Frenchman Flat
This too shall pass.
Beckton felt Newkirk slip a handful of bullets for the Springfield into his pocket.
"Were you expecting this, Beckton? They have two heavy hitters."
"We knew they had an interest in you, but we didn't think they'd move like this."
"I can't take them. I need you to give me the sigil sequence for a friendly circle."
"Parsons and Teller -"
"Are already dead. I need two minutes. Hold them off. You have fifteen Magic Missile rounds."
The agent shook off a persistent sense of unreality and worked the bolt on the rifle to put a round in the chamber.
"Sigil sequence is Austria-Baker-Nehalem-Queen Potsdam-Yoke-Sevastopol-George. Make it fast, Newkirk. I don't like our odds."
Newkirk toppled the workbench onto its side to give them a little more cover, then began his spell. Following his training, Beckton waved a hand over the gun and muttered an activation word. There was a faint glow from the chamber in affirmation, and then -
The near door that he'd come in through blew in. It was on.
Prequels
Sequels
Comments (5 so far!)
HSAR
(continued)
Magical theory does require that all spells be activated with a master word (or, when written, a symbol). Usually this is immediately after the preparatory vocalisations, materials and hand motions are complete, but (as discussed above) with the right technique the preparations can be stabilised enough that the activation can be done some period of time afterwards and sometimes even by untrained laymen.
Frenchman Flat is the site where the "Ranger" series of nuclear tests were conducted following Crossroads. Later, it was also used to test the M65 nuclear artillery piece.
- #3086 Posted 7 years ago
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HSAR
The sigil sequence is an alternating sequence of location names and letters from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, one of the precusors to the current NATO phonetic alphabet.
- #3100 Posted 7 years ago
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WhiteHat
I'm eager to see this continue. You've crafted a, uh... link-clicker.
What's the ficlet equivalent of a page-turner? :p
- #3104 Posted 7 years ago
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Inspired by (sequel to):
An explosion echoed outside. The pair, seasoned veterans both, were in motion without a word. Beckto…
X-Ray- Published 7 years ago.
- Story viewed 18 times and rated 0 times.
All stories on Ficlatté are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. What does this mean?
HSAR
Teleportation Circle is a fairly advanced fifth-level conjuration spell for long-range transportation. It creates a portal linking two teleportation circles together temporarily, if the unique "sigil sequence" for both circles are known. Newkirk is no fool and had already prepared the circle on his end in case a rapid exit might be required, but he still needs to know the destination sigil sequence. The precise destination of this sigil sequence is not stated.
Parsons and Teller, presumably, were the MPs in the car. The nature of the attacking force is not stated.
Magic Missile is a first-level spell, one of the most basic and well-known offensive spells. It fires self-guiding bolts of magical force dealing 10.5 damage (average).
One of the major themes of this world is the attempt to give non-magic users access to magic. Newkirk's area of expertise is warfare, and casting spells inside munitions is his specialism, but the reader can probably imagine other examples.