Oldton's Magnificent Field of Inversion

  "Princess Marcelle, lower your shield and surrender!" boomed the fairy captain. "We don't want to hurt you, but we will use force if necessary!"

  "You'll never take me alive!" shouted Marci as she raising a hand.

  In her mind she visualised nine overpping, runic matrices, and channelling mana through the formus and ratios and mental geometry. A crackling ball of fire sprung into existence in front of her palm, and the would-be kidnappers all hurriedly raised enchanted, gem-studded bracelets, conjuring their own, less bespoke shields.

  Marci was, no matter what Of said, an excellent wizard. Sure, she'd only 'scraped' a pass in her degree, but that was because she had no interest in proving herself—the academy had never deserved her best.

  That meant that the fireball, despite her somewhat tipsy nature, came out perfect: a bzing, cherry red ball as big as her torso which surged and roiled with explosive power.

  Her aim, however, was a bit off.

  The sphere of controlled destruction rocketed away from her palm, flew several meters to the right of the onrushing squadron of her mother's kidnappers, and impacted a brick wall across the street.

  The masonry exploded, sending a wave of dust and embers rolling out over the area, and bnketing the street and beer garden in thick, obscuring smoke.

  "Haha! You face a mighty—hic—Sorceress!"

  A stunning bolt smashed into her shield, which was beginning to look rather battered, and a moment ter a male fairy, wielding a rge crackling baton emerged from the smoke, diving towards her.

  Before he could get to her, however, Of's long bastard-sword blurred, and with a solid whack he smacked the fairy off-course with the ft of the bde. The fairy tried to catch themselves in time, but had been caught off guard, and crashed into the ground, one of his diaphanous wings bending.

  Marci knew from personal experience how much that hurt—beaten out only by when you got a rip or a chunk torn off. They grew back, and potions or magic could speed that up, but there were nerves that ran all the way through them, and they were pretty damn sensitive.

  Since he had been trying to abduct her, however, she pointed and ughed.

  "Marci, come on!" said Of, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her off the table.

  She caught herself with her wings and allow him to drag her off towards the road, stumbling past patrons as they scrambled to get out of the beer garden that had been turned into a battlefield by her mother's agents.

  She charged another spell, a simpler magic missile. Arcane energy danced in her hand as she held the charge, and a moment ter another shape emerged from the smoke, flying above all the others.

  The fairy screamed as the arcane missile took her in the chest, scorching her armour and sending her flying in the other direction, smacking into a stout elvish man and knocking them both over into the mud.

  "Over there! Engage your shields!" Marci heard the fairy captain shout over the din.

  Bsts of stunning energy began to rain down around them, catching several of the retreating patrons and knocking them over into the mud. Marci's shield held off two more blows before it shattered and colpsed in a swirl of azure sparks.

  The smoke began to clear, and in the distance she heard the piercing whistles of Krefeld am Nain's ever-patrolling enforcers who seemed to be taking exception to a squad of fairy commando unit trying to illegally abduct an innocent woman going about her day.

  That, or the fireball that had blown out the wall of a manufactory.

  Perhaps both.

  She should probably leave.

  Ahead of them a shape emerged from around a muddy corner, one of the new horse-less carriages that the enforcers were so chuffed with, and which city budget had somehow found coin for even as cleaning up the river had been deemed 'too expensive.' It was rge, blocky gunmetal grey, and featured a turret that had the test innovation in less-lethal munitions that money could buy—electrified nets.

  Seeing the smoke, the fleeing tavern goers, and the now smouldering building behind them, the enforcers instinctively assumed themselves to be under threat, and the horse-less carriage had barely screamed to a stop when turret fired randomly into the crowd, flying open and wrapping around an unfortunate dwarven woman who had been a few people ahead of Of and Marci.

  "Everyone, get on the ground!" screamed an elvish enforcer, even as the unfortunate dwarven woman thrashed about within the grip of the netting.

  For all their expensive toys, however, the enforcers did not seem to understand that opening fire on crowds before making demands was not the best way to get them to be compliant. People did not get on the ground, they began screaming and pushing and trying to get away from both the smoke filled with fairy-commandos behind them, and the trigger-happy enforcers in front of them.

  Marci, as a fairy, had the very simple option of just flying directly up and over the nearest building. She knew, from having assembled a couple of the enforcer's turrets, that they required around twelve seconds to impart their charge into the nets. More than enough time to get away, even if they targeted her.

  Of course, Of would be left to the tender mercies of an organisation of hammer-wielders convinced that everything and everyone was a nail. And while her retionship with him was not what she would have liked in that it involved far too little snogging and far too much telling her off, she still didn't want to see him hurt.

  Thankfully, like most things, there was a magical solution to that problem.

  Well, not the snogging, not unless you had a sufficient paucity of ethics to consider breaking out certain banned-for-a-reason potions.

  Gold and green energy swirled around Marci's hands as she focused on a far more complicated spell than those she had cast before, pushing past the tipsiness that all the adrenaline was doing wonders to suppress and pcing her hands on Of's shoulders.

  "What are you- no!" he screamed, a moment before her spell activated.

  Gold and green energy surged over his body, and his outraged shouts became more and more high pitched and squeaky as he began to shrink, shifting from a tall, muscur, broad shouldered, dreamy six foot three cat- kattdjur man, into a six inch, eighteen point tall little man who Marci plucked out the air as he fell and put in the only secure pce she had whilst flying and perhaps needing to cast magic: the front of her blouse.

  "Godsdammit!" squeaked Of from her bosom, peering over the top of her colr as she shot straight upward. "I told you never to do this again! It's- people will think I'm a pervert!"

  "I think m'lord—hic—doth protest too much," said Marci as she arced over the other end of the textile mill from where the fire seemed to be spreading a bit further than she'd intended. She gnced back, hopefully it wasn't so bad-

  A bolt of blue-silver stunning energy whizzed past her right wing, and she swore, looking over her shoulder to see that looked like ten of the fairy commandos were in hot pursuit.

  She dove down, hugging the sloped roof of the textile mill only swerving slightly, trying to break line of sight.

  It sort of worked, and bought her enough time to cast another spell, this one trickier, and requiring her to visualise four and a half-ish matrices to manifest. It took so much of her focus, that she nearly ran into a chimney that came out of nowhere, and she swerved wildly as she tossed the flicking ball of magic over her shoulder and hoped for the best.

  'Oldton's Magnificent Field of Inversion' was a spell that had confused most of the wizarding community for the entire century since it had been created. No one was quite sure why it worked. Its creator had gone mad shortly after publishing the finished geometries, and no one had been able to make head nor tails of his 'proofs' that were a chaotic mess, and when asked he'd just started shouting about apples.

  But, even if no one was sure why, it did still undeniably work: things that had a natural pce lower down went up, and things which had a natural pce higher up went down.

  Which whether you were a creature bound to the nd like most of the mortal races, or even if as an incredibly fairy you could slip the shackles of the earth, suddenly finding oneself falling upwards into the sky was disorienting, especially because the field only ever sted for one point two four seconds, after which point the natural order reasserted itself and you were sent hurtling back towards your rightful pce.

  This time her aim was perfect, and as the field expanded with a crackle of energy most of the commandos shouted in arm as they began to fly unintentionally upwards. They, of course, corrected, but that meant that when the spell ended those still in the field were smmed rather roughly against the roof that they had been flying over, a few of them throwing up their lunches as they did so.

  "Hah!" shouted Marci back at them. "Take that-"

  "Marci?" squeaked Of. "Marci!?"

  "What?" she said, looking down at her cleavage. "Hey, that tickles!"

  "No, not me, the-"

  Crunch.

  Marci hit something hard and angur and bricky—which ter expnation would turn out to be a chimney that had blended in with the rest of the roof and skyline something shocking. If Marci had anything going for her in the collision, it was just that, as someone still mildly intoxicated, she was very rexed, which meant that she didn't tense up, and instead merely bounced painfully off the chimney, swerved wildly out of control, smacked into a very inconveniently pced signpost on the way down, and was saved by a fortuitously passing cart filled with bundles of linen coats which she face-pnted directly into.

  She was vaguely aware of a whole lot a whistling, and the staccato of what sounded like musket fire and electrified nets being shot, but then everything got much too hard, and with a moan of pain she passed out.