Ascarons in the Sky

Tytos Skyfire's peaceful autumn vacation is interrupted by an unreasonably large bird.

A lone man sat beneath a tall oak tree, wearing a long white coat with black trim adorned with geometric runes in silver, gold, and blue. A fine, long sword leaned against the tree, accompanied by an even longer staff. Atop the staff rested a wide-brimmed hat, woven from long grasses and bound neatly together. Crude black runes, contrasting with the more refined ones of his coat, circled the hat's middle section. His brown boots, impeccably clean and polished, were stretched out in a posture that clearly declared, “Don't bother me, I’m on vacation."

He was smoking from a long wooden pipe. Used but not abused, and clearly cared for by someone who was more interested in being regarded as a “Gentleman who smokes” than as someone jonesing for the herb. It was a cool autumn day, and by general agreement of the people of Harrowville, a lovely day. The best kind of day to be doing absolutely nothing at all.

It was also the middle of harvest, so most of the residents of Harrowville were also covered with sweat, toiling in the fields, and being resentful of the man under the tree, clearly not pulling his weight. That man should get a job, they thought, as they threshed and beat their wheat. 

But the people of Harrowville knew better than to bother a man dressed in wizard’s robes trying to avoid work. Most people considered “wizards work” to be bad luck, and should try to avoid it at all costs. Lest you be ‘wizarded’ by proximity. Nothing good came from being wizarded was the general consensus.

So they went about their work, trying *not* to think about why a wizard was vacationing nearby their fields. Those kinds of thoughts have a bad tendency to spread a lot of potentially necessary concern, and got in the way of doing definitely necessary time sensitive work.

Today, however, turned out to be one of those days where they should have given a bit more thought.

 A great cry was heard in the sky. Farmers looked up to see a giant eagle shaped creature, the size of a lord’s manor in the sky. Cries of panic erupted in the fields, and a horn started blaring at the little town’s watchtower. If one happened to be resting under a tree in the nearby hilltops overlooking this valley, then one would see the many agricultural labourers running back the village in terror.

An Ascaron had been spotted flying towards the valley. People were concerned, and rightly so. Ascaron were massive predators of the sky. The greatest aerial predators in this part of the world… though… not all parts of the world… but in THIS part of the world seeing an Ascaron falls into the category of “Shit is going down, time to leave town.” 

Though strangely most of the peasants response to this event was to run TO town. 

Most people make bad decisions during cataclysmic events.

The man under the tree looked up from his lazy stupor, and a puff of smoke came out in a great big huff. This huff wasn’t that of a man who had prepared for this. This was the huff of a man who had been surprised by an early and unwelcome appointment. Who knows precisely how bad this early appointment is for everyone, and was wishing that someone else had done their job and sent word ahead in an appropriate timeframe. He scrambled to his feet and began snatching his belongings with the air of someone who is “late late for a very important date.”

After grabbing sword, staff and hat, and failing to have a sufficient number of hands to make this act graceful, he bolted down the hill at a highly motivated pace. One might think that wizards generally are not good sprinters, being of the “nerd” persuasion. This is actually a common misconception. Marathon running and competitive sprinting is the most common form of regular exercise amongst the faculty members of the College of Celestial Wizards. Helps the brain work better, they all agreed in their meetings. It was encouraged amongst the students.

The unspoken understanding was that it was actually a survival trait whenever a Celestial Wizard inevitably got drafted into the army for a tour of service on the warfront. Out-of-shape wizards had a statistically significant probability of not coming back from a tour of duty, and this was noticed in the first couple years of the war by the faculty of Long Numbers. 

“The numbers don’t lie,” they presented in their report to the general faculty. “Runners are survivors.” To a great deal of skepticism. On principle they could all see very well that cowards generally did better at surviving than courageous folk, but that didn’t mean one had to subject oneself to the regular suffering of exercise. Surely a cowardly disposition would be enough to keep one safe from danger.

Within 4 years the consensus had arisen from the survivors of the war, that yes, the regular exercise - or more specifically - the *skill* of running away was the important variable. The Faculty of Long Numbers was awarded a special investigatorial service award that year at the faculty season end dinner. Many still held out for several more years on account of being “committedly lazy.”

But not Tytos. 

Tytos Skyfire was an early convert to the running regime, and proved an exceptional coward. He ran away and survived many horrific situations during the Sidhe-Rundellian war. Admittedly that sounds a lot more horrible than it actually was. Not running away in *most* of those situations would have resulted in his death, so he proved to his commanders that he was one of those rare individuals who made pretty good decisions during cataclysmic events.

So they kept sending him back to more of them.

Today, he was tasked with protecting the harvests of one of the outlying villages on the borders of the Sidhean forests. At high risk of attack by the Sidhe.

Because one thing the Sidhe were very good at, is doing highly inconvenient things like burning all your food production during critical seasons. Waiting for you to spend a whole year of labour growing food in a specific patch of land, only to show up and burn it all before you had a chance to eat it. And often the people trying to harvest the food. The Sidhe were thorough.

Tytos stopped half way down the hill, and dug out a spyglass. He brought it up to his eye in a hurry, zooming in on the incoming Ascaron. Sure enough, three Sidhean wizards were standing atop the Ascaron, riding in a saddle, roughly the size and shape of a small hockey rink. Tytos knew those flying fortresses came equipped with physical and magical shielding - along with any number of magical totems that would grant powers to the Sidhe and Ascaron they rode. 

Tytos swore as he saw the wizards begin spinning their hands in the motion of a wheel. Cracking energy built up as they wove their powers. Once they reached a blazing crescendo the Sidhe thrust out their hands sending the blazing ball of energy in a lazy arc away from the Ascaron. This ball would drift out for a short distance in a lazy arc, only to rapidly change direction downwards at a 45 to 30 degree angle and arc towards the ground like a rocket.

Fields erupted in fire, and the earth was torn up by explosive blast. 

Tytos dropped his sword, staff and hat on the ground, all inconveniently in the same hand, and began weaving a pattern of gestures while shouting, to us, incomprehensible bullshit. A slowly intensifying hendecagram wrapped in a bright white-blue circle of light spun lazily around him. It was an overly complicated pattern that really leaned into the lifestyle of wizarding. 

As the light circle gathered in strength, a powerful wind began to spin around him and then lashing out towards the Ascaron, erupting into a howl as it sped towards the enormous bird and it’s lethal cargo. 

His powerful wind spell slammed into the side of the Ascaron, pushing the flying beast with the force and size of a raging river. Tytos’s eyes narrowed as he watched his grass hat go spinning into the gale-force winds and soar towards the Ascaron. His left hand drew some runes into the air and pointed at the hat. The runes flashed bright blue and disappeared. The hat’s wild trajectory straightened out, and now it flew like a spinning, flying saw blade. He continued his earlier chants, and the force of the winds intensified.

The infernos raging in the farmers' fields were abruptly extinguished as oxygen was violently drawn away, funnelled into the jet stream. Plumes of smoke, originating from the scorched wheat, were whisked away in the same gust. The Ascaron, caught off guard, veered dramatically to one side as the tempestuous winds, laden with smoke and debris, collided with its flank at staggering speeds. Amidst the swirling maelstrom, a sharp eyed person would see a lone grass hat being carried away by the forceful gusts.

Sidhe wizards, seasoned by decades and, for some, centuries of practice at the wizarding arts persisted in their relentless assault. They unleashed a barrage of flaming doom orbs. While the flames failed to take hold, the sheer concussive force of their detonation was enough to obliterate vast swathes of the wheat fields. However, three orbs deviated from their expected path. Propelled with alarming speed, they arced with menace towards Tytos. 

Tytos stopped his wild gesticulations, and the hendecagram faded. He snatched up his sword and staff from the ground and bolted downhill at a breakneck pace. The flaming doom orbs crashed into the ground behind him, releasing a massive shockwave filled with fire. Tytos rapped his sheathed sword and staff together, then pointed behind him with his sword. The blast wave hit him... well, it hit the force shield he'd hastily thrown up behind himself. He was shoved with the force of a schoolyard bully on a rampage. The uncompensated force sent him soaring into the air.

“Ffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuu…….” you would hear if you were one of the field hands watching him get tossed through the air overhead. That is, if it were in English. It sounds quite different in Rundellian.

The field hands gaped in amazement as the wizard slammed into a web of bright white tendrils of light. It looked as if a grenade full of spider webs had erupted over the field. The tendrils caught him like a hockey puck in a net, gently lowering him to the ground. As the tendrils evaporated into the air like mist and he touched down, they heard him cursing. Drawing his sword, he pointed it skyward at the retreating Ascaron.

His sword flashed a bright blue white light, as though it had been struck by lighting.

And then it was struck by lightning. 

This was particularly startling to all the field hands because there were no clouds. It seemed to leap out of... nothing. Some of the field hands took a step back, and others made protective gestures. To the wizard, however, this was just a regular part of his workday. He shouted more incomprehensible bullshit.

Somewhere above, a floating rice hat adorned with crude black runes exploded in light, the runes flaring with a brilliant blue-white glow. A massive lightning bolt erupted from the base of the hat, slamming into the Ascaron’s back. The Ascaron let out a shriek, a howl of pain and rage, as it was pushed downward with tremendous force. The Sidhe wizards, riding in the chariot-saddle, braced themselves. A glowing field of force, emanating from the totem, surrounded them, protecting them from being burned alive.

Deciding that this was more trouble than it was worth, and clearly outside of operational requirements, the Ascaron and the Sidhe wizards turned their flight path southward, away from the village and it’s troublesome defender. As they retreated, the villagers let out a jubilant cheer, grateful for the reprieve. 

Tytos didn't have much time to celebrate his victory or lament the loss of his hat. He had many villages and fields to visit that day to mitigate the damage done.

The fields were ablaze for leagues around. While he may have saved these fields, the countryside of Rundell was burning as far as his eyes could see. 

It had been a challenging season. The weather had been uncooperative, resulting in scant food growth. The coven of earth wisdom had done their best to summon rain and sunshine, but even they conceded that there was only so much they could do given the 'forces' against them.

It was a lean winter that year.