Mother of Magic

Line of Battle

Le liked to call the platforms 'Sky Sleds'. Stephanie did not refuse overtly. She also never used the term, preferring to just call the devices 'sleds'. Ava, who could fly without needing something to magically push on without crushing offered no opinions. She liked that her 'students' had invented ways to fly without prompting. Starting at Le's biplane they had used to escape the tower in Seattle, through the modified version they took to the Guildhall, to these scaled-down and simplified solutions that only carried a few people. No seats. No comfort, but most importantly, no internal organ crushing. The current version of the sleds were extremely tough and simple. Inspired more or less by flying carpets, they were flat sheets of steel. Plates of metal with railings on the front and the sides. What was the front of the sled was a bit arbitrary. Moving the railing to the opposite end of the rectangle would suddenly make that end the front. The front was where Stephanie or Le held on to and defined the direction the sled went in the sky.

Technically, holding onto a railing was not required to fly the sled, but the physical connection gave the two new Witches a mental frame of reference.

It also gave the passengers peace of mind. Ava could fly if she fell off in the sky, but Silena would need Ava to magically catch her if she did. Silena did NOT want either Stephanie or Le 'catching' her because that would probably equal pulping her. Her experience with Stephanie's undisciplined reaction to her sword, while in the past now, was not forgotten. She did not blame Stephanie. Silena did not forget the ease with which she had been tossed and her supposedly Witch-proof armor damaged. For these two Witches, fusing Namber was easy. Flying without crushing themselves or another person was not. One was in some way damped by the Namber. The other required fine control of Magic that neither Stephanie nor Le currently possessed.

Silena and Le were on one 'sled'. Ava and Stephanie on the other. Both flyers held the front rail, and both passengers one of the side rails.

The two brand-new Witches guided the sleds through the air to the North. Not so fast as to blow them off. They were not in that big a hurry. Yellow Feather had told them they were just getting going, and there was a sufficient amount of ground to cover between Collins and Cheyenne. The sky transport was moving far more rapidly than what Yellow Feather said the armored vehicles were moving as well. Plenty of time to intercept the militia and be north of the Ward.

Ava added a magical screen around both sleds. The two sleds looked like flying bits of sky-blue fluff from the outside. Magic, and Ava's fine control of it, allowed the screen to be one-way. Being on the sled and looking out, the passengers could not see the fluffy disguise at all. It looked to all aboard the sleds as if they were standing on sheets of reinforced steel flying around with unobstructed views of the countryside.

To the outside viewer, once they were up 1000 feet from the ground, the two steel flying carpets were almost invisible. It would take a sharp-eyed observer to detect their motion. Especially if they passed in front of a cloud.

The Cheyenne Nation was not all that far to the North, but the train station was on the north side of it. The pair of flying carpet analogs flew on for a while before they came across the line of assault vehicles.

Silena pointed and called out for all to hear (careful to maintain a tight grip with the other hand) "I see ten of them. Spread out in a line. At least a mile wide. Not going all that fast it looks like. Bumping along South at... dunno. Twenty miles per hour maybe? Probably not that fast."

Le handed Silena some high-power binoculars he conjured. "Thanks, Boss."

Silena surveyed below, then called over to the ball of blue fluff in the sky next to them "It's like Yellow Feather described these beasts. I have never seen anything quite like them. Custom builds I think. Mostly the same, but they have weird proportions. Big old things. Metal tracks on either side. Gatling guns forward and aft. Some angled armor protects the gunner. A big slot in the center so they can aim. Just like I thought: I can see a hatch behind each gun emplacement, so the gunners are inside the vehicle until they need them outside to fire the weapons. That big gun is huge. Guessing the shells are five or six inches wide. The turret is tall and wide. I am guessing that at least two people operate that. With a turret that tall and a gun that big, must recoil like a bitch."