Broken

by Ryan Attard

  Only the ceiling didn’t stop him.

  I forced him to go through the castle roof. Once airborne, I shot after him, and blasted him again.

  The Knightmare careened in the air and zigzagged. He flew right behind me, and brought his sword down. My body spasmed and I was sent crashing into one of the castle’s bell towers.

  I had to will my magic to heal me this time, but it was fast and efficient, and I held on until I regained the use of my spine again.

  Lightning clouds raged above us, and I took to the sky.

  The law of Equivalent Exchange is key in magic—spells are essentially energy changed from one form to another. So whenever possible, use what you have at hand.

  Like, for example, the shit-ton of lightning raging over your head.

  Thank you, Greede.

  I raised Djinn, the blade elongating and extending into the sky, collecting all that energy. Blue electricity crackled, and Djinn’s blade grew fat and mastodonic, and the Knightmare just stared as I brought it down on him.

  The explosion caused several fat bolts of lightning to rain down on the castle, destroying it. The sky flared with light. Lightning snaked towards the rest of the castle town, destroying cathedrals and other tall buildings.

  The Knightmare slammed down in the middle of the piazza, completely razing the area around him.

  The angel’s magic in Djinn flared again, ready for one more shot. I flew at a thousand miles an hour, rocketing straight for him. He dodged at the last second, and I caught his shoulder.

  The pauldron shattered and dissolved into shadowy wisps that then flew towards me and formed a pauldron on my shoulder.

  I looked at it, momentarily confused.

  “It’s mine,” I realized. “The armor is Life magic. And that’s my magic.”

  The Knightmare looked at his missing armor and then at me, and roared. Dark aura formed around his blade and he swung. Anael’s magic flared as I blocked with Djinn. He pushed and I let him go past me, before slicing downwards. Djinn tore one leg then the other, shattering the armor.

  My legs now became encased in metal.

  Now the Knightmare stood up, his lower body naked. Beneath, he was just a thin wisp of black smoke, barely strong enough to hold his physical form.

  “You’re nothing without the magic you stole from me,” I said, as we traded blows.

  I blocked and swept his arms up, ensnaring them in a chain of white light. It was not as strong as my sister’s version but it held long enough for me to cut his arms, taking his armor.

  Spindly arms swung free and waved the giant sword in frantic defense.

  “You’re a pathetic thief,” I said.

  His swing was easily dodged and I threw Djinn high into the air. The blade spun and buzzed and sliced into his back. As my back became armored, I grabbed both his arms, and head-butted him with enough force to shatter the helmet. He stumbled back and I ripped the chest plate off him, taking away the last bit of armor from him.

  I felt the Knightmare’s armor on me, heavy and solid and restricting, and willed it away. It dissolved into black smoke that merged with my aura.

  Wrath, now naked save for the giant black broadsword, turned its rage-filled eyes towards me, and raised the blade. Already, I could see it crumbling and with his last efforts he lunged.

  I backed away, and realized too late it was a fake-out. Instead, he kept his momentum and hit Djinn, still embedded in the ground behind him, as hard as he could.

  The blade was sent sailing.

  His black sword turned to dust. Wrath roared at me. His body hunched over, becoming more insect-like. His head ballooned, and his arms and legs became six spindly arms that click-clacked on the shattered stone of the piazza.

  “So you took my weapon away,” I said. “Good for you. Oh, wait, did you think the angel’s Grace was still in there?”

  Wrath growled in confusion. I opened my fist to show him the little ball of light.

  Wrath lunged at me, just as I raised my gun with my other hand and blasted him in the face. The sigils and runes on the gun glowed as magic empowered the bullets. Wrath’s carapace exploded, and it screamed, weakened on the ground.

  I ejected the empty cartridge and pressed the angel’s light into the empty mag.

  “I guess Lust didn’t tell you about this trick, huh?” I said, as the light became a bullet that perfectly fit into the gun. I slammed the mag in place and chambered the round.

  Power coalesced inside the weapon, like a taut slingshot, ready to fire.

  “Don’t fuck with the wizard, bug.”

  I pulled the trigger and saw a small flash of light exiting my gun barrel.

  Then the world went supernova and I was blinded. I felt more than saw Anael’s Grace turn into a weapon that smashed into Wrath, destroying its essence.

  When the power finally subsided, I was alone in the piazza.

  The click-clacking grew faint. I spotted a small creature, like a slug with six insect legs, smaller than a beetle, scurry along the cracks.

  SMACK!

  Anael’s boot squished the bug and twisted. Something sizzled and smoke billowed from beneath her foot. The last remnants of Wrath were smitten out of existence.

  Gil, Abi, and Amaymon landed next to me, with Gil providing an air spell similar to the one I had used for flying.

  I nodded at them, then at Anael.

  “So,” I began. “Is it over?”

  “Yes, Erik Ashendale,” she said. “It is over. You are free from the Knightmare, and the Sin of Wrath is no more.”

  I grinned, and braced myself before turning towards my sister and my friends.

  “I guess I have some explaining to do, huh?”

  I blinked something from my eyes. Probably rain. Using all that lightning would most definitely have an effect on the atmosphere.

  I blinked again and wiped something red and viscous with my fingers.

  Blood?

  My fingertips were cold and numb, blue like frostbite. I tasted something coppery and spat. More blood. Confused, I was suddenly overcome by my throat seizing up.

  Someone was calling my name but next thing I knew I was on my knees, and then flat on the ground. I felt long, sharp needles of hot pain in my facial orifices. Blood kept getting in my eyes.

  My breath just wouldn’t come.

  My side hurt. My left side. That’s bad, right? I’d read that somewhere in a journal. Left side was always bad.

  Then I was looking up. Figures and shapes were at the edge of my vision but my eyes were locked at the sky.

  Vision dulled, then my head hurt. And then…

  Nothing.

  Chapter 35

  I was officially dead for six minutes.

  I have no idea what Gil did to revive me, but the first thing that hit me when I came to, several days later, was the smell of hospitals and the chemicals I associated with them.

  They showed me my medical report not long after. I had had a heart attack and two strokes in the first hour. My internal organs had broken down. My kidneys had turned to mush, followed by my liver. The word ‘liquefied’ was thrown around. I stopped reading after that. Suffice it to say, my sister brought in several magical surgeons, along with a Necromancer or two.

  I didn’t ask too many questions.

  Mostly because I spent thirteen days in a coma. Maybe there was something magical about the number.

  Like I said, I didn’t look too hard at that particular gift horse.

  Instead, I just let everyone who visited me talk until they ran out of guarded shit to say. I would nod along, just to reassure them I was listening, and mostly just to make them go away.

  I needed to be left alone to wallow in the fact that I was empty. Not emotionally (that came later).

  No, I was tapped out.

  That fucking tree had been right. My system had been overloaded, but that wasn’t the full extent of my obeisance for unlocking my full magic.

  Because now, I had none.
/>   Three weeks later we had a meeting in my office.

  Well, they had a meeting. I just sat quietly, did some more nodding, and sipped my coffee. I was put on some kind of diet that precluded coffee, but I figured a life without it wasn’t worth living anyway.

  Gil concluded her point.

  “So, no sign of Greede, and the Black Ring Society is no more,” Abi surmised.

  “Yes,” replied my sister. “That particular thorn is plucked for good. And Greede has nothing left. I’ve had Mephisto set up meetings with all of the Ryleh Corp board members. My plan is to move in within the next few months and take over. Like I said, Greede will have nothing, even if he does return.”

  “That ain’t gonna be easy,” Amaymon said. He was curled up in cat form next to Abi, rubbing his head against her thigh. Her hand absent-mindedly stroked his back. “The Necronomicon is a gateway to thousands of dimensions, all filled with beings even I wouldn’t wanna face. If Greede does get spat back out, he ain’t gonna be the same.”

  “Either way,” Gil said. “We’re ready for him.” She turned her head towards me. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet.”

  I shrugged. “Just don’t have anything to add.”

  “Ain’t that a first,” Amaymon added.

  “What do you want me to say?” I said. “Yeah, we won the day. Hurray for us.”

  “Still no magic then?” Gil asked.

  I raised my hand to show her the band-aid on my finger. “Cut my finger yesterday. Still bled this morning.”

  “It will come back,” she said.

  “It’s been over a month, Gil, and still nothing.” I set down my mug—I didn’t like the way it was shaking in my hand. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  She cocked her head.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I went on. “About something Anael told me when she was inside my head. She said I could be more, but I’ve always limited myself to becoming this guy. The wizard, the monster hunter, the weird magic guy at the edge of a district in Eureka.” I shrugged again. “Maybe this is the universe telling me it’s time to retire.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that,” Abi said. “The world needs you. I, we, need you.”

  “Do you though?” I countered. “Abi, you ran the shop better than I ever could when I was dead. Same goes for the past month. You’re better at this than you give yourself credit for, and you actually enjoy it. I had no choice. This was all I knew, from the day I lost my magic until now.”

  She didn’t say anything. I’m sure she had a response but I think I had shocked her into stupefaction for a few seconds.

  Or maybe she bit her tongue because she knew I was right. No magic meant no monsters, which meant no business.

  She—and everyone that mattered—knew that the old Erik Ashendale was done.

  I looked at Gil.

  “You can handle Greede if he ever pops up again,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. “Same goes for the remaining Sins. Our curse is still active in you, and now you know everything Ubatu told me. I’m sure you and Mephisto, and Amaymon if he wants to help, can find the Nexus.” I nodded. “Yeah. You can handle this.”

  I started walking away.

  “Where are you going?” Abi asked.

  I didn’t stop, just slowed down. “Out. Because I don’t have to be here,” I told her. “This is no longer my business.”

  ***

  Two months later

  Depression was the worst.

  Not because it hollowed you out from the inside, or because you felt like a shard of your soul was dying with every passing second, or you felt like you were falling into a pit that no one but you could see and therefore no one would help you.

  No, by then it’s too late.

  Depression had a way of creeping up on you, slowly encroaching from the tightest of corners, until it nestled within every thought and invaded your existence. It was the worst form of pestilence a person could have: the inability to feel, to live, and therefore, the inability to get better. That was the worst one of all. All my life, I’d believed that if you fucked up in some way, you could always fix it. Depression took that away, and let you stew in your own misery, keeping you stuck.

  At this point I’d been stuck for two months, barely alive.

  This was why depressed people contemplated, and often acted on, suicide. In our minds, we were already dead. Might as well finish the job and get it over with.

  But I didn’t want to kill myself. I never had that in me. Guess that was the one good thing about my situation. I was broken but not dead.

  Not yet.

  So I bought the books, and took the self-help courses. I went to therapy—different shrink, for obvious reasons—and did the meditation, and the journaling, and a whole bunch of other crap.

  Some of it worked, some didn’t. It kept me on the brink. For a while that was enough.

  But I knew deep down that I was different. My situation was more difficult. I had lost something that had been a part of me since birth. A legacy spanning millennia suddenly gone. I had been one with the universe, commanding the forces of nature. Well, less commanding and more slinging around, but it had been there and it had defined who I was.

  Bits of what Anael had told me kept repeating inside my head, especially the part about me blocking my own magic. I began toying with the idea that perhaps this was the same thing, that I had somehow shocked my system so badly that it had shut down. Which meant, to carry on the metaphor, I needed to rewire my brain.

  And it seemed that my angelic stalker slash therapist agreed with me.

  I heard her wings flutter inside my bedroom, rousing me from my pretend-sleep.

  “Are you actually listening to my thoughts or do you always sneak into my bedroom when I’m asleep?” I asked, peeling the covers away from me.

  Anael smiled. She sat next to me. And let me say this about the angel of love and kindness: she was hot. The armor hid a lot of her sensuality, but the white robe she was wearing, similar to a Roman toga, showed curves that would have made lesser men salivate.

  I was keenly aware of the fact that I usually slept in my underwear, and of how close she was…

  And then decided I didn’t care.

  If she was inside my head, she must already know the effect she was having on me. Somehow, I doubted she sauntered over from whichever spa resort Heaven had spat her out of just to pity-fuck some guy.

  “I only come when people are desperate and in need,” she replied.

  I grinned at her. “Wow, that must make you popular,” I said winking.

  She laughed. “It’s good that you can joke.”

  “Not much else I can do these days,” I said.

  She nodded. “And yet you have not given up your attempts at bettering yourself.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, that’s me. An oxymoron. Or maybe just the moron part.”

  “You are a warrior,” she said, draping one arm around me. When she pulled me close, I feared for my modesty. “But you are lost, little mortal.”

  I tried very hard not to get distracted by her breasts and her scent.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

  She leaned in and whispered, “I am your guiding light, Erik Ashendale.”

  I leaned in until our foreheads were touching.

  “Guiding me towards-”

  “-Where?”

  My father’s study surrounded me, and I was back in front of that fireplace.

  “Why am I back here?”

  “Because this is where it all started,” Anael said, softly stepping behind me.

  Young Erik was nowhere to be seen, but the book he had dropped was still on the ground, face-down. I read the title on the spine.

  MAGIC.

  Could it be that simple?

  “It is,” Anael said. When I turned, she was smiling. “Often the simplest solution is right in front of us.”

  “The book.”

  “Yet you refuse to pick it up.”
<
br />   I turned to the book again and stepped towards it. Young Erik’s voice echoed in my head, warning me.

  Don’t do it.

  Magic is bad.

  Magic makes monsters. Monsters hurt you. Magic hurts you.

  Magic is the source of your pain.

  “It is, kid,” I said, still staring at the book. The gold script flickered as it caught the firelight. “But you couldn’t see it back then. You couldn’t see the beauty that magic brought to our world.”

  I knelt down.

  “Magic is just that. Power. And all this time I let it hurt me. But I guess I’m all grown up now, right? I guess now I can choose not to let it hurt me anymore.”

  I picked up the book. It was warm and soothing, like it belonged in my hands. But it was also heavy. It carried a lot of baggage—I guess metaphors had actual weight in my subconscious.

  Still, I opened the book.

  “See?” Anael said, her arm still draped around me.

  The darkness in my bedroom only made what was inside my hands seem more luminescent.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of,” she said.

  I couldn’t reply. Tears gently streaked down my face. I blinked and then dared to open my hands and saw within the smallest drop of light.

  Smaller than a pea, smaller than a seed. So small you could have mistaken it for a trick of the light.

  But I knew what it was, for it was mine and I had made it.

  “Magic,” I said.

  READY FOR MORE?

  You’ve reached the end of Broken but Erik’s adventures aren’t over just yet. Check out the rest of the Legacy Series and find out how the saga began.

  Legacy Book 1:

  Firstborn

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