“Hey, you stupid asshole,” Gypcie hollered, pelting the wraith with dual shots from her pistols. “Come pick on me for a while!” She manifested the ice crystal, which covered the floor in a hoar frost, and slowed the wraith as it turned toward her. I used her distraction to get back to my feet.
The wraith was indeed bigger. It was not only larger in size, but it seemed to be less affected by our attacks. We were definitely going to need to work together to keep it busy until we could do enough damage to beat it.
I started tormenting it with small blood strikes, none of which would do a lot of damage, but which were designed to irritate. I hit it wherever I could find purchase on its back and head as it stalked toward Gypcie. She kept backing away, firing, her shots less effective as she strove to keep me out of the line of fire. I saw the telltale white beam of energy leave the tip of the scythe as the wraith drew back to strike her. Gypcie was trapped in its path.
Click. Click. Her pistols were empty.
The scythe swung slowly and inevitably toward her, and she couldn’t move. Nor did she have the pistol energy to cleanse herself of the snare. Terror filled her face. My heart jumped into my throat.
“No!” I screamed, and with a snap of my wrist, used my blood magic to attempt to rupture the wraith’s heart. The shock of the spell interrupted the wraith’s swing, and it turned back toward me and crossed the room with a speed that took my breath. Gypcie quickly recovered, slapping a new clip in each of her pistols.
I fractured reality as it approached and began to curse it slowly with maleficium, again and again. Corruption built up in my blood, and I started to feel a rage coming on. The wraith swung at me and again nicked me, this time in the arm, as I dodged out of its way. Only a scratch and it just made me madder.
Over and over I cast maleficium. I could feel the rage seething beneath my skin and the wraith beginning to wither under my assault. The corners of my vision were going red.
I was powerful!
I was rage incarnate!
“Stop, Wedd! Stop!”
I was…dying.
I swayed on my feet and began to black out. I had used too much blood and was seconds away from anima exhaustion. I collapsed on the floor in a heap as the wraith moved into position for a killing blow.
Gypcie had moved forward from the doorway and now stood in the middle of the room. With a wild shriek, she held her right hand up in the air and called lightning down from the aether, striking the wraith full on and covering its body with electricity. Again, she struck, and again, her hair lifting off her shoulders in a static halo. Dizzy from the loss of blood, I could have sworn I saw her arm transform into a giant hammer.
Then, she drew both of her pistols and unloaded them into the wraith at point blank range. The wraith turned, and darted to the mirror, and shrinking in size, disintegrated into it.
The room swam as I tried to sit up. Smoke was streaming out of the ends of Gypcie’s pistols, which now hung by her sides, and off the soles of her shoes. There were several scorch marks on the floor where the lightning had landed.
“I missed taking a shot again,” she said, as she walked over, holstered her pistols, and smashed the mirror, shaking her head glumly.
“Oh, you took a shot,” I giggled, giddy from loss of blood. “Lots of them.”
She smiled wryly at me, and then her face filled with a combination of anger and fear as she continued to study me.
Now that the corruption was starting to wear off, my chest hurt badly and I could feel the wound on my arm was far deeper than a nick. I glanced at it and gulped at the pulpy muscle and telltale gleam of white bone as blood continued to trickle from the wound. I could still bleed out if I wasn’t careful.
Yeah, it was awful, and as a result, I was going to have to attempt a healing spell on myself if I had any hope of getting back in the fight.
“What the hell was that, by the way?”
“I lost control of the corruption cursing it with maleficium,” I said weakly. “If corruption gets too high, I’ll literally bleed myself to death in the throes of rage.”
She pursed her lips and glared at me. “You have issues.”
“Tell me about it. I could use a tall orange juice about now. Hell, I’d even take some reconstituted powdered orange drink.”
Gingerly I pushed myself back to the classroom wall and set about preparing to do a healing spell. I gave a quick prayer to Gaia, but there was no need to cut myself. There was plenty of blood on the outside of my body already. My goal was to get it back where it belonged, without sending myself into a state of martyred bliss.
I started with a small mend spell, and within moments, I could feel the sides of the slice on my chest itching as pulled together, fresh cells knitting up the wound. Ewww and cool at the same time. I figured a little redemption was in order as well after all that corruption. I cast it and, with a gesture, suffused my body with golden healing light. By the time the spell effects had worn off, the wound on my arm was closed as well, except for a deep ache in the bone there. It would be a while, I figured, before that stopped hurting. Arms didn’t like being flayed open and closed like window shades.
Still, at least I was no longer at death’s door, although I was hungry enough to eat a pack of mules. Whether I was hurting or healing, blood magic took energy—lots of it. My stomach growled loudly in agreement, but I felt good, really good, as I always did after using my healing abilities.
This gave me an idea. Maybe I should plan more support spells when we confronted the wraith a third time. I was rolling that idea around in my head when Gypcie handed me a piece of peppermint hard candy. She unwrapped hers and popped it in her mouth. I salivated just looking at the candy in my hand and quickly did the same, shuddering in pleasure as the sugar raced into my bloodstream. I was definitely going to have to start carrying around some of those.
“It’s not orange drink,” she said dryly, “but hopefully it will help a little.”
I pushed my legs under my body and pushed myself up the wall to a standing position. “That was exactly what I needed. Thank you.”
Gypcie nodded. “I’m thinking there are two more mirrors left in the classrooms in this hall.”
“Does that mean we have to fight the wraith twice more?” I rubbed my hand across my face. “I am torn between dread and wondering if that will be enough chances to capture it.”
“It was definitely stronger this time, like it had healed completely from the first fight. And while your skills are remarkable,” she said, gesturing to my arm, “we don’t recover like that, and we are tired and hungry. That makes us sloppy while it gets stronger. We’ve got to figure out a better way to fight it.”
She paused and groaned. “I ran out of bullets, and you ran out of blood. If these fights get longer, we can’t afford to have that happen again. We got lucky this time.”
I agreed. I was going to need to choose spells that worked synergistically to help me stay on top of my blood loss and corruption levels. The easiest answer seemed at first glance to try to keep them low by jumping between healing and dealing damage. But after some more thought, I groaned. Not only would that require me switching mentally between the two, but I also did more damage with more corruption. I’d need to figure out how to balance my attacks and replenish my health mid-fight without also generating martyrdom.
For her part, Gypcie was going to need to rely on both her weapons but focus on elemental spells more often. She also needed to be able to regulate the heat she raised with that bad-ass lightning hammer. I said as much aloud.
“The spell is called Mjolnir after Thor’s hammer.”
“Well, there’s an apt name if I ever saw one. Your hand totally looked like it morphed into a giant hammer when you were casting it. But the smoking shoes…scary. I may have to grab a fire extinguisher from the hall.”
“Ha, ha. You can always hit the wraith in the head with it if you get low on blood.”
I stuck my tongue out in response t
o that.
Gypcie and I made our way to the Familiar Lab, which was the northwestern-most classroom in the south wing. Sure enough, peeking in the room, we saw another replica of the standing mirror. The spectrometer had taken an alarming amount of time to warm up. It was clearly getting low on juice, so we shut it off again almost immediately once we confirmed that mirror was its target. I had also checked around the corner at the junction of the halls toward the Bingo cola machine, confirming my recollection that there was indeed a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall there should the need arise. Gypcie wasn’t amused, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
The room was roughly the same size and configuration as the previous classrooms, with windows on the west wall overlooking the back of the campus. The south wall was hung with a large map of the ancient world and a painting of some noble Illuminati forefather. Both were askew. The mirror sat nearly diagonally across from the threshold into the room where we stood. Student desks were pushed up against the walls again, leaving the bulk of the floor clear except for another tin hood from one of the ceiling lights and a large wall blackboard, which lay on the floor in front of the teacher’s desk. Someone had left a small desk lamp lit, which was incongruous with the disorder of the rest of the room and useless with the daylight coming in through the windows. I sat the spectrometer down on the desk next to the lamp.
Gypcie tugged on the end of the blackboard, pulling it toward the door. With a little effort, she and I leaned it upright against the wall to our right from which it had fallen. I further made a mental note to kick the tin hood out of the way—I didn’t need to trip on one of them in the middle of a fight again.
Our goal this time was to pace ourselves for a more protracted fight. That meant a more offensive approach, but with a solid defensive plan. That involved focusing on a primary spell tree—elemental for Gypcie and blood for me, and not relying as heavily on our go-to secondary spells. It was a risk, as neither of us was as comfortable with our heavy-hitting single-target spells, but we needed to try to disable Mal’un before it ran for the mirror.
With a nod to Gypcie, I approached the third mirror. I got within 15 feet, but nothing happened, so I cautiously closed the distance to 10 feet. Still no reaction from the mirror. I glanced over my shoulder at her and approached to within 5 feet. Nothing. What was happening? Was this because we turned the spectrometer off?
I turned to Gypcie to speak.
“Watch out!” she squealed.
Around me, three separate streamers of neon yellow energy rolled silently up through the worn wooden floor beside me as the room filled with the smell of sulfur. I dodged forward away from the mirror and turned to discover that not one, but three separate wraiths had manifested, all of them identical gaunt figures bearing deadly scythes.
“No fair. That’s my trick,” I shouted, clenching my fists. I fractured reality beneath the three, as much from habit as plan and moved back out of range of the scythes again. Gypcie manifested her crystallized frost in a broad greyish blue circle, which slowed their progress as they attempted to close the space between us. To avoid giving the wraiths a swing that would hit both of us, I dodged over to the far side of the teacher’s desk, hoping to draw at least some of them to me.
We both let loose on the wraiths from each side. Gypcie pummeled the wraith closest to the door with fire bolts and fireballs, flinging the flaming missiles as it struggled to move forward through the frost.
Squeezing the ritual cut on my left hand to get the blood flowing, I began to torment the right-most wraith with blood spikes, casting maleficium curses in between. The wraith bent under the assault and stopped its progress forward toward me. My corruption was rising, but I was trying to be aware of its degree, so I didn’t get any manic ideas that I was invincible. I glanced over at Gypcie’s wraith and saw she was more or less holding hers in place as well, with the combination of frost and fire.
The wraith in the middle, however, which had been a little further back than its peers when the fight started, was now passing forward between them, closing the distance, which brought both Gypcie and me within range of its scythe. The tell-tale beam of white energy sprouted from the weapon, trapping Gypcie in place in the corner near the door. This was terrible. By splitting up our efforts on the outside enemies, we had halved our strength, and now Gypcie was snared.
I screamed angrily and dodged back into close range between the three wraiths, unleashing pandemonium as I went. Chaos bloomed around me, swirling in purple and green pulses around the wraiths before flinging them to the ground. The middle wraith lost control of its snaring spell as a result, and Gypcie was able to move out of reach. She ran to the corner I’d just left, as I rolled through the wraiths to the back side of the room.
“We can’t split up our damage!” I shouted. “Let’s focus on the same one.”
She nodded, panting, as the wraiths recovered and turned to engage me. Although they didn’t have faces per se, I could feel the hate rolling off them. Apparently, they didn’t like being thrown to the floor.
Gypcie laid down another frost manifestation beneath them as I fractured reality. We were definitely damaging them all. They weren’t as strong as Mal’un had been previously, but duh there were three of them!
“Hit the one nearest the door, Wedd!”
I turned to that wraith and cursed it with maleficium. My corruption levels were high, but I wasn’t yet feeling invincible, so I hit it a second and a third time. Putting her hands to her forehead, Gypcie cast a beam of ice at the wraith, freezing it in place, then smacking it down with her hammer of lightning. The wraith cracked into a million particles and disintegrated.
I cheered but cut the sound short as I realized that both the other wraiths were now close enough to me to hit with their scythes and that both had pulled back to do exactly that. I was trapped. I didn’t have enough chaos energy built up to cast pandemonium again. The scythes swung toward me in tandem. With an enormous effort of Will, I popped myself out of Time, shuddering at the nearness of the scythes.
The probability glow of the movement in my mind’s eye arced toward me in two streams, not hundreds—one from each weapon. All the trails of probabilities confirmed the weapons would hit me dead on. Both intersected my body, one at my neck, and one in my midsection. There were no probabilities where I did not get hit.
Gulping with fear, I rolled the possibility forward in my mind’s eye, watching my head roll off my shoulders and my body cleaved in two, and feeling bile in the back of my throat at the sight. I was terrified. And worse, my evisceration meant that Gypcie was left to face both of the remaining wraiths alone. As tempting as it was to explore those outcomes, I knew that only the next few moments would readily be revealed. Once I was hit, Gypcie’s reaction would be only partially predictable. She was frozen out of time now, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth open in a shriek.
Back and forth I rolled the next three seconds, looking for the faintest evidence of a probability of a different outcome. I would have to be hit, but I would also have to survive it.
There it was. One faint probability where my body remained intact after impact with the scythes. What happened that time?
Looking closely, I could see a faint yellow glow around my body and a swirling torrent of chaotic energy within me. To survive the strikes, I needed to be unchanging, immutable. This was one of the most difficult of the chaos spells I had attempted to master. It was on par with pandemonium, but there were two problems. First, I had never actually attempted it when it mattered. I had successfully cast immutable in spell class, it was true, but never under pressure. The second problem, which was actually the worst, was that I had already used an elite spell—pandemonium—and no longer had the ability to cast another.
I rolled time back further, back before I dodged to the corner, back to the terrible moment when Gypcie had been snared with the middle wraith about to scythe through her. I couldn’t allow her to be hit either. She would be totally anima-deplete
d, and I would be left with all three wraiths to face. I thought quickly about all the spells I knew in both the chaos and blood spell trees, but I could feel the boundaries of Time starting to resist my will. I needed to decide, or I would be snapped back into Reality with no options. I made a decision and brought myself back into Time in the past.
The tell-tale beam of white energy sprouted from the wraith’s weapon, trapping Gypcie in place in the corner near the door.
I screamed angrily and reached for the three wraiths with evulsion, forcibly tearing chaos from all three, pulling them toward me and interrupting their attacks. The middle wraith lost control of its snaring spell as a result. I rolled through the wraiths to the back side of the room, while Gypcie remained in the doorway, shaking her head in confusion as her mind struggled to deal with the new reality stream it was presented with. I was suffused with relief for her but stayed focused on keeping the fight as similar as possible to avoid changing the probabilities. It was unlikely I was going to be able to pull myself out of Time again.
“We can’t split up our damage!” I shouted. “Let’s focus on the same one.”
She nodded, panting, as the wraiths recovered and turned to engage me.
Gypcie laid down another frost manifestation beneath them as I fractured reality.
“Hit the one nearest the door, Wedd!”
I turned to that wraith and cursed it with maleficium. My corruption levels were high, but I wasn’t yet feeling invincible, so I hit it a second and a third time. Putting her hands to her forehead, Gypcie cast a beam of ice at the wraith, freezing it in place, then smacking it down with her hammer of lightning. The wraith cracked into a million particles and disintegrated.
With a grim smile, I turned to face the two remaining wraiths. This was the test I’d signed up for.
To Sir, with Love: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 1) Page 12
