by Zoe Chant
“I like the term superdour better,” Rez said solemnly.
That only made them break into more peals of helpless laughter.
“Okay, look,” Daniella said, rising to her feet. “Henrik’s theory is as good as any, but what we should do is try to get a little more information, and stick together. None of us alone was strong enough to knock it out, but six of us were.” Henrik thought it was kind of her to count him. “We don’t know how many of them there are, or where, but we know they are after us specifically, so we should be careful about going out alone. And I also know that if we starve to death, we won’t be able to save the world.”
“Sorry to break up the war meeting,” Ansel said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a rectangle of paper in his hands. “I was going to order some takeout, if you guys are as tired of Thanksgiving leftovers as I am.”
“Pizza!” Henrik said, but the suggestion immediately reminded him of Robin, still missing. Robin would know better than them what this new menace was, and how to counter it, even diminished as they were here.
“Pizza,” Trey agreed mournfully.
“Pizza,” Rez chorused with Heather.
“Geez, guys, don’t sound so excited about it,” Ansel said, but his face suggested that he understood their sadness.
It was the same delivery driver who had delivered their pizzas weeks before at Marie’s cafe, and he looked no more amused than he had the previous time. “Veggie, two pepperoni, meat festival, and chicken fiesta, extra spicy.” He looked them over skeptically. “Nice house.”
“It is Ansel’s,” Rez pointed out politely as he took the steaming boxes. “He is gracious enough to allow us to live and train here.”
“It has a refrigerator,” Henrik added.
The delivery lad nodded slowly. “Sure, man.”
Ansel signed the receipt. “They’re Norwegian,” he said apologetically.
The driver scurried away with suspicious quickness.
26
The second hand store was technically open, but as usual, there were no customers, which was just as well, since everyone was coming to pack up the warehouse and minimize the damage that the coming battle would do.
“I don’t know how you stay in business,” Daniella said, hanging her coat near the door.
“Thanks, nice to see you, too!” Ansel called from the counter. “I’ll remind you that the weeks before Christmas are usually my most brisk sales, and that I’m closing early in the year, for you guys, so that you can save the world without as much collateral damage this time. Hopefully.”
“You’re our hero, Ansel,” Gwen called. “Maybe they’ll write a ballad about your sacrifices.” She took off her coat.
“Will it be a rock ballad?” Henrik wanted to know. Gwen had been introducing him to more styles of music. He’d been alarmed by K-Pop, enthralled by jazz, and bored by classical. Queen remained one of his favorite bands.
“It was just a joke,” Gwen explained. “I was teasing Ansel.”
Henrik looked vaguely disappointed, and since he was standing close enough, bent to give her a kiss that she was perfectly happy to accept.
“Alright,” Daniella said commandingly. “Girls, let’s start with glassware, since that’s the most fragile. The knights can start moving out the furniture. Most of it can go in the storage unit out back. We’ll stack the boxes on the furniture. Clothing and the display racks and shelves last.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Ansel said. “Please label the boxes so that I have some hope of finding things again.”
“We will of course unpack for you once the crisis is past,” Rez assured him. “This is the least we can do.”
“Yes it is,” Ansel agreed with a laugh. “Alright, I’m going to close up and call it a year. I’ll have dinner ready when you guys realize how much you’ve bitten off.”
“It will take us several days I fear,” Trey admitted.
After a few hours, and about a hundred bubble-wrapped glasses and baubles, Gwen was starting to feel like it was going to take them until Christmas.
Robin, who was still worryingly missing, had wanted them to start monitoring the warehouse in mid-December, to make sure that Cerad’s forces didn’t try to punch through the veil unexpectedly while it was thinning but not yet its thinnest.
Henrik felt bad about not being able to scry for Robin, or dowse for Tadra or her key, or do anything useful, and Gwen hated how he took that guilt upon himself instead of putting it on her where it belonged.
The others remained optimistic, frequently reiterating that it had taken external forces to bring their magic to light. They smirked at Henrik and Gwen no less than they had before, but Gwen cared less now that they were spending every blissful night together.
“Sorry, we’re closed!” Daniella called, when the door gave a little chime. No one answered, but Gwen continued to hear commotion in the front. The door chimed again, and again.
Daniella brushed off her knees as she stood to go talk to them directly. “Some people can’t take a hint,” she sighed.
Then she got to the end of the aisle and screamed Trey’s name at the top of her lungs.
Gwen was rolling to her feet before Daniella could turn and run back.
“What is it?” she asked in alarm, unconsciously standing in a fighting stance.
Before Daniella could answer, Gwen saw them. “Marie?” she said hesitantly, but she already knew that it wasn’t Marie. Not any more than it was Mr. Strickland, or that guy from the corner market, or the woman who jogged with her dog down Jefferson street every day at six, or their pizza delivery driver. They were clearly possessed, puppets at the hands of the darkness that glared from their eyes.
There was a press of them, and Gwen wasn’t sure what was the cold of the darkness they carried, what was the cold swirl of air from the door they’d left open, and what was the chill of her own despair. They weren’t ready! She hadn’t figured out how to unlock Henrik’s energy, and she hadn’t thought to bring her sword.
“Is there a sword in this place?” she asked desperately. She was going to figure out how to unlock this power sooner than later, it looked like.
“In costumes, maybe?” Heather suggested.
“Wait, I think there’s one behind the counter,” Daniella said.
The three of them had retreated, shoulder to shoulder, and the mob of superdour-ridden people was advancing on them, slowly but inexorably. It wasn’t quite a zombie shuffle, but it was clearly un-hurried. They were grinning in anticipation.
As badly as Gwen wanted to keep her fellow keys at her side, she stepped forward away from them. “I’m going to need a little space,” she warned them, flexing her fingers.
The zombies paused as she stepped to face them. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she told them. “Okay, I don’t want to hurt the humans. So, just let them go, and...uh…I won’t have to hurt you?”
Okay, she wasn't great at the negotiating part.
One of them laughed, a man holding a length of chain. Marie was holding two of her biggest butcher knives and the jogger woman had an axe. It looked more like a wood-chopping axe than the kind of battle axe that Henrik used, but Gwen was pretty sure it would hurt if it connected. The delivery boy had a baseball bat.
“You won’t harm us,” Marie said. “But we have no such qualms about hurting you. Only you stand between this world and glorious victory. If we remove you, we will have favor with the darkness coming. We have new masters now, and new vessels.”
Gwen sighed, and took swift inventory of herself as she calmed her breathing. Her shoelaces were tied, her pants were stretchy enough to allow her to kick, and her shirt was not too loose. She wasn’t wearing a Do Bohk, but she didn’t need the uniform to fight.
She just had to take them down and then the knights could get the dours out of the poor people. It was just...there were a lot of them.
Before she could lose her nerve she gave a loud “Kiyep!” and dropped into a position of a
ttack. “Come get me, you jerks!”
Unfortunately, they accepted her invitation.
27
“Daniella!” Trey dropped the end of the couch that he was carrying, leaving Rez and Henrik at the other end to try to keep the piece of furniture from careening off the ramp to the storage unit into the snow. “She is distressed! She is in danger!”
That was reason enough for Rez and Henrik to abandon the couch as well, sprinting back to the warehouse.
Trey shifted as he went through the door, cracking the frame, and Rez was his magnificent stallion self, leaping over Trey’s lashing tail.
The only way that Henrik was going to get past them to Gwen was if he shifted, too, so he did, keenly aware of the uselessness of his still-tiny form. He winged his way up, above Trey’s great head. From this vantage, he could see a terrible battle spreading out through the warehouse. Gwen was crouched facing a half dozen humans armed with a variety of deadly tools, looking small but not helpless. Daniella and Heather were behind her, and none of them were aware of the other two humans coming down the next aisle to flank them.
Henrik did not have to see their faces to know that they were driven by dark forces. Gwen had called them superdours.
He gave a shriek, wishing for human speech at the least, but he knew that his warning would be understood. He darted through the air and fell upon the two superdours who were creeping around behind the keys, scratching and snapping his beak at them. One of them he actually landed on, using the magic he could dredge up to snap at their source like he had with Marie.
As it had with Marie, it only lasted a moment before the dour was back in control of the human. If Trey and Rez had followed him, perhaps it would have lasted longer, and Henrik rose into the air to join his shieldmates.
They were working in tandem on the group of ridden humans attacking Gwen, and Henrik chose the human they were nearest. Snap!
Between the three of them, the dour was stripped from the body it was possessing and the human staggered back in confusion from the battle it found itself in.
Gwen was taking on too many of them, Henrik thought in miserable dismay. She was a flow of water, a measure of music, and using her skills to great advantage. When they attacked, she used their strength to throw them down, or to twist them aside. But they had weapons to her bare hands, and there were many more of them. A man swinging a chain caught her in the side and battered her into the shelves that they had been clearing. Books tumbled off swaying shelves onto the fighters.
Daniella and Heather began picking them up and throwing them into the fray, but swiftly realized that their efforts were not helpful and chose to flee—directly into the two ridden humans coming around behind them.
Gwen got back to her feet and Henrik landed on another dour-ridden victim close to Trey and Rez. Snap! Henrik could feel the strength drain out of him as the dour’s hold released for a moment.
But Trey was already leaping over the battle, his big wings spread as he surged to protect Daniella and Heather, and the moment of opportunity was gone. The man lifted his weapon, a bent pipe, and struck Henrik off his head before he could dodge.
Tumbling helplessly, Henrik saw Gwen darting between all of the aggressors. At first he thought that she was coming to help him and wished he could warn her back. But she did not pause, dashing past him to the front counter and vaulting over it. As Henrik righted himself, he saw her purpose. Behind it on the wall—clever key!—a sword was hanging.
Several of the ridden people peeled off to follow her and Henrik was appalled to see that the one they’d managed to free was re-infested, the darkness oozing into them like a rotting stench once more. Trey and Rez were fighting together by their keys.
Gwen leapt back over the counter with a warcry, using the flat of the sword to slap back the weapons menacing her. But she was hampered by her desire not to harm the hosts, and the damage she dealt was too minor to stop them. One of them raised a wooden club at her, and she struck it aside with her blade. They were too many, and though she twisted and fought with grace and skill, Henrik knew she must be tiring.
He dodged a whirling chain and banked just in time to see Gwen’s sword slice the air and embed in the wood of the counter, thoroughly stuck. One of the ridden humans was swiping at him with a racket of some kind and he had to tilt to avoid the blow, losing sight of her in the fray.
28
The sword...was stuck. It was wedged hard in the side of the wooden counter and Gwen could only yank on it desperately and weep in frustration.
She could feel the magic, like her eyes were closed but she could see light through her eyelids. But none of her fighting seemed to do even the tiniest bit of good to her control of it or her ability to throw the power to Henrik the way Heather and Daniella described.
And Henrik was slowing and tiring, darting less and less quickly to attack as Trey and Rez did the heavy lifting. Henrik who would fight his heart out while she helplessly let him down.
This was the moment that everything was supposed to click into place, wasn’t it? They were outnumbered and outmaneuvered and they were losing. When would her blade light on fire or whatever crazy thing needed to happen to make the magic work? There were no moments more desperate than this!
The sword refused to budge, and Gwen leaned back and tried to wiggle it loose, but she simply wasn’t strong enough.
She wasn’t strong enough, she wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t ever going to be.
She would fail as a key like she’d failed every other expectation for her life.
Even her fighting wasn’t good enough. The only other things she was good at were drinking coffee and playing video games.
The sword, though it wasn’t moving from the counter where it was lodged, flexed in her hands, like a sticky joystick.
A...joystick.
Gwen remembered sitting on the couch next to Henrik, showing him the parts of the controller, reminding him that he didn’t have to move his whole body in order to activate the functions. “Just your fingers,” she’d said, thinking entirely too hard about his fingers at the time. “Little motions. Subtle. You won’t win with strength.”
She stared out over the battlefield of the warehouse, at the handful of possessed people they were trying not to hurt...and not be killed by. Trey and Rez had to defend Heather and Daniella, as well as try to separate the superdours from their victims. They were divided and disorganized, barely fast enough to react to each new threat. And every time one of the humans was freed, the superdour crept right back into their shaken host.
She longed for a pause button...she could see too well how their resources were poorly distributed, how badly they needed to regroup and re-evaluate their strengths. If Henrik’s shock attack could stun them long enough, if she could coordinate Trey’s flame and give Rez the time to apply his magic…all at once?
It was all about timing. Like a video game.
Gwen released the hilt of her useless sword and stepped back. A man was roaring towards her, his features full of ill-intent and his hands full of baseball bat. Gwen didn’t try to run or dodge or lift an arm to defend herself, but centered herself and pictured a controller in her hands. A new controller, for a completely unknown game with no user manual.
All she had to do was logic herself through how it might work and watch for clues. If she was playing a game, she’d pause for a moment, to familiarize herself with the menus and commands.
And to pause the game, she just had to…
Gwen closed her eyes and imagined a pause button under her thumb, hyper aware of the swing of the bat coming at her, that she wasn’t leaving herself enough time to dodge, not with mere human reflexes.
She braced for the blow...and it didn’t come.
Her eyes flew open, to a frozen tableau of their losing battle.
The man before her had his bat raised to strike, but had been caught out of time before he could.
Gwen threw her head back and laughed in release and surp
rise. She had paused the game. She had paused it.
And if she could pause it, what else could she do?
She touched the man with the bat cautiously, ready to dodge out of the way at the slightest hint of motion. He was immovable, and when Gwen tried experimentally to adjust his arm, she heard an error noise, clear as day. Blat.
She remembered Robin trying to explain magic. Magic was outside of logic and understanding, operating within rules that human brains simply didn’t comprehend. Daniella’s song, Heather’s knitting, even the way that each of them saw a slightly different image of the fable, it was their mind filling in blanks, supplying information that they understood at a subconscious level in a way that they would respond to. It was even the way they each saw Robin with vastly different kinds of wings, to explain how they flew. Gwen’s perception of magic was put into a platform that she understood. When she couldn’t do a thing, she got a response that her mind would interpret, in her case a video game noise.
Blat, indeed.
It was a lot to take in, and for a moment, Gwen stood there and poked the unfortunate man with the bat. She couldn’t manipulate him directly, she decided, so what could she do? Could she somehow release him from the darkness riding him, in this weird out-of-step moment?
Blat, blat, blat…
Gwen finally left him in peace and circled the room. She could touch things, but not move them. She could not adjust any of the player positions, and she could not arm anyone. She frowned, assessing the scene from a tactical point of view, no longer simply reacting to a nearby threat, but looking out over the whole thing as a complete game board.
There weren’t actually that many of the superdours. They were just persistent, and her friends were handicapped by their desire not to actually harm any of the hosts. It took all three of the knights to release a host from their evil rider, and it was only a temporary respite. Their current tactic was just keeping their enemy at bay; if they wanted to actually win, they had to group together and actively protect the hosts they freed.
