“It is indeed.”
“Perhaps we can talk to him.”
“Talk? And why would he talk to us?”
“He might inadvertently give something away, or we could trick him into telling us something.”
“He is a wizard who has been around for millennia. You really think we could trick him that easily?”
“We have secret weapons.”
“Let us not count on those.”
“In any case, unless you mean for us to go back, we have no choice but to engage with him.”
“Perhaps you could try to bulldoze him out of the way.”
“Literally?”
“Why not?”
“Okay then.”
They came to a stop a few feet away from the hooded figure, just standing and waiting to see what he would do next.
“Turn back,” a reverberating voice echoed all around them.
“We can’t,” Jordan said.
“Turn back,” the voice said again.
“No,” Uzochi answered.
A blue fire began to gather beneath the figure’s feet, spreading outward and eating up the lighted pathway. It advanced toward them like it was a sentient thing, intent on the destruction of Jordan and Uzochi.
“What do we do?” Jordan asked in a frantic whisper.
“I don’t think countering this will work.”
“Indeed. I think that’s really him.”
“So now what?”
Uzochi lifted his hands, closed his eyes and began to chant.
“What are you doing?”
“Protection spell,” Uzochi said amidst his chanting.
“What can I do?”
“Stay perfectly still and don’t move.”
Jordan nodded as the fire came toward them like a heat-seeking missile. He closed his eyes, and called to Jaime, hoping their captain could hear them. If ever there was a time for a magic boost, this was it.
He didn’t hear any response coming from Jaime, but he suddenly felt slammed by a jolt of power so strong he teetered on his feet, opening his eyes to see Uzochi stumble slightly too. The velocity of the approaching fire bomb slowed a bit, however, so Jordan took it as a win.
“Can you stop it now?” he asked.
Uzochi’s face was grim. “I can slow it down, put up a barrier between us and it. But that’s a short-term solution. We need a way through.”
“Turn back,” the echoing voice said, and it seemed to have a physical force that pushed them a step backward.
“Now Jordan, I need you to really focus. He’s scared of us and that’s good. It means we are succeeding. But I need you to find a way through the fire. On the other side, there are answers.”
Jordan gave a thumbs-up, trying to think about what he could do to penetrate the barrier the wizard was putting up. Suddenly, the approaching flames came to a stop like they’d encountered an impenetrable barrier. Jordan turned to Uzochi, seeing the perspiration dripping from his forehead as he held the flames back. The fire rose as if it was trying to go over the barrier and then pulled back and slammed itself into the barrier like a battering ram. Jordan startled, taking an involuntary step back at the sight, before returning to stand by Uzochi’s side and lend him his strength even as he tried to think of a way through.
“Water?” he murmured to himself. “Can we counter with water?”
Epone was the Elementalist. She would know. But Epone wasn’t there.
∞
They used body bags to transport the bodies, hoisting them onto the trolleys and rolling them out towards their aircraft. Even with the emailed notice, they were surprised that nobody tried to stop them. Everybody just went about their business without so much as batting an eyelash. It was disconcerting; a relief, but also worrying. Ash worried that it was a trap while AX carried out electronic surveillance; monitoring all transmissions for any sign that they had been caught out. They almost made it out, but when they got to the ship they found it surrounded by guards. There was no way to board without being detected.
“Now what?” AX asked.
Ash reached for one of the bodies, touching it with an open palm. It glowed blue and then the color died in a shower of sparks. AX watched in fascination as the figure came alive, swinging its black-veined tail from side to side and making a groaning sound like its vocal cords were not quite up to par. The thing’s eyes were covered by a cloudy film that obscured its iris completely and gave her the look of a demon. It swayed from side to side, seemingly disoriented, and Ash raised her finger again.
“Go,” she said, and it began to walk towards the guards with a slow loping gait. One of the guys caught sight of it and made a loud sound of surprise. The others turned as well, mouths gaping as they watched the previously dead infected walk towards them, making unintelligible sounds.
AX could see that they wanted to run but were held back by their training.
“Make her do something scary,” he whispered to Ash, leaning in so he could speak directly into her ear.
“That's not how this works,” she whispered back. “I am not a puppet master and she is not a puppet.”
“But you told it to go and it went,” AX argued.
Ash sighed. “I didn’t say it was not susceptible to suggestion.”
“Well then suggest that it does something scary!” AX urged.
Ash lifted her hand and pointed it at the previously-dead infected. “Scream,” she said. The thing paused for a split second, then opened its mouth and a truly blood-curdling sound emerged. It had the guards scattering like birds at the sound of a gunshot.
Ash and AX quickly pushed the other trolleys towards the ship as the infected loped after the fleeing guards.
“What about her? Shall we leave her?” AX asked, pointing his chin towards the reanimated infected.
“We can't do that. It's dangerous, irresponsible, and it will give me away,” Ash said.
“Well, then you’d better do something about it soon, because she’s disappearing back into the complex,” AX said.
Ash put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, and the infected turned, ambling back toward the ship. The sounds of gunshots rang out and she went down.
That was their cue.
“Time to go,” Ash said, scurrying onto the ship and into the cockpit. AX quickly strapped himself in, his circuits already doing a preflight check. They were just lifting off as the guards came running back, weapons pointed at them.
“Camouflage mode,” AX shouted, and the ship immediately took on the look of its surroundings, disappearing from sight.
“Hyperspeed,” AX shouted next, and they were off into Outer Space before the guards could think to commandeer a vehicle to follow.
They headed towards the rendezvous point at the Van Allen belt, hoping that their teammates had been just as successful as they were in their mission. They landed to find Jaime and Epone, standing over the bodies of Jordan and Uzochi while Zorica stood behind Epone, just watching. Zorica’s eyebrow was already raised in inquiry.
“We were successful,” AX answered her unasked question.
“We are waiting,” Jaime said.
“Have you heard from them?” asked AX, looking at Epone. She knew that he was really asking if Jordan was alright.
“They asked for more power about half an hour ago, but since then we've heard nothing,” she answered him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Elemental, My Dear Watson
“Water,” Jordan said, “that's what we are gonna use to get through this fire.”
“You know this is no ordinary fire, right?” Uzochi asked.
“Of course I know that; I'm not an idiot,” Jordan snapped, feeling irritated.
“Just checking,” Uzochi said.
Jordan closed his eyes, visualizing water as a sentient thing that came wielding a weapon. The water being was gigantic, stepping through the fire with its huge feet, swinging its weapon from side to
side, and extinguishing the flames. There was a roar of rage and Jordan opened his eyes to see what he had wrought.
There was indeed a mountain of water shaped like a man doing battle with the flames. The wizard stood on the other side of the battle, his hands raised crackling red with the same intensity as the veins in the maze.
“Is he the source?” Jordan wondered distractedly as the fire lit up higher, circling the water's throat and squeezing. The water being was pushing the fire away and so far they were evenly matched.
“Should we try to sneak past them?” Jordan leaned in to whisper in Uzochi’s ear.
Uzochi was staring in fascination at the battle and he shook his head slowly. “The wizard is watching us. For sure his fire would turn away from your water and come directly for us if we tried to sneak past.”
“What if we rushed the wizard? Take him on directly?” Jordan said eagerly.
Uzochi gave him a look. “You really think you're strong enough to battle the wizard in his own mind?”
“But isn't that what we've been doing this whole time?” Jordan argued.
“Fine, but we do this my way. You go to the left, I go to the right. Circle around the fire, I will circle around water. We always present a moving target. We force him to choose who to go for first.”
“For sure he’ll choose you; you are the well-known seer,” Jordan said, and Uzochi rolled his eyes.
“This is no time for flattery my friend. Let's go to work.”
They both darted forward; one going left, the other right. Flitting from shadow to shadow, trying to remain unseen. They stayed low on the ground, minimizing their surface area as a target. They almost made it to the other side before the wizard noticed that they were no longer standing where he'd left them.
Suddenly, the fire let go of water, turning around, seeking a new target. That was a mistake because water surged up like a wave, enveloping fire within it and effectively extinguishing the flames. Not for long though; soon, water was steaming as fire reignited even more fiery than before.
But they were already on the other side of the elements and closing in on the wizard.
All of a sudden, Uzochi was assailed by a vision, even as he was mid-run to rush the wizard. There was an orb in the wizard’s robe pocket. He needed to get it and crush it for it contained the soul of the man the wizard had been. Once the orb was crushed, the wizard’s powers would be debilitated. Killing him would be much simpler then. Getting the orb involved more than just reaching into the guy’s pocket and pulling it out. The wizard had not survived for centuries by making things easy.
There was no time to apprise Jordan of this new information. The wizard was already raising his hands; finger sparking red. Now that he knew how to destroy the wizard, all he needed was the information. He needed to know the wizard's plan for the contagion so they could stop it. So, before he could kill him, Uzochi had to subjugate Eshugurin the Wizard to his will. Uzochi snorted at his own chutzpah, wondering where he got the moxie to think such a thing. He was simply a Seer of the future. He was no great mage. He was no fighter. Not with the weapons, they would need in this place. He needed Epone and probably Jaime as well, for the next part. He stopped abruptly, raising his hand for Jordan to stop as well.
“We have to go,” he said. “We have gone as far as we can for now.” He reached out, grabbing at Jordan’s aura, and pulled them both out of Eshugurin’s mind.
“What did you do that for?” Jordan asked as soon as he sat up in his own body.
“What happened?” Jaime asked at the same time, hurrying towards them to help Uzochi to his feet.
Since the answer was the same, he replied to them both, “I saw how to defeat him, but we needed reinforcements.”
At that moment, he was struck with another vision. The water being Jordan had created was still battling with the fire. The wizard was screaming with rage at their escape, but beneath the rage was fear. For the first time in his life, the wizard did not know what had happened and why.
“We must move fast while the wizard is unsteady,” Uzochi said, his voice shaking with the force of his vision.
“What do you need?” Jaime asked.
Uzochi looked around at them. “I need you all,” he said.
Jaime nodded, looking around at the group. “You heard him, people. He needs us all.”
“Can we at least hear what the plan is?” AX asked, walking towards Jordan and putting a hand on his arm to steady him as Jordan got to his feet.
Uzochi took a deep breath, knowing that he had to communicate with his team so that they could go back and co-ordinate in the best way possible, but feeling like every second they stood around talking was a second wasted that could be used to kill or capture the wizard.
“I had a vision as we were trying to get through the wizard’s barriers. There's an orb in his pocket that I must get and crush, and that will weaken Eshugurin the Wizard almost to the point of death. However, even though I must be the one to get the orb, it will be protected by various magicks, and I need you all to get me close enough and to destroy the barriers that would stop me from getting that orb. It is the only way we can stop him.”
The others stared open-mouthed at him.
“Do you have any idea what these magicks might be?” Zorica asked.
“None. That's why I need you all. We must be prepared for anything.”
“Can you tell us what we're facing?” Jaime asked.
“No. That's why I need you all. You all have a skill that we might need, and better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
“One of us needs to stay out here with our bodies and guard us,” Jaime said, “and since it has been established that you don’t need my physical presence for me to enhance your magic, I think that person should be me.”
Uzochi eyeballed him, nodding his head as he thought about what Jaime had said. “It’s true that we can establish the psychic link to you and pull from it when one of us needs a boost. And yes it is good thinking. For Eshugurin the Wizard might try to harm our bodies while we are spirit walking. Let us go now, I will explain as we journey to the core of the Wizard's mind.”
Zorica drew a hexagram using goofer dust, and they each took their places, hands linked. Jaime stood outside the circle, watching over them.
Uzochi murmured the spell that would catapult them back into the Wizard’s mind. He came up short against an invisible barrier as they tried to penetrate.
“He has put his wards up tight,” Jordan grumbled.
“Indeed, we could not just have expected him to leave the way open for us to enter. Can you bring it down?” Uzochi asked.
Jordan closed his eyes and visualized a laser cutting an arc through the wards. He felt a stabbing pain in the front of his mind as a result and opened his eyes, shaking his head. “He's ready for me; pushing me back.”
“What if we pull from Jaime and get a boost?” AX asked.
Jordan shook his head, turning to Zorica. “Can you counter his magic?”
“That's more your department isn't it?” Zorica said to Epone.
Epone turned to Jordan, holding out her hand. Jordan took it.
“When I say now, do what you need to, to get the barrier down.”
Jordan nodded his understanding and Epone closed her eyes, starting to chant under her breath. A noxious black cloud began together at their feet, rising slowly until it covered them head-to-toe. It inundated them with the smell of sulfur and ozone, swirling around them as if looking for some sort of entry into their bodies. Epone’s chanting got louder yet more unintelligible, faster; she hardly stopped to breathe between words. The noxious cloud coalesced into a humanoid shape and then reshaped into a bullet aimed in front of them at the barrier.
“Now!” Epone yelled, even as a bullet shot forward.
Jordan closed his eyes, visualizing his laser, and began to cut. There was a loud splat and Jordan opened his eyes to see t
hat the bullet had smooshed itself on the invisible barrier and was now a huge blob through which his laser was cutting with ease as if the wall was made of putty.
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Zorica said with excitement as she clapped her hands, ran forward and was the first through the hole in the barrier.
The others quickly followed and they took off at a sprint, trying to get as far as possible from the wall before Eshugurin the Wizard thought to bring in other obstacles.
“This way,” Uzochi said, the path like a shining beacon in his mind beckoning him forward. Still, he looked to Jordan now and then to make sure they were following the true path. Jordan simply nodded at him with every look, loping at his side with ease.
The maze was just as they left it, and they could feel Zorica’s fear like a scent in the air. She said nothing though and simply kept going like the soldier she was. Epone ran closer to her, providing strength with her proximity, and soon they were out on the other side and facing the icy tundra.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Epone said before stretching out her hand, making a ululating sound filled with words they couldn't understand. Their surroundings heated up and the icy tundra melted.
Jordan smirked. “Not as fun as my sled and Karna wolves, but I guess…”
“Come on, let's go,” Uzochi said impatiently, starting off at a jog across what had been tundra and was now simply rock and sand. He came to a sliding stop, as a host of slithering snakes emerged from the rocks hissing and spitting, their heads moving from side to side as they regarded the group; malevolence clear in their eyes.
Ash darted forward, hand held out.
“No!” Jordan yelled, even as AX held him back.
As soon as Ash's hand touched the snake, it crumbled, decimated as if she drew all the liquid from its body and left it a thin transparent husk of skin. She reached out for the next snake and the next and the next so fast that she was merely a blur of blue skin, white hair, and death.
“I thought Drueerds were not allowed to kill,” Zorica murmured in Epone’s ear.
“Shh,” Epone replied, “she might hear you and kill you too.”
Mage Marine Misfits: Book 01 Page 22
