A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twenty-First Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

"Alright, now try the left and the right target at the same time again."

He sighed quietly at the order. This would be rather embarrassing. Again. For the last week, Lanaer had tried to make this shot and it always ended in failure. Sometimes he just missed a bit and sometimes he instead struck the middle target, which was kind of the opposite of what he tried. But there was nothing he could do except try again and make himself look the fool by failing yet again. Slowly his hands came to rest on the rune-engraved crystals at the tip of the armrests again. His back straightened as he raised himself from the slump he had sat in to rest his head against the back of his seat. It was a comfy seat all things considered, fit for a lord even without all the golden filigree and glowing gemstones worked into it, but this wasn't mere frippery on a chair for a study.

Before him stood three targets made from wood that had been mended by magic so often that some joked it was more a exceptionally real illusion than actual wood at this point. When you hurled steel bolts the size of a man's arm at something, it tended to look a little worse for the wear. They had tried to stop the projectiles with targets made from densely-woven straw instead, but that just ended with the bolts sticking into the stone wall behind them, deep enough that it took a Minotaur's help to get them back out at that. It was all too easy for Lanaer to forgot just how much power that pleasant warmth at his fingertips truly meant. It was all too much like a fancy children's tale instead of hard fact.

Yet wasn't this the Age of Wonders as some of his comrades had begin to call it? That thought alone already seemed fantastical. Comrade. Lanaer. Fighting side by side with former slaves. His father had been apoplectic of the mere notion of his firstborn sullying the name of the family by something as brutish as becoming a soldier, let alone one made up of what certain circles in Tyrosh still considered rabid beasts given blades instead of the chains that were needed to protect decent folk from them. But he had never been a merchant in his heart. That was his little brother, who took joy in all those lessons about numbers and how to read the logbook of his fathers ships. Of the family business, Lanaer always preferred the stories the captains brought, not the coin. Of far-off ports and fanciful things there, of beautiful vistas and exiting battles against vicious pirates.

So when he saw a recruiter at the market, he had signed up immediately. The Legion was the one outfit that would have him without second thoughts, promising him the far flung travels and excitement of battle he had always craved. Anyone else had turned him away, fearful of his father's wrath, but here nobody cared about his name. Of course, his father had tried to get the contract Lanaer signed voided, but with little success. He was of age and as far as the Legion was concerned, that was that. His father tried to appeal to a few officers, always getting the same response, and only gave up when he was told that the only two people left he could complain to were General Torchwood and the Dragon King himself. Even the stubborn old magister preferred to accept defeat then instead of drawing their ire.

His eyes focused again, taking in the two man-sized boards of oak to the left and the right. It helped to get the nervousness down to let his mind drift a bit, but he still had an order to execute. The grip on the crystals hardened, trying to feel the minute shifts and patterns in the warmth they radiated in his hands. Which wasn't actual warmth if he got the explanation from the mage right, but trying to find what felt like a taut metal bowstring in the currents was a lot easier than trying to figure out what a 'meta-sensoric representation' was supposed to be. With one last deep breath, Lanaer tried to steady himself, still trying to focus on both targets without going cross-eyed. And then he tugged at the strings and felt the kick of two weapons roaring with power. For a single moment, he savored the feeling of the knock that shook the half-finished metal frame around him, heedless of what he would likely hear next.

"Misses, both of them." There wasn't even any reproach in the voice of the stone-skinned enchanter, just a weariness born from repeated failures. "Let's take a break for now."

In his frustration, Lanaer kicked the floor beneath him, hard enough to give a loud thump when his boot hit the steel. He couldn't make this shot, no matter what he tried. Everything else was fine. He could tilt the wings with his eyes closed, make even the maddening number of steel tanks and spinning wheels within the hull dance just as they wanted from him, and he nailed every shot they could have him try within the confines of the underground warehouse they kept these machines in. Except this one.

Maybe he had been the wrong pick after all. Back when they searched for people for this, they had just given him some sort of mage toy, a cube with a lot of runes on it, some of them glowing. It was really easy to make the runes light up and go dark the way they wanted once he'd had a few moments to get used to it and he had been ecstatic when they told him he would join a special project of the King himself. Now though, it seemed he would be quietly shuffled out of this whole thing in short order. The machines weren't even flying yet and he doubted that making them do that would be easier than shooting two targets with two weapons. Enough steel to armor a Company, shaped by magic and then enchanted in painstaking work by dozens of people. He doubted that anyone would trust him with a machine that was probably worth more then a ship full of spices after getting not even this one thing right.

At least he would still see them fly. The Sage herself had come today to finish what they called the 'engine' of the first machine. Lanaer slowly moved back to his slumped position, peering through the gap between the slightly opened glass cupola's rim and the hull to see her work. It was quite a display at first, arcane symbols and diagrams being written in glowing runes into the air with nothing but a finger, but most got bored of the show of power after a while. Quite a few had probably only watched to see the Lady Lya in person and promptly lost interest once she climbed into the half-finished hull for her work. For him though, it was too intriguing to miss any moment of it.

When would he ever again get the chance to see a mage working whom even the foreign enchanters deferred to without a second thought? He couldn't read a single one of the glowing symbols, but seeing how the Sage made them move around each other, writing themselves anew in the middle of their dance without even having to look, that he understood. It was beautiful. It was art. All the more precious for how ephemeral it was.

"Why are you trying to shoot like that?" The question jolted Lanaer from his trance, throwing him instead straight towards dread. When he looked up to where the voice had come from, he saw the face of the Incarnate. Aradia. She was laying on the cupola, her head resting on her hands and looking down at him with her legs kick lazily in the air. "You aren't the only one who can watch others at work, but you are not in trouble if you think that. No need to give me that look."

He quickly glanced around, but apparently nobody else was watching them. Maybe he really wasn't in trouble for daydreaming on his post. With only a slight edge of trepidation he looked back at the woman. "What look do you mean?"

"The one every soldier gets when he thinks a superior caught him. It's almost as if they teach it to you so that they know when you are guilty of something." He knowing smirk that accompanied these words almost made Lanaer think she just told him a closely-kept officer secret. It was hard to read that woman, last but not least because she rarely bothered to speak with anyone on top of her inherent strangeness. Like a feather in the wind, she drifted from her resting place without tensing a single muscle for it, drifting down right next to him and leaning against the hull while looking towards the targets. "Why do you try to shoot two targets at the same time?"

He nearly replied that he was following orders and she should ask the enchanter giving it, not him, though he suspected that was not what she meant. "Well... I've got two of those launchers in the machine, so I think they want to make sure I can use them both on their own."

She just made a thoughtful sound before she turned, staring straight at him with those pupil-less eyes of sea-foam. "How many minds do you have?"

Was that some kind of trick question? "One... I guess... Is this one of those 'inner eye' things the mages sometimes talk about?"

In response, he got a snort and a shake of her head. "No, and you shouldn't listen too closely when a mage tries to be mysterious at you. You don't aim a bow with just the string and your hands. You need to look at what you want to shoot and let your mind guide your hands. You will never hit something if you don't focus on it. Just shoot one target and then the next. The trick is to learn to shift your focus quickly and nothing more."

"But he insists I must do it at exactly the same time..." The answer was weak and he knew it, but he pointed towards the enchanter giving him orders to day in a vain attempt to ward off the Incarnates attention.

Aradia looked over to the man, one of the foreigners from the endless caverns, and regarded him for just a moment before turning back to Lanaer. "And he surely demonstrated that stunning feat for you?" He just shook his head. "Well, then why he should know what he is talking about?"

That threw Lanaer for a loop. It made sense, but could he really call out the enchanter on this? Maybe if the Incarnate did it for him...

Though before that thought got anywhere, the groan of steel caught both their attentions. Beside them, the other machine was moving. The patterns around it had disappeared, and in defiance of all common sense, the giant thing of steel began to lift itself off the ground, the heavy chains anchoring it slowly going taut. From within the hull, they could clearly hear the voice of the Sage. "Aradia! Why aren't you reversing the direction?"

Lanaer glanced to the command chair of the machine. Empty. Then his eyes turned to the Incarnate who wore an apprehensive look that probably looked exactly like the one she poked fun at a moment ago when he had it. Again the Sage was heard. "Aradia! Where are you? Aradia!" When she returned his look, she smiled uneasily and raised a finger to her lips, motioning him to be quiet while her body faded like smoke in the wind.

He silently wondered if the recruiter had any idea just what kind of excitement the Legion would have for Lanaer.


AN: Another slice of life from the growing Imperium.