Mage Tank-Chapter 270: Hammerhead Airlines

Our meeting was briefly interrupted by a soft knock, and a messenger appeared to let us know our falcon was ready. Tavio quickly outlined some of the suggested skill levels for the combat areas they’d discovered, which were mainly in the 40 to 70 range.

“And after that?” I asked. Everything on the map beyond the combat zone had no labels at all.

“We will have to discover for ourselves,” said Tavio, looking quite excited at the prospect.

Varrin leaned forward to peer at the map, studying the cramped text describing all the different regions. Several of them looked like they were hybrids, or bled into one another. “When we spoke with the empress, she mentioned that a new intrinsic skill was discovered,” he said. “What was it?”

Tavio pointed to a tiny spot on the map, closer to the center than all the others. It could have been mistaken for a smudge if one didn’t have superhuman vision. “The skill is called Colossal Weapons,” he said.

Varrin’s eyebrows rose. If Tavio hadn’t had the big guy’s interest before, he had it now. “Tell me more.”

“Okay, keep the colossal weapon in your pants,” I said. Varrin barely contained his eye roll. “There will be time to go over more of this during the trip, right?”

“Yes, the flight should take ten hours or so,” said Tavio. “We will also need to refresh our falcon near the capital. We should leave soon if we wish to keep to our schedule.”

“Anything else you need to fill us in on while we’re here in Fort Ruiz?”

“I believe we have covered the essentials,” said Tavio. “If you are ready, we can make our way to the mew.”

We all stood and got a move on, with Varrin immediately beginning to lob more questions at Tavio. As we were making our way out the door, Xim leaned over and whispered to Etja, “How long does a lily have to be before it’s considered colossal?”

To my surprise, it was Captain Pio who responded. “If the stem is longer than seven inches, it is generally considered an exceptionally gifted lily. More than ten, and most will struggle to find a garden large enough for it. However, lilies are normally sought for their beauty and not their size.”

Pio answered Xim’s question with a face so straight that I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was just talking about horticulture. Given the woman’s reactions during the briefing, I’d begun to think she hadn’t understood what she was signing up for when she agreed to work with us.

Now I thought she might fit right in.

*****

The mew was closer to the size of an entire bird sanctuary than a birdhouse. Not much of a surprise, since its inhabitant was the size of an elephant. The hammerhead falcon was an intimidating beast to see flapping through the dark of a midnight sky, staring down at you like a fresh worm, but the one lording over us from atop its hundred-foot perch had a regal beauty to it, revealed by the bright daylight.

The hammerhead’s wings were covered in a vibrant chestnut hue that gleamed candy red when catching the sun. Its breast was a creamy off-white, interspersed with dark spots, and the bird’s color scheme reminded me a lot of the officer uniforms Tavio and Pio wore. The creature had two yellow eyes on either side of its head, set slightly apart to give the falcon a nearly 360-degree view of its surroundings.

The least bird-like aspect of the creature, aside from its enormity, was the rounded, bulbous beak that ran down the front of its head. The bird of prey had no need for a pointy beak made for pecking or poking in search of seeds and insects. This beak was made for crushing power, allowing the hammerhead to swoop in and lock its jaws down on heavier prey without losing grip when climbing back into the sky. The unlucky victim would then be smooshed to death in one or two chomps, or simply dropped from a great height, and then gulped down in one swallow.

As for the kinds of things a hammerhead preyed upon, it usually limited itself to anything smaller than it was. After all, it could hardly be expected to fly away after grabbing something larger than an elephant, much less swallow it whole. Of course, that didn’t always keep the hammerhead from trying, and Tavio had a couple of humorous tales to share of hammerheads trying to lift off after diving onto something much too large for it, such as a “humbla”–which was similar to a blue whale–or another he called a “little-claw”. That one was one hundred percent a Tyrannosaurus rex. ŕ𝒶₦ÖＢĚş

In both cases, the hammerhead still won.

Hammerhead falcons partially achieved this grip by being able to lock their jaws in place after grabbing hold, requiring little to no energy to keep their beak shut tight around their meal. In fact, it was this exact mechanism that we would be taking advantage of with our noble sky steed. This was explained to us as we approached something that looked like the shunned child of an airplane who’d had a drunken one-night stand with a tour-bus-sized picnic basket, complete with a looped handle that the hammerhead would bite down on.

While the transport was ugly as sin, it was surprisingly full of mana weaves, each of which helped it to achieve its purpose. The ‘vehicle’ was lighter than it should be and larger on the inside than it should be. It created very little drag despite its awful aerodynamics, and it burned through mana storage to stabilize itself, both for the benefit of the bird carrying it and the occupants being carried.

The interior revealed that all of the money spent on its design and creation went towards its practical functions. While it could carry more people than it should, the space was still cramped, with about four feet of separation between two rows of seats that faced one another. These seats were comfortable enough, so long as one had sufficient Fortitude or defensive abilities not to feel them at all. Their worst feature was the shared armrests, causing me to quickly dart between Xim and Nuralie the moment I saw them. There was no way I was going to try and jockey for elbow room between Varrin and Etja.

As for other amenities, there was a tiny bathroom in case anyone felt the call of nature during our flight. Really, it was a small closet with a hole in the ground, but at least it was clean. Otherwise, there was a person who sat up front and could signal the bird to land or change course, but they weren’t very friendly and refused to acknowledge me when I asked if I could get a set of pin-on flight wings.

Moments after entering and seeing what the interior had to offer, I wondered if I should sit in the cabin alone while everyone else enjoyed the newly constructed amenities of the Closet. Alternatively, Varrin could carry me and make the flight in about ten percent of the time. But this wasn’t the moment to be antisocial. I figured we would all suffer together and bond over the misery. How else did people make friends?

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Then I wondered whether I could leave the Closet portal open in the cabin while we all enjoyed the newly constructed amenities of the Closet. The birdplane wasn’t really that bad. We were used to breathing poison and weeping blood for longer stretches than this, so we could handle stale air and seats that violently punished anything other than perfect posture for a day.

But why do it if we didn’t have to?

The Closet portal had some stickiness to a specific point on the planet when open. If it didn’t, the thing would zip away the moment I summoned it due to the rotation and orbit of the planet. Then again, even that assumed there was some point in the universe that was its objective center, and that a frame of reference could be established at a fixed point at some coordinate around it. Obviously, the portal didn’t work that way.

So far, the Closet portal seemed to be tethered to a fixed location relative to my position on the planet at the time it was activated. I’d done tests where I hopped into a carriage, went into the portal, and closed it behind me, then later opened the portal to find myself without a carriage. The portal location had stayed where it was while the carriage trundled away on its own.

However, for the brief time it was open, it travelled in the carriage with me. This meant that I was at least one of two variables the portal considered when activating and establishing its mobile behavior. It determined what my position was if I were at rest in my environment, to determine its relative distance to me for so long as I stayed at rest. It then also bound itself to the stationary environment so that when I moved, I could move towards or away from it.

This meant that if I opened the portal and went inside, it wouldn’t have me as a frame of reference to continue moving with the vehicle I’d previously been in, since my new ‘at-rest’ reference was the Closet environment, but maybe I could get it to work anyway.

At the end of the day, the portal acted more or less like a probability function that shunted you to one side or another based on the direction of your movement. Despite its appearance, it wasn’t actually a door or oval-shaped hole with two-dimensional edges, but more like an event horizon that extended into an imperceptible direction that was in both target locations–entrance and exit–at once.

I really had no idea if any of that was true in a magical-science sense, but that’s the model I was using and it seemed to work.

If you were halfway through it when the portal closed, it would just kick you out into the space that existed in the direction of your movement. This meant that it could not be used to effortlessly slice shit in half. I could weaponize a portal, but that got into a whole host of other considerations that aren’t pertinent.

Why did all of that matter? Well, the portal wasn’t a door I could nail into the plane. It needed a formula to tell it how to behave and what coordinates to use as a reference for either side of its probability function. To make the portal travel with the birdplane while I was inside the Closet, I needed to replace myself as the initial reference point for the portal and replace it with the thing I wanted it to travel with.

I set one instance of focus aside to work on that problem with Grotto while we had our meet and greet with the rest of Pio’s team. The group loaded into the people-basket right after us to sit so that our groups faced one another. They were in more relaxed military garb than their superior officers, with green and brown hues that weren't quite camouflage.

“Greetings, fellow passengers,” said the first Littan to load, Sergeant Guar. The man had a similar build to Tavio, with well-developed musculature, but was a half-head shorter than the major and had snow-white fur. He glanced around with bright golden eyes as he made his way to sit across from Varrin.

After him came Staff Sergeant Baltae, a mage with a wiry build, both his fur and eyes black. He had a gentle smile and sat next to Guar, across from Xim. After him was Captain Pio, who sat across from me, followed by Lieutenant Madel, who was an athletic Littan with dark brown fur and red eyes. She sat across from Nuralie.

Their fifth moved silently behind Madel, and if I hadn’t already known what to look out for, I probably wouldn’t have noticed her load in. She was Specialist Cezil, Madel’s identical twin. The only features that set the two of them apart were Cezil’s slight smirk and the way her fatigues hung off her frame with a casual air just barely on the neater side of sloppy.

Cezil sat across from Etja, who immediately established dominance with her first sentence.

“Hi!” she said. “Nice to see you again. I’m Etja, in case you forgot!” She held out a hand to Cezil, who went completely still and looked at the four-armed woman with a calculating glint in her scarlet eyes. This went on for a full second before the Littan wordlessly accepted the handshake, her smirk fading away.

This enthusiastic greeting broke the potent “don't-notice-me” effect Cezil had going, leading Xim, Nuralie, and Varrin to all turn and see the dark-furred Littan for the first time. Xim barely reacted, but both Nuralie and Varrin failed to hide their surprise.

Etja immediately engaged the twins in conversation while Nuralie silently observed from beside her. After another handful of seconds, Cezil’s form felt more solid and real, even glowing slightly to my sight as Nuralie used a new Archery evolution to make sure no one in our party could lose track of the sneaky Littan again. At least until the even sneakier Geulon decided to paint a different target.

I hid a grin and turned to find that Varrin and Guar were already talking enthusiastically about the Colossal Weapons intrinsic. Guar was more animated than the big guy opposite him, communicating with his entire body as he spoke. Meanwhile, Varrin’s tone alone conveyed his passion for hitting things with other, much larger things.

Tavio came in last, glanced down the row to make sure everyone was present and accounted for, then turned to speak to the stoic hammerhead-handler slash birdplane-pilot person at the front. Tavio sat down just behind the man, settling in to observe the rest of us. I suddenly felt like I was on a field trip, with Tavio as our amicable and attentive chaperone.

There was a subtle pitch as the hammerhead falcon swooped down from its ten-story perch and snatched us up. This corrected itself shortly thereafter as our bird-based magic school bus gained altitude, leaving me fairly impressed by the vehicle’s stabilizing mana weaves.

A minute or two later, Xim crossed one leg over the other and drummed her hands on a knee. “So,” she said, looking between Baltae and Pio. “Killed anything interesting lately?”

Baltae’s smile grew as the mage considered her question. A moment later, a book appeared hovering in the air next to him, its pages fluttering until it landed on the entry he was looking for.

“I do not know that we can claim to have killed it,” he said, “but we did cull a very nasty plant in our last Delve.” The book turned and floated closer to Xim and me, showing a detailed illustration of our obelisk room overgrown by the Dominion Ivy Plant of the Endless.

“Oh yeah,” said Xim. “I’m not sure you can actually kill one of those.” She didn’t even try to hide her familiarity.

“You have encountered one?” Baltae asked, his black eyes widening a hair.

“We keep one as a… pet?” Xim said, looking over at me.

“Guard dog?” I suggested.

Baltae chuckled. “Hostile landscaping, perhaps?”

“That’s good,” I said. “Like thorny rose bushes beneath your windows to keep burglars from climbing in. Just way more dangerous.”

“We’d never even know someone tried to burgle us,” said Xim. “Since there wouldn’t be a body after.”

“Maybe it has already happened,” said Baltae. The book flipped around, and he took another look at the illustration. “The one we found did not seem like the sort of thing that could be tamed.”

“The secret to any animal’s heart is its stomach,” I said. “That’s what my stablemaster says, anyway.”

“And what do you feed a Dominion Ivy Plant to earn your way into its heart?” Baltae asked.

“Oh, you know,” said Xim. “Water, fertilizer, broken remains of the Icon of a blood god.”

Baltae exchanged a look with his captain, then folded his hands and placed them beneath his chin. “That sounds like an interesting story,” he said. “Would you care to share it?”