Magic Alcohol

"We're under attack!" someone yelled as they pounded on my door

The cry startled me from my intense concentration. I jumped, knocking the delicate contraption that I had been tinkering with from the workbench. It smashed into pieces on the hard floor, but I was already running outside to see what the cry had been about.

A guard was standing outside my door, sloppily dressed in armor.

"Lord Mense's men are at the gates! They're breaking through!" he said. Then he sprinted towards the walls.

The streets were chaos. Ordinary citizens were flooding towards the rear of the city, hoping that the enemy hadn't surrounded us, while half-armed and armored guards and militia tried to fight their way through the crowds to defend the entrance to the city.

"Shit," I muttered. I dashed back inside and grabbed my emergency bottle of whiskey, then sprinted for the gates.

When I finally arrived and climbed to the top of the walls, I nearly dropped the bottle.

I knew that Lord Mense had assembled a large army. He had a formidable force, especially compared to our town's paltry force of maybe a hundred untrained guards and farmers. Reports varied, but a high estimate would have put his numbers at around two thousand foot soldiers, a mixture of bannermen and mercenaries.

The force assembled against us had ten times that number. They stretched nearly to the horizon, pointed weapons and polished armor shimmering in the early morning sun. Behind them, an array of siege weapons were being loaded and aimed at the town.

I knew from a single glance that we had no chance.

The captain of the guard stood next to me, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

"We can't fight them, can we?" he asked. I knew that he was really asking if I could fight them.

I looked at the bottle in my hand and made some quick mental calculations.

"I don't think so," I said, slowly shaking my head. "Not this number, so spread out. I wouldn't even be able to scare them off."

An idea began to form in the back of my mind.

"Call the retreat," I said, "but make it slow."

"Slow?" the captain asked, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I have an idea," I said excitedly. "It may cost some lives, but we might be able to save the town, or at least part of it. I need you and your men to draw them into the town. Get them lost in the back streets, tied up in going door to door and flushing you out. We need them to be committed completely. They will start looting and pillaging, but better to save something than nothing."

The captain held up his hands. "Hang on, what about you? What will you do?"

I turned back and looked over the city. Finally, I saw what I was looking for and pointed to it.

"I need to get into that tower," I said. "Give me a man that can break down a door. Also, send your fastest runner to my house. Tell him to grab a sack and fill it with every bottle of ethyr alcohol in the workshop."

I popped the cork out of my emergency whiskey and took a swig. Instantly, I could feel the energy coursing through my veins, begging to be released.

"But what will you do?" the captain repeated.

I took another drink and smiled. "I'm going to make a storm.

Without much questioning, the captain assigned the two requested men to me before he set about creating a series of ambushes and lines of retreat through the town. The general tactics were beyond me, but I had a bigger task to accomplish. I could only trust that the captain knew what he was doing.

The emergency whiskey allowed me to cast a spell of speed and strength on myself and the enormous mountain of a soldier that was coming with me to break into the tower. Within moments, we had arrived at the door and broke it down. I sent the man back to the captain and sprinted by myself to the top of the tower.

It was the tallest tower in the city, and the view from the roof provided me a great view of the conflict. As expected, the siege engines had made quick work of the town's meager walls, and the first waves of invaders were swarming into the gaps. I didn't have much time; I downed the entire bottle of emergency whiskey.

The stored magic helped me stay on my feet even as the alcohol threatened to make me stumble off the tower. I gritted my teeth, ignored the haze filling my mind, and began to focus.

Dark storm clouds began to fill the sky, blocking out the sunrise. The temperature dropped a few degrees, and I could feel the fury of the storm building. Electricty crackled above me, making the hair on my neck rise.

It wasn't enough.

The runner arrived quickly enough. The bottles clinked together as he set the sack on the roof next to me. I picked one up and kept drinking.

Around the tower, the city began to burn as the invaders pillaged the houses. My brow furrowed. I didn't have much time. The storm was about to be released, but I needed more magic. I kept drinking. Thunder started to rumble.

Then I blacked out.

"Wake up."

I groaned.

"Hey. Wake up!"

I felt a sharp spike of pain on my face, and my eyes fluttered open.

"Did you just slap me?" I asked blearily. In front of me was the soldier who had brought bottles of magic stored in alcohol.

"Come on, we need to get going!" he urged me.

"Wait. What happened? Did my plan work?" I stood and nearly swayed off the tower before the soldier steadied me. "Did I save the city?"

"Of course not," he said scathingly, and I could see he was right. In the distance, the sun was setting, but there was enough light for me to see that the town had burned to the ground.

"What happened?" I asked, horrified.

"Well, you started summoning the storm. Then the storm hit- over there." He pointed to a forest in the distance where it was still raining. A few of the trees had clearly been hit by lightning, lightning that had been intended for invading soldiers.

"And then you threw up over the edge of the tower and passed out," the soldier finished. "Everyone else died or fled."

"Oh."