by Harry Nix
“Let's get out of here,” April said. She cast vine and thanks to Mrs. Bronson cracking the cobblestones there was plenty of earth for the spell to attach to. The thick vines shot up from the ground, wrapping around her legs. Mrs. Bronson stepped forward and snapped them like they were nothing.
“There must be more than one necromancer around here, giving her enhanced strength,” Nia said.
“I’m getting tired of this,” Alex responded.
He rushed Mrs. Bronson in a blur of speed, slashing at a leg, intending to take it out like he did with the corpses in the cemetery.
She was so fast that he didn’t see her move. An agony burst in his left hand and he suddenly found himself flying towards a brick wall. He smashed into it headfirst before crashing down on to the cobblestones. Besides the pain in his hand there was a searing on his right as his protection spell ring overloaded and melted off his finger.
Alex sat up and saw a spray of blood jetting into the air. He’d only seen that once before – the first time he’d been attacked by a weredog and it had pierced his jugular. In a daze he looked down and saw his entire left hand was gone. Mrs. Bronson had ripped it off somehow.
She’d dropped it at her feet, the clawed hand matted with blood but looking oddly like a horror movie prop, sitting there in the moonlight.
From his wrist came another spurt of blood as his heart pumped. Somehow the shock of it snapped him out of his concussion. He leaped to his feet, grasping his stump to try to cut off the blood flow.
This got Mrs. Bronson moving. She attacked the girls, punching Nia in the face. The crunch was sickening as it seemed half her face caved in.
The rage came, an overwhelming mixture of black and red. Alex felt himself let go of his bleeding arm and his last conscious thought was the hope his body was clever enough to close off the blood vessels to stop him from passing out.
Sometime later, he didn’t know how long, Alex awoke in the dark. His wrist was burning and throbbing. It was only when he sat up and hit his head that he realized he was in the trunk of a car.
“Hey!” he called out.
Was this Boris? Or had he been kidnapped?
The car stopped and he got his one good hand ready. The trunk popped open to reveal Juno and April standing there. Both of them were injured. Juno had long scratches down her face and April looked like someone had thrown a bucket of blood over her.
Alex tried to get out of Boris’ trunk but his legs were barely working. He was jittery too, like he’d mainlined a gallon of coffee.
“Sorry, we used the kasers on you,” Juno said.
She and April helped him out and then around to Boris’ back seat. Nia was sitting there in hybrid form with her hands over her face. A steady stream of blood was running down her neck. Alex felt a burst of fear when he saw how badly she'd been injured.
She'd been in hybrid form and her wolf snout appeared to have been caved in. Some kind of pink liquid was leaking from the corner of her ruined eye.
“She’s alive but we need to treat her so let's go,” Juno said. Alex got in the back seat along with April and then they took off again, heading for home.
“Nia… can you talk?” Alex asked.
Nia gently shook her head. Every time her fingers moved Alex’s stomach lurched at the damage he saw. Her skull was crushed in too, her eye socket broken.
“We managed to get your hand but it’s too late to rejoin it. You’ll have to regrow it, which is really going to suck,” Juno said.
Some part of him knew she was trying to keep him distracted so he didn’t focus on Nia and go wild again. He was still in disbelief himself that the rage and overwhelmed him so quickly and completely.
“What happened? How do we get away?” he finally asked.
April patted him on the back of the hand.
“You went wild and tried to attack Mrs. Bronson, which didn't work at all but the distraction meant we could grab Nia and get to Boris. We ran that old lady over and she ended up trapped underneath. Then we electroshocked you a bunch of times and stuffed you into the trunk. You were going crazy trying to get under the car. Then we escaped, leaving the old lady behind us,” she said.
Alex sat back and looked at Nia who was breathing in short gasps. How could he be so stupid? So reckless? He knew it wasn't his fault that he’d gone wild… but on a deeper level it was. He’d turned into a mindless beast.
Even his first attack had been foolish, leaping to attack Mrs. Bronson and separating himself from the three girls.
He behaved like he was alone and as a result lost his hand. Nia was severely injured and the resurrected Mrs. Bronson might still be out there.
They soon were home, Alex and April helping Nia down to the basement and laying her down amongst the cushions beside the house ward batteries.
Juno pointed a finger at Alex and waved it.
“This is really dumb and you never ever do it,” she said. With that she cast her one and only heal spell and simultaneously shoved a hand in between two of the batteries. A bolt of pure lightning conducted through Juno and into Nia in the form of a healing spell, hitting Nia like a truck. She rolled across the room and came to rest against the far wall. Juno went the other direction, airborne, and thudded into a wall.
Alex ran to her and found she was unconscious, blood leaking from her nose. She was still alive and appeared otherwise unharmed. He awkwardly carried her back with one hand to where Nia was sitting. She was still clearly injured but the horrific injury of her caved-in face was now gone. Her bones were back in place and the bleeding had stopped. April was next to her, examining her face.
Nia opened her eyes and looked up at them.
“Were we just in an alleyway with an old lady?” she asked. Then she frowned at Alex’s stump which was still slowly leaking.
“Oh, you lost your hand,” she said, like she was talking about a misplaced piece of clothing.
Alex managed to get Juno to the ground without too much trouble. He turned to April. “Do you have anything to help Juno?”
“This might help,” April said, laying her hands on Juno.
Alex heard music and saw a small flash of light from April’s palms. Whatever she cast worked – Juno’s nose stopped bleeding and within a minute she had her eyes open. As soon as she could focus, she looked up at Alex.
“And that's why you don't do that type of healing spell,” she said. Alex didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The fear of what might have been was starting to hit and his wrist was burning in pain, promising a long night ahead.
He sat down beside the three girls, feeling fear and shame crashing down on him.
“I'm sorry, this is affecting all of you. Maybe I should –”
“Don’t you finish that fucking sentence,” Juno murmured.
“We’re your wives, your pack. We chose you and you chose us, so shut the hell up,” Nia said.
Alex felt April looking at him. When he glanced at her she merely nodded in silent agreement.
They sat down in the basement until Juno had recovered enough to start moving around. As soon as she could, she and April went upstairs and gathered bottles of whiskey.
By now the pain in Alex’s wrist was searing and he was struggling to hold it together. He was drawing on the magic to help heal his wounds but it wasn’t doing anything for the pain.
“You’ll want to have some of this. A lot of this, actually,” Juno said, opening a bottle.
Alex leaned back against the wall and took a huge gulp, the pain in his wrist growing stronger.
9
“Okay, I can see why you risked your life to retrieve that stick blender,” April said, taking another gulp of her banana honey oat milkshake.
“I know, right? It's quiet but powerful and blends things to within an inch of their life. This stick blender is plenty pretty much the pinnacle of technology,” Alex said the moment he finished puréeing up his own milkshake.
“Yup, it goes Alex's stick blender and then right
below it is the International Space Station,” April said with a laugh.
It was two days since Alex had lost his hand and had been forced to regrow it. Agony didn't begin to describe how painful it had been. Even the copious amounts of alcohol and handfuls of pills which Juno had fed him had barely done anything to reduce the fiery pain as his hand slowly reformed, cannibalizing his own body.
Alex's spent the whole night gritting his teeth, pulling on the magic around him to help his body heal between gulping down high proof whiskey and whatever tablets were handed to him.
It had been around six in the morning yesterday before the worst of it was over. His hand had reformed, albeit at the size of a child’s. Juno had made jokes about it but it was hard to laugh when it was still hurting like crazy and bleeding everywhere.
Alex had virtually eaten them out of house and home to get the extra calories his body needed. He’d spent the entire previous day having his skin crack and split and bleed, over and again as his hand grew larger.
Finally, yesterday evening, he’d recovered but wasn’t unchanged. His new hand was dotted with metallic flecks. It wasn’t silver but some other metal. The working hypothesis was that his body had taken whatever it could grab to heal him and perhaps there had been a bullet still in him. Juno had made plenty of handkerchiefs out of butt references. Nia said she’s never seen it happen to a werewolf before.
In the light of day and after all the pain, Alex wished he’d been able to press his amputated hand to the stump. Apparently there was a good chance it would have rejoined and saved him all the agony. They missed their window though between driving over Mrs. Bronson and having to electroshock Alex.
On the positive side of things, Nia had recovered quickly. She had gone out with Juno to sell protection rings for money so they could buy groceries and refill the decimated pantry.
Alex followed April outside into the back yard. He stepped out of the grass, enjoying the feel of it under his bare feet and took a deep breath of morning air.
Yesterday was rapidly becoming a blur, which he supposed copious amounts of alcohol had helped with.
April sat down on the grass, crossing her legs and slipping away on her milkshake.
Refreshed and revived, Alex couldn't help but notice April had borrowed some of Juno's clothes, which were on the small side for her. She was wearing a yellow sundress, her curves pushing it out in all directions and had braided her pink hair. Although Alex's wolf had some very strong opinions about what they should be doing right now, Alex wasn't going to do anything.
He still wasn't quite sure if it had been jealousy Juno had shown in Boris all those days ago and although he’d talked with Nia and Juno about the fact that Alphas usually ended up with multiple wives, he was still uncertain.
There was some idea in there about consent needing to be enthusiastic. Although it seemed there had been some kind of quiet permission and perhaps even from April herself, it hadn’t reached the level he was considering enthusiastic.
He sat down, trying not to glance at her curves and the way the sundress fell on her body, and focused on drinking his milkshake and enjoying the sunshine.
April certainly didn’t help things however – when he sat down she reached out and took his newly grown hand to examine it.
“I've never heard of this before,” April said, examining the tiny flecks of metal that were throughout Alex's skin. In the sunlight as he moved his hand they occasionally glimmered as though someone had thrown a handful of glitter on him.
Alex sat there and concentrated on drinking his milkshake, willing certain body parts not to do anything but damn it was hard with April’s soft hands rubbing against his. Eventually she let go and sat back, which was barely an improvement considering how the sundress fell down from the shoulders and barely came past her thighs. Alex lifted up his hand and rotated it in the light, looking at the silver glimmers.
“I haven’t checked Know Thyself yet but maybe it has something to say,” Alex said. He brought up his spellcasting screen and cast the spell. The usual pages of stats and conditions appeared, showing he had resistances to various spells. Two major changes nearly caused Alex to choke on his milkshake.
The first was that in the image of his body his left hand was now a different color to the rest of it. Beside it was a line with strength +1.
What did that mean? If he encountered the old lady again and she tried the same move it wouldn't tear his hand off?
He put that aside for now because the second change was so incredible he couldn’t look away from it. Up until now his stats had changed on their own. His body fat percentage going down, his strength going up, agility and dexterity sometimes showing numbers or symbols. All the figures had been grayed out however. He’d tried a few times to tap on to see whether he could edit his own attributes as easily as he could edit a ring but had no luck.
Now there was a giant red circle with a number inside it.
Skill Point: one
The attributes weren’t grayed out now.
“What is it?” April asked, seeing the look on Alex's face.
“Something crazy…” Alex murmured. He experimentally tapped his finger on the strength attribute and saw a small plus and minus appear next to it. It appeared he could increase his strength by one point, whatever that meant.
He tapped on other attributes and the same symbol appeared.
Alex turned to April. “You know when you cast Know Thyself to see information about yourself? Have you ever been able to change that? Ever heard of anyone being able to change it?”
April immediately shook her head. “I see mine like bar graphs. Height, weight, strength, whatever, but the only way I can change it is by like losing a lot of weight or practicing some spell over and over, and only incrementally. Are you saying you can change yours right now?”
“For some reason I have a single point now that I can distribute. Ever play RPGs? I can add a point to strength, intelligence, whatever. I’m looking at memory right now,” Alex said and tapped the little plus symbol next to memory.
The moment he did, he felt a change within him. It was subtle but he suddenly knew he had more space to work on spells. There had been a restriction there, a limit of some kind, which had been most evident when he’d attempted to copy spells from Juno. For most of them he simply didn’t have enough space.
Now with increased memory he had far more space to play with.
Alex hit the minus button before he lost his nerve and then shivered as the feeling of the expansiveness vanished. It felt like he was cutting into his own brain and he tasted something strange in his mouth, a metallic flavor and wondered if it was safe to screw with attributes like this.
“You'll revive me if something goes wrong?” Alex asked April.
She put up her hands. “If you die, Juno and Nia will kill me, so please don't do that.”
Alex took that as some sort of agreement and hit the plus button next to strength. Immediately a shift washed over him. He was already incredibly strong but he felt his muscles grow a little more. He was in human form and the shirt he was wearing complained as the stitches strained.
April's eyes widened and when she went to put down her milkshake, it fell over on the grass. She ignored it.
“You seriously just grew more muscle. How do you do that?”
Alex shrugged, gritted his teeth and hit the minus button on the strength attribute. This one was worse than cutting back memory. It felt like chunks of flesh being ripped out of him. A sudden sharp pain went through his body and that strange taste returned.
After a moment the pain faded and Alex was left staring at his attributes, deciding he didn’t feel like experimenting anymore. He was having the familiar problem anyone who has ever played in RPG has: what do you increase first?
Unlike a game however, he had no idea why he’d acquired this point or when, if ever, another one would appear.
Although he could see advantages to being faster or stronger or ev
en to heal quicker, his eyes kept coming back to the memory attribute and the expansive feeling of having more space to work in.
One of the major barriers they'd encountered was he simply couldn't copy larger spells from Juno. He was unable to cast a fireball because he didn't have enough space to hold the spell at all. Juno had explained that practice would expand this space and enable him to cast more complicated spells, but for a normal witch or magic user it took years of study to do that.
With the psychotic mages who after them, and now necromancers, Alex knew he didn't have the time to wait. Feeling that he could spend all day second-guessing himself, Alex finally hit the plus button on memory, feeling that same expansiveness return. Down the bottom of the screen a small square with commit appeared on it. Alex hit it before he could change his mind.
Immediately, all the attributes grayed out and everything appeared back to normal, except of course when Alex checked, he had far more space to play around the spells now.
“I think I just directly modified myself to improve my memory so I can cast more complicated spells,” Alex said to April.
April shook her head in disbelief. “It’s kinda gross the puppet show Juno puts on about you and your butt but damn, she’s right. No one had this power. I’ve never heard of it.”
As Alex sat there looking at a blank screen with a blinking cursor he decided it was time that he should attempt to write his own spell.
From reading the spells over and over again, he’d uncovered similarities. Parts of the telekinesis spell were within the unlock spell. The unlock spell needed telekinesis to push on the tumblers to open a physical lock. He’d also found similarities between spells that affected the body.
For example, the shield spell had a section that had appeared after he’d tied a physical movement to activate it. It was ridiculously complicated but Alex believed that somehow the spell was tracking the palms of his hand, measuring where they were and then where they ended up. If it was in a specific narrow range that meant he’d thrust his hand out in a stop motion and the spell should trigger. Within that section of the spell there were long, complicated numbers that Alex believed referred to body parts. This was backed up by a similar section in the flame finger spell. When it was cast, a flame would appear on his right-hand pointer.
