Another prompt! Let's get some action going. Take two of your characters from different works you've written. They're both thrown into a jail cell. Here's the prompt:
"Look, this floorboard is loose. Think we could escape?"
Warning: I got a little carried away with this one. I don't see any kind of spoiler tag, so I guess you just get this short story as-is. Sorry folks. Feel free to scroll to the end for the next prompt if you don't want to read this.
"Look, this floorboard is loose," Aaron Hagestan said, pulling up on the squeaky board with two pudgy fingers. "Think we can escape?"
Without a word, Jaxon wiggled his fingers under the board and pulled. The stubborn board bent slightly, but whatever mechanism held it in place refused to budge.
Aaron lifted an eyebrow. "Ah. Looks like they used screws."
With a grunt, Jaxon pulled his fingers out and leaned back. The board snapped back into place with a
twang, nearly catching Aaron's fingers. "What's a screw?" Jaxon asked.
"What's a..." Aaron looked at the young man incredulously. "You don't know what a screw is?"
Jaxon's eyes closed briefly in concentration as blue Elmorian magic filled his arms. Both his hands turned ocean-blue as he pressed them against the spot where the board had bent. Cold seeped into the wood, freezing it hard.
Shaking his arms as the blue faded, Jaxon grabbed the board and hauled on it once more. This time, unable to bend, the board creaked and snapped.
"Huh. Neat trick," Aaron said, scratching his chin. "But how does someone as trim as you keep enough energy to do any magic?"
Jaxon looked sideways at the large man. "You don't need fat to do magic."
"Sure you do. The power has to come from somewhere."
Jaxon shrugged as he looked into the hole. There was another board a few inches below the first, probably the ceiling of the room below. With one board out, Jaxon set about methodically removing enough of the floor to fit the pudgy Aaron through.
"You could help," Jaxon said, sweat beading on his forehead.
"But you are doing such a wonderful job!" Aaron beamed happily. Jaxon stopped to glare at the obese mage, but Aaron was watching between the thick iron bars of their cell and didn't notice.
Finally, Jaxon guessed he had enough of the floor removed for the big man to get through. "Alright," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. "I'm going to take a peak at what's in the room below."
"Don't bother," Aaron said confidently. "I scryed it earlier. It's an empty dinner hall. A small one, probably for servants."
"Scryed?" Jaxon asked, unfamiliar with the word.
"Yeah. Used magic to look at the room."
"What color of magic can do that?"
"Magic isn't associated with colors, you know," Aaron said with a wink. "Now, down we go!"
The big man jumped into the middle of the ceiling below. The boards creaked, but held firm. Aaron began jumping up and down.
"You idiot, everyone in the whole keep is going to hear that!" Jaxon said, trying unsuccessfully to pull the big man over.
"Then you'd better be ready," Aaron said between jumps. An ominous cracking sound came from one of the boards. As Aaron muttered words of power, an invisible spell weakened the boards below him. More cracking sounded with the next jump.
"You're just going to fall into the room below?" Jaxon pictured the fat man breaking through like a cannon ball and hitting whatever was below with almost as much force.
"Not just me," Aaron said, grabbing Jaxon under both armpits. Jaxon barely had time to struggle before Aaron jumped again. The weakened ceiling cracked and splintered with the impact, dropping both men five feet down to a table below.
Aaron released Jaxon mid-fall and rolled backwards in a surprising display of agility for one so large, though it was marred somewhat when his shirt ripped on a piece of wood. Jaxon, unprepared but always a soldier, landed painfully but without any real injury.
"You crazy lunatic, you almost-" Jaxon stopped mid-sentence at the sound of voices outside the dimly-lit servants' dining hall.
"Time to go," Aaron said, picking himself up off the table and plopping onto the dirt ground. Channeling magic, the large man prepared a powerful spell. Jaxon wasn't sure in the uncertain light coming from a single dirty window, but it almost looked like the man's thick neck shrank a little.
The dining room's door opened and two armored soldiers walked in. "Leroy, I thought I told you..." the soldier blinked in surprise at finding two escaped prisoners and a gaping hole in the ceiling. Aaron released his spell and a fireball as large as a buckler streaked toward the two men. To their credit, they both leaped aside, but the fireball hit the doorframe behind them and exploded anyway.
"This way," Aaron yelled over the screaming men. He began casting another spell toward the dining room's window. Jaxon simply picked up a chair and flung it through the glass before Aaron could complete his spell.
"I suppose that works, too," the mage said as Jaxon jumped out the window. Aaron waddled over as the two soldiers behind him finally fell silent in death. Flames licked at the wooden walls as smoke slowly began to fill the room.
Using a piece of the ceiling, Aaron cleared broken glass from the window. Outside, Jaxon embraced blue Elmorian magic once more, this time pulling a great deal of energy out of his inner reserves. A guard from the keep's front rushed around the building's outer corner, meeting an ice bullet fired from Jaxon's outstretched palm.
The guard crumpled without a sound as Aaron heaved himself through the window. He fit, but barely. Jaxon's whole body turned a deep blue as he ran past the downed guard to look around the corner.
The keep's courtyard swarmed with guards. Metal armor clinked against itself as soldiers poured out of the keep and a squat barracks. The portcullis in the courtyard's outer wall had already slammed shut. The timber walls were only about fifteen feet tall, but they were too high to climb quickly and the stone gate with its portcullis looked almost impenetrable.
Jaxon ducked back around the wall as an archer pointed in his direction. "Got any ideas, Big One?" he called back to Aaron as the mage caught up.
"Sure do!" he said cheerfully. "You guard me, and I'll make a hole in that wall," he pointed directly forward, just right of the stone gate.
"That doesn't seem like the best idea," Jaxon said, leaning around the corner to fire three ice bullets at oncoming soldiers. All three shots missed.
Aaron ignored him and knelt beside the dying, unconscious soldier. "Sorry, friend," he said as he placed one hand on the man's armored chest.
The first group of guards reached the corner. Jaxon threw a jet of water into their faces. Sputtering and blinking, the men were too slow to react to Jaxon's ice bullets. In a moment, four dead or dying soldiers lay in a heap.
Raw energy flowed into Aaron from the guard. The man's skin began to shrink and collapse in on itself as first fat, then muscle was absorbed by Aaron's magic. It looked like the guard was rotting from the inside out in seconds. The energy snapped and hissed along Aaron's skin and clothes, making his hair stand on end.
Fifteen soldiers rounded the corner and immediately began sliding on the sheet of ice Jaxon had placed on the ground. Three of the men went down in a tumble, and two more fell to Jaxon's ice bullets, but then the men were on Jaxon. Swords and maces flashed as the nimble young man dodged and blocked with magically-created ice, but he would be overwhelmed in seconds.
"Aaron!" he yelled. Deep in concentration, the mage didn't respond. Screaming, Jaxon jumped back from a sword swipe and threw his magic out in one big explosion of power. A jet of water slammed into the soldiers, shoving them back in a gurgling torrent of men and weapons. One soldier had flanked far enough around Jaxon's side to avoid the sudden stream of water, but he stopped in surprise as his comrades were flung away.
Sweating and panting, Jaxon pulled on his inner reserves of red Sentothi magic. Entering a battle meditation, he drew upon his last source of magic and threw jet after jet of fire at the soldiers as they struggled to rise. Soaking wet, the men were somewhat protected for a moment, though the one dry soldier screamed in agony as his metal breastplate immediately began to burn him under the intense magical flames.
More soldiers arrived, but none of them jumped into the inferno before them. A few of the burning soldiers were pulled to safety or made it around the corner, though their howls of pain made it clear they were still out of the fight. The rest died, their burnt skin creating a smell so foul that several soldiers retched. It was a familiar smell to Jaxon.
Panting and out of energy, Jaxon's flames finally cut off. "Aaron..."
Several grim-faced soldiers stepped cautiously toward Jaxon, shields held in front to protect them from any more surprises. Aaron stood up behind Jaxon, raw energy sparking around his now baggy clothes.
"Gul kor ram!" Aaron threw a fist over Jaxon's shoulder and magic exploded from it. A concussive shockwave blasted the soldiers, flinging them like toys. Those who weren't caught in the blast shied away, fearful of what this mage would do next. Aaron took the offered opening and sprinted straight ahead toward the keep's enclosing wall.
As soon as he was past the corner, arrows flew out to greet him. Most missed, though several should have hit. Jaxon ran behind the sparking mage, dumbfounded as arrows bounced off when they should have stuck fast and deep.
Reaching the wall, Aaron yelled the same spell.
"Gul kor ram!" This time, he threw all his energy into it. The shockwave smashed into the wooden timbers, splitting logs and echoing with the sound of thunder.
"Through the breach!" Aaron pulled Jaxon, who had stopped to shield his eyes from sawdust and splinters. The pair sprinted through a wagon-sized hole and out the other side. Stunned soldiers were slow to begin firing arrows again, giving the two a head start.
Aaron's clothing now hung off him like sheets, and he had to use both hands to hold his pants up as he ran. "I feel as light as a feather!" the mage exclaimed with a grin. "I haven't been this weight since the summer of '33!"
"What happened to you?" Jaxon asked as they ran.
"Used all my fat to power that spell. And that one soldier's tissues, too."
"You... converted him into energy?"
"Of course! I can't blow through walls every day, you know. It's going to take me months to regain my fat reserves."
"You were fat on purpose?"
"Only way to store energy," the thin Aaron said. "How do you power your spells?"
"With focus and energy from inside myself," Jaxon replied, confused. He had never heard of spells using
fat.
"Maybe you should try my method," Aaron grinned broadly. "I get to eat as much as I want!"
Prompt: "You have to go to the bathroom now?"