The Last Hero's Wasterland Sanctuary

A Friendly Electromagnetic Welcome

Chapter 6: A Friendly Electromagnetic Welcome

"Not on my watch!" Aurex snarled. He grabbed a heavy metal wrench from his belt and slammed it down onto the primary glass terminal, shattering the screen into a million pieces. He reached into the broken glass, grabbed a thick, glowing blue conduit, and yanked it out with a violent grunt. "Bypass manual override, confirm!"

The terminal let out a pathetic, dying whine. The massive stone ring in the sky groaned, its blinding blue light instantly flickering and dimming.

"Did... did you stop it?" Lyra whispered, her chest heaving as she stared at the sky.

"Sort of," Aurex panted, leaning heavily against the terminal, his hand bleeding slightly from the broken glass. "I cut the lethal plasma feed. But the stored energy had to go somewhere."

"Where did it go, Aurex?" Vaelia asked, her eyes widening as she pointed upward. "Tell me it didn't go into the sky-pulse."

"It went into the sky-pulse," Aurex muttered, closing his eyes in defeat.

"What's a sky-pulse?" Lyra asked, looking between them. "Is it dangerous?"

"Not to humans," Vaelia said, taking a steps back. "But to magic? Oh, boy."

"My magic..." Lyra gasped, suddenly falling to her knees. She gripped her chest, her face turning pale. "The ambient mana... it's completely gone. I can't feel my connection. I feel... empty."

"It's an electromagnetic-mana dampener," Aurex explained, wiping sweat and dirt from his forehead. "Standard safety protocol for ancient defense grids. If you can't blow the enemy up, you strip them of their power source. Your ships run on magic, right?"

Lyra’s eyes went completely round. "They run entirely on refined mana crystals. If the crystals are drained..."

"They're going to fall out of the sky like lead bricks," Vaelia finished.

"Aurex," Vaelia said, her voice deadpan as she tapped his shoulder. "Look up."

"I don't want to look up, Vaelia."

"You really need to look up, Aurex."

Aurex groaned and looked skyward. The massive Solarian flagship—a colossal wooden vessel adorned with golden sails and hovering via glowing gravity runes—was currently tilting sideways. The glowing runes on its hull were flickering out one by one.

"They're falling," Lyra screamed, scrambling to her feet. "They're falling out of the sky! All of them!"

"They aren't just falling," Aurex said, his voice rising in pitch as he calculated the trajectory. "They're falling west. North-west. Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"What's in the north-west?" Lyra asked, terrified.

"My farm!" Aurex roared. "They're falling right into my hybrid pumpkin patch!"

"Should we run?" Vaelia asked, already taking three steps backward.

"Yes, we should run!" Aurex grabbed Vaelia’s arm and snagged Lyra’s mud-stained cape, dragging them both toward a reinforced stone archway nearby. "Move, move, move!"

"But my knights!" Lyra protested. "We have to help them!"

"You can help them after we don't get squashed by a three-ton magical sailboat! Run!"

The sky was filled with the screeching sound of tearing metal and wood as the massive flagship plummeted. The auxiliary ships in the fleet were scattering, some spinning out of control, but the main mothership was a giant, unguided boulder dropping straight toward the ground.

"Hold on to something!" Aurex yelled, shoving Lyra and Vaelia under the heavy stone archway and shielding them with his body.

The impact was cataclysmic.

The earth buckled under their feet. A massive shockwave of wind, dirt, and pulverized pumpkins blasted through the clearing. The sound of wood splintering, metal grinding against stone, and magic engines exploding echoed like continuous thunder. Aurex could hear his carefully built perimeter fence—weeks of hard labor—shattering into kindling.

After what felt like an eternity, the chaos subsided. A thick cloud of black smoke and sparkling, defunct mana particles drifted over the ruins.

"Everyone still has their head attached?" Aurex grunted, shaking a layer of dust and dirt from his hair.

"I think my ears are ringing, but yes," Vaelia coughed, swatting away the smoke. "And my tail is covered in ash. This is going to take hours to wash out."

"My knights..." Lyra gasped, stumbling out from under the stone archway. She fell to her knees, coughing. "Is anyone alive?"

"They're alive. Those Solarian flagship hulls are built like fortresses," Aurex said, his eyes scanning the wreckage. Suddenly, his jaw clenched. "But my pumpkin patch isn't. Look at that. Just look at it."

"Aurex, I'm so sorry," Lyra stammered, looking at the giant trench of mashed orange pulp. "I... we will compensate you, I swear! The crown will pay for every single pumpkin!"

"Compensate me?" Aurex turned on her, his eyes blazing. "With what? Shiny gold coins? Can I eat gold coins during the winter blight? Do gold coins keep the blood-briars from invading my living room now that my fence is demolished? Look at my fence, Lyra! It's completely flat!"

"Hey, look, someone's coming out," Vaelia pointed toward the wreckage of the ship's deck.

The heavy, silver-plated doors of the flagship's main cabin burst outward, thrown off their hinges by a burst of residual, cracking red magic. From the smoke emerged a tall, imposing man in ornate golden armor, draped in a scorched crimson cloak. His face was twisted in a snarl, his silver hair disheveled and covered in soot. He held a massive, glowing broadsword that crackled with unstable, angry red sparks.

"Who did this?" the man roared, his voice echoing across the ruined farm. "Which of you wretched, degenerate scavengers dared to sabotage the royal fleet?"

"General Gregory!" Lyra called out, stepping out from behind Aurex. "General, please, lower your weapon! It was an accident!"

Gregory’s eyes locked onto Lyra. "Princess Lyra! Thank the heavens you are safe. Step away from those filthy peasants at once! They have clearly used some form of forbidden, ancient sorcery to bring down our vessel!"

"No, General, you don't understand!" Lyra pleaded, running toward him. "He didn't attack us! He saved us! The defense system was going to obliterate the entire fleet! He bypassed it!"

"Saved us?" Gregory sneered, looking around at the ruined landscape, then pointing his glowing sword directly at Aurex's chest. "Look at this destruction! The fleet is grounded, the mana-drives are fried, and we are stranded in the middle of the Forbidden Zone! And you expect me to believe this zero-mana exile did us a favor?"

Aurex walked forward, completely ignoring the glowing sword pointed at his heart. He stopped just a few feet away, his boots sinking into the mashed pumpkin pulp.

"Listen to me, you shiny, over-armored golden retriever," Aurex said, his voice dangerously low and calm. "You just parked your oversized toy box in the middle of my dinner. You broke my fence. You ruined my crops. And now you're standing in my mud, pointing a glowing toothpick at me."

"Watch your tongue, peasant!" Gregory snarled, his sword flaring up with red light. "I am General Gregory of the Solarian High Command! I could execute you where you stand for treason against the crown!"

"Oh, really?" Aurex smirked, crossing his arms. "With what magic? Your little sword is running on battery power right now, General. The dampening field is still active. If you try to swing that thing, the residual feedback is going to blow your arm off. Go ahead. Try it. I dare you."

Gregory hesitated, his eyes darting to the unstable, sputtering sparks on his blade. He gritted his teeth, his face flushing with embarrassment and anger. "You... you dare threaten a general of the realm?"

"I'm not threatening you. I'm telling you to get your trash off my lawn," Aurex said, pointing toward the shattered flagship. "And then, you and your little scout troop are going to help me rebuild my fence. Every. Single. Post."

"This is absurd!" Gregory roared, turning to his surviving soldiers who were dragging themselves out of the wreckage. "Men! Arrest this man! He is using forbidden, dark magic to suppress our abilities and hold us hostage!"

"He doesn't have magic, you idiot!" Lyra yelled, stepping between Gregory and Aurex. "How many times do I have to tell you? He has a mana level of zero! He's the survivor we came to find!"

"I don't care who he is!" Gregory spat, his eyes wild with fury. "He has brought down a royal flagship. That is an act of war! Seize him!"

The soldiers hesitated, looking between their general and the princess, their hands trembling on their weapons.

Aurex sighed, reaching down to his belt and tapping the wrench against his thigh. "Man, I really hate royal nonsense."

"Step back, Princess," Gregory ordered, his voice trembling with humiliated rage. "I will not let some zero-mana parasite mock the Solarian military. He will answer for this treason!"

"If you touch him, General, you answer to me!" Lyra yelled, drawing her own sidearm, her blade lacking its usual golden aura but still sharp and lethal. "I am the leader of this expedition!"

"You have been compromised, Your Highness!" Gregory spat. "This man has clearly bewitched you with some ancient relic! Soldiers, I said seize him!"

Aurex didn't flinch. He just looked at the approaching, weakened knights and shook his head. "Vaelia, go get the heavy-duty gravity-press from the shed. It looks like we have some garbage to clean up."