by Sean Davies
The fiery pale-skinned Book Wielder wore her curly red hair down so that it spilled over her black Conclave greatcoat and ended just above her chest. She was wearing a tight black fitted shirt and a short black mini skirt that showed off far too much thigh for Alice’s liking. She also wore a pair of impractical platform boots that stopped halfway to her knees and featured an insane amount of decorative metal buckles. Her cute face was sprinkled with freckles, which a lot of the men and women in the building found desirable, and she had applied dark red lipstick and black eyeshadow, along with a thick band of eyeliner to compliment her white eyes. Alice never approved of how Chloe presented herself, but unfortunately for the uniform-loving Lord Imperator, the Book Wielders’ dress code was left in the hands of Winston and Veronica—so there wasn’t one.
“He’s got a fake ID but no weapons to speak of, and no sign of alteration, thank fuck,” Chloe explained. “We haven’t checked the bag in case it’s rigged though.”
“Good,” Alice replied to Chloe, before turning to the shaking man. “What’s your name?”
“Fuck you, traitor!” the man yelled, and then proceeded to spit at Alice.
The Lord Imperator dodged the disgusting projectile and swung her body around, lightly connecting her armoured fist with the side of the intruder’s face. The smart, skinny man crumbled and collapsed backwards, spitting out blood and a few broken teeth as he fell to the floor.
“Don’t make me ask you again,” Alice warned, advancing threateningly.
The man whimpered, but quickly steeled himself and rose to his feet. “Nathan Philips of Stonebury-on-Sea—you wouldn’t have heard of it, it’s just a graveyard now. That’s all you’ll get out of me.”
Alice Eve rolled her eyes. “Believe me, Nathan, you don’t want to talk to me about losses. The people I lost—”
“But you still joined them! They were at war with your Inquisitors and now you sleep with the enemy!” Nathan said accusingly.
The Lord Imperator flinched slightly but stayed resolute and pointed to her white eyes. “It turned out that I was the enemy… besides, we can’t build towards a better future if we’re clinging to the past.”
“That’s a Reynolds line,” Nathan sighed in disgust.
Alice frowned, realising that she had indeed quoted the leader of the Conclave. She shook it off and got back to business. “What are you doing here, Nathan? How did you get past our security, and what are we going to find in the backpack?”
Nathan wiped some dripping blood from his lips, straightened his back, and scowled defiantly.
“Come on Nath’, don’t be a dick,” Chloe sighed. “You know we can make you spill the beans one way or the other.”
Nathan Philips winced, and the smart looking man’s face turned red as he tried to contain the urge to wail in agony.
Alice looked at Chloe, who’s magic was still hovering in the air beside her hand, but the redhead shrugged, equally confused.
Nathan grunted. “They just wanted me to have a look around…” He paused to let out a soft, agonised squeal. “They said to ask about Winston’s weird behaviour. He took me through a small Catacomb portal, it’s concealed under some boulders near the northern shore. He said there was a present for you in the bag, I never saw his face… that’s all I’m saying, just stop the pain and kill me already!”
The Lord Imperator slowly approached the black backpack, lifted it off the floor, and rocked it side to side gently. It felt too light to contain a malicious device.
Nathan’s words troubled Alice deeply. She hadn’t known Winston long compared to some of the others, as they had been on opposite sides of the War for Reality, but she had noticed his steady change from the humble man who had shown her around the amphitheatre that he had literally pulled out of thin air, with the help of the now diminished golden quill artefact. She knew that he was an ambitious and power-hungry man at heart, and assumed that he had simply fell into his old habits—power had been known to corrupt better men than him—but recently it was like he had become someone else entirely. It worried her that the citizens of the world had noticed too, and that Corriztis had probably sent Nathan to scope out an opportunity to cause chaos within the Conclave. As much as his change of persona bothered her though, Alice’s primary concern was the private portal hidden somewhere on the northern shore of her isle.
“We’re not doing anything,” Chloe said, tilting her head slightly in amusement. “Thanks for blabbing though!”
Nathan Philips looked confused and shook his head in self-disgust. For a moment he hunched over, feeling the urge to vomit, but then gasped as the strange pain he’d been experiencing vanished completely.
“What did you witches do to me?!” Nathan demanded.
“I told you: nothing,” Chloe replied with a shrug. “This is force magic, not fire or blood magic,” she added, gesturing to her magical circle of runes.
Alice carefully unzipped the bag and saw something thin and shiny within. She couldn’t sense anything magical but still reached inside carefully, half expecting the bag to blow her arm off. Luckily for the Lord Imperator, nothing untoward happened as she pulled out a full-face masquerade mask.
The silver mask looked as beautiful as it was disturbing. It was polished to the point where it was almost reflective and engraved with a highly detailed image of the night’s sky, and the Twin Goddesses’ symbol of two crescent moons dominated the forehead.
A handwritten note was taped to the inside, and Alice pulled it off and read it aloud. “Dearest Alice, I hope you like my gift—you’ll be needing it sooner than you think. I hope the explosion was a sight to behold. If you caught the inferior being before he went off, you might want to take a step backwards. Love, C.”
“What explosion? What does it mean?” Nathan asked in a panic.
Alice crushed the silver mask into a ball and threw it violently across the room. “Did the Demon give you anything to drink? Answer quickly, your life depends on it.”
“There’s nothing magical in the works, and no signs of Gloom exposure,” Chloe mused. “Wait—there is something, but it’s faint… and weird.”
“Demon?!” Nathan exclaimed. “There was no Demon. It was Darkheart and some robed man. They gave me some vodka, but they all drank it too!” He froze in terror. “The man had his finger in the glass, but it wasn’t like Gloom water. There was nothing wrong with it!”
“Well someone’s dosed you with something,” Chloe said, narrowing her eyes in concentration. “There’s a trace of magic in your system but it’s not alchemical. It’s powering something, either biological or very tiny technology. Or both?” She asked, seemingly to herself.
“Get a medical team to my location immediately!” Alice ordered into her wrist-mounted HCD.
“I think I’ve got this, Alice,” Chloe said confidently. “The pulse of magic is getting stronger. I reckon he’ll be toast in about five minutes, but it should give me enough to work with. I’m going to forcefully expel it from his system.”
“Yes, do it, please help me!” Nathan Philips cried, suddenly more than willing to embrace the help of Supernatural beings when faced with his impending, grisly end.
“Get ready, this ain’t gonna be pretty,” Chloe said, dispelling her force magic and visualising the poor man’s corrupted blood vessels.
Nathan suddenly became as stiff as a board, craned his neck towards the ceiling, and let out an unpleasant gargling sound.
“Can you do it in time?” Alice said, taking a step backwards.
Chloe shook her head. “I haven’t even started, I must have got my calculations wrong!”
Alice took another step towards the door and rolled her eyes. The girl was terrible at judging timescales.
Nathan’s body trembled all over. His veins and arteries bulged outwards and looked as though they had been stuffed with pulsating marbles, and black and blue liquid oozed out of his orifices.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Chloe cursed. “I can’t force it to
stop, it’s some sort of microscopic tech mangled together with magic and organic compounds!”
Alice was impressed with the ginger Book Wielder’s senses which put her own to shame, but she was clearly outmatched. “Chloe, we need to get out of here!” she yelled.
With a loud pop, Nathan Philips exploded in a burst of black and blue ball bearings and liquid, interlaced with gore and shattered bone. But to Alice’s surprise, the explosion stopped expanding as though it was trapped in an invisible sphere. Then she noticed that it was Chloe’s doing.
The redhead looked like she was attempting to crush a large invisible ball with her hands; she had created a barrier of force magic, and was trying to keep it stable against the erupting tide of liquid and shrapnel from within. A ball bearing whizzed out of the containment field and made a small crater in the room’s stonework. Chloe grunted and tried something new.
Suddenly, Alice felt like she was being dragged towards the centre of the unending gory explosion, and saw that many of the smaller knickknacks within the room were making their way towards Chloe’s barrier. She regained her footing and watched as the little flat screen television was torn from its wall brackets and was absorbed into the sphere of chaos, along with a lamp, rug, and several other objects. The larger furniture rattled and was dragged across the stone floor, and Alice noticed that the explosion was shrinking in on itself.
Chloe strained and focused on her ongoing spell, making sure to negate herself of the effects so she didn’t join the furniture on its fatal journey, and soon the barrier had shrunk down to the size and appearance of a bowling ball. Her hands clasped together, and she released her magical grasp on the now dormant and severely compacted remains of Nathan Philips. The sphere sloshed to the floor, and an odourless black and blue puddle seeped across the stonework.
“How did you do that?!” Alice gasped. She had seen barriers before, but what Chloe had done to the repugnant and unnaturally long-lasting explosion was completely new to her.
Chloe shrugged nonchalantly, but the blasé gesture was lost under her heavy breathing. “Just a bit of gravity alteration. Nothing special,” she joked as she caught her breath.
Alice raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Well, it took me years, but I finally got good at my job,” Chloe chuckled, before gesturing to the puddle. “It sounds like this poor fucker was working for Daedrian Darkheart and Corriztis. You don’t think those shits are working together, do you?”
Alice frowned. “They have very different MOs. Darkheart wants to destabilise the new world order, and Corriztis seems to be using the planet as his playground.”
“The Demon’s obsessed with you,” Chloe remarked. “I feel bad for Theodore—you think he’s still in there somewhere?”
“I hope not,” Alice grumbled.
Theodore Miller had been on her squad in the early days of the Justiciars. The Desem-born Vampire Bloodmage had reminded Alice a lot of herself in the sense that he was fiercely loyal, incredibly reliable, and had magical abilities but neglected them in lieu of conventional weaponry.
They had been on a mission together underneath Industria City, before it had been expanded into nearby Rigorton, to seek out and destroy the Demon Corriztis. Armed with the best technology the planet had to offer and a shedload of Sanctium, they had stormed down into the gigantic warren of combined sewage and industrial waste pipes underneath the metropolis, to rid the continent of the foul Demon once and for all. They had become overconfident with several Demon kills under their belts, and even Alice had to admit that she’d grown complacent. The monsters and lingering Demons of restored Mydia were no match for the might of the Justiciars and the amazing talents of the Book Wielder Conclave, or so they had thought.
The stinking liquid form of Corriztis had billowed out from beneath a stream formed by an endless supply of chemicals pouring down from the factories above. Alice’s favoured Book Wielder at the time, Ethan Tanechi, had shielded the squad quickly and protected them from the tide of thick black sludge and watery tendrils that followed the initial appearance of the Demon’s goofy white mask. Alice and her squad were quick to retaliate from the concrete walkway, setting the pipelines aflame with light blue plasma rounds and Sanctium, which blazed brighter than the sun when it came into contact with the gargling Demon. Alice had watched its mask melt away into nothingness with her own two eyes.
They had been on their way to the surface in good cheer when they were ambushed by a set of liquid tentacles reaching out from grates in the walls and ceiling. Theodore had been lashed off balance and dragged underneath a stream of sewage before Ethan could react. A large lump of translucent black liquid rose from the sewage, containing both Theodore and a new white mask within its mass.
As the whole squad had been encased from head to toe in power armour (including Alice, who usually avoided wearing a helmet as she found them restrictive), the watery attacks were more of an annoyance than a danger, and even Theodore had managed to blast himself free. Once again, Alice and her team had lit the sewers up, and she’d watched Corriztis die for the second time in one day.
Learning from their mistake, the squad had spent hours combing through the network of manmade tunnels just in case the Demon resurfaced for a third time. All the while, Theodore had assured them that they’d finished the corruption Demon for good, and eventually they had listened to him and left. Looking back, Alice could see that Theodore had been acting slightly out of character, but at the time she was tired and after hours of hanging around Industria’s plentiful waste she’d been more than willing to call it quits.
Corriztis had chosen to show himself once again that day, but only when Alice and her squad were back on their airship and flying high above the ground, on their way to a Justiciar outpost near the Continent of Desem’s eastern tip.
Alice had been cleaning her armour for the fourth time since leaving the Industrian underground with a concoction known as ‘purifier spray’—which was essentially watered down Sanctium, bleach, and Alchemical cleansing solutions—when she’d sensed a Demon. Shortly after, she’d heard shouts and gunfire, and then came a tremendous stink. Alice had grabbed her war hammer and left her small officer’s quarters, entering the airship’s main section. There she had witnessed her top squad in the process of killing each other, while air whistled loudly through the multiple hull punctures and tears caused by the irrational infighting.
Some of her squad displayed the tell-tale signs of alteration, with jet black eyes, dark bulging veins, and pallid skin, but others were being mind-controlled, a psychic skill that advanced Bloodmages employed. The Justiciars that were still themselves had been doing their best to fight them off without causing their colleagues serious harm and destroying the aircraft they were all riding in. The Book Wielder Ethan was holding Theodore at bay near the vehicle’s rear cargo door. When he saw Alice, the long-faced Vampire Bloodmage had spewed thick white liquid from his mouth, and it shot back and settled on his own face where it had quickly formed the jovial mask of Corriztis.
Alice had quickly realised that Corriztis had found a way to seep inside Theodore’s suit, and then his body, while he’d been contained within the Demon’s watery mass. A small portion of Corriztis had remained dormant within the Justiciar where it slowly but surely took control, so as to avoid detection until it was powerful enough to reveal itself.
The Lord Imperator had used her Book Wielder negation magic to sever the threads of mind alteration and control on her squad, giving them back control of their senses and putting the odds in the Justiciars’ favour.
Corriztis had completely disregarded Ethan and shot torrents of black water from his hands towards Alice, who quickly shielded herself against the tide of black bile. Meanwhile, a dark tendril had reached out from Theodore’s back and activated the airship’s cargo door, spilling even more cold air into the damaged vessel.
Ethan had worked his best magic to throw the possessed Theodore into the airshi
p’s hull with tremendous force, but the Bloodmage just turned into liquid on impact and quickly reformed into its new host form, clothes and all. The Book Wielder was knocked over by a hard slap of water and restrained to the floor with reeking sludgy tentacles.
As Alice had advanced on her possessed ally, struggling against the torrent of filth being thrown at her and the heavy gale from the open cargo door, the altered members of her squad had stopped fighting and made running leaps out of the airship. The Demon had forced them to commit suicide, one by one.
Before she could even gasp, the Corriztis-infested Theodore had once again melted away into a pool of black water and burst out of the airship. A second later, a tentacle had reached back inside and wrapped itself around Ethan’s leg, quickly dragging him out of the aircraft to fall to his death.
Alice had been mortified by the turn of events, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that they were still in danger, and had pushed her grief and sorrow away while she’d rushed to check on the pilots. Upon seeing Alice, the airship’s altered pilots began sabotaging the vehicle’s controls wildly, forcing Alice to execute them with her war hammer. The Spell-forged steel had flashed with intense magical energy as it slammed against their heads, putting them down quickly and painlessly; however, the airship had already been ruined beyond repair and was plummeting towards the ground. Alice had levelled the craft out as best as she could with the sturdier manual controls, but it had still been a terrible crash. Only three other Justiciars had walked out of the wreckage with their lives.
With the Vampire Bloodmage Theodore as a primary host, Corriztis had gone from being a mindless gargling puddle of corruption to a chaotic yet calculated adversary, with a wide range of hybridised talents and a knack for escape and regeneration.
Alice and the other three Justiciars had called for help from the nearby outpost, and solemnly licked their wounds at the base before returning home to Central Isle. Winston had been livid when he’d learnt of the bodged mission; it was the first time Alice had seen the young man lose his temper, and the first time she had been overwhelmed by his sheer presence. Veronica had apologised on his behalf later, and the two women had started the first of many little chats that had eventually formed into an unlikely yet solid friendship.
