“How do you plan to draw out the Admiral?” Morg asked, moving to pick me up. Before I knew what was happening, he was cradling me in his arms. The warmth of his body seeped into me as we moved, which was weird because my spacesuit should have but a stop to that. Then again, being in contact with the orc was making the Bone Staff of Greatward glow ever so slightly. Maybe that’s where the warmth came from?
“I don’t really have a way to do that,” I said, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. It was hard because I had to focus on not coughing up my spleen, but you do what you can with what you have. “Any ideas?”
“Take his ship’s power, and he will have to come out to stop us.” Morg nodded toward an iris to the left. It had once housed a syphon beam, but with no planet in range it just hung open like an empty mouth.
“You’re a genius,” I said, hugging him tightly. The movement made a sharp stab of pain shoot through me from my broken arm, causing the suit once again to shoot me full of meds to counteract the pain. I bit down as it did, not allowing the wash of euphoria in my elbow not to take my focus away.
“Then we’re in agreement,” Morg said, stopping beside the porthole and dropping me unceremoniously next to it. I hit the ground hard on my butt and looked up at him in confusion as more mechs poured out from inside the ship. “I will keep the mechs away. You will defeat Vah.” He winked at me. “If you fail, know that I will most definitely not mate with you.”
“That goes both ways, buddy,” I wheezed, turning onto my belly so I could stare down into the recesses of the syphon. As I did, I heard Morg charge off into battle. The sounds of plasma fire came through my speakers as they zipped by Morg.
I pushed it out of my mind, focusing on the syphon. The metal had cooled thanks to space being a cold-hearted bitch, which made it a bit easier to worm myself closer. It hurt so much, I wanted to scream, and practically every movement made the suit shoot me full of more dope than even my dad would find comfortable.
That was okay though because as I threw myself into the tunnel, I knew I didn’t need to last much longer.
28
My body tumbled down the tunnel, breaking things I knew I didn’t want broken, but that was okay because my suit pumped me full of so many drugs my eyeballs were practically spinning by the time I came crashing out the other side in a bloody heap.
The syphon chamber ended at a clear wall of amorphous fluid, and beyond it, I could see Vah standing with his hands outstretched in front of himself. Holographic controls for the ships, the mechs, the armada back at the orcish world all danced around him as he shifted, running his hands through them in intricate motions I didn’t understand.
It seemed like a lot of work, and thankfully, it was too much for him to notice little old me. That was good because everything in me hurt so much I was pretty sure if the pain and injuries didn’t kill me, the overdose of drugs feeding through my system would.
I shut my eyes, sucking in a deep breath as I tightened my grip on the Bone Staff of Greatward. The movement shot a fresh stab of agony ringing up my shattered nerve endings, and I was thankful, I’d commanded my suit to wrap around the weapon, duct-taping it to my grip after I’d fallen the first few feet and nearly lost it.
“Yeah, this is going to go really well,” I muttered under my breath as I pushed myself to a standing position. Truth be told it only worked because I was using my magic to move my body. If I’d had to rely on good old-fashioned muscles, bones, and tendons, I’d have been fucked. Without lube.
The wall before me didn’t seem that complicated. It was marbled with intricate wards I couldn’t read nor understand, but at the same time, I didn’t need to do that. I knew what its purpose was. It was to allow the energy siphoned from the planet to pass through into Vah. It made me wonder what the brightly lit command chamber looked like when it was running at full tilt.
“Guess I’ll find out soon enough,” I mumbled, glancing at the screen showing our approach to the orc world. We’d be there in only a few minutes. It hardly seemed fair after everything, but then again, life wasn’t fucking fair.
I raised the staff and touched it to the wall, and as it made contact, light danced around the edges. The residual energy within the wards that had been drawn from the planet leapt to my command, and I barely had to think the thought to shatter the wall completely.
The wards flared like miniature suns for a split second before the entire thing was blown inward in a spray of shrapnel that was instantly reversed by all the atmosphere inside Vah’s little command center getting sucked out. The admiral slammed into me an eye blink later as we were thrown backward along the tunnel. I wasn’t sure what that meant for the ship or its controls, but either way, we listed hard to left. My head smacked painfully off the side of the tunnel as Vah crashed into my stomach, knocking my breath from my lungs.
His eyes were wide in shock, but as a bulkhead slammed down between the syphon and the command center and the escaping atmosphere stopped bouncing us around like pinballs, his eyes narrowed in anger.
“You have caused me more trouble than I thought possible, witch,” he said leaping to his feet because, of course, the vacuum of space didn’t bother the motherfucker. Power danced around him in a spiral of colors and sounds as his fist lashed out impossibly fast. My head cracked against the wall, and my faceplate spider webbed into cracks or energy.
He hit me again and again, driving hammer-like blows into my stomach, chest, and face with so much force, the spacesuits sensors were starting to shriek. My body rattled around inside, getting beat to shit despite the suit’s best effort to keep me alive. At this rate, I’d die.
I teleported. His fist sailed through the spot where my head had been and buried itself in the metal wall up to the elbow. As I reappeared behind him and slammed him upside the head with the staff. The staccato crack of the weapon against his stupid skull was strangely satisfying.
As his feet left the ground, and he tumbled sideways, I felt a surge of magic flow into me through the staff. That brief contact had been more than enough to charge the staff in my hand. But why? It was only supposed to work on the planet’s energy…
Vah crawled to his feet, sparks dancing around him as he shook his head with way too much disorientation for the blow I’d given him. I’d felt the resistance of the magical shield around him when I’d struck. It shouldn’t have done more than piss him off.
But it hadn’t.
My eyes opened in sudden realization. He was full of the energy of the planet. I could see it coursing through his veins, surging within him.
“Oh, you’re so fucked,” I mumbled as my grip tightened around the staff in my hand. Then I pointed it at him. The magic within him heeded to my call, springing from his body in an unbridled torrent of plasma that slammed into me with enough force to launch me backward.
My back crashed into the bulkhead, and I felt the metal start to give way as more magic than I’d ever felt before filled me. The walls of the syphon became superheated, melting into gobbets of liquid metal as Vah screamed in pain.
He tried to move, tried to do something to resist the call of the staff in my hand, but I knew his efforts were futile. The staff was meant to wield the energy of the planet, and at the end of the day, Vah was just some douchebag who’d gotten in over his head.
There was just one problem.
As more energy pulsed into me, I felt my suit start to give.
It peeled away from my flesh, and my skin began to blister and burn. The bones in my hand turned to paste. The bulkhead gave way behind me, sending me spiraling backward like a champagne cork being forced to overcome the pressure pent up inside and I hit the amorphous wall on the other side of the chamber. Energy coursed through me, and as blood poured from my ears and nose, the control room exploded into a fireball that roiled unspent and pissed the fuck off.
The shockwave of it rebounded off of me, absorbed by the magic and turned into more raw power as the walls all around me began to blaze. I could
n’t say if it was happenstance or not, but all the syphon panels along the inside of the command center came to life. Energy leapt from Vah to the staff in my hand and across the room before rebounding back into me.
Only as it happened, I realized that cycling the planet’s magic through the ship’s syphons was actually preventing me from dying. A smile flitted across my lips as my flesh peeled back to the bone. I might have worried about the staff slipping from my grip, but instead, it melded to the remnants of my hand.
“Hey, fucker,” I snarled, shutting my eyes as I concentrated on the energy. Then I used it to reverse the effects on my body just like I had with the Gideon Cube what felt like ages ago. Power surged through me, rebuilding my body and putting me back together in the span of a single breath. “You picked on the wrong planet.”
I raised the staff, allowing more power to cycle into the syphons and causing the room to glow like a molten core. It was hot, but I spent enough power to shield myself from that as Vah buckled like a juice box being sucked dry on a summer’s day.
“You cannot kill me,” he snarled, reaching out one hand toward me. “But I thank you for one thing, witch.”
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing the staff at him and using the augmented strength to pull him toward me. His form flickering around the captain, could feel it clinging to him as he struggled against my magic.
“For my new body of course,” he said before letting go of Captain Brand’s body and leaping into me.
29
Captain Nolan Brand slumped toward me in the vacuum of space as Vah’s life force slammed into my chest like a fucking freight train. It hurt, but not as bad as before. My limbs began to stiffen as a meteor of sapphire energy began to burrow through my chest.
My eyes narrowed in anger as I grabbed hold of everything to throw him backward.
As I did the metaphysical equivalent of bricking up walls just ahead of a bulldozer, I knew I didn’t have time, nor could I really throw him out. All I could do was slow the inevitable.
I sucked in a deep breath as that realization hit me. I was going to die. Really die. Vah was going to take me, and once he did, I wasn’t sure anyone could stop him from finishing off the orc world.
I shut my eyes as I diverted my attention to a different spell. The thrum of the orc world’s magic hummed around me, and I grabbed some.
A spell spilled from my lips. The first slowed down time to a crawl, just like how the soul of the planet had done, and I felt the strain of it crackle in the air. It’d buy me some time, but not enough because the second Vah’s blue contrail disappeared within me, I’d be doomed.
No. I’d be worse than doomed. If it was just that, I could be okay with that, maybe. I could probably make that sacrifice. But I would not be trapped within the body snatcher while he rained destruction down on my friends, on my planet. I would not allow that.
“Hey, Captain, sorry I’m such a fuck up,” I said, reaching out and placing my hand on his chest. As soon as my fingers brushed across his freezing torso, I sent my spacesuit one last command. “Hope you can forgive me. So long and thanks for all the fish.”
I tried to smile as my spacesuit tore from my body in an instant, wrapping around the captain’s body. I heard the rush of air around me, felt the freezing cold of the place work to rip me out into the vacuum as my magic buffeted around me.
That was fine though because I was as good as dead and the readout on the spacesuit let me know that while unconscious, Captain Brand was alive. Barely, but alive.
“I know this guy with a tank,” I said, hoisting him onto my shoulder. “You’re going to love it.”
I turned and pulled all the power I could into the Bone Staff of Greatward. It hurt, but time was moving so slow, I could bear it for a little while at least. Then I expended a tiny fraction of it to teleport.
I appeared beside Morg as he stood among the wreckage of a bazillion mechs. My time slowing spell wrapped around him then, pulling him into my timeline. His chest heaved as he turned to look at me. His eyes went wide, and as he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, I shoved the captain into his arms.
“Take him back okay?” I tried to smile as he took Captain Brand from me. “I’d do it, but I don’t have the time.”
He looked at the glowing contrail in my chest. It had all but disappeared. “As you wish, Mallory Quinn. I will bring him back. You have my honor.”
“Take this too,” I said, holding out the Bone Staff of Greatward. “It will go inert if you take it since you don’t know magic, trapping all your planet’s energy inside. You can return it to the gray-skins. I’m sure they can fix your planet with it.”
He took the staff from me and nodded. “I am saddened we will not be able to mate, Mallory Quinn. You would produce strong, noble offspring.”
“Thanks,” I said. While I was never, ever going to mate with the orc, I respected the hell out of him. I wouldn’t let him down. “I mean that,” I added, clapping him on the shoulder as my control over my limbs began to fade. I felt Vah stretching into me, like someone putting on their pants and shirt. Even with time at a crawl, it was over.
Or nearly over.
“Good luck, Mallory Quinn,” Morg said, turning away from me then because I’d have sworn he got something in his eyes. “The bards shall sing the tale of your sacrifice for generations to come. It is a good death. A noble death.”
I wanted to respond, but my mouth stopped working. I felt myself getting pushed out, pushed deep within myself, and I moved my consciousness to my little mental panic room. I’d not used it since I was in training, and it showed. Cracks filled the one once pristine walls of my very own mental prison, but that was okay because my magic was here. Or at least it hadn’t all rained out through the cracks. I knew it wouldn’t matter much because the second Vah was in control, he’d lay waste to everything. He had magic of his own, after all.
“It’s all about the choices we make,” I said and released everything I had in one final teleport as Vah finally shattered my tiny room and took everything from me.
30
The black hole appeared in front of us as Vah struggled to orient himself to my body. He had control, but it was obvious he didn’t know the ins and outs of it quite yet. It probably didn’t matter though because the black hole had us. He struggled, throwing the combined strength of our magic out as the gravitational pull wrapped us both up and tried to tear us into nothing.
“Help me, witch. If not, we’ll both die,” Vah cried, true panic in his voice.
It brought a smile to my lips.
“No,” I whispered into the ether, but I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me. I could already feel Vah struggling, trying to leap from my body in an effort to escape the confines of the black hole. He could probably live in space until some dumbass flew close enough for him to take over. Then he’d hop, skip, and jump until he found a suitable host.
Just like last time.
That realization hit me as Vah leapt from me in a spiraling meteor of color. Only he barely moved as we tumbled backward into the depths of the black hole, every second an eternity.
When he left me, my body came back to me, and my magic fought and struggled to keep me from dying. And as it did, Vah threw himself forward in a desperate effort to escape. That couldn’t happen. Not again. This time I’d make sure he didn’t hurt anyone. Not ever again.
“Don’t go, Vah. I want you inside me,” I said, throwing my magic toward him, wrapping it around him and pulling him backward. The contrail of his blue comet halted, and the strength of his will crashed against mine as the black hole swallowed us.
“No!” Vah cried and the rage I felt in that word was astounding. His body snapped into me like a rubber band, and the backlash threw me. For half a second, I’d thought I won, thought I’d gotten him back on my own accord, but as I sought to bind him down within me, I realized nothing worked.
Flame began to dance across my body as Vah took control, adding his
power to mine. It wouldn’t be enough, but if he burned me up trying what did it matter.
The amulet on my chest began to glow then, and as it did, Vah’s eyes widened. The flames stopped as he reached down and touched it, drawing a finger across its surface. The residual energy of the Gideon Cube thrummed within it, barely there anymore, but there enough for Vah to grin like an idiot.
“When they sing songs of this day, they will sing of the day Admiral Vah almost died.” He wrapped a hand around the amulet, drawing on its power before adding it to mine. He wasn’t a good teleporter, I could tell now, but he didn’t need to be because I was amazing at it.
Only, as he threw one hand behind us and generated the portal away, I tried to scream at him to stop. I railed against my cage within myself, bucking against the metaphysical walls.
Plaster that was really bits of my mind and body rained down around me as the portal opened unto the void and Vah stepped through it thinking he’d won.
The white of the archive spread out before us. The huge obelisk gleamed in the distance.
“What is this?” Vah asked right before he was torn from me. It hurt in a way that I can’t explain unless you’ve ever been brained with a waffle iron. I fell to my knees in the weird gravity of the archive as Vah hovered next to me in a blue ball of fire.
“You idiot,” I snarled, glaring at him as we fell toward the obelisk one lifetime at a time. “You attached a portal to the closest point within the black hole? Don’t they teach you anything at space Mage School?”
“Who are you to mock me, witch?” Vah snarled, his voice a crackle of electricity on my ears as the keeper finally appeared. Like before she looked like a crazed angel. Her blood-smeared wings flapped behind her as she descended from seemingly everywhere before settling in front of us.
“You have a lot of nerve coming back here, Mallory Quinn,” the Keeper of the Archive said as she looked me up and down. “I am not pleased by our last encounter.” She gestured toward the obelisk. “You nearly blew up my purpose.”
Planet Breaker: A Supernatural Space Opera (Witching on a Starship Book 2) Page 14
