With her eyes closed, Iris commented, “We’ve got company: two witches on sticks!”

  Amelia cursed and slammed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor, producing a burst of acceleration as the engine revved higher!

  Marta switched seats and raised the rear-facing gonne.

  “It’s Denholm and Krauss!” She shouted over the roar of the engine.

  “Focus on Denholm!” Iris shouted.

  Marta nodded, muttered the magic word for ‘metal’ and linked it to ‘attraction’, ‘witch’ and ‘flying’, then fired a shot, which angled through the air in the oddest fashion, carried toward Denholm by Marta’s magic!

  Just as Krauss had been muttering to make all three traitors explode as a beautiful shower of blood, she felt a strange, cold sensation surrounding her heart, as if someone had gripped it! Krauss clutched her chest and fell from her broom, screaming in pain!

  She used the spell she’d intended to attack with to instead cushion her heart against the invading force! The forced heart attack came to an end when Krauss hit the ground, where she lay in a groaning heap, incapacitated by her injuries!

  In a moment of distracted concern, Colonel Denholm was looking backwards as a high-velocity lead ball grazed the back of her head and knocked her hat off, despite the fact it had been skewered in place with hat pins! The only saving grace had been the fact her dive had gotten more steep as she looked away and if she’d remained focused forward, it would have gone through her eye and into her brain with sufficient force to kill her.

  Forgetting Krauss, Denholm glared with rage as her eyes glowed and a terrifying, red aura surrounded her body, which caused her hair to unwind itself from the tight bun it had been in, only to rise on end, as if it had a mind of its own!

  She began muttering words in the witch’s tongue, stringing them together in a spell, while battle-hardened instincts allowed her to dodge three more target-seeking lead pellets through quick adjustments to her angle of descent, while a fourth hit her red aura and bounced off, as if it were solid steel!

  The witch’s words for ‘gravity’, ‘crush’ and ‘witch’ passed Denholm’s lips, followed by a linking twist to connect that to ‘limited’ and she was just about to twist in the word for ‘kill’, because she intended to destroy the Blackwell sisters without damaging the war wagon. It would have been a quick, two or three word spell, except for the fact she needed to spare the vehicle, which made things complicated, but when she was about to speak the last word, she felt as if someone had clamped their hands on her head, jaw and lips, preventing her from opening her mouth!

  Growling with frustration at her spell having been disrupted, Denholm’s red aura grew more dense and she accelerated, intent on closing for hand-to-hand, because she had no better way to make a precise attack, but even at maximum safe acceleration, Denholm was only barely gaining on the war wagon!

  That was a powerful testament to the technical skills of Private Amelia Blackwell. It really was a shame she’d never willingly serve the King.

  Iris gritted her teeth with effort and growled, “She’s using words!”

  “If she wants to play with sticks and words, how about you give her some stones?” Amelia suggested!

  Nodding, Marta let go of her gonne’s handle and raised her hands, beginning an incantation of her own, which started with ‘stone’ and ‘land’, followed by linking the words ‘attraction’, ‘flying’ and ‘witch’. This was followed by another syllable for a link, but Marta held it on the tongue for a moment.

  Denholm grew slightly worried as the landscape erupted into plumes of dirt and great boulders rose from the rocky landscape, each of which must have weighed a couple hundred pounds. She really didn’t like how the near future was likely to pan out!

  She knew Corporal Blackwell was responsible, because she was the only one of the sisters that had an affinity for Earth magic. Denholm regretted having assigned the woman to artillery training, because by all accounts, she was a terrifying force to be reckoned with, who’d done significant damage to enemy fortifications over the past five years, or the soldiers within them, depending on circumstances, but seeing the sisters had been playing the long game, all along, Denholm wished she’d clapped them all in irons from the start and forced them to work as prisoners, which would have limited their training and put them in support roles, with direct witch supervision.

  Boulders whizzed through the air like pellets from a spring-gonne, each and every one of them producing a clap of thunder as they went from floating motionless to moving almost faster than the eye could see!

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Denholm lashed out with her existing gravity-based telekinesis spell, slapping the huge projectiles aside with terrifying force, causing them to explode into smaller fragments that pinwheeled away! At the same time, her flight path weaved back and forth through the air, while smaller rocks bounced off her aura!

  Sweat soaked Marta’s uniform, due to the strain of serious magic, as she looked up at her opponent and grinned.

  Glancing backwards, Amelia stared with fear at how close Denholm was and shouted, “I’m hitting the boosters!”

  Amelia pushed a little lever forward, causing water to pour from the fuel tanks into a pair of pipes that were crammed with tiny, metal plates that bore the runes for ‘metal’, ‘heat’, ‘water’ and ‘steam’, very similar to the enchantments used in Amelia’s steam engines, but in this case, there were hundreds of them, in much smaller sizes, and the intent behind them was to produce the most energetic steam possible, basically a controlled explosion.

  Two circular armor panels on the rear end of the wagon suddenly popped downward on hinges, revealing a pair of cone-shaped depressions, which sprayed high-pressure steam like a pair of rocket nozzles, which was exactly what they were! The whole wagon lurched forward, while the cheeks of Amelia and Iris were stretched to the sides by the sudden burst of acceleration!

  Paying no heed to that, because she was too busy concentrating to control her magic, Marta shouted in the witch’s tongue, using the words for ‘heat’, ‘stone’ and ‘flow’, followed by linking them to ‘flying’, ‘witch’, ‘cover’ and ‘hold’, putting all of her will into the words and the intent behind them! Once again, she held a linking syllable on her lips, carefully controlling her breathing, that she might finish the complex, multi-stage spell!

  Denholm emerged from the torrent of stone, leaving behind a cloud of much smaller rocks and rock dust! Seeing the wagon accelerate by spraying steam out the back, Denholm abandoned safety and gritted her teeth as she accelerated to keep up, the wind whipping at her body quite painfully! Specks of dirt floating on the wind became quite painful, the larger ones cutting the exposed skin of her hands and cheeks, while others were merely painful! Almost as bad were the insects hitting her in the face, which splattered! She would have protected herself from the small objects with magic, but they were mostly too small to perceive and far too fast for her to react to!

  Feeling a strange sense of heat from the tail of her broom, Denholm glanced backwards, noting the bristles were on fire! Her gaze naturally rolled upwards to the cause: contrary to what she’d expected, the rocks that failed to connect had not fallen to the ground! Instead, they were flying after her and heating up, turning to lava in the air!

  Denholm growled with frustration and abandoned her pursuit of the war wagon, instead focusing everything she had on survival!

  The angry, red aura surrounding her thickened and solidified, until she could no longer be seen from the outside, at which point the lava surrounded her, encasing her in a layer three feet thick!

  Observing Denholm surrounded and trapped in lava, Marta shouted the words for ‘cool’ and ‘solid’! The lava ball instantly turned to obsidian and crashed to the ground, where it bounced and rolled away!

  “Marta, that was amazing!” Iris shouted to be heard over the war wagon’s engine and boosters, “I didn’t know you could do that!”

  Marta didn’t respond, however, because she was unconscious from over-exertion.

  Seeing the closed iron gates of their property rapidly approaching, Amelia shouted, “I need a little help, Iris!”

  Amelia pulled back on the lever for the boosters and applied the break peddle, to slow them down!

  Iris released her scrying spell and opened her eyes. Seeing the same thing, she muttered a quick and dirty incantation, using words for ‘heat’, ‘melt’ and ‘metal’, though she held a linking syllable at the end! The gate immediately melted into a glowing puddle and Iris added the last two words of her spell, very similar to what Marta had done, also using ‘cool’ and ‘solid’! The former gate instantly cooled, just in time for them to pass over it!

  Amelia turned to the left side and they careened through some topiary art in the shape of the sisters, which was the result of years worth of painstaking work from the gardeners, something that made Amelia feel a bit guilty! Next, they crashed through a rather colorful floral clock composed of patches of flowers that had been chosen and bred for the way they opened at particular times of day and night! Finally, they tore through a line of hedges that marked the border of the back yard, at which point Amelia turned to the right and headed for the tower.

  “I can’t believe my plan worked so well!” Amelia enthused!

  “This isn’t over yet,” Iris grumbled, “because we’re still on the ground!”

  Finishing a bit of healing magic, Krauss got to her feet, then located her broom. Mounting it again, she got into the air and flew over to the ball of obsidian, which was still rolling at relatively high speed.

  She matched speed with it and muttered the word for ‘blood’ in the witch’s tongue, focusing her mind on the interior of the ball. She doubted Denholm was still alive, but with how difficult the Blackwell sisters had already proven to be, she needed backup.

  It was weak, but there was somehow still life in there.

  Krauss grinned, “I knew you wouldn’t die so easy.”

  Using the magical words for ‘blood’, ‘gift’ and ‘magic’, Krauss linked herself to Denholm, using the connection to pass energy to her superior.

  Within ten seconds, the ball of obsidian exploded into razor-sharp fragments that flew in all directions, except toward Krauss. Denholm’s uniform was a charred mess full of holes, the rubber soles of her boots were half-melted, her hair had mostly been singed off and her angry aura extended from the tips of her remaining hair to the bottom of her boots, making her look almost as if she was covered in glowing blood.

  She took a deep, cleansing breath and growled, “When I catch up to them, I won’t stop until I’ve flayed them alive!”

  “Orders, ma'am?” Krauss asked as she landed, hoping to have all limitations removed.

  “We terminate the traitors with extreme prejudice! I don’t care who or what gets in the way!”

  Krauss nodded and smiled evilly, because that’s exactly what she’d wanted, all along.

  She offered her broom to the Colonel, who got it flying with a muttered word, then mounted it. She paused and Krauss got on behind her. The stick wouldn’t fly as well with two passengers, but they only had one broom.