Hilda - Lycadea (14 page)

"We can at least try," William shrugged,
filling up the mugs again with a wave of his hand. He made a cup of
tea materialise in front of Davdruw as well.

After breakfast, Davdruw took the group to
the Palliza again. He first had objected to Kerna being there, but
Hilda insisted that the woman had to come. "To take care of the
cats."

Gesmarion and Katinki looked up and came to
greet the group. "Welcome back, honoured witch!"

William frowned, as they only seemed to
notice Hilda, but he refrained from mentioning something. Being
invisible had its advantages, he knew.

The day passed with a kind of inventory of
all machinery and systems, under Rebel's supervision. She was the
one who understood most of all that stuff. William looked at all
the people who made up the high council. Many of them were sleeping
on improvised beds; he changed those into proper beds, just to have
something to do. Maurizio and Kerna took care of the two cats, as
long as these animals wanted to. This meant that the two people
stood empty-handed most of the time.

"Oh, this is interesting," said Rebel at one
moment.

"What is?" Hilda asked. She at least tried to
understand.

"This console here," Rebel pointed, "looks
like it is controlling the weather over this area."

"Controlling the weather..." Hilda sounded
disbelieving and disgusted. "You do not want to control the
weather."

"They wanted to," Rebel said. "And their
technology did pull it off for a while, but something is going
wrong with that now."

Rmani, a woman who stood near the apparatus,
explained that Rebel was correct, and also that they had been
trying to make the system work again. "It does not work well,
though."

"It works worse, I dare to bet," Rebel said.
"The more you adjust on these things, the more unstable the output
parameters become, so the next machine in the chain will get
unbalanced data and create a faulty projection of the
meteorological adjustments, so the whole thing will end up in an
atmospheric deviation of considerable proportion."

"What?"

"The weather is going to be crap," William
translated for Hilda.

"Right. And what if you just stop that thing
from doing whatever devious deviating it now does?"

Rmani stared at Hilda. "But, honoured witch,
then the weather will become... unpredictable!"

"And it is predictable now, is it?"

Rmani fell silent. Gesmarion then confessed:
"We do not know how to shut it down."

"Ah. That is a different dragon," Hilda said.
"Maybe we can find something out. Rebel here is so good with
that."

Maurizio, carrying Grimalkin, coughed for
attention. "Maybe that is not a very good idea, Hilda."

"And you have a better one?"

"Maybe we can fine-tune the machine," the
captain tried.

"So you are in favour of messing with the
weather. Without me, sir," Hilda told him. "Let's see if we can
calm it down first." That was as far as she wanted to go. There was
no way she was going to touch any of these things.

The small group watched as Rebel go to work.
Well, attempted to, as she had to depend on the lack of knowledge
of the high council. Most of her questions were replied to with a
good old shrug.

Hilda looked at William, who looked back at
her. They shared the same worry that this might end up in some
serious disaster concerning the weather.

One of the high council members, a man by the
name of Tarmis, happily started flicking a switch.

"What are you doing?" William asked, hoping
that this man had some form of a clue.

"I don't know," Tarmis said, "I sometimes do
that to see if something happens."

"And always with that switch?"

"No. I take a different one every time and
they all seem to be broken. I never hear of something that
changed." Tarmis reached for the switch again. Hilda punched his
arm away.

"Ouch, honoured witch, why did you do that?"
He really did not seem to understand.

"Suppose you are messing up some weather on
the other side of the planet? Suppose you trigger some heavy rain
that causes people to drown?"

"Uhm... oh..." Tarmis put his hands behind
his back.

"Can that happen?" Kerna with the cats
asked.

"Who knows," William replied. "If we're lucky
nothing happened. Does anyone even know if there are people on the
other side? And how many? And if they are in the same mess as you
are?"

Davdruw, unfortunately, could assure them
that the state of misery was the same everywhere. Some people had
contact with other groups, as far as the communication systems
allowed.

Rebel in that time had discovered a pattern
in a few things on the consoles, but she had no idea what they
meant.

"Better leave it all be then," the witch
suggested.

Davdruw looked at his silvery sleeve. Then he
asked to be excused. Without waiting for a response, he paced off
on his long legs.

"Wonder what he's upto," Hilda commented at
the disappearing back.

"Honoured witch! I have something for you!"
One of the council members came to her, waving his arms excitedly.
"Here you are!" He handed her a broken switch.

"Oh. Wonderful." Hilda frowned at the thing
in her hand. "And your precise meaning of this gift is?"

"I don't really know," the man said, "you
seemed interested in the other one too."

Rebel tapped a panel. "Looks like this is
broken too." At that moment, the panel came to life and showed a
very complex scribble. Several council members gasped.

"What?" enquired the witch.

The answer came in the form of a trembling
floor.

"Uh-oh," someone said. Someone from the high
council. This did not bode well.

"What?" Hilda asked again, getting slightly
impatient with the council and worried about the unrelenting
tremble.

"I'm afraid something is going wrong."

Hilda and her friends had figured that out
already.

"Very wrong."

That just made it worse.

The floor trembled some more, this time more
serious, as if the previous tremor had been a practice run. The
equipment against the walls responded by vibrating, and here and
there parts fell off, as if they agreed with the floor's trembles.
William and Rebel hoped they were not crucial parts.

"This is an earthquake, right?" Hilda tried.
It was almost a relief as some of the Lycadeans nodded and looked
around for more possible parts coming down. Nothing happened
anymore though. The floor settled down, as did the parts.

"I want out of here," Rebel said. "If tapping
a console already calls up an earthquake, I'm not touching anything
anymore." She had barely said it when another trembling made itself
known.

Hilda looked at William. "This was something
different..." Her words were confirmed by a display coming to life
by itself and a set of blue lights blinking. "Does that mean
alarm?" she asked Katinki, who nodded.

"Hmm. What happened to red for danger," the
witch muttered. The display in the meantime occupied itself by
showing a pyramid that was slowly collapsing.

"Madonna," Maurizio said. "Are there people
in there?"

Davdruw confirmed that notion.

"We have to go and get them out!" Rebel
voiced the feeling of the entire group. They all started running
towards the door, Kerna included, when suddenly a small beam of
light enveloped Hilda and froze her in place.

"Crappedy crap!" she shouted. She could only
moved around inside the circle of light. "What is this? Can someone
let me out?"

Davdruw, his hand still on his sleeve, said:
"My sincerest apologies, honoured witch Grimhilda, but I cannot let
you go out where the danger is. You are too precious. You are here
to make right what is wrong!"

William drew his wand and pointed it at the
spiritual leader. "It is against my feelings to hurt a spiritual
leader," he said, "but if you don't release her, I will. And then I
am going to find the biggest elf in existence and let that suck on
you."

"Suck an elf," Hilda said, "that's what I
call style."

There was another rumble through the floor,
the display showed a pretty picture of a piece of wall falling
down.

"And maybe we should hurry up in style as
well," the witch added.

Davdruw's hand moved to his sleeve, but
William's wand was faster. The sleeve disappeared and the tall man
tapped on his bare, pale arm. "Sorry to burst your, ehm, sleeve,"
said the wizard as he turned to Hilda. It actually took him a few
tries before he had removed the light circle that kept his witch
imprisoned.

"But you-" said Davdruw. At that point
William slammed the man with some innocent magic. There was a light
circle around him. And it was sound proof.

Kerna, Rebel and Maurizio were waiting by the
door. Hilda and William joined them and they left the council hall,
leaving Davdruw and the high council behind.

In the corridors there was a lot of running
around by people who all attempted to do some rescue-y action. None
of them however seemed to have a decent clue of what to do,
though.

"Holy Bejeebus," William said, "this is going
to be tough."

Maurizio said: "I am sure that Rebel can make
them cooperate." He looked at the woman, who grinned. Apparently he
knew something about the tricks she had up her sleeve, where
Davdruw was without for now. Tricks, as well as a sleeve.

Maurizio reached inside a pocket of his long,
red coat and brought out a small piece of yellow metal. He held it
in front of his mouth and said: "Everybody calm down!" His words
echoed through all the corridors, startling people and making them
stop their panicked running around.

Hilda looked at the man who suddenly had
assumed his role of captain.

"We need medical supplies, if you have those
around here. We also need three people to guide us to where we can
get to the other building. Everyone capable of doing something
useful like carrying wounded or tending to them, follow us. The
rest go to your quarters or carry on with your regular activities."
Maurizio put the metal in his pocket again.

"Crappedy crap, that is a handy little
thing," Hilda commented.

The captain nodded, put his eye patch over an
eye and looked around. Several people had stepped up and said they
would be able to help. Maurizio appointed three of them to lead the
way. "Rebel, stay close to them and keep them near. Not sure if
they are as brave when things get a bit more difficult."

Rebel nodded and with the other three formed
the spearhead to the corridor from where they could reach the
pyramid in distress. William's magic and Rebel's unnatural powers
were needed to forcibly open the door. Inside the corridor they
found several people, many of them hurt. The Lycadeans that had
joined them started carrying the wounded away.

"I hope their sickbay is still operational,"
muttered Rebel, "these folks are not very competent without their
machinery."

Hilda agreed. "I wonder why they allowed
their machine things to take over their entire life. It looks as if
they exist to support the machine things. Does anyone know how many
people were in this thing? And how many are already brought
out?"

Her question remained frightfully
unanswered.

"This is going well," the witch muttered.
"Rebel, William, can you find people in here?" She bit away another
pinch of pain over the loss of her magic. Now would be a great time
for that to come back, but clearly magic was not aware of that.
Hilda felt helpless, despite pretending to be in control of the
search and rescue operation.

William squeezed her hand for a moment, as if
he knew what she was thinking at that moment. "I'll throw in some
magic," he said calmly.

Rebel just nodded as she spread her hands,
fingers pointing up and palms away from her. "At least a few dozen
behind that wall," she pointed. "Everyone out of the way, the
wizard's going to make a nice hole in there."

William raised an eyebrow for a moment, it
was as if she had read his thoughts. Rebel, he decided, was a scary
person when she was not busy being weird or strange. Wand in hand,
he started removing parts of the wall, making the blocks fall
towards them. He made them float through the corridor and dumped
them at the end where Lycadeans tried to remove them. They failed,
as the blocks were quite large. And heavy.

It did not take very long for the hole to be
large enough to step through. Rebel was right: they found over
thirty people in the adjacent room. Most of them were well, some
had bruises from falling bits of ceiling, A serious bit of falling
ceiling had effectively sealed off the way out.

"We're making progress this way," Hilda
commented. "Next room." Her last words were out-volumed by a
majestic bit of noise coming from further into the
pyramid."Crappedy crap," she said after the coughing, courtesy of a
large dust cloud, was done. "That was not what I asked for!"

"Honoured Grimhilda!" a well-known voice
called.

"How did he get out?" William wondered as
Davdruw appeared.

"The palliza started falling apart," the tall
man quickly said, "and somehow that made your prison circle
disappear."

"And the council?" Maurizio asked, who just
came back from carrying off a person.

"They are safe," Davdruw said.

"Good. Now get out of the way," Rebel said,
"I have people to find." Again she spread her hands in front of
her. Her "uh-oh" did not mean much good.

Everyone looked at where Rebel was looking
and everyone saw a large crack appear in the next wall. It was as
if two invisible hands started ripping the room apart, starting in
the centre of the wall and tearing away at the floor and the
ceiling at the same time.