The Twins
22/06/11 22:11
The Twins - Marc Oak-Founder and his twin sister Elma’leah are excited. With their father having fallen ill it is up to them to lead their town’s trade caravan to the nearest city. They expect the two week trip to be the experience of a lifetime, but they get far more than they bargained for when their innate use of magic gets them conscripted into the king’s army and they are sent to help fight a war they previously knew nothing about.
Marc Oak-Founder: A headstrong, stubborn, and talkative boy of fifteen. He is boastful and excitable but is also honest and knows how to put in a hard day’s work. He enjoys giving his twin sister a hard time whenever possible, but is quick to defend her or his family when the need arrises. Marc is a helpful hand around the family farm and is surprisingly good with animals. He is also well on his way to becoming an expert creek fisher. Like his twin Marc possesses the talent of the innate use of magic. With only a thought and some concentration Marc can alter the air temperature around him, heat and cool objects to the point of catching fire or hard freezing, and can even crystalize the water in the air to form anything from an icy wall to flying frozen shards. He also claims to be able to control lightening, but so far, to his great frustration, all he’s ever been able to do is cause storm clouds to flicker and pulse.
Elma’leah Oak-Founder: Marc’s twin sister and the younger of the two siblings by mere minutes. Unlike her loud, talkative brother Elma’leah is quiet and more than a little shy, especially around those she doesn’t know. She tends to whisper things to her brother knowing he’ll soon blurt them out for her. She is not weak willed or unopinionated by any means, she just sometimes has trouble finding her own voice. Elma’leah is one of the most educated of their small town thanks in part to her mother’s instruction and to the wealth of books she has read. Like her brother she is good around the family farm and with animals but she is also a very accomplished clothing designer specializing in rugged heavy duty outfits and items. Practically everyone in their town owns a pair of her tough yet comfortable gloves and anyone who travels knows to see her about ordering a set of her custom tailored leather and cloth pocketed traveling clothes. Like her twin Elma’leah is able to make innate use of magic, though their skills vary completely. By touching a seed she is able to impart specific and often very dramatic instructions to it. With just a thought she can cause any kind of seed to reshape itself to practically anything as long as it’s not much bigger than her hand. Her creations can also receive special properties such as the ability to glow, dissolve, or even explode. She can also focus magic into an invisible physical force and use it to push or grab hold of objects and can even create waves of force large enough to knock down full grown men several feet away. One of her favorite demonstrations of both abilities is to launch acorns high into the air where they will explode in a colorful shower of sparks like a fireworks. She almost always wears a pouch filled with acorns at her side in case she needs one for something,
Settings:
- Oak Creek: The small farming and fishing village that the twins live in and their father is the mayor of. It is a town of perhaps three hundred located on both sides of a major creek that splits off from their country’s main river. The town has no walls or defenses, it is too spread out for that anyway, but is somewhat protected by a thick oak forest on all sides. Oak Creek has food, water, wood, and farmland and is completely self sufficient. So much so that quarterly trade expeditions are sent to Middle River, a much larger city some fifty miles to the east.
- Middle River: One of the kingdom’s three major cities. As its name suggests it is located beside the kingdom’s only major river roughly at the midway point between the capital city of King’s Ridge two hundred miles to the north and the port city of Ava’s Head about two hundred miles to the south. Middle River is a branch off point for a dozen or so smaller villages and many of which use Middle River as a trade hub. With several thousand residents Middle River has everything from churches to the kingdom’s primary military garrison and is a very busy and very different place than Oak Creek.
- King’s Ridge: The capital city and the smallest of the three major cities. It is situated in a lush valley just south of the King’s Ridge mountain range that marks the country’s upper boarder. The city is built around a large natural lake which the kingdom’s only major river flows from.
- Ava’s Head: The largest of the three major cities, located to the far south of the kingdom on its only coast. Ava’s Head is a major center of trade for several countries and races and houses the kingdom’s primary shipyard and naval force. It has a trio of large seaside forts staffed with troops and mages specializing in long range magical bombardment. Its unusual name come from the unfortunate but necessary beheading of its female founder just a few short years after it was established.
Story Outline:
- The twins are excited about leading the trade expedition to Middle River in place of their father. They have been preparing for the trip for the past week and are anxious to depart. Even though they are technically the leaders of the expedition, seeing as they are members of their town’s founding family, their father’s good friend Dale Lancer will actually be in charge. A good reason for this is he knows the way there. The twins have been to Middle River once before but it was when they were small children and neither remembers much of the trip.
- The five day journey to Middle River is eye opening for the two teens. Especially memorable is when they move past their town’s large oak forest to the much sparser landscape beyond, and Middle River’s impressively large river crossing bridge.
- The first couple of days at the city are spent helping the various families represented in the expedition sell their wares, including their own family’s food, animals, and clothes. Elma’leah’s travel clothes are a huge hit with the trade market selling for much more than she expected. She only wishes she could have had the time to make more sets to sell.
- On day three the twins venture alone deeper into the city in search of their elder brother who left four years earlier to join the military as a mage. We learn that the twin’s innate use of magic is actually fairly rare and that most magic users, including their brother, have no real ability to use magic until they begin studying Rule based magic. Unlike innate magic with the twins call forth using their thoughts and emotions Rule based magic is an infinitely more ridged and defined discipline where complex spells are constructed from more basic parts. Innate magic is far quicker to cast but is limited by the user’s imagination and abilities. Marc for instance only has control over heat, cold, and lightning (if he can ever figure it out). A Rules based magic user can branch out to any number of sub disciplines and can mix and match basic spell building blocks to get new results. Rule based magic spells take longer and longer to cast based on their complexity simply because it takes longer to call out the complicated spell incantations.
- The twins are unsuccessful in locating their brother even after visiting multiple military garrisons and mage training academies. Their efforts are not entirely futile however as they learn he was probably sent to Ava’s Head only a month before to reenforce the port city for the coming war, a war which neither the twins or anyone in Oak Creek previously knew anything about.
- On their way back to their town’s trading expedition at the outskirts of the city the twins are stopped and arrested for violating a royal decree. The decree, which like the war they never heard of, required all potential magic users fourteen and above to report to a training facility to be evaluated and possibly trained for military service. The twins are unceremoniously thrown into a damp jail cell for the night until the authorities can decide what to do with them.
- The next morning they are taken before the primary garrison commander and a council of mages and are briefly tested for magical ability before being told that they are being conscripted into military service. The sympathetic garrison commander makes them several concessions including having the military buy all of their town’s wares at an inflated price and sending four skilled farm hands to their parent’s farm to replace them.
-The twins accept that, not that they have much choice, but are both very upset when they are told they will be split up since male and female mages are always trained separately. Marc even goes so far as to lash out at nearby soldiers with magic injuring a couple of them before he is quickly subdued by the mages present.
- The story then splits up and alternates between the twins as they go through their training.
- Elma’leah is upset with what happened and is angry at seeing her twin being dragged away under guard for his actions but she soon accepts what happened and begins her studies. She finds Rule based magic slow and clunky at first. Recreating her force waves which she can create with a quick thought and a flick of her wrist takes a paragraph long incantation using Rule based magic. Worse, Rule based magic has no real way to duplicate her seed bending abilities though the high level mages at the academy seem interested in looking into it. But, as she gets better and quicker with Rule based magic she begins to see its advantages. By mixing, matching, and adding onto the building blocks of spells she has memorized she can alter them to fit her needs, and even powerful abilities are performed by simply memorizing their, sometimes long, incantations. By mixing the slower Rule based magic with her own innate abilities she is able to impress even the most skeptical of her instructors. After a mere three months of study Elma’leah is told that her training is ending and she is to be attached to a division of soldiers heading to defend Ava’s Head. She complains that she isn’t ready, she hasn’t even begun to study the theory behind intermediate and advanced spells, but she is told that there is no more time and they need all the mages they can get as soon as they can get them.
- Marc wakes up in his new room at the mage academy he will be training at. For the first week he refuses to cooperate despite the insistence of his instructors and fellow trainees. He demands to see his sister but is told no again and again. Finally he requests to send her a letter. Her reply arrives the same day and in it she pleads for him to work with his instructors, because what they will be doing is now bigger than either of them. Marc agrees to participate, but only if he can stay in contact with his sister via letter to which his instructors agree.
- If Elma’leah found Rule based magic difficult at first Marc finds it to be almost completely impossible. He lacks his sister’s more through education and ability to simply sit back and study the abstract concepts that form the basis of Rule based magic. After weeks of honest attempts he is still only barely able to wrap his mind around Rule based magic at all. Sure he can launch an impressive offensive or defensive spell by reading from a prewritten scroll, but that’s a far cry from the mixing and matching memorization and improvisation that is required to come out on top of any serious magical battle. Finally he is allowed to cease study of Rule based magic in order for him to experiment with and improve upon his own innate magical abilities. By the time his “training” is cut short some three months late he has greatly increased his power and control of his skills and has developed new ones including an impressive ice to fire attack that wows his instructors. He still doesn’t have any more control of lightening beyond making the clouds blink and flicker, though not for trying.
- The twins are reunited as they board the boats heading for Ava’s Head. They have a lot to talk about and show each other. They’re also both amazed at how much each as grown in the few months they were apart.
- The journey to Ava’s Head takes the better part of a month on foot, but is only about two days by boat. Things are looking good for the first day on the water with a good wind helping them along. But then around noon on the second day a large oddly shaped ship appears on the horizon. In under an hour the enemy warship is upon the military convoy and things aren’t looking good. While the enemy ship is brimming with catapults and mages the friendly ships are merely lightly armed troop carriers and worse all the mages are on one ship leaving the other two vulnerable.
- The friendly ships are quickly forced to flee to the river’s shoreline and one of them is sunk before it even makes it that far. The other two ships offload their remaining forces to the riverbank before also being destroyed. The enemy ship apparently satisfied with the outcome of the battle sails onward up river leaving the three hundred or so soldiers and mages to walk the last five miles to Ava’s Head.
-Thick black smoke rising up from the horizon has some speculating that the entire city might be ablaze but when they finally reach the city it become apparent that only one bay side district is on fire. The rest of the city, including the forts are safe and there is a major ongoing naval battle out in the bay. Streaks of cannon fire and magical attacks can be seen lighting up the ships and water as they criss cross across the bay.
- Soon the surviving forces are contacted by the battered Ava’s Head defensive forces. The two groups join up to the east of the city and plan their next move. Apparently the enemy’s assault was stopped, aside from the one warship slipping through, but further ships dropped off nearly two thousand troops over the horizon to the east. The enemy plans to assault the bay forts by land using the city itself as cover. If they take the forts Ava’s Head and Middle River are likely to fall and King’s Ridge and its impressive defenses would be under siege. The enemy ground forces will be attacking the next day and must be stopped even though they outnumber the city’s defenders by almost two to one.
- The twins and the other mages from Middle River go to converse with the surviving mages from Ava’s Head. Knowing what kinds and strengths of attacks and defenses the enemy used could tip the balance of the battle. Before the meeting even gets going the twins discover one of the senior battle weary mages is none other than their elder brother Patric. The three meet after the strategy session completes. Patric is thrilled to see them again after nearly four years apart. He is amazed at how big and mature they’ve grown since he last saw them but is also appalled that they’ve been drawn into the war. He wants them to have no part in the upcoming battle but they insist on being there to help against the superior enemy forces. Ultimately Patric agrees.
- The battle for Ava’s Head begins an hour after sunrise. The defenders fight well and with great courage but are pushed back into the city. The first fort falls to the enemy then the second. By midday the third is under siege by enemy land and sea forces but the enemy’s numbers are finally running low and the defenders mount a surprise counter attack. The twins and Patric form the magical centerpiece for the attack and working in combination help devastate the enemy and protect their own forces until they come head to head with the enemy’s highest ranking mage and his support troops.
- The enemy mage’s defenses are seemingly invincible and his subordinate mages and foot soldiers do a good job of defending him while he readies some complex spell. Fortunately Patric seems to be the enemy’s match. The battle between the mages goes back and forth while the regular soldiers on both sides take cover. It looks like between the three siblings and their three different approaches to magic the enemy mage is fighting a losing battle.
- Then the enemy mage finishes his complex spell and Patric, who realizes what is happening in time, shoves his siblings out of his powerful protective shield just before it is corrupted transformed into a flurry of magical shards that cross inward from all directions inside the shield bubble. Patric falls to the ground badly wounded but alive thanks to his other defenses, the twins however would have been easily killed had they still been inside the shield.
- Elma’leah is the first to stand and the first to be attacked. She puts up an impressive showing but is out of her league. Even her combination Rule and Innate based skills are no match for the enemy mage, besides she is nearly out of acorns, her seed of choice for her Innate attacks. As Marc stands and is sure he is about to watch his sister’s death he realizes what has been missing in his attempt to control lightening. He has always tried to affect it in the cloud but its connection to the ground is equally important, or at least thats his spur of the moment theory. As a last ditch effort he tries to create the lightening from both ends and it works. A powerful bolt connects with the enemy mage and detonates the mage’s defenses with a searing flash and a shower of sparks.
- With the last enemy mage down the friendly ground forces are able to move in and defeat the enemy’s remaining forces while the twins rush to their wounded brother. Patric is down, but not as out as both the twins had assumed. He has already started stabilizing himself with healing spells. Elma’leah quickly joins him leaving Marc momentarily with nothing to do, until he looks up.
- The remaining three enemy naval ships have defeated the final fort and have begun to head up river with little to stand in their way. If they get away it is a sure bet they’ll destroy Middle River. Marc refuses to let that happen. Drawing on his new power as well as his old skills he freezes the lead ship in place and proceeds to rip it apart with fire, ice, and lightening. He does the same to the second but is too weak to penetrate the defenses of the third. Fortunately his twin is there to help out. Together they string a series of feints and attacks and tear at the enemy ship piece by piece until they launch one final attack destroying it outright.
- With their forces all killed or captured the enemy nation sues for peace fearing reprisal. The twins, Patric, and the other Ava’s Head survivors are hailed as heroes, and the story ends happily, with the hint of more hardships to come.
Marc Oak-Founder: A headstrong, stubborn, and talkative boy of fifteen. He is boastful and excitable but is also honest and knows how to put in a hard day’s work. He enjoys giving his twin sister a hard time whenever possible, but is quick to defend her or his family when the need arrises. Marc is a helpful hand around the family farm and is surprisingly good with animals. He is also well on his way to becoming an expert creek fisher. Like his twin Marc possesses the talent of the innate use of magic. With only a thought and some concentration Marc can alter the air temperature around him, heat and cool objects to the point of catching fire or hard freezing, and can even crystalize the water in the air to form anything from an icy wall to flying frozen shards. He also claims to be able to control lightening, but so far, to his great frustration, all he’s ever been able to do is cause storm clouds to flicker and pulse.
Elma’leah Oak-Founder: Marc’s twin sister and the younger of the two siblings by mere minutes. Unlike her loud, talkative brother Elma’leah is quiet and more than a little shy, especially around those she doesn’t know. She tends to whisper things to her brother knowing he’ll soon blurt them out for her. She is not weak willed or unopinionated by any means, she just sometimes has trouble finding her own voice. Elma’leah is one of the most educated of their small town thanks in part to her mother’s instruction and to the wealth of books she has read. Like her brother she is good around the family farm and with animals but she is also a very accomplished clothing designer specializing in rugged heavy duty outfits and items. Practically everyone in their town owns a pair of her tough yet comfortable gloves and anyone who travels knows to see her about ordering a set of her custom tailored leather and cloth pocketed traveling clothes. Like her twin Elma’leah is able to make innate use of magic, though their skills vary completely. By touching a seed she is able to impart specific and often very dramatic instructions to it. With just a thought she can cause any kind of seed to reshape itself to practically anything as long as it’s not much bigger than her hand. Her creations can also receive special properties such as the ability to glow, dissolve, or even explode. She can also focus magic into an invisible physical force and use it to push or grab hold of objects and can even create waves of force large enough to knock down full grown men several feet away. One of her favorite demonstrations of both abilities is to launch acorns high into the air where they will explode in a colorful shower of sparks like a fireworks. She almost always wears a pouch filled with acorns at her side in case she needs one for something,
Settings:
- Oak Creek: The small farming and fishing village that the twins live in and their father is the mayor of. It is a town of perhaps three hundred located on both sides of a major creek that splits off from their country’s main river. The town has no walls or defenses, it is too spread out for that anyway, but is somewhat protected by a thick oak forest on all sides. Oak Creek has food, water, wood, and farmland and is completely self sufficient. So much so that quarterly trade expeditions are sent to Middle River, a much larger city some fifty miles to the east.
- Middle River: One of the kingdom’s three major cities. As its name suggests it is located beside the kingdom’s only major river roughly at the midway point between the capital city of King’s Ridge two hundred miles to the north and the port city of Ava’s Head about two hundred miles to the south. Middle River is a branch off point for a dozen or so smaller villages and many of which use Middle River as a trade hub. With several thousand residents Middle River has everything from churches to the kingdom’s primary military garrison and is a very busy and very different place than Oak Creek.
- King’s Ridge: The capital city and the smallest of the three major cities. It is situated in a lush valley just south of the King’s Ridge mountain range that marks the country’s upper boarder. The city is built around a large natural lake which the kingdom’s only major river flows from.
- Ava’s Head: The largest of the three major cities, located to the far south of the kingdom on its only coast. Ava’s Head is a major center of trade for several countries and races and houses the kingdom’s primary shipyard and naval force. It has a trio of large seaside forts staffed with troops and mages specializing in long range magical bombardment. Its unusual name come from the unfortunate but necessary beheading of its female founder just a few short years after it was established.
Story Outline:
- The twins are excited about leading the trade expedition to Middle River in place of their father. They have been preparing for the trip for the past week and are anxious to depart. Even though they are technically the leaders of the expedition, seeing as they are members of their town’s founding family, their father’s good friend Dale Lancer will actually be in charge. A good reason for this is he knows the way there. The twins have been to Middle River once before but it was when they were small children and neither remembers much of the trip.
- The five day journey to Middle River is eye opening for the two teens. Especially memorable is when they move past their town’s large oak forest to the much sparser landscape beyond, and Middle River’s impressively large river crossing bridge.
- The first couple of days at the city are spent helping the various families represented in the expedition sell their wares, including their own family’s food, animals, and clothes. Elma’leah’s travel clothes are a huge hit with the trade market selling for much more than she expected. She only wishes she could have had the time to make more sets to sell.
- On day three the twins venture alone deeper into the city in search of their elder brother who left four years earlier to join the military as a mage. We learn that the twin’s innate use of magic is actually fairly rare and that most magic users, including their brother, have no real ability to use magic until they begin studying Rule based magic. Unlike innate magic with the twins call forth using their thoughts and emotions Rule based magic is an infinitely more ridged and defined discipline where complex spells are constructed from more basic parts. Innate magic is far quicker to cast but is limited by the user’s imagination and abilities. Marc for instance only has control over heat, cold, and lightning (if he can ever figure it out). A Rules based magic user can branch out to any number of sub disciplines and can mix and match basic spell building blocks to get new results. Rule based magic spells take longer and longer to cast based on their complexity simply because it takes longer to call out the complicated spell incantations.
- The twins are unsuccessful in locating their brother even after visiting multiple military garrisons and mage training academies. Their efforts are not entirely futile however as they learn he was probably sent to Ava’s Head only a month before to reenforce the port city for the coming war, a war which neither the twins or anyone in Oak Creek previously knew anything about.
- On their way back to their town’s trading expedition at the outskirts of the city the twins are stopped and arrested for violating a royal decree. The decree, which like the war they never heard of, required all potential magic users fourteen and above to report to a training facility to be evaluated and possibly trained for military service. The twins are unceremoniously thrown into a damp jail cell for the night until the authorities can decide what to do with them.
- The next morning they are taken before the primary garrison commander and a council of mages and are briefly tested for magical ability before being told that they are being conscripted into military service. The sympathetic garrison commander makes them several concessions including having the military buy all of their town’s wares at an inflated price and sending four skilled farm hands to their parent’s farm to replace them.
-The twins accept that, not that they have much choice, but are both very upset when they are told they will be split up since male and female mages are always trained separately. Marc even goes so far as to lash out at nearby soldiers with magic injuring a couple of them before he is quickly subdued by the mages present.
- The story then splits up and alternates between the twins as they go through their training.
- Elma’leah is upset with what happened and is angry at seeing her twin being dragged away under guard for his actions but she soon accepts what happened and begins her studies. She finds Rule based magic slow and clunky at first. Recreating her force waves which she can create with a quick thought and a flick of her wrist takes a paragraph long incantation using Rule based magic. Worse, Rule based magic has no real way to duplicate her seed bending abilities though the high level mages at the academy seem interested in looking into it. But, as she gets better and quicker with Rule based magic she begins to see its advantages. By mixing, matching, and adding onto the building blocks of spells she has memorized she can alter them to fit her needs, and even powerful abilities are performed by simply memorizing their, sometimes long, incantations. By mixing the slower Rule based magic with her own innate abilities she is able to impress even the most skeptical of her instructors. After a mere three months of study Elma’leah is told that her training is ending and she is to be attached to a division of soldiers heading to defend Ava’s Head. She complains that she isn’t ready, she hasn’t even begun to study the theory behind intermediate and advanced spells, but she is told that there is no more time and they need all the mages they can get as soon as they can get them.
- Marc wakes up in his new room at the mage academy he will be training at. For the first week he refuses to cooperate despite the insistence of his instructors and fellow trainees. He demands to see his sister but is told no again and again. Finally he requests to send her a letter. Her reply arrives the same day and in it she pleads for him to work with his instructors, because what they will be doing is now bigger than either of them. Marc agrees to participate, but only if he can stay in contact with his sister via letter to which his instructors agree.
- If Elma’leah found Rule based magic difficult at first Marc finds it to be almost completely impossible. He lacks his sister’s more through education and ability to simply sit back and study the abstract concepts that form the basis of Rule based magic. After weeks of honest attempts he is still only barely able to wrap his mind around Rule based magic at all. Sure he can launch an impressive offensive or defensive spell by reading from a prewritten scroll, but that’s a far cry from the mixing and matching memorization and improvisation that is required to come out on top of any serious magical battle. Finally he is allowed to cease study of Rule based magic in order for him to experiment with and improve upon his own innate magical abilities. By the time his “training” is cut short some three months late he has greatly increased his power and control of his skills and has developed new ones including an impressive ice to fire attack that wows his instructors. He still doesn’t have any more control of lightening beyond making the clouds blink and flicker, though not for trying.
- The twins are reunited as they board the boats heading for Ava’s Head. They have a lot to talk about and show each other. They’re also both amazed at how much each as grown in the few months they were apart.
- The journey to Ava’s Head takes the better part of a month on foot, but is only about two days by boat. Things are looking good for the first day on the water with a good wind helping them along. But then around noon on the second day a large oddly shaped ship appears on the horizon. In under an hour the enemy warship is upon the military convoy and things aren’t looking good. While the enemy ship is brimming with catapults and mages the friendly ships are merely lightly armed troop carriers and worse all the mages are on one ship leaving the other two vulnerable.
- The friendly ships are quickly forced to flee to the river’s shoreline and one of them is sunk before it even makes it that far. The other two ships offload their remaining forces to the riverbank before also being destroyed. The enemy ship apparently satisfied with the outcome of the battle sails onward up river leaving the three hundred or so soldiers and mages to walk the last five miles to Ava’s Head.
-Thick black smoke rising up from the horizon has some speculating that the entire city might be ablaze but when they finally reach the city it become apparent that only one bay side district is on fire. The rest of the city, including the forts are safe and there is a major ongoing naval battle out in the bay. Streaks of cannon fire and magical attacks can be seen lighting up the ships and water as they criss cross across the bay.
- Soon the surviving forces are contacted by the battered Ava’s Head defensive forces. The two groups join up to the east of the city and plan their next move. Apparently the enemy’s assault was stopped, aside from the one warship slipping through, but further ships dropped off nearly two thousand troops over the horizon to the east. The enemy plans to assault the bay forts by land using the city itself as cover. If they take the forts Ava’s Head and Middle River are likely to fall and King’s Ridge and its impressive defenses would be under siege. The enemy ground forces will be attacking the next day and must be stopped even though they outnumber the city’s defenders by almost two to one.
- The twins and the other mages from Middle River go to converse with the surviving mages from Ava’s Head. Knowing what kinds and strengths of attacks and defenses the enemy used could tip the balance of the battle. Before the meeting even gets going the twins discover one of the senior battle weary mages is none other than their elder brother Patric. The three meet after the strategy session completes. Patric is thrilled to see them again after nearly four years apart. He is amazed at how big and mature they’ve grown since he last saw them but is also appalled that they’ve been drawn into the war. He wants them to have no part in the upcoming battle but they insist on being there to help against the superior enemy forces. Ultimately Patric agrees.
- The battle for Ava’s Head begins an hour after sunrise. The defenders fight well and with great courage but are pushed back into the city. The first fort falls to the enemy then the second. By midday the third is under siege by enemy land and sea forces but the enemy’s numbers are finally running low and the defenders mount a surprise counter attack. The twins and Patric form the magical centerpiece for the attack and working in combination help devastate the enemy and protect their own forces until they come head to head with the enemy’s highest ranking mage and his support troops.
- The enemy mage’s defenses are seemingly invincible and his subordinate mages and foot soldiers do a good job of defending him while he readies some complex spell. Fortunately Patric seems to be the enemy’s match. The battle between the mages goes back and forth while the regular soldiers on both sides take cover. It looks like between the three siblings and their three different approaches to magic the enemy mage is fighting a losing battle.
- Then the enemy mage finishes his complex spell and Patric, who realizes what is happening in time, shoves his siblings out of his powerful protective shield just before it is corrupted transformed into a flurry of magical shards that cross inward from all directions inside the shield bubble. Patric falls to the ground badly wounded but alive thanks to his other defenses, the twins however would have been easily killed had they still been inside the shield.
- Elma’leah is the first to stand and the first to be attacked. She puts up an impressive showing but is out of her league. Even her combination Rule and Innate based skills are no match for the enemy mage, besides she is nearly out of acorns, her seed of choice for her Innate attacks. As Marc stands and is sure he is about to watch his sister’s death he realizes what has been missing in his attempt to control lightening. He has always tried to affect it in the cloud but its connection to the ground is equally important, or at least thats his spur of the moment theory. As a last ditch effort he tries to create the lightening from both ends and it works. A powerful bolt connects with the enemy mage and detonates the mage’s defenses with a searing flash and a shower of sparks.
- With the last enemy mage down the friendly ground forces are able to move in and defeat the enemy’s remaining forces while the twins rush to their wounded brother. Patric is down, but not as out as both the twins had assumed. He has already started stabilizing himself with healing spells. Elma’leah quickly joins him leaving Marc momentarily with nothing to do, until he looks up.
- The remaining three enemy naval ships have defeated the final fort and have begun to head up river with little to stand in their way. If they get away it is a sure bet they’ll destroy Middle River. Marc refuses to let that happen. Drawing on his new power as well as his old skills he freezes the lead ship in place and proceeds to rip it apart with fire, ice, and lightening. He does the same to the second but is too weak to penetrate the defenses of the third. Fortunately his twin is there to help out. Together they string a series of feints and attacks and tear at the enemy ship piece by piece until they launch one final attack destroying it outright.
- With their forces all killed or captured the enemy nation sues for peace fearing reprisal. The twins, Patric, and the other Ava’s Head survivors are hailed as heroes, and the story ends happily, with the hint of more hardships to come.