Intro
Today, we’ve got a new fantasy flash fiction, written by yours truly. This was so much fun to write, and I’m excited to share it with you.
So, if you’re in for a short little fantasy battle featuring an orc inventor with a giant gun saving a fey warrior, read on!
Technical Difficulties by E.M. Linden
“Any minute now, Mogara,” Adrian Hatherferd, their team’s wizard, called over his shoulder, hands crackling with blue energy as he held them out before him. His voice held only a slight tinge of panic as the massive twenty-foot-tall cyclops bounded down the stone bridge that spanned the canyon below them, heading straight towards them.
“I know!” Mogara snapped, her patience growing thin as she fiddled—so far uselessly—with her latest invention, a large gun that was about the size of a dwarf. Anyone smaller than an orc such as herself would’ve had a difficult time lifting the thing—even Demerael, the warrior among them, hadn’t been able to get it more than a foot or so off the ground when she’d prompted him to try to lift it that morning—but she held it easily under one arm as she frantically adjusted the settings, turning dials and pushing buttons, trying to get the stupid thing to work before the charging monster turned herself and her companions to nothing more than splatters on the stone of the bridge.
She didn’t understand; it had worked earlier. Why wasn’t it working now?
At the cyclops’s feet, Demerael and some sort of shadow monster—summoned by Bronta Blacksoul, the dwarven witch who was the fourth and final member of their team, who stood a few paces ahead of Adrian on the bridge, blasting bolts of dark magic up at the monster’s chest—stabbed and clawed, respectively, at the gargantuan creature’s ankles and shins, trying to regain its attention so that Mogara had more time to get her gun working so that she could shoot it, bringing the fight to an end.
Hopefully. Mogara didn’t make a habit of doubting her inventions, but she couldn’t help but do so now, with the gun acting as it was.
As she continued to mess with the settings, cursing under her breath, she noticed Adrian turning his attention back to the cyclops and joining Bronta in blasting it with his spells. At last, Demerael had managed to stick his sword deep enough into the monster’s hide to get it to halt its approach. It tripped, roaring in pain and, for a moment, Mogara feared that it was going to pitch over completely, crushing Demerael beneath its bulk, but it managed to recover. Snarling, it swung its massive club down at Demerael and the shadow creature. Demerael—a naturally-quick ice fey—managed to duck the blow, but Bronta’s minion wasn’t so lucky, taking the full brunt of the attack and instantly dissipating in a burst of dark smoke.
“Bah, that was a weak one anyway!” Bronta spat. She then began to chant, and a dark portal appeared before her, allowing a second, larger void creature to emerge. “Go and kill it—the big ugly one, not the sparkly one,” she ordered, pointing the monster towards where Demerael and the cyclops continued their fight. (Although by this point that fight had turned more into Demerael hastily darting back and forth to avoid the monster’s massive club, which it continued to bring crashing down around him.)
The shadow creature didn’t hesitate to obey, drifting over to the battle.
“You any closer to getting that stupid thing to work?” Bronta demanded, turning to Mogara.
“Just hang on!” Mogara returned, turning a few more dials. She felt that she was getting close to a breakthrough—she just needed a few more minutes.
Ignoring Adrian and Bronta’s blasts almost entirely, the cyclops, clearly tiring of its scuffle with Demerael, suddenly stopped swinging its club, instead reaching down to try to grab the fae. Demerael managed to avoid its grabbing fingers the first time, but wasn’t so lucky the second time, and the monster grabbed him by his trailing cape, lifting him up off the ground. Thinking fast, the fae twisted around and sliced through the fabric with his sword, leaving himself dropping back down to the bridge, where he staggered and ultimately failed to gain his footing, crashing to his hands and knees, his armor clattering loudly against the stone.
By this point, Bronta’s new shadow creature had reached the cyclops and was starting to claw at the monster but, like practically everything thus far, it seemed to be having little effect, not even piercing the thing’s thick hide. The cyclops swatted it aside with its club, then turned its sights on Demerael again, who was just scrambling back to his feet, bringing his sword back up in preparation to defend.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to.
“I think I got it!” Mogara announced, snapping the cover back over the controls.
“Then shoot it!” Demerael cried.
Mogara didn’t need to be told twice, leveling the heavy weapon and lining up the shot with the cyclops’s chest. Praying that she was right about having fixed the problem, she pulled the trigger.
A missile shot forth from the barrel, the recoil so strong that Mogara stumbled back a few steps. After recovering her footing, she looked up just in time to see the projectile hit the monster square in the sternum, shooting easily through skin and bone.
With one last gurgling roar, the cyclops finally fell, tumbling over the side of the bridge to plunge into the canyon. The impact as it hit the canyon floor jarred Mogara and her companions even from their position up on the bridge.
“Hey, it worked!” Adrian cheered as Bronta called her minion back and Demerael rejoined them, disheveled but apparently unharmed.
Mogara wasn’t sure whether to beam in relief or scowl over the wizard’s implied doubt in her invention.
“It’s got a few kinks to work out,” Mogara allowed, giving the gun an affectionate pat. It had delivered in the end, she supposed.
“I think you owe Dem a new cape, though,” Adrian went on, peering at the short length of blue fabric that remained on their companion’s back. Demerael grunted his agreement.
“I guess I could see if I could build something for him,” Mogara mused, thoughtful.
Demerael was too polite to outright refuse, but Mogara was pretty sure that his already-pale face somehow blanched with the suggestion, the incident with the gun still fresh in his mind.
Their companions, however, were less restrained.
“No!” Bronta and Adrian cried as one.
Mogara supposed that was fair.
The End
Thank you for reading!
