Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion

by Stephen W. Gee

  Mazik grimaced as he unleashed another salvo, his spells hammering three cultists clustered together. Each individual cultist didn’t seem to be that powerful, but there were still eight of them, and they had spread out to make it harder for him to attack them all at once.

  Wait a second, thought Mazik. He counted the cultists. One near the hallway they emerged from a minute ago, three still in the vicinity of the spell circle, another running toward him along the first aisle, and…

  As Mazik watched, the fifth cultist disappeared in a swirl of indigo smoke. He didn’t see the other three at all.

  “Fuck m—Gavi, Rae, turn on your sight magick!” Mazik yelled over his shoulder as his eyes blazed blue. As the fifth cultist swam back into view, Mazik opened fire. The cultists sneaking their way through the storage racks did likewise. Some of the former captives cried out as spells splashed into the barriers around them, the thin defenses cracking as Raedren hurried to replace them with more powerful ones.

  “Dy neth aygn drodios, qvir zyrst—Truesight,” said Gavi, and as the magick permeated her eyes she watched a black-robed man swirl into visibility mere meters away, a wild look in his eyes and a twisted knife aimed at Gavi’s neck.

  Gavi gasped and let her left leg collapse, yanking her body down and to the side just in time to make the blade sail past. Her body screaming with adrenaline and fear, Gavi brought the pommel of her sword up into the man’s exposed stomach; the angle was bad, but it was enough to knock the breath out of the cultist’s lungs.

  Regaining her balance as the man staggered, Gavi brought her sword down, aiming for his exposed side. Her blow hit, mana crackling down her blade as the man’s barriers absorbed the strike. He danced away and brought his knife up, a smile of pious insanity on his lips—

  The cultist flew off his feet and into the nearest storage rack, green magick burying him in an avalanche of shattered crates.

  Raedren gave Gavi a thumbs-up.

  “Thanks!” said Gavi as Raedren pushed back against another cultist who was emerging from the storage racks. More cultists were attacking the escapees from the back and the side, but Mazik and Raedren were doing a good job of keeping them from encircling the group, leaving Gavi to focus on the not-so-distant exit. As the air filled with more nukes from the cultists trying to slow them down, Gavi ducked low for the last sprint.

  Gavi yanked herself to a stop. As former captives piled up behind her, Gavi watched in dismay as five cultists rounded the corner and spread out in front of the small hallway. They said nothing, but their body language made one thing clear—they had no intention of letting anyone pass.

  Gavi’s heart sank. The cultists from earlier. Apparently they hadn’t stay buried for long.

  “Mazik, we have a problem!” Gavi called over her shoulder.

  Mazik glanced across the room, and then cursed wildly and creatively. He picked up the cultist he had been grappling with and threw him across the room. “Rae, switch with me!”

  “Er, okay,” said Raedren as he cast spell after spell, indigo spells pummeling his barriers as he scrambled to replace them. It was like playing whack-a-mole on expert, only he was the one being whacked and people’s lives were on the line.

  Raedren stopped in his tracks, too overwhelmed to cast and move at the same time.

  Suddenly, a titanic rumble filled the warehouse, one so deep and unsettling that it would have shaken loose the fillings in Mazik’s mouth, if he had any. Mazik stumbled as he ran, and Raedren caught him.

  “Thanks,” said Mazik as he stood up, balancing carefully as the floor pitched beneath him. He pushed Raedren toward the back of the group, waving him on. “Go! I’ll figure out what’s going on!” he said, and then turned his attention toward the murky center of the warehouse.

  Meanwhile, Gavi was bracing herself against the wall as she tried to keep her eyeballs from shaking out of their sockets. She forced herself to look up, sure that the cultists would take advantage of this to attack. Sure enough, the five were running unsteadily toward her.

  Gavi frowned. The cultists didn’t seem to be running toward her so much as running away from something….

  The shaking stopped—and then indigo magick ripped through the storage racks closest to the exit, picking up crates and boxes and shattered shelving units by the dozen and hurling them at the corner of the room. The tiny hallway filled up quickly, cutting off the group’s only hope of escape, and then more debris piled up on top of that. Soon the hallway was buried under old apparel and packing materials.

  They were trapped.

  Gavi watched as some of the cultists themselves leapt out of the way of the maelstrom, one barely escaping being added to the mountain. Gavi clenched her teeth as she slowly backed up, forcing their charges to bunch closer together. Now they were not only completely surrounded, they had no exit, and if the cultists’ expressions were any indication, they did not intend to give up.

  In the distance, Gavi could hear Mazik cursing. He appeared to have run out of new curse words a while ago, but he was giving it a spirited effort.

  That’s when a new cultist calmly emerged from the aisles.

  Compared to the other cultists, this new arrival was much fancier, her robes replete with gems and raven’s feathers and lined with rich black fur. She also wore a polished bull skull on her head, and the skull’s blank eye sockets were the only ones visible, as the darkness seemed to hang within her hood like a living veil. She carried a heavy staff made of knotted ash, with yellowing bones, tufts of horse hair, and yet more raven’s feathers tied to the its head as if it were a witch doctor’s rattle.

  The fancy cultist—the head cultist, Mazik and the others assumed, and they were right—stopped a handful of meters away from the escapees and pointed her staff at Mazik. A few short, whispered words later, and the head of her staff lit up with indigo magick. Very bright indigo magick.

  “Oh fuck,” said Mazik, and then he threw up his arms to defend.

  Kra-koom! The spell that engulfed Mazik was bigger than any a cultist had cast so far, a pulsating mass of pure mana that lacerated his barriers and pounded the person beneath. Mazik strained, and then with a terrific roar he disappeared under the barrage, obscured entirely by its light, heat, and power. The escapees behind him cried out and dove for cover as the floor beneath Mazik began to melt.

  A busy second passed, and then the mana began to dissipate. It revealed Mazik, still standing.

  Mazik lowered his arms, the cracking blue and green barriers wrapped around him shimmering brightly before receding to their usual intensity. He looked like he had been put through a carwash fitted with flamethrowers, but he was still alive.

  The Head Cultist tilted her head to the side. Then, as if someone had hit the play button, the battle shuddered back to life.

  *

  “Mazik!” said Gavi as the cultists charged them from all sides. She parried the first one to reach her, deftly sidestepping and punching him in the face. She looked over her shoulder, but Mazik still wasn’t moving. “Mazik, are you okay? What’s wrong?!”

  Mazik did not respond. He just kept standing there, looking down, his body gently bending out of the way as spells exploded around him.

  Had Gavi more time to look closely, she might have noticed that Mazik appeared to be shaking. He was not. What Mazik was doing was vibrating with anger.

  Mazik’s head came up, a look of pure death in his eyes. Mazik was pissed.

  “Rae, take everyone toward the stage and keep them safe! Gavi, go with them!” Mazik barked as his body glowed, mana filtering back into his mana pool. He ignored the spells exploding around him.

  “No!” said Gavi as she leapt over a crate, two angry cultists right behind her. She dove out of the way as a third fired at her, former captives panicking and running away as the cultists drew near.

  “Fine, you’re with me,” said Mazik as he grabbed a cultist by the head and rammed him into his knee. “Just get ready to run when I call for it. Rae!”


  “On it!” said Raedren as green winds pressed down on the cultists around him, rooting them in place. Raedren waved for the former captives to hurry, then used his magick to wrench weapons from the cultists’ hands. The former captives picked them up. Now the men and women who were once so cowed were bristling with weaponry, not to mention the reckless rage necessary to use it.

  “This is more like it…” said Mazik as he dodged cultists and their spells with a smile that would have put most kindhearted citizens on edge. In the distance he could see the Head Cultist preparing a spell, which made him smile even wider.

  “Coming in!” yelled Gavi as she tore across the warehouse floor, weaving between boxes and shelves like a sprinter in a jungle with a cheetah on her tail. Only she would have preferred the cheetah to the three cultists pursuing her, plus the other two preparing spells not far away.

  Gavi skidded to a stop beside Mazik, her sword raised. Mazik calmly waved a hand at the cultists following her, and a spell drove them back. They cried out as their robes burned.

  “What now?” asked Gavi as she tracked an invisible cultist, stabbing at him as he came within range.

  Mazik flashed her a predator’s grin, his hair whipping about him as mana tore at his barriers. “You ready to do this?” he yelled over the din.

  “I don’t know!” Gavi parried a cultist’s blade, then pivoted to another. “What’s the plan?!”

  “Kill them all,” said Mazik darkly. “We keep killing them until they give up, can’t stop us anymore, or we go down.” He clapped his hands together, mana crackling between them like lightning between angry storm clouds.

  As Mazik and Gavi fell back, nearly a dozen cultists followed them, half that number closing to melee range while the others—including the Head Cultist—remained content to cast from a distance. While a token few attacked Raedren and the others, the rest set upon Mazik and Gavi, which made them heavily outnumbered, completely surrounded, and increasingly pressed into the wall behind them. To an external observer, the odds would have looked grim.

  Mazik didn’t seem to mind. He grinned savagely as he pulled up just short of the wall, standing defiantly in the path of the enemy tide that threatened to engulf him. “Now we’ve got you just where we want you,” he whispered.

  “Mazik!” yelled Gavi.

  “C’mon Gavs, let’s DO THIS!!” bellowed Mazik, and then he surged forward, ethereal fire leaping out in an arc in front of him. Mazik’s spell caught five cultists at once, burning away large chunks of their barriers in an instant. Gavi stepped in front of Mazik and caught the sixth cultist’s blade on her own. They struggled, Gavi’s sword locked on the cultist’s curved weapon.

  “Thanks.” Mazik pointed at the man’s forehead. A burst of mana like a rocket’s exhaust swept over him, burning through the cultist’s barriers and dropping him to the ground, dead.

  Mazik stepped over the man’s body, mana already coalescing into another spell.

  Explosions went off around them as Gavi nimbly dodged and Mazik barreled straight through, bearing down on the remaining melee cultists like a train out of hell. The cultists parted, revealing the distant Head Cultist—and then a spell lanced through their lines, heading straight for Mazik.

  Mazik stepped to the side and laughed as the spell exploded behind him, right where the former captives used to be. He kept coming.

  The cultists tried to back away, but it was too late. Mazik and Gavi leapt into the thick of things, mana arcing off Mazik’s naked fists as Gavi maneuvered to his back. Explosions erupted around them.

  Mazik and Gavi fought ferociously, battering cultists left and right—and then the remaining cultists appeared to grow larger, their barriers darkening, their speed increasing, and their blows hammering the pair harder than before. Mazik looked over to see the Head Cultist with her staff clutched in both hands, her unseen lips no doubt moving frantically as she channeled a spell.

  Mazik fired on the Head Cultist, and when the other cultists rushed to their leader’s aid, he aimed for their exposed backs. More cultists fell as their enhancements drained away.

  “You think that’s enough?” asked Mazik as he forced mana through his tired muscles.

  Gavi looked around. Of the twelve cultists that attacked them, only seven were still standing, and, aside from the Head Cultist, they were looking very much worse for the wear.

  “I think it might be,” said Gavi. The warehouse now looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, only not so clean and orderly.

  “Good, because I’m running out of juice,” said Mazik. He held his hand open, a sphere of rippling blue mana appearing above his palm. “Let’s rescue the last one and get the hell out of here.”

  “Sounds good,” said Gavi as she tried to calm her shaking legs. “Need me to cover you so you can channel while we run?”

  “If you would be so kind,” said Mazik. Then he tossed the spell high overhead, and with a snap of his fingers, it exploded, raining light and fire down on the cultists. As they threw their arms up, Mazik and Gavi tore across the warehouse, heading straight for Raedren and the others.

  *

  “Rae! How you doin’?” Mazik called out as he and Gavi neared the rest of the group. Behind the pair, half a dozen injured but increasingly desperate cultists were scrambling to regenerate their mana and patch up their defenses before attacking again.

  “I’ve been better,” said Raedren. Sweat was pouring off his face as he cast spell after spell, his normally placid expression hardened into a tightly wound knot of concentration and stress. Four cultists had been hammering on Raedren and the others for some time, and the strain of keeping all of the former captives plus Mazik and Gavi shielded was clearly getting to Raedren.

  “Let’s see if we can help!” said Mazik, and then he attacked one of the cultists who was casting from range, mana arcing off his knives and ripping through his target’s barriers. The woman cried out in surprise and, after barking a few short words, disappeared. It did no good—Mazik calmly tripped the invisible cultist as she tried to maneuver away from him, and then fired a spell at her tumbling body, which exploded.

  Mazik and Gavi waded into the remaining cultists, battering them back, and then green winds swept all around them, hurling cultists away like a typhoon through a poor farming community. Mazik and Gavi experienced only a slight breeze.

  “Thanks,” said Mazik as he sheathed one of his knives. He looked at the former captives around him, especially at the ones wielding weapons ripped from cultist hands. More than a few were splattered with cultist blood. He took the sheathed knife back out and handed it to an angry-looking woman.

  “Okay, do you think you can hold them back for a minute or two while Gavi and I rescue the last one?” asked Mazik, turning back to Raedren.

  “I’m getting low on mana,” said Raedren, who was taking advantage of the slight lull to channel some of it back. “I’m under a third and dropping fast.”

  “If you can hold out for a minute longer then we should be able to rescue her, get back here, and then we can cover for you while you channel back to full,” said Mazik. “That work?”

  Raedren shrugged tiredly. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’ll take it,” said Mazik. “Come on, Gavs, let’s go!”

  Green mana pressed down on the cultists, and then multiple explosions ripped through those between the escapees and the stage. Enemies tumbled out of the way, and suddenly the path was clear. Mazik and Gavi leapt onto the platform, Gavi landing in an awkward roll while Mazik tripped and belly-flopped. Mazik scrambled to his feet, his knife ready.

  Suddenly, the Head Cultist swirled into view in front of them, right next to the altar.

  “What the hell?” said Mazik. “I thought—”

  “Look out!” said Gavi.

  The Head Cultist brought her staff down on the stage with a terrific crack, sending mana rippling away. Mazik and Gavi threw their arms up, but they were still pushed back, their barriers melting away as the He
ad Cultist’s spell battered them.

  Mazik’s eyes swept over the altar, the empty platform, and the floor nearby. “Gavs, if you can give me twenty seconds, I think I can take her down.”

  “On it,” said Gavi, and she stepped forward. The green barriers around her darkened—even with everything else he was doing, Raedren was still watching out for them—and then Gavi rushed forward. There was no bellow, no one-liner, no stupid war cry. Gavi just put her head down and charged, her eyes blazing green as she aimed her sword at the Head Cultist’s heart.

  The Head Cultist invoked three short words and pointed her staff at Gavi.

  “Gaaah!” Gavi cried out as mana tore at her. Gathering every bit of power she had around her sword, she gritted her teeth and pushed. Mana crackled as the spell burned through her barriers, and then there was a soft whompfh and Gavi was through. The spell flew into the nearby wall, exploding harmlessly.

  Gavi stumbled forward a few steps as the spell she had been putting all of her weight into disappeared. Steadying herself with shaking arms and legs, she raised her head and—

  The Head Cultist said one word, and indigo mana picked Gavi up and hurled her into the wall. She crumpled to the ground and twitched.

  The Head Cultist yanked a twisted black dagger free of her belt and turned to Mazik.

  Mazik wasn’t there.

  Suddenly, white-hot pain washed over the Head Cultist from behind. She reeled, spinning around, and found herself confronted by a lunging Mazik, his dagger aimed at her face.

  The Head Cultist dodged out of the way, Mazik’s dagger sailing past her and nicking one of the horns on her headdress. Mazik grinned—and then jammed his other dagger right into her chest.

  Mana hissed and spit as the Head Cultist’s barriers held back Mazik’s blow. The black dagger went tumbling from her grasp as she gripped her staff in both hands and swept it toward Mazik.

  But Mazik wasn’t about to let up. It was well known that weaker casters could defeat stronger casters by getting into melee range and keeping them off balance. What Mazik long ago realized was that when a caster who’s powerful enough to fight from a distance decides to get into melee range anyway, the results became downright unfair. Which was exactly how he liked them.