It took two days of trial and error before Sam was able to forge the Nuetta into a ring while his eyes were open, another half a day to do it while walking. After that, he simply spent his time moving the energy into a ring timed with his breathing.

Gradually, the strain on his concentration became less and less, until eventually forming new rings and breathing became the same action; unconscious and easy.

“Done!”

Ella glanced over at him from where she was studying the walls of Hope. They’d come much closer in the last few days, and the elves were on edge, expecting an attack from the city at any moment.

Sam didn’t think that would be a problem, it had looked like the entire adult male population of the city had been marshalled into the dragon’s army. Never hurt to be careful though.

“Done with what?” Ella said, glancing over at him.

“Making rings while I breathe.”

“Damn,” Ella said, her eyes widening as she stared at Sam.

“So, transmutation?” he asked. “I’ve read some books on it, but it was all second hand information. Nothing on how to do it.”

“I’ve created a monster,” Ella said with a chuckle. She reached down and picked a blade of grass, focusing on it. In a matter of seconds, the grass lost its color and began to shine silvery in the sunlight. She passed the grass to Sam, who bent the grass. The blade of grass resisted his pressure far more than grass should have been able to, then straightened again with a twang. Yep. It was metal now.

“This is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen so far.” Sam said, playing with the metal piece of grass. To hell with making stuff explode. Effecting real change on the world was freaking awesome. Well, blowing stuff up was good too.

“If you think of everything in the world having a sound,” Ella said, picking another blade of grass and watching it crumble to dust in her hands. “Then pure elements would be a single note, alloys would be chords, molecules would be music of increasing complexity, and life…life would be a beautifully discordant symphony beyond any man’s understanding.”

“So how do I make this happen?” Sam asked, twirling the piece of metal in his hand.

Ella searched the ground with her eyes for a moment before raising her hand, allowing a pebble about the size of a thumbnail to fly into her palm. When she opened her hand again, the rock shone a brilliant silver.

“This is platinum. It’s a good starting element to try, since one step to the right or left would give you gold or iridium. Relatively nontoxic, even if you miss.” She said, handing him the platinum pebble.

“huh…” Sam said, looking at the shining lump in his palm, almost disappearing between the creases in his hand. A moment later, she handed him a larger rock, about a quarter the size of his palm.

“Put your Nuetta through the platinum, strum it like a guitar string, and feel the sound it makes in your mind, replicate that on the rock I gave you.”

“Your dad blessed bull semen for a living.” Sam said, bemused. “I’m starting to think he may have only done that for show.”

“You think?” Ella smirked before she limped away.

Sam glanced up at the city in the distance, then back down to the pebble in his hand. If you want to pretend to be weak, you have to be very strong. It’s about exploiting the gap in expectations between the two.

Sam took a steadying breath and visualized his Nuetta flowing through the platinum, casting a sound back into his mind as it came out the other side, like blowing on a harmonica. Sam missed his harmonica. Maybe if he learned this, he could make a silver one, that would be-

Sam’s concentration slipped, and the Nuetta scattered. This might be a little challenging.

Sam found it easiest to concentrate on the pebble when he was mindlessly marching behind the line of elves, spacing out while he moved, concentrating on nothing but the platinum.

The next day, he felt it. It was an elusive sensation, that settled in his teeth, the back of his neck, and his gut. At first he thought he was just feeling off that day, but he quickly homed in on the cause of the sensation, repeatedly firing Nuetta through the platinum caused the sensation to pulse through his body. When he sent the Nuetta a little bit faster or slower, he lost the feeling. It really was like hitting a note.

That night, after Sam had familiarized himself with the sensation, he tried to force it into the rock in his hand. The rock resisted the change, like a magnet shrugging off a similar pole. The more he tried to force the note through the rock, the more it resisted. Sam also noticed that when he ran his Nuetta through the rock, there was no single note, and it offered resistance at any speed.

That had to be on account of the multiple different elements present in a typical rock. There was almost nothing pure on the face of the earth.

That night, Sam sat by his own fire, glaring down at the rock in his palm while he ate a leg of spider, determined to learn the skill. But no matter how hard he pushed, the rock didn’t want to change its tone to match platinum’s.

“How goes it, Sam?” Ella asked as she came to stand beside where he was seated. “We reach the city tomorrow, so don’t exhaust yourself, okay?”

“This fuckin’ thing,” He said, picking the rock up and spinning it in the air with his Nuetta and allowing his arm to rest in his lap. “Won’t change no matter how hard I push.”

“This rock it too big for even me to change,” Ella said, stopping the rock’s motion with her finger. “But…” she lifted her finger up, and a small circle was metallic. “No one said you had to do the whole thing at once. You can’t view objects as wholes. Everything is made of smaller pieces, and there is more to the world than meets the eye.”

Ella held out her hand, and Sam felt a gust of wind blow past his ears, swirling around her hand as a crystal formed in her palm, branching out into a delicate tree.

“Of course,” Sam said, slapping his forehead. “Air is matter too.”

“Yup. Don’t get too carried away, we’ve got work to do tomorrow. And don’t get excited and make any strange elements, a lot of them can get pretty toxic in their pure forms.”

“You got it,” Sam said, already focusing on the rock. He heard Ella walk away as he began to narrow the scope of his Nuetta. Now, what should he write? S4M was here?

#

“You’ve created a monster,” Jimmy said as Ella approached, taking a seat by the other three elders. “Tell me how that is any less dangerous than Tyranus.” The bald man flicked a finger at the killing machine staring at a rock.

“He’s working with us this time,” Ella said, wincing in pain as she sat.

“I’m not entirely convinced. We do have to plan for the future, and four rings in a month? And he wasn’t even trying hard? Might as well write off this plane now.” Yukensha said, voraciously eating a leg of spider. Of the elders, he was the youngest, and largest. He was rapidly regaining weight as they dined pounds of cooked spider each day.

“You even told him a technique that was said to be impossible was ‘basic’, and he did it in three days!” Jimmy almost began to shout before glancing over at the S4M unit in the distance, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper.

“The more dangerous he is, the more smoothly we’ll beat the dragon,” Ella said. “Keya, what do you think?”

“I think his end goal in killing the dragon is saving the human race, not the elven one. I’ll need to see more of his actions, but as it stands, that’s how it looks to me. I don’t understand why you would teach him more than he already knows.” Keya clasped her fingers around her knees and leaned back, chewing on her thoughts.

“I’ve gained valuable information by offering to teach him. Without that, we would never have discovered what exactly we’re dealing with.” Ella said, taking a dainty bit of spider. “I for one am confident that Sam won’t turn on us when the dragon is gone.” Ella blew on the hot piece of meat to cool it. “I’m also confident that he has a bomb in his brain guaranteeing that.”

The other elder’s expressions changed. The worry eased from Keya’s brows, Yukensha’s expression became predatory, and Jimmy stared uncomprehending.

A distinct clomping caught their attention as S4M rushed over to them, grinning.

“Check it out!” he said, holding out the palm sized rock. Above a crude S4M wuz heer, the platinum circle Ella had made was surrounded with delicate golden trace work depicting the rays of the sun above a mountain.

“I did a lot of carving and drawing when I was in the lab,” Sam said, grinning with pride as she turned the rock over in her hands, her gaze following the sand-grain thin lines he’d formed in the stone. “There wasn’t much to draw but Ann and Tom having sex, though.”

“Impressive,” Ella said, keeping her voice as steady as possible. It was supposed to take years to grasp the most basic techniques, dozens of years to make four rings, and impossible to do it while moving. Maybe she had created a monster.

The last thing she needed was for the monster to get a big head.

#

“I didn’t really get the chance to check it out from up close last time since it was at night, but that’s a big fucking wall.” Sam said to the buffalo grazing beside him. Behind, another five hundred and seventeen buffalo milled around, grazing just out of bowshot.

The walls of Hope rose up nearly a hundred feet, smooth and white. Men stood at the top of the wall, toy soldiers marching across them.

“They’re spread thin.” The lady buffalo beside him said between munches of grass. “There can’t be more than five thousand soldiers left in the city.

“Five hundred for you, forty-five hundred for me.”

“Hah,” She said dryly. “You wish.”

“looks like they’re doing searches on the way in and out.” Sam said, gazing at the massive gate, working on his entry plan. The illusion seemed to be working at this distance, but not everyone had convincing buffalo illusions. Those people were the farthest away. Sam didn’t think it would be viable to go for the front gate with illusions, there was too much risk of one of them slipping up and giving it away before they made it close enough to charge the gate.

Sam wished he could just cut the gate open and walk through, but he could only transmute about a grain of sand at a time, let alone teleport people like Theold.

Theold, Kein’Maddal, and Billy the dragon. They were the three measures of unassailable power he’d come across in his time wandering the distant future, and Sam intended to surpass and kill two of them.

Sam’s gaze turned to the cobbled road leading to the city Gate, a steady flow of merchants and farmers milling on both sides. They opened every boxe, dug through potatoes and wheat to make sure no one was hiding inside. That didn’t seem like a good way in.

As he was assessing the situation, wishing Ella had taught him a way to fly rather than create paper-thin gold-plating, his gaze caught a jeep barreling down the road, its engine rumbling all the way out to where Sam and Ellanore watched the road, disguised as buffalo.

The Jeep hustled down the road at a solid thirty miles an hour as the people on the side of the road got out of the way. Sam narrowed his eyes and made a simple lens to magnify the view of the gate. The jeep slowed down long enough for the gatekeeper to get a look at something shiny in the passengers hand, then the jeep kicked back into gear, riding through unchecked.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Sam asked.

If you’re thinking about stealing a jeep and some uniforms and riding into the city unopposed, then yes, I’m thinking that too.” Ella said.

“Alright.” Sam turned to the buffalos milling around behind him and spoke. “All right you buffalos, let’s follow that road. We’re going to steal some jeeps!”

Sam gave his best bufallo noise and led the herd north of the city, until the walls were once again shrunk in the distance. A mere ten minutes in a jeep, though.

Every half hour or so, anywhere from one to a dozen jeeps came down the road either direction, pushing fifty miles an hour. All Sam and the rest had to do was stand on the road and look like buffalos, and the cars would stop.

“Look at that,” Jesse said, pointing in front of them. A herd of some five hundred buffalo were taking an afternoon nap on the damned road.

“What in the nine hells?” said Jesse’s superior, one Captain Harmon, a blonde woman with freckles, biceps, and a sour disposition. She studied the herd for a moment before reclingin back in her seat. “Move forward, slowly. They’ll get out of the way. They’re just animals.”

“Ma’am,” Jesse said, easing the jeep forward. He hoped she knew what she was doing. Jesse had no idea what would befall them if The miraculous wagon given to them by lord tyranus sustained any damage, but her knew it wouldn’t be healthy.

With sweat beading on his brow, Jesse eased the car forward, and the buffalo indeed moved, startling aside as the jeep moved forward, splitting around the convoy of a dozen trucks.

“Told yah,” Captain harmon said, adjusting her cap over her eyes again. “Tell me when there’s a real problem.”

“Ma’am.” Jesse said in acknowledgement, working the jeep through the crowd of buffalo. It wasn’t until the convoy was almost out the other side that Jesse saw somethign that made his skin chill.

“Ma’am?”

Captain Harmon grunted.

“Some of those buffalo don’t look real.” Jesse said, his gaze passing over a handful of buffalo that looke like paper mache, and one that simply looked like a one dimensional carboard cutout.

Captain Harmon launched forward in her seat, cap tumbling off her head, pulling a handful of hair out of the tightly wound bun.

“Lock the doors!” she hissed, but it was too late. Hands flew out of the Buffalo surrounding them and opened the doors of all twelve jeeps, dragging the driver out of each vehicle.

The last thing Jesse saw was an enormous black hand seize his uniform and yank him forward, bashing his head on the doorframe.

“That’s what, fifty cars?” Sam asked, dusting off his hands as he dropped the kid into the grass on the side of the road. The woman with the vibrant captain’s uniform thrashed and screamed, trying to bite the hands of the elves tying her up.

“fifty-two,” Ella said.

“Think that’s enough?” Sam asked, approaching the elves that were having trouble. “Here, like this,” Sam took a big hand and bent the captain’s neck down, holding her still while the finished securing her hands.

“To catch his attention one would be enough,” Ella said, nodding. “This’ll really piss him off.”

Sam opened the back of the trucks and saw nothing but some broken, bloody steel awaiting repairs. In fact, he had expected to be hijacking trucks fills with the wounded, but he saw no such thing. Apparantly in the army of god, you work until you die.

“Heathen elves, our god will punish you!” the captain screeched.

Sam rolled his eyes, turning to face her. He walked close to her until she was forced to crane her neck to look at him. He squatted low and looked her in the eye.

“Do I look like an elf to you?” he asked. She didn’t answer. “Your god has a history of taking things that don’t belong to him. I figure as the highest ranking living officer of the U.S. military, all the shit he stole from it is mine. That makes sense, right, Ella?”

“Sounds about right to me.” She said.

“What are you talking about?” the captain was confused and angry. “The world belongs to our lord, it was created by him!”

“I’d love to stay and give you a history lesson, but I’ve got things to do today. you seem tired, maybe get some sleep.” Sam said, standing and casting a delicate web onto her brain.

“What? I won’t...”

There it is. Sam found the soldier’s off switch and flipped it. The woman relaxed into the grass and began to snore.

“Okay,” Sam said, clapping his hands together and standing to address the crowd of elves. “This is your last chance to bitch out.” He scanned the assembled elves. The very old and very pregnant stayed with the children, leaving approximately four hundred and fifty about to head toward certain death. They stared back, unwavering.

“Excellent. Listen up! Ella tells me that dragons are especially greedy. Natural hoarders. And it’s not just moldy stacks of playboys from the nineties. No, I’m talking the real good shit. Not just gold and gems either, but artifacts brought over from beyond the veil. Maybe even the kind of thing enterprising individuals like ourselves could use to kill a dragon.”

“We’re going to smack him in the face, hard. We’re going to drive a train of jeeps into the city, we’re going to load every single thing he owns onto them, piss him off real good, and we’re going to lure him away from the city with it, to a place of our choosing.”

“In that place of our choosing!” Sam shouted, catching their attention as he drew his gaze across them. “We’re going to kill the vainglorious bastard. We’re going to beat him with every weapon designed by man or elf and show him we were not to be fucked with!”

No one shouted, but Sam saw grim smiles on the faces turned toward him. That’d have to do.

“Alright, I want the ten fastest talkers to step forward, the smartassest sons of bitches who get a hard on talking their way out of a knife to the throat.” Sam said. “If the guy next to you is always cheating you out of money, push him forward, if he was just so nice you couldn’t bear to let him take a turn in the factory, push him forward. If you have no idea when he’s lieing, push him forward. If the man standing next to you is a goddamn sociopath who can fake a smile at someone he hates and laugh in the face of death, push him forward.”

Before long, about thirty men and women were standing at the front, including a woman that looked familiar to Sam. The dark haired woman that had been standing beside the captain when he woke up.

“She the one that betrayed you?” Sam whispered to Ella. She shrugged.

“Jennei’s loyalty was never in question. Marcus had her husband, now we have her husband.”

“Ah.” Sam muttered under his breath as he faced the assembled elves. “Jennei, come here.”

The dark haired woman came to them, her eyes steady and her body relaxed, but Sam noticed her hands concealing a tremor.

“Do you know why you’re not dead?” Ella asked. Jennei shook her head silently. “Because we still have a use for you. Your husband is-“

“Obviously you know we have your husband, and we could use him to guarantee your cooperation.” Sam said, cutting off Ella. “But I’d rather pay you up front, so that you can trust my word when we get in the thick of things.”

“What do you mean?” Jennei asked, her gaze sharp as it landed on Sam.

“I mean we’ll put him in the group that is heading for the river.” The group of elders and children fleeing across the river would be the safest one.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll disappear in the middle of the operation?” Jennei asked.

“You’re going to be sitting right next to me,” Sam said. “The only opportunity you’ll have to leave will be after you’ve gotten us inside the city. After that, the easiest way out of the city will be with us.”

Jennei thought about it, her gaze distant and her arms wrapped around herself. “Deal.”

“Alright, you can go tell him yourself.” Sam said. “I’ll meet you in the front jeep.” Jennei nodded and turned away. Ella watched sam with a scowl until the woman was out of earshot.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded. “She doesn’t need anyone’s help to leave the city, she could waltz out at any time and no one would ever see her again. She’s going to vanish the moment you turn your head.”

“Maybe,” Sam said, his eyes watching Jennei. “I don’t really care if she disappears after we’re inside. I can always fight my way out. This is just a toss of the dice and I wanna see how it turned out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jennei’s a two faced, duplicitous, brilliant, heartless monster, right?”

“What of it?”

“Did ever you wonder what kind of man she would give up her life and that of all the other prisoners for?” Sam asked. Ella’s eyes widened and she turned to watch the exchange between Jennei and her husband.

The big man turned toward Jennei as she approached, his face lit up in a smile. When jennei began talking, his smile faded, and he shook his head. She appeared to raise her voice, and he simply shook his head again, taking her in his arms. A moment later she began sobbing, rocking in his arms.

“Let’s start lining up the trucks,” Sam said, nudging Ella’s shoulder with his elbow.

Sam and Ella lined up the trucks, organizing the ten most silver tongued elves as drivers heading into the city while the remaining five hundred or so packed into the jeeps, twelve to a car.

“Gotta wonder where he’s getting the fuel,” Sam said, climbing into the jeep as the rich smell of diesel assaulted him. Sam turned the key and the truck roared to life, Sam took the stick and put the truck in gear. His peg leg slipped off the clutch and the truck’s engine sputtered and died.

“Shit.” This might be harder than he thought.

“Need some help?” Ella asked with a smirk, resting her arms on the window of the truck as Sam struggled to get the truck to start again.

“I know how to drive a stick, it’s just this damn... foot!” Sam rattled his peg leg against the underside of the footspace in frustration. “It’s the first time it’s been a problem, aside from walking, balancing, aching when the weather changes, prickling, and generally being unhelpful.”

“You could have Jennei be the driver.”

“The passenger is the superior officer. If I want her to be the voice, I’ve gotta figure..this...out.”

“You could ride in the back.” She offered as the car sputtered again.

“Damnit!” Sam shouted as the truck died one more time. He resisted the urge to bash the steering wheel. More than one Sam had gotten a concussion by triggering an airbag.

“I just need a way to smoothly...” ah. Sam reached inside and drew Nuetta from his Yuenan, pressing down on the clutch in place of his missing foot. The car roared to life again, and got a few dozen feet before it died as he tried to change gears.

“Got further that time.” Ella said appreciatively.

“I got this,” Sam said. It would just take a little practice to get used to driving the car with his mind and his body at the same time. By the time he figured out how to use telekinesis to work the clutch smoothly, Jennei climbed into the passenger seat, her eyes red from tears. She was wearing the captain’s clothes, the saber rattling at her hip.

“He said he won’t run away.” She said quietly.

“Shit, what a surprise, now you’ll have to make sure we kill the dragon.” Sam said in monotone.

“Or make sure the convoy never leaves the city. Better chance he’ll live that way.”

Sam was speechless for a moment. Crap. He hadn’t considered that.

“’Course, you wouldn’t be saying that out loud if you meant to do it.” Sam said, fishing for a reaction. Jennei shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’ll use my judgement. If Tyrannus is stupid enough to have a dragon slaying arrow or sword lying around his hoard, then he deserves to die. If I don’t even see the faintest chance of success, I’ll most likely stab you in the spinal column and disappear.” Jennei retrieved a chisel-like knife with a frog crotch in it from a hidden sheath. The knife looked designed to guide the spine into the center of the blade and sever it.

“Damn,” Sam said, shifting the truck into gear and rolling out onto the road. Behind him, another nine trucks lined up professionally. Sam glanced to the east and saw the remaining trucks speeding out over the open plains, gaining as much time as they could to set up an ambush.

“Here we go,” Sam muttered to himself as Jennei pulled a hand over her face, becoming the same blonde captain they’d pulled out a few minutes ago. She leaned back in the seat, threw her feet up arrogantly, and tilted her hat over her eyes.

Sam worked the truck up to thirty-five miles an hour on the poorly-paved road. No, for these people, the road was probably quite the accomplishment, but it was still severely lacking compared to the roads of the twenty-first and twenty-second century.

Two hours later, as the sun was going down, they arrived at the gate, the last people of the night being searched as they waited to come inside the city walls. Sam guided the truck up to the same station he had seen earlier, where another man was sitting. He had circles under his eyes, yawning as they approached.

“What the hell took you so long?” he demanded as Jennei flashed the shiny metal I.D. “You shoulda been here an hour ago.”

“Some shit-for-brains sorcerer ahead of us thought shooting the buffalo on the road was a good idea. Well, he got one of his jeeps overturned by the beasts, and another died on the road. We cleared the road, but we left him to deal with his own mess. He should be by in the next hour or two, if he gets his shit unfucked.” Jennei said, scowling at the man behind the desk.

“Ah yeah, I heard about them from the guys on the wall this morning. Did you bring some back with you?” The man had a hungry glint to his eye. Sam winced, hoping he didn’t try to check the back for buffalo

“Even if we did, why would we share them with a fat fuck who sits on his ass all day?” Jennei asked. “ They’re going to the army of God. Now are you gonna cost me some more time, or are you gonna wave me through?” she leaned on the door of the car, giving the man an angry look.

He shook his head, waving them through.

“Thank you,” Sam said with a smile. She’d kept the man on the defensive and gotten through without any major questions, and the buffalo lie was even more believable since the people of the city had seen them heading for the road. Sam hadn’t even thought of that.

“Keep your mouth shut, corporal.” Jennei snapped. Sam rolled his eyes, but didn’t add anything. Method actors.