by DM Fike
“Avalon!”
Kay’s heart-wrenching cry focused her attention. Through the interior of the bubble and past a kneeling Nobody, Kay reached toward her, Desert Rose’s head on his lap, barely conscious. The fairy would collapse at any moment, but he refused to let go.
They were all going to die.
Avalon gritted her teeth. She could not let that happen.
Get the statue.
Ladybug. Avalon focused back on the green liquid of the syringe. She stopped fighting the chokehold and grabbed the syringe instead. She wrenched it out of James’s hands.
The bruise on her arm pulsed with pain. Avalon thought she saw Braellia’s menacing eyes behind her own eyelids. A savage roar of magic ripped throughout her.
But along with the pain came a type of strength too. All her former elemental magic returned in a rush, along with a strange sense that she could escape this place, that the world had cracked open. Llenwald felt so close by, as if she were one with it.
Avalon tapped into that sensation. She looked at Kay, haggard and panicked, desperately attempting to summon lightning magic he had already used up. At Desert Rose, a dark red pool forming underneath her. At Nobody, pointed teeth bared, keeping the thinning barrier up. At Vimp, hanging on for dear life.
Please, she begged. Please save them.
Something inside her clicked. She drew on that feeling of oneness.
A shimmering haze expanded behind Kay.
A portal.
She had created a portal to Llenwald.
Avalon tried to yell at Nobody and Kay to get out, but James’s hands squeezed around her throat, cutting off her air. Nobody and Kay yelled at James to stop. They didn’t notice the portal behind them.
But Desert Rose did. The mercenary took one look at the portal and nodded in understanding. She opened her mouth to say something, but only a trickle of blood came out. She could not speak.
But she did not need to.
A new sensation pulsed through Avalon. Something hotter than James’s fever screamed through her veins, followed by a flurry of numbing cold. It snaked along her extremities, revitalizing her from her toes through her core and up to her brain, consuming her with a new surge of energy.
Desert Rose smiled and closed her eyes.
Tiny icy fractals traced the lines of Avalon’s veins as they froze. James loosened his grip. “What in Sadus?”
Avalon got her free hand underneath his chokehold and pushed him away with a blast of frost. She whirled around and put that same hand on James’s chest, right above his heart.
“You will not hurt them.” Cold puffs of air burst from her lips.
The ice shard she produced tore right through his lab coat into his chest cavity. Avalon could see the other end protruding like a strange limb from his back.
James tumbled backward in surprise at his wound.
Avalon used that opportunity to shout to her friends, “Go! Get back to Llenwald!”
Nobody found the portal first. “Seriously? You made a portal! I can’t even right now.”
“We will not leave you,” Kay said, struggling to get up. “We—”
The fairy suddenly grabbed at his throat, eyes bulging as his face turned blue.
Avalon whirled around to find James’s glowing hands. “Sach!” James spat at Kay. “You are interfering with her fate.”
A blazing heat seethed through every inch of Avalon’s being. She could not control this rage.
“My fate,” her voice building in strength as the flames boiled inside her, “is not for you to DECIDE!”
The flames swept out of her in every direction, pouring over the room like a tidal flood. Boxer and the suits ran in terror from it, narrowly missing the blast as they escaped into the hallway, fire pursuing them. Vimp jumped onto Nobody’s neck and bit him just in time, allowing the bubble shield to thicken, protecting everyone behind it from the raging inferno.
James and the rest of the room, however, bore the full brunt of Avalon’s fury. The walls, equipment, and cables swathed in fire. The floor beneath the metal slab groaned as the heat weakened the building’s support beams. James, engulfed in flames, clawed at them as he careened toward the lab equipment.
Avalon knew her friends would not leave on their own. She would have to make them leave.
She summoned a gale, directing it straight at the bubble shield. It shattered the barrier instantly, both Vimp and Nobody unable to sustain it further. Nobody rolled backwards head over heels against the massive onslaught of wind, Vimp still attached to his body. His foot slid into the portal.
“What in the actual blazes are you doing?” he yelled at Avalon.
Avalon cut off her wind magic for a moment so he could hear her. “Ladybug says it’s not your fault.”
Nobody blanched. Avalon summoned a final gust to push him and Vimp through. Against all odds, she had gotten in the last word against Nobody.
Kay, blue from being choked, begged her with pleading eyes as she focused her wind magic. He shook his head emphatically.
Swallowing hard, Avalon pushed an unconscious Desert Rose into his arms with a gale.
“Goodbye!” she yelled. She could not bring herself to look at either of them as the portal engulfed them.
The minute they vanished, her magic disappeared and the pain in her arm subsided. The portal faded away. Unprotected now from the fire, the heat punched her in the gut. She dropped the syringe, and it shattered into a thousand fragments on the floor.
She had to get out of here. She glanced around the room, searching for an exit, when hands grabbed at her.
“No,” James croaked. He tried to get a better grip on her despite his melting skin. “My people…” He attempted to speak, but only a hiss escaped his blackened throat.
Avalon shoved him away in horror.
James fumbled backward, hitting the metal slab that had restrained her only moments before. The floor beneath the table creaked and moaned. His added weight proved too much, the ground opening beneath him. Avalon jumped out of the way as James fell into the newly formed crater like a rag doll, all of the Entelegen equipment following on top of him.
Avalon glanced over the edge into the darkness below. Flames licked down in the concrete basement, lighting the dark corners. She could barely make out James’s arm bent at an unnatural angle underneath the rectangular outline of the metal slab.
James—no Bedwyr—was dead. The Entelegen was broken. Nothing could harm her now.
Nothing, except the mess she had made. Heat and smoke nearly overtook Avalon. Fire cut off any chance of escape out of the room’s only doorway. She crouched low to the floor, seeking oxygen in her burning lungs. She wanted to curl into a ball and die.
But she didn’t make it this far to give up. It was a time to fight.
Avalon frantically scanned the lab and spotted the ventilation shaft gleaming in between falling ceiling debris. She crawled to it, staying low to breathe the last bit of air remaining in the room. The grate fit only loosely around its frame, but she still cut her fingertips tearing it off the wall. When it finally clattered to the floor, she could hardly take another smoke-filled breath.
Avalon scrambled into the ventilation shaft, clawing her way through. She tore her bare skin in her haste to get to the other side. Once within striking distance of the opposite grate, she hurtled herself into a large bush. She gulped in air as she brushed mulch from her burnt clothing.
Avalon heard distant sirens as she stumbled away from the building. She ambled across the street, hiding herself in an alleyway between two medical school facilities. The fire trucks screamed past, none of the first responders glancing in her direction. Thick smoke curled its way out of the first-floor windows.
It looked exactly the way it did the night her father had died.
Avalon finally lost her composure. She ran away from the building, sobbing uncontrollably as she escaped between alleyways beyond the edge of campus.
EPILOGUE
&nb
sp; AVALON CLOSED THE orange metal door behind her, shaking as she replaced the storage room key back onto her makeshift anklet. The lone bulb on the side wall cast a sick yellow hue over the concrete floors, outlining hulks of boxes and miscellaneous junk from her past. Covered in soot, bruises, and torn clothes, Avalon hoped that here, in her father’s storage unit, she could finally collapse.
Avalon sank to the floor, exhausted and spent with gathering tears. Where would she go? She had no friends on Earth and was wanted by law enforcement. Nobody might eventually come back for her, but even so, did she want him to? Did she ever want to see anyone from Llenwald again?
Tears streamed down her face. She gulped in a sob, spreading her arms wide to hug herself. Instead, her arm brushed up against a storage box.
Her shoulder flickered with a pinprick of pain. Avalon gasped, examining her arm, but the bruise had vanished along with the rest of her magic. The pain faded away.
Avalon examined the box she had bumped into. It read “Saluzyme” in familiar handwriting.
Her father’s handwriting.
It was the box that had held the thumb drive from before. It felt like a lifetime since she had visited with Kay and Nobody in tow. Absentmindedly, Avalon emptied the box onto the floor. Design specs fluttered onto the cement. Patient names and photographs stared up at her. Only the capped empty vials remained at the bottom of the box.
Avalon hiccuped as she raised the vials under the bulb light. They appeared completely empty. She sighed, letting despair wash over her. She had bigger problems than Saluzyme now. She almost threw the vials back into the box.
Then a faint green glow inside one vial caught her attention. Squinting, Avalon uncapped it and stuck a finger inside. A green residue smeared on her fingertip.
Her arm stung with pain. Flinching, Avalon checked again, but her Miasmis bruise had not reappeared.
Avalon’s eyes widened. Did these once hold Miasmis treatments? Fragments of the statue itself? Her dad couldn’t have known about Llenwald, could he? She could not reconcile the loving man who sat by her bedside with someone willing to experiment on her.
But her father had built the Entelegen. The score of design specs that lay at her feet proved his dedication to his research.
James’s word haunted her. “Don’t let your father’s work go to waste.”
With James dead, she may never know the truth. She didn’t even have the thumb drive with her family’s medical history on it anymore. She had lost it during the previous Saluzyme break-in.
Avalon surveyed the mess around her. Exhausted, she examined a photo attached to a patient record. A young girl, about her age. Straight red hair, freckles, beautiful smile. Personal information jumped from the page. Name, age, birthdate, family history. Someone with a life. A life now destroyed.
Another Miasmis victim, like herself. Like her mom.
Scores of other red-headed women smiled at Avalon from the floor.
Due to legal reasons, her father had never treated Avalon or her mother, but he had cared for scores of others. Those patients would have spent hours with him over the course of many months, conducting tests to prove each AEG prototype’s efficiency. Sessions could run for hours. Some of those patients might have gotten to know him during his tenure at Saluzyme.
Some of them might even be alive.
Avalon gathered up all the paperwork and placed it carefully back in the box. She stood, feeling its bulky weight in her hands, the prickling in her arm completely gone. James had taken away almost everything she held dear, but she still had a chance to clear her father’s memory.
She didn’t have much left to lose.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
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MAGIC CURSE
MAGIC CURSE: CHAPTER 1
“DON’T MOVE, OR I’ll shoot!”
Avalon stared out from her oversized black hoodie down the inside of a double barrel shotgun. She let go of her backpack strap, its weight pulling her down as she raised her hands in surrender. A weathered man in a plaid shirt and overalls held the trigger, a ray of sunlight through the forest canopy hitting his dirty baseball cap. His mouth curled into an angry snarl.
“Can’t you read?” He pointed to a black sign with orange letters at the bottom of the hill. “‘No Trespassing.’”
A chill not connected to the autumn breeze ran up her spine. No matter how many times she’d done this, it was never easy facing the wrong end of a firearm.
“I came to ask you some questions,” Avalon said.
“I don’t like anyone on my property.” He inched his gun forward.
Avalon stifled a sigh. Every single interview started off like this. “Let me show you who I am.”
Slowly, she bent her fingers around her hoodie, pulling the fabric back away from her freckled face. Frizzy red hair popped out like springs, bouncing in a gentle autumn breeze. Her green eyes pierced his.
The gun faltered. “You look familiar.”
“My name is Avalon Benton,” she said. “I went to Saluzyme for Miasmis treatments.”
Just uttering the word made Avalon’s mouth taste sour. She never told any of the family members of Miasmis patients the truth: that their daughters, wives, and sisters had not come down with a hereditary disease but had been experimented on, just like her own mother. Saluzyme found victims through gene identification to determine whether potential subjects would be viable for “treatment.” Once they selected a candidate, Saluzyme injected its victims with an ancient enchanted artifact called the Jaded Sprite Statue. The injections caused symptoms like ugly spontaneous bruising, splitting headaches, and blackout seizures. Saluzyme then combed patient results for someone who might show signs of magical powers. When the patient’s health inevitably began to fail, they would inject more of the substance into the victim until it eventually killed them. All the while claiming to be saviors.
Avalon swallowed the painful truth in her throat. “I had the same illness as your daughter Maranth.”
The weathered man lowered the gun. “You’re Dr. Benton’s daughter. I remember your picture on his desk. Your father talked a lot about you during AEG scans. The girl who beat the odds.” A pained expression crossed his face. “You gave us hope.”
Avalon held back the familiar sting of tears. Her father had worked at Saluzyme, ostensibly to find a cure to save his ailing wife and daughter, two of the first victims of this horrendous scheme. But had her father known Saluzyme’s true intent? Avalon never got an answer from the mastermind behind Saluzyme, Dr. James Skog. Now he was dead, along with her father. They had taken the secret to their graves.
“I was hoping we could talk,” Avalon said.
The man hesitated for only a moment, then threw his gun back over his shoulder. “Why not?” He extended one rough hand. “Name’s Xant.”
“Nice to meet another Aossi, Xant.” Avalon returned the handshake.
Xant gaped in surprise. “You know about Aossi? But you look human.”
“I am.”
* * *
Xant led Avalon on a half-mile hike into the Klamath Forest to his mountain cabin. His home had fought a battle with time and lost. The sickly pink trim paint peeled off in flakes. One window had been boarded over with rusty nails. Avalon had to step over roof shingles as they navigated across the knee-high grass toward the front door.
The interior of the house fared little better. An aging dining table with a metal rim sat next to faded yellow cabinets. Where the linoleum ended, the living room began, all part of one giant room. Two couches sagged under the weight of cardboard boxes, bo
th facing a wood burning stove that radiated heat against the cooler temperatures outside.
“I apologize for the mess,” Xant said, moving a wooden crate of jars from a cracked vinyl chair. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“No worries,” Avalon said.
Xant placed a tea kettle on top of the woodstove to boil water. He took off his ballcap, revealing unkempt gray hair and the tips of his pointed ears, a telltale sign of someone with Aossi heritage. He offered her a place to sit on a rickety folding chair before he plopped down.
He grunted as he shifted his weight to get comfortable. “Tell me, how can I help Dr. Benton’s child?”
“I’m conducting interviews on behalf of Saluzyme.” Avalon had found that this lie helped gain instant trust with Miasmis patient families. They were eager to help the people who had tried to “save” their loved ones.
Xant cocked his head in confusion. “I thought the company had shut down.”
“We’ve had some setbacks. Some of our records were lost in a fire.” Another lie based on a truth: the Saluzyme office had burned twice in the last few years.
Once because Avalon herself had set it on fire.
“I heard about your father’s death,” Xant said, bowing his head.
Avalon’s lips set in a grim line. Her father had died in the other Saluzyme fire. Labeled an accident by authorities, Avalon now wondered if something else had been going on to cause the fire itself.
Avalon retrieved her notepad and pen from her backpack, flipping through pages and pages of notes she had already taken on other Miasmis patients. She found the first blank page and wrote “#9 Maranth” at the top, next to the October date. Then she wrote “Father Xant” underneath.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“The Wazan Forest,” Xant leaned his hip against the wall as he waited for hot water. “You’ve heard of it?”
