1. Beginning
It was a sultry May of 1362. It was very bright, even very, very bright. It was so bright and warm that the elderly high elf, Matt, had to put down his pipe and cigarette case and return to the hut to get his hat.
With a grunt and a struggle, he stood up, sometimes the old injury from the damned pickaxe hurt him. His friend Kris hit his leg a couple of centuries ago.
“What has become with the weather in our forests. The wind so strong that tobacco falls from the pipe is changed by the sun so bright that it is possible to fry eggs on a bald head” — with a grunt, he got up from the stump, leaned on his stick and wandered along the trees to the hut.
His way led through the forest edge, located on a huge slope. Where the grandsons of the KIIP clan used to practice fencing.
It seems that the way by itself was not particularly tedious, but the students of the clan constantly asked the grandfather to tell them about the times of the war. On the one hand, nothing difficult, but the wise Supreme tried to avoid unnecessary conversations on this topic, considering that extra knowledge brings extra sorrows…And the time spent on stories so much that it was already possible to win five such wars.
After passing through the forest edge and already climbing the slope, he has heard strange metallic sounds, and then a loud, increasing rumble every second, and then saw the favorite cart of his two grandchildren, which literally flew down the slope right under his feet.
In just a fraction of a second, he managed to intercept his stick with an ancient green crystal at the end and cast the protective spell of “rebound”, and then the spell of “levitation”. His stick turned green, the cart stopped just a couple of meters away, and the boys hovered over it upside down with surprised faces.
The old sage made the “most serious” face of the Defi continent, and gradually loosening the spell of “levitation” has said:
“Scilly, Willie, how many times have I told you to look down the slope before you put fuel in the wagon’s engine?”
As always, the older Scilly began to answer, always protecting for his brother in all his experiments.
- Grandfather, forgive — clapped eyes young elf, who, by the way, was only 11 years old, by the standards of the elves still a baby.
“It’s just that Willie and I have developed a new fuel formula with an increased acceleration coefficient. It’s very simple, you just need to add a little KIIP pollen to the fuel, and its thermodynamic characteristics become simply incredible”.
“Oh, you fool,” — Willie said, rolling his eyes.
Such a phrase, of course, did not bode well for either of them.
Dumbfounded, the grandfather even dropped his magic stick, and the young elves, like punctured balloons, fell down and almost rolled down the slope, having managed to catch on the bushes.
“How many times have I told you oafs to stop wasting my gold supply of protective crystals, it is not a toy for you. And if you added a little more of them, the engine would just explode with you! By God, I have told your father to better ask two Golems from the magic fire than have such fools as you!”
It would seem that after these words, a couple of varmints should have flattened their ears and not opened their mouths anymore, but suddenly both of them rolled in a fit of laughter.
– Grandfather, you say from the magic fire, but we know where children come from, you would also say that they are forged from the KIIP element… — Scilly could not come to himself.
- Or, adults have become, during the great war, you would have been court-martialed for little bit of KIIP, or worse, to clean up the droppings after reniki!
But then the old sage fell silent, again remembering the war, which was great for him, and for his grandchildren — just a grandiose story. Stories that they constantly asked their beloved grandfather to tell about that interesting but tragic time.
The giggles ended immediately, and the young elves stood up briskly, dusted themselves off, and, having completely forgotten all their experiments with the magic engine, began to jump around their grandfather as if he was a Christmas tree.
“Grandpa, tell me a story, please,” — Willie whined.
“Well, please,” — Scilly whined.
And, as always, the good old man forgot about all his business and about the sun that baked his head.
He began to scroll through one story after another, lost in the memories of his youth.
And with a wave of his stick, he quickly created several magic stumps, right on the slope.
- All right, sit down and listen, I’ll tell you a cautionary tale about a young elf who found a famous mineral. And also about how it is not necessary to handle it.
2. Wake-up call
The Defi continent was not famous for its friendliness. There were always all sorts of military and commercial skirmishes between active clans of various races: dwarves, humans, hobbits, and, of course, everyone’s favorite (or maybe not) high elves.
And of course, all the races of the continent sought to surpass each other in the amount of resources, the value of currency, military power, and in general just liked to bother each other with raids on border villages.
Now our story begins with a small barracks, standing on the very border with the burrows of hobbits.
The barracks, according to all the rules of military affairs, was located on a huge hill with a wide view of a small forest, and immediately behind it were the burrows of hobbits.
The night, for the time being, passed smoothly and serenely for the entire barracks, only occasionally the silence was interrupted by the howling of wolves and the hooting of an owl, whose nest was located on the totem oak of the barracks.
But, unfortunately for our heroes, all good things end, as well as a calm and serene night.
There was a clatter of feet and a clank of armor, and then the door of the barracks was opened by the huge foot of the local first lieutenant, Bryon Bays.
Bryon was a hefty, beefy fellow under three meters tall and weighing a centner, which, by the way, is not typical for high elves.
- Company, the rise! He shouted from the doorway.
First lieutenant’s loud voice made the young border guards jump out of their seats with enviable speed.
However, not everyone reacted quickly, and, considering that the army is a single combat mechanism, the first lieutenant “treated “a pair of slow “gears “ of the mechanism with a soldier’s boot. In a couple of minutes, all thirty-five high elves were on full alert.
One of them was our hero, Matt al Kiip. He, by the way, was a nobleman and the son of the head of one of the ruling clans.
Matt’s body wasn’t much different from the other elves, just as tall and fit. The only thing that distinguished him were his eyes, green and glowing in the dark, even too bright for the mage he was.
Mages were the elite from the elite, and even in the army, they were allowed the indulgence from the higher ranks of the army.
There were very few mages, and each of them was usually very strong. Even a novice mage could match the strength of an entire battalion of elven infantry.
Bryon stopped in front of Matt and looked him up and down scrutinizing the line of young border guards.
“To Matt, as the eldest of this rabble, I give you an introductory task. Your company will be patrolling the hill today. The goal is to take the height and stop any attempts of hobbits to our nearest village of Yuni. Which, by the way, was recently attacked and completely ruined by the local head of hobbits and inveterate robber Rich al Swap”.
The prefix “al” indicated a noble origin, but this rascal was not from the nobility at all, having received the title in a very interesting way. Namely, by impregnating the royal daughter of the relevant clan and eventually escaping the local hobbit lord.
“I wonder why Bays has decided to patrol at this hour, probably he fighted with ambassador hobbit again, and we have to put up with their antics,” — thought Matt.
“Bays, what’s the matter, give the boys a break,” — he tried to argue. — “A Hird of dwarves from the southern mountains came to you only yesterday, led by Johnny Brash. Send them away, and let us rest, by the way, the guys gave their best yesterday at the exercises”.
“First of all, Matt, just because you’re a nobleman doesn’t give you the right to talk to your superior officer like that,” — first lieutenant snapped. — “That’s why you and your company, by the way, are patrolling and secondly, according to an intelligence agent with the code name “Toltek6”, today will be a raid of multi clan of hobbits, and I have no doubt this agent. And by the way, this time, please don’t do your scientific tricks, or I’ll have to tell your father, and believe me, you won’t get off with a patrolling this time!
Those “scientific tricks” mentioned by first lieutenant Bays were the work of our hero’s whole life and consisted in transfusing magical energy into various metals, in order to transfer this power to compatriots who were not magically gifted.
It is worth noting that the KIIP clan, which Matt belongs, itself earned on artifacts, or “accumulators”, which the clan’s mages filled with magical energy and sold as fuel for magic engines. But mostly their crystals with manna powered the entire system of protection of local elven clans.
But our young hero decided to overcome the manna potential and worked on the technology of transmitting magical energy to a living being, this technology has not yet been invented. And all such experiments ended in complete failure and, very sadly, did not do without victims in the face of volunteers.
Matt grimaced at the mention of a previous experience that had made one of the army volunteers look like one big lip-rolling machine…
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Reader, it is better not to ask how this happened, but as they say, this is magic, and EVERYTHING is possible here…………
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And he stopped to argue, and didn’t really want to argue with the clan elders….
“All right, first lieutenant, everything will be done”.
And after these words, forming up his company and saluting, he went to the exit of the barracks.
Which, for obvious reasons Bryon didn’t like.
“Did I let go to anyone?” — first lieutenant asked, arching an eyebrow.
Matt stopped in front of the barracks door, turned around, looked Bryon up and down, and apparently decided that there was no need to “go too far”.
“I’m sorry, senior Lieutenant, I must have forgotten myself”. — Our hero answered Bryon with a serious, unblinking look.
Subordination to a higher rank was, of course, mandatory under the army code. And the elven army was one of the most disciplined armies on the continent, so in 99% of cases, when the highest-ranking, for example, gave the order to jump, the subordinate could only ask two questions, namely, “how high and how many times”.
And the main hero did not have any problems with subordination, as you might initially think. It was just that the code of noble lords, which was Matt, was in clear conflict with the army’s rules, and a nobleman simply could not obey a commoner. But the fate and the inquisitive mind (or rather, crazy experiments) of our hero led him to the fact that his own father exiled him to a remote borderland, which did not smell of noble gentlemen, and the main thing here was the army code.
Bryon, after a moment’s thought, decided not to stir up a conflict with a nobleman, much less a mage, out of air.
“Company,” — changed the theme Bays. — “Before you go on patrol, give back your training weapons and get a fighting one from our warehouse manager, Jonathan. And here’s the thing,” — he added, after a moment’s thought, — “for every careless arrow you shoot, it’s not even me who’s going to ask , but Jonathan who’s going to skin you. He records all. Everything is clear?” — the first lieutenant literally shouted the last sentence, which sounded like a cannon shot.
“Yes, sir,” — there were unrelated shouts of the company. To which the first lieutenant again thought: it seems that the company, this is a linked combat mechanism, may be again to produce a forced “ stimulation “?
And, having given up on it, he decided to let the company go to execute the order…
But remembering something.
“So, everyone is free, and I’ll ask you, Matt, to stay”…
While everyone was leaving, the first lieutenant gave our hero a message from his father that the master mage Arjin al Inv would arrive at the barracks one of these days, and he would come for some very important conversation…
“Intrigue…intrigue,” Matt whispered thoughtfully to himself leaving the barracks…
