhere in the east, most likely a larger camp.

Metal things and wooden frames placed on top of a dirt mound, one they had already excavated. There were no traces, thankfully, but Waeve still knew that a family of Mistforms that lived inside that mound. They may have been elusive, and more incorporeal than any other clan of ponies, but if a Mistform was disturbed enough, their bodies never regained cohesion. That the Breezies could do so mindlessly to innocents disturbed him deeply.

"Check it out," Shellfome whispered from behind a boulder. He pointed to the centre of the town where a well burrowed into the surface of the plateau. It was the same one they had passed when they came in.

Waeve found it funny how quickly situations changed. He had passed by that well so dismissively, while the Breezies seemed to have a fascination for it. The well had buckets of bright crystals. Most were yellow, some were white or red, but they were all extracted from the plateau indiscriminately.

The equipment the Breezies used were assembled at the former homes around the well. Some were simply carts, others carried large heavy spikes that could be lifted with leverage and dropped back down to crack the stony surface.

"They're making it bigger," Waeve told Shellfome.

"Yes, I can see that. What are those crystals for?"

"They have magic, that's all I know. And they're important to the King."

From behind a rock at the corner of a derelict dirt mound, they observed the Breezies working in unison. The creatures chattered in their strange language, constantly moving carts back and forth to carry more crystals away from the well more was brought up.

Eventually, one of them let out a cheer of some kind. The others stopped what they were doing and rushed to the well to see the crystal that had come out. In a bucket of yellow, white, and red crystals, a blue crystal had gotten itself caught up in the Breezies' fervour. One of the Breezies walked by the others and took the blue crystal from the one who had cheered.

He looked at it, inspecting it from all angles. He even used a sharp metal spike to put a scratch on the crystal's uncut surface, to the shock of the others. They watched and waited for a verdict with as much curiosity as Waeve and Shellfome. The judging Breezie grinned and said something which brought gleaming looks of relief to all the others. They suddenly rushed back to work with even more energy than before.

Waeve noticed a new structure being put up, a tall metal spire with a glass receptacle at its tip. It stood as tall as the trees around them, its metal beams bolted to planks of wood, which were pinned down into the plateau by large metal stakes.

"I can shoot it down before they secure it," Shellfome said, beginning to reform into a pony so he could launch a blast of water from his hoof. "Bet they won't

Waeve rippled his water around. "Hold on, we still don't know what they're doing. If we leave now, we'll escape without knowing why they want the crystals."

"Yes, but we'll escape."

"We'd be useless scouts if we didn't get information about our enemy."

"This is above our call of duty, Waeve," Shellfome muttered, still readying himself to fire. "Let me take this thing down and we can get out of here. We don't even know what the crystals here do."

"But the King does, and the Mistforms have always been critical parts of the kingdom. Our orders were to secure and investigate what had happened here in the first place. We still have that mission."

Shellfome rippled with irritation, but he slunk back into a puddle. "We better not die."

"I sure hope we don't," Waeve replied. They held themselves low, following the contour of the land, trickling as close as they could to the metal frame being built. When it became stable enough, the Breezie who had inspected the blue crystal mounted his prize onto the glass bauble at the top.

The Breezies talked to each other, muttering incomprehensible things. Waeve could tell they were excited, however. They were all watching him, slowing down in their work. It took a rough bark from the apparent leader to get them all bustling again.

The crystals that had been dug up in the meantime began to pile up. Each Breezie not reinforcing the tower dragged bags of other coloured crystals to its base. Yellow, white, red, it seemed like the colour didn't matter for the rest of the crystals. The pile grew higher and higher until it filled the bottom half of the tower frame.

"A shrine maybe?" Shellfome whispered to Waeve. They had retreated a little farther back, simultaneously watching for an opening to escape as they observed the Breezies.

Waeve considered the same thing. Whatever the crystals' purpose, nothing seemed to be happening. "Why would Breezies worship our crystals?"

As if to answer, flashes of light started to flare out from the blue crystal. The magic from the others below flew up in a single beam, siphoned into the glass receptacle. The Breezie leader shouted some orders, and two soldiers quickly climbed up to the glass and faced it down. Like a mirror reflecting sunlight onto a single point, the glass around the blue crystal focused the light onto the ground.

Quickly the leader produced a bottle from the mining equipment and threw it down into the light. The rocky plateau immediately softened into dark, fertile soil. It was black water. Waeve watched as the light heated the black water, sending it into the air as a hotly-glowing mist.

The mist glowed blue, dancing in the sky like the auroras in the Frostform lands. When all the water was gone, the shimmering mist collapsed into a swirling disk on the ground.

They waited. Waeve and Shellfome were as gripped by the sight as the Breezies. But only the Breezies cheered when an impossible limb stuck itself through the disk and crawled out. The scrawny limbs were unmistakable. Another Breezie had climbed through.

Waeve rippled, reforming himself behind a jutting piece of stone. He watched intensely as more came through. It was an endless line. Only minutes passed before the ruins of the Mistform village was filled with Breezies. The magic they had discovered, or perhaps they already knew it was there, posed a greater threat to the Kingdom than Waeve could have imagined.

In an instant, the Breezies could bring an army to Waterform borders. If they ever felt pressured, they could retreat without delay.

"There's too many of them Waeve!" hissed Shellfome, who was still bubbling on the ground, hiding as a puddle.

"Go, now," he said without a moment's hesitation. "We have to tell the King they've built a portal. If we can't stop them now, they won't just destroy us, they could conquer any kingdom on the Isle!"

A shout from behind the rock neared them. More followed. Waeve instantly called himself an idiot for panicking so loudly. To Breezies, a Waterform's voice must've sounded like a flowing creek or a bubbling hot spring, sounds too common to notice. But a panicked cry here, an outburst there, and the sounds were like a sizzling Fireform.

It was just a matter of time before the sheer number of Breezies overwhelmed them. Even if they hid as puddles, one lucky step could force them out. So Waeve turned and did the only reasonable thing. He ran like death itself was chasing.