Chapter 36 - Charge of the Light Grenade.
When Gwen and Glynda arrived back at their living quarters, the men and the boys were only just out of their beds.
Tryg was busy preparing breakfast, a meat feast of bacon, fried kidney, black pudding, white pudding, sausages, eggs, mushrooms, hash browns, and fried bread.
They appeared out of the training room door. The room fell silent, all activity ceased, everyone just stood and looked at Glynda.
“Stick a few more rashers and some eggs on for us as well please Tryg,” Gwen said as if nothing was happening, “we had an early start.”
“What’s happened to Glynda?” Tom asked sheepishly.
“Nothing’s happened to me.”
“Yes, it has, and where’s Dragon Slayer.”
“It’s been put away and hidden until it’s needed, so I can walk around like a normal girl for a change without everybody gawking at me.”
“But where is it?” Tom continued as if trying to press the point.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, now, someone mentioned breakfast?” she said to end the conversation, and then she stuck her tongue out in fun. Tom then chased her around the kitchen table, but they all took the hint and started to carry on as normal. Everyone talking over everyone else.
“I want two sausages please.”
“Only one egg for me.”
“I’ll have two please.”
“I want mine sunny side down.”
“No black pudding please, yuk!”
“And no white pudding for the same reason,” said another.
Tryg slammed his spatula down onto the stovetop and grunted while looking around at all the men and boys. They got the message and meekly sat down to await whatever was placed in front of them. You don’t mess with a trygall when he’s cooking.
“Tryg says that he knows what everybody wants, how much to cook and how to cook it,” Tom announced, “he’s been doing it long enough.”
“Since when did you start communicating with Tryg,” his dad asked.
“I don’t, he communicates with me, has been since Ren came into my life.”
“Well, you kept that quiet.”
“Not really, no one asked.”
Breakfast was served, talking stopped, and they all tucked in.
After a while, Jon asked a question, “So, Tryg can communicate with you, but if you wanted to communicate with Tryg, could you?”
They all stopped eating and stared at Jon.
“What?” asked Jon.
“Yes, of course, if I want to communicate, as you call it, with Tryg, I have some deep and powerful magic I can use.”
The others smiled.
“What’s that then?” Jon asked, still not realising.
“I talk to him!”
They all erupted in laughter; Jon went red with embarrassment. He had somehow forgotten that Trygalls can listen and understand everything, they just have no voice.
“All right, I forgot. Stop laughing all of you.”
Even Tryg was laughing, something none of them had seen before.
“So,” Gwen asked once the hoo-ha had subsided and breakfast was finished, “is the larder now stacked high with wild boar, hare, rabbits, pheasant, and so on?”
“Err, no,” came the reply, “we didn’t catch anything.”
“So, you all go out for the night, stay out for most of it, but don’t even bring back a hedgehog?” Gwen said suspiciously.
“No, not even a dormouse, not that there’s much meat on a dormouse,” Llewellyn replied.
Llewellyn looked at the others for some sort of sign.
“You might as well tell her, she’ll find out later,” Faraji said.
“Come, we will show you, Flinty, apparate us all out to Paddock Wood clearing.”
He had no sooner spoken, and they were there.
“We, my dear, have been inventing,” Llewellyn said, “show them Samuel.”
Samuel reached inside his satchel and pulled out a small silver ball no bigger than a golf ball. The girls stared at the small silver ball unimpressed.
“So, what is it?” Glynda asked.
“Samuel, maestro, demonstrate our marvellous invention.”
Samuel launched the ball high into the air, there was a crack, and a brilliant white flash of energy filled the morning sky, so bright even the morning sunshine seemed quite dim by comparison.
“It’s a light grenade,” Llewellyn said triumphantly, “we didn’t go hunting last night, we spent the night trying to perfect this little beauty instead.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Gwen said, not trying to sound too enthusiastic, “why couldn’t you just have told the truth?”
Llewellyn looked a bit downtrodden and said, “we didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t work and then you mocked us.”
“We wouldn’t do that, would we Glynda?”
“No more than they would if we’d got it wrong.”
“Got what wrong?” Llewellyn asked.
Glynda spoke, “Dragon Slayer!”
Dragon Slayer appeared in her hand, and she was instantly transformed, her robes turned into the beautiful, pure white they were before, her hair became auricomous and her aura returned.
She then returned Dragon Slayer to her back scabbard and as soon as it was up to the rainguard the whole lot vanished and she was back to the look she loved, grubby clothes and unkempt hair.
“Glynda didn’t like the ‘angel of light’ look, so we went and had a bit of a mardle with Lynessa.”
“What’s a mardle?” asked Jon.
“It’s what girls do when they get together, a bit of a gossip, girl talk. Anyway, between us, we came up with the idea of lining the scabbard with a very thin sleeve of cold iron and then Lynessa came up with an incantation to make it all vanish when not needed.”
“So why the big secret, pretending to go shopping all day?” Llewellyn asked.
“Because if it didn’t work, you might have laughed at us as well.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t have secrets, then you wouldn’t have been out all night for nothing,” Glynda added.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Samuel.
“Watch.”
Glynda formed a ball of pure white energy in her hands, rolled it and squeezed it, rolled it, and squeezed it and formed it into a small ball the same size as the light grenade and gave it to Samuel.
“Throw it,” she said.
Samuel launched the ball high into the air, there was a flash of pure white light, so bright it left them unable to see for a few seconds. Much brighter than their now obsolete invention.
Within a few minutes, she had filled Samuel’s little pouch with them. Job done.
And not a moment too soon. As they stood there waiting for their eyes to readjust to normal light, a chill came over the area, fingers of frost and ice began creeping across the clearing towards them.
Before it reached them, Samuel launched one of Glynda’s grenades into the air. Boom it went, before the frost reached the ground they were standing on, it receded again.
“This is not good,” said Llewellyn, “the Abaddon seems to target us, there have been no reports of it appearing anywhere else in the kingdom. Just in case, we had better warn the other cities and tell them how to deal with it, come on Flinty, we have a council to convene.”
Word quickly spread to the other six cities and from them to the towns around them.
“It’s important that you light up the sky with as bright a light as you can conjure before the frost hits the ground you are standing on. If it gets that far, you’ll be too late, and then we don’t know what will happen,” a wizard messenger was explaining to another group of wizards.
“If you see the frost approaching, you must act in all haste,” another was saying.
And so, it went on, by the end of the day, every wizard in the land had been briefed about the Abaddon.
The worst fear was in Dolydd, the so-called breadbasket of Trymyll, here, nearly all the food in the land was grown, if the Abaddon came to Dolydd, they could easily destroy the entire harvest, leading to severe shortages for months to come. So, some extra Wizard Guards were dispatched to the area to help protect it.