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For now we had to handle the idiots she left behind. I had to focus. One cultist down, and three more to deal with. I was about ready to step into the room – that guy with the ponytail and the glasses, I could do the old Sneaky Dustin Special. Just shadowstep behind him, and smash him in the back of the head. As I weighed my options, a mist started to rise from the floor. That decided for me. I knew on instinct to stay the hell out.
It wasn’t a trap set by the Viridian Dawn, though, judging by the pale orange tinge of the vapors. Carver, wherever he was, was trying to put these guys to sleep again. I guess I appreciated his non-violent approach to suppressing threats, but something about knowing what these people had done, and had in store, made me feel a little less reserved about hurting them. That and the fact that they were almost very likely working for Thea.
The mist rose, and I had to admit, I was glad that we’d be able to end things quickly. The only thing more dangerous than a hostile mage was a bunch of normals in possession of lethal artifacts. Thea – no, it couldn’t have been her – their leader had equipped them with a host of magical items. I might have mentioned this before, but that’s about as responsible as handing a grenade to a small child.
One of them was already hurriedly reading out loud from a scrap of notebook paper by the light of his cellphone. I guess you couldn’t cast spells directly from a notes app – something which shattered my grand fantasy of sending someone a fireball as an email attachment – but there were more immediate problems to worry about. If there was one thing I remembered from working with the Lorica, it’s that the vehicle for magic didn’t matter, only the intent. That notebook paper was a scroll, and something super shitty was about to happen.
The scrap of paper vanished in a puff of flame, and the cultists’ bodies became awash in faint light. They watched, eyes wide in terror, as the mist rose, licking at their clothes, probing at their mouths – but nothing happened. Whatever was on that scroll had countered Carver’s spell. The guy with the notebook paper – the one with the ponytail and glasses, let’s call him Scrolls – smiled and reached into his pocket for another piece of paper.
“There’s three of them,” Scrolls said, the lens of his glasses gleaming as he thrust his finger into empty space. Wait – those were enchanted too. He’d spotted Carver.
One of the men, a shuddering mess, pulled out what looked like a tiny pebble, and hurled it at the patch of empty space Scrolls had indicated. It sailed through the air harmlessly, comically – and then grew by several magnitudes into a boulder. Something in the room cracked, and snapped. Carver screamed. Pebbles thrust his fist in the air, triumphant, doubtless glad that he’d scored and had unwittingly taken down a supremely powerful sorcerer with a rock. But he didn’t expect Sterling to react so quickly.
No one could have. In a blur of black hair and leather, Sterling shot through the darkness, teeth bared and hand outstretched. Sterling’s momentum and his unholy strength slammed Pebbles into the opposite wall. The man-boy cried out in fear and pain as the impact cratered the wall and sent up a shower of broken plaster. With his other hand, Sterling forced Pebbles’s jaw upward, and he began to feed. The boy yelped, then whimpered, writhing and struggling. I looked away.
Gil growled and charged directly for the largest of the men, this huge wall of confused but sturdy muscle my mind immediately labeled as Chunk. Gil’s talons slashed in a crescent, the sweep of his claws leaving a trail of black blood. With his chest cut open, Chunk screamed.
Which left just Scrolls, and with Carver out of commission that meant that it was up to me to take him down. I shut my eyes and willed myself into the ethers. I was spoiled for choice with the entire house thrust into darkness, but I figured my best destination was my old standby: right behind Scrolls. I could grab the lamp off a side table, then beat him in the back of the head with it. Excellent.
The jaunt through the Dark Room went quick and easy, and the shift in temperature after exiting its gloom signaled that I was back in our reality, just a short distance away from Scrolls. I reached behind me, careful not to make a sound as I grabbed the lamp –
And was promptly met with a fist to the jaw. I grunted and stumbled, eyes tearing with pain, a faint tang of blood in my mouth from having bitten my tongue.
“Can’t get the jump on me,” Scrolls said, smug and self-congratulatory, except that I could hear his voice shaking. His fingers trembled as he struggled to unfurl another sheet of notebook paper. “I’ll dodge you every time.”
“That fucking hurt,” I said, spitting out blood.
He kept muttering, squinting, eyes frantically scanning the spell in his hands. I drew a deep breath, flush with the impending pleasure of beating the shit out of him. My mind whirred through the possibilities. Everything in the room was a shadow, meaning that everything was a surface for me to work with, to emerge from.
I allowed myself to melt into the ground, sinking soundlessly into the darkness, never breaking eye contact with Scrolls.
“Dodge this, motherfucker.”
He stammere
d long enough to interrupt his spellcasting, looking wildly about to see where I was going to appear next.
He wasn’t expecting the ceiling.
I aimed my foot at his face as I dropped, relishing the crack his bones made when my shoe made contact with his jaw. I landed heavily on the ground, rolling to take the sprain off my legs and avoid injury. Scrolls yowled as he slumped to the floor, clutching his face.
Sprays of dark, wet droplets burst from his mouth as he sputtered, mixed with bright white shards of his teeth. His enchanted spectacles were a mess of twisted metal and broken glass. Smashing an artifact was just the kind of thing that would have given Herald a heart attack, but it gave me the greatest surge of satisfaction in that moment. I sucked on my tongue, flush with adrenaline, and maybe a grim sense of accomplishment.
All four of the Dawn’s final defenders were down for the count. Scrolls was picking broken glass out of his face and groping around the floor for his teeth. Wrist was still clutching his hand and moaning. Chunk had somehow disappeared, driven to sheer terror by Gil’s claws, or to find some way to mend his gaping wounds, or both, and Pebbles was writhing on the floor, pale, possibly bloodless, but alive.
Maybe I should have felt some sliver of remorse, but I steeled myself with the reminder that these people were responsible for at least twelve deaths that we knew of. Given time to accumulate more artifacts and power they would have ruined even more lives. There was also the niggling matter of them being the reason I had a tattoo counting down my impending death.
Collecting myself, I went to help Sterling and Gil move the boulder off of our invisible employer, but I should have known that my presence was unnecessary. They lifted the stone easily, Gil cursing as its enchantment disappeared the moment they took it off the ground, reverting to the size of a pebble. Carver blinked back into existence, groaning as Sterling helped him to his feet.
“That was – inconvenient,” Carver said, somehow none the worse for wear apart from the creases in his suit. I didn’t know what it would have taken to kill him, but apparently it involved much more than being crushed under several hundred pounds of rock.
I shrugged. “You couldn’t have, I don’t know, destroyed the boulder? I’ve seen you do it to a knife.”
He scowled, brushing at his suit. “Disintegrating something as tiny as a knife takes significantly less ability than an entire boulder, Mr. Graves. And who knows if this fight is even over? I’ll need enough power to transport us home, after all. Also for this.”
Carver waved his hand again, and this time the amber mist didn’t take its time traveling across the room. It snaked across the floor, slipping into three pairs of nostrils, finally driving the remaining cultists into silence and stillness.
“Better,” Carver said.
