I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally found Tetra’s pulse… but it was faint. I reached down gently, trying to remember what I had learned about First Aid back on Earth… I think I was supposed to carefully roll her onto her side? She was on her back right now, and I remembered something about choking on fluids.

Tetra groaned as soon as I slowly started moving her, so I stopped right away, laying her back down. I checked her breathing again… it was very hard to tell, but her eyelids started fluttering slightly, which I took as a good sign.

“Tetra, its Heller. You are safe now…” I said, waiting for a moment before glancing back at the soldiers. They weren’t moving, so I decided to stay with Tetra just in case something started going wrong.

But after a few more minutes her eyes slowly opened, and she grimaced as she looked up at me. “Whh..” She gasped in pain as she tried to speak, her arms flying to her midsection. “Ahhhhhh, bloody beasts!”

“Take short shallow breaths, Tetra. You might have some broken ribs.” I said, a worried frown on my face. Alder would pay for this.

It took another few minutes, but she finally managed to stand with my help, taking shallow rapid breaths as she gasped and hissed through her clenched teeth. She improved as she got used to taking shallower breaths, and was even able to speak again (in short stilted sentences) after a while.

I explained the gist of what happened, leading her over to examine the bodies after she insisted. She seemed to be taking everything remarkably well… but then again, maybe the pain of her broken ribs was just masking her shock – I had no way to know.

“Take… off… helmet…” she wheezed out, nodding her head at the bodies. I looked down, realizing that the magnetic fields I had setup on their helmets were still active, though somewhat drained and less powerful than they had been at first.

After making sure Tetra was able to keep her balance (she seemed fine except for what I assumed were her broken ribs), I bent down and started reversing the magnetic fields on the helmets, causing them to pull apart and allowing me to slide them off.

There was surprisingly little damage done to the three soldiers, two men and a woman, except for the fact that one of the men had a trail of blood coming out of his nose… and the other man was dead…

---------------------

I examined each of the soldiers several more times, just making sure that I was assessing the damage correctly. Two of them, the woman and the man who had stayed back to close the door, were still alive but unconscious… I wondered if having your helmet press in on your skull for that long could cause brain damage…

Regardless, the other male soldier was the man who had first spoken to me, and when I examined him I could not find a pulse at all. Not only that, but his flesh felt slightly cooler than that of the other two, though I suspected that might have been my imagination. I was still angry enough not to care that he was dead, but I was well aware that there would be consequences for this.

Tetra informed me that all of them were nobles, as far as she knew, and the penalty for killing a noble would be very harsh, though she didn’t know exactly what would happen. The worst case scenario was that my parents would be executed in my place… So I needed to make sure nobody ever found out I had killed him. And what would happen when the other two soldiers woke up?

Then Tetra shocked me with what she said next.

“We… have to… kill them, Heller.” She said, still grimacing in pain as she looked at me. I was so shocked I took a step backwards away from her… not because of what she said (I had been thinking the same thing), but because she was the one to say it. She was a nine year old girl, but she was a heck of a lot tougher than I would have expected anyone to be at that age.

“Umm, are you sure?” I asked her. I was growing increasingly certain that they would have to die, if only to protect my family, but I felt guilty dragging her into this mess.

“Pass… that… sword.” She told me, gesturing at one of the gleaming metallic swords scattered on the floor. I did as she requested, figuring she meant to use it as a cane… so I was shocked yet again when she dragged the blade over to the unconscious female soldier and set it on her neck, before leaning heavily onto the blade and sending it deep into the woman’s throat. Holy shit!

Tetra stumbled and nearly fell, doubling over in pain as the activity of ending the soldiers life caused her broken ribs to shift yet again. I ran over to her, helping her over to a corner of the room as the unconscious warrior quietly bled out on the cold stone floor.

We discussed what we needed to do, and I suggested that we stage the scene to make it seem like the soldiers had killed each other in a fight. After Tetra agreed I went back and arranged the bodies closer together, using magnetism to seal a sword to the dead man’s hand and lifting up both bodies (one unconscious and one dead) before having the dead man ram his sword into, and then straight through, the unconscious man’s armor. I felt sick to my stomach, despite my still lingering anger, but I fought it down. I was just grateful that the unconscious man hadn’t even twitched – perhaps he had brain damage after all…

I tried to arrange the bodies so it looked as if one of the men had killed the woman, and then the two remaining men had fought and killed each other. I dragged the body of the previously unconscious soldier (now quite dead) towards the door, trying to mimic the blood smear that might have been made if he was crawling after the battle.

When I returned to Tetra she had her eyes closed, and I saw a small pile of vomit on the ground next to her, but she did her best to smile at me when I called her name.

“What if I take you to the village?” I asked her, “You can stay at my house until you recover, then go back home to The City, say you ran away from Toad?” She shook her head, her eyes widening as she looked over at my handiwork in the middle of the room before she leaned to the side and retched a series of incredibly painful looking dry heaves.

After she had recovered she looked at me again, “No, they… will look… for… me. I will… stay here. Say I saw… everything… Protect you.” I could tell she was in immense pain, which, combined with the shock of what we had just done, must have taken a severe toll on her psyche. But she seemed lucid as she looked at me.

I considered her words. I couldn’t think of any way to explain her injuries that wouldn’t make her look suspicious. Three dead House Flameward soldiers, and the heavily injured servant girl wasn’t involved? That was too far-fetched for anyone to buy. Plus, if she stayed here she would be able to get the medical attention she needed, and I felt certain nobody would think that she (a small nine year old servant girl) was responsible for this mess.

“I will… scream… if you… move me…” She said, giving me a fierce look.

I hesitated for only a moment before nodding. This was the best way to ensure that Tetra got out of this okay, and there was no way we would be able to hide her injuries from everyone in the Garrison. So best to make the lie as close to the truth as possible – and make sure I disposed of the broken helmets properly.

We worked together to come up with a plausible story, deciding that she would say she had been in here cleaning when they came in. They had started arguing and moved to close the door, not noticing her until she moved to run past them. They had struck her, stopping her from leaving the room, then continued arguing. They were talking about killing some boy, Tetra wouldn’t know who or why, with the woman saying she would stop them if they tried (we decided to make the women the hero of the lie). A fight had broken out, and they had killed each other, but Tetra had been facing the other way and hadn’t seen what happened. When she came too, she started calling weakly for help… and luckily I was there to hear her and run for aid.

The tricky part was closing the door from the outside, but after explaining how my powers worked to her we came up with a simple plan – she would place the woman’s sword under the heavy wooden beam, which was reinforced with iron straps, and I would shift it into place. Afterwards, she would put the sword back in the dead woman’s hand and I would go calling for help (saying I had heard her faint cries from the other side of the door). This section of the Garrison was only used during Beast Attacks, with servants occasionally cleaning and swapping out food stores as they grew old. It would make sense that I was here, having been assigned to clean the ground floor of the building, and we would simply have to hope that nobody questioned why Tetra had been in a safe room in the first place – after all, House Flameward would have the far more important matter of three dead soldiers on their hands.

It was a risky plan, but it was the best we could come up with on short notice… and given the situation, I was amazed we had done as well as we had.

Authors Note: There was some discussion about armor vs lighting in the last thread. If anyone is curious, this video explains it quite plainly (and is pretty fun to watch).

Armor vs Lightning

That isn't the full story, of course, but it's a good start.

It is also worth noting that Heller, the MC, is not a scientist. He's not an Engineer. He went to trade school, which only teaches limited theory. So don't expect him to always be completely correct with his assumptions in the story - he doesn't have access to the internet, and I'm going to write him as he is, mistakes and all.

On the other hand I've a pretty good grasp of science, and am prone to googling what I don't know. So the science of the story itself should be quite solid.

PS. Maybe nobody noticed, but Heller mistakenly calls a Faraday cage a 'Tesla cage', and will continue to do so in the story, but otherwise his science is fairly solid, so far.

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