Red Magic: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 6 (The Othala Witch Collection)

by JC Andrijeski

  Rosettes and starbursts of purple and green light exploded overhead, like signal fires, but brighter than anything I’d ever seen, and more decorative in form. The sound was deafening after the quiet following the trucks’ departure. No one ducked though; maybe we were still in too much shock to consider that we might need to hit the ground.

  Confusion swam over me as I stared up at those lights.

  They didn’t seem dangerous.

  On the contrary, they were... pretty.

  Like something one might set off to entertain people at night.

  Already, those purple and green streamers were fading, sinking towards the scorched ground with a quiet grace. I didn’t see any danger in them falling on us, either. The flames turned to black smoke long before they reached the ground, disappearing to ash in the darkening indigo sky.

  Then I heard it.

  The silence.

  That droning noise we’d been hearing nonstop in the distance had gone utterly quiet.

  Donal was the first to put the pieces together.

  “They just signaled them!” he shouted, slinging his gun strap cross-wise over his shoulder. “That was for the ravagers! They just told them where we are! They’re leading them to us!”

  He caught hold of my wrist, yanking me roughly with him as he broke into a fast jog. He waved for the others to follow us.

  “Run!” she snarled, louder still. “We have to move! Right now! We’ve got maybe five minutes before we’re overrun!”

  Looking straight ahead, I realized where Donal was taking us.

  A cliff stood in the distance, maybe a quarter-mile away.

  I guessed it would be maybe three or four minutes of hard running across flat, packed ground, even without our gear and weapons. But we weren’t on flat ground. We were running across a sliding hill of sand, ash and shale. Moreover, the small canyon below the cliff looked rocky, and the sides leading up it looked sheer.

  It was our only option though. I could see that, as well as Donal could.

  Of course, I still couldn’t see how we’d manage to keep them at bay for long, even if we did get up there ahead of them. We had no magic, and only twenty or so of us against what might be as many as a thousand, if Donal and Yanna were correct.

  Guns would only hold out for so long.

  Shoving that out of my mind, I ran as fast as I could, doing my best to keep my footing as I plowed through the shifting slope of the hillside. I tried to get Donal to let me go so he could run faster, maybe get there ahead of us, but he only gripped my hand tighter and urged me to hurry.

  Eventually we made it through the sliding sands of the hill, and the going got somewhat easier. We were running across the rocky flats below the cliff when I first heard them.

  A low, guttural clacking sound came from the rocky area to my right.

  My heart leapt to my throat, even as a gun went off from seemingly right by my ear.

  The sound was so loud, I stumbled.

  Recovering and lurching back into an all-out run, I craned my neck to see Miggs lower his rifle, already running harder to catch up with us. Behind him, Yanna took another shot at a shadowy form that darted between boulders only a few dozen meters away.

  Ahead of us, I saw red witches and warlocks already scaling the cliff walls.

  They moved so quickly up those cracks and crevices, I marveled at their agility, even as I ran. Then we were up against the base of those same cliffs ourselves, and Donal was shoving me towards them, turning his back to me as he pulled his rifle down level with his shoulder.

  “No!” I shouted. “Climb, Donal! Climb!”

  Yanna grabbed my arm, so tightly it hurt. She shouted into my ear, her face sweaty against mine. “Get up that damn’d cliff, Maia, or I’ll shoot ye myself!”

  Giving her a hard look, I glanced at Donal a last time, then turned, jamming my hand and then my foot into the first cracks in the rock I saw. I began pulling myself up the sheer wall, finding the nooks and protrusions almost without thought, like my hands and feet knew where to go. I didn’t look down, didn’t let myself think about Donal or the guns I could hear going off at my feet, I just moved up that wall as fast as I could.

  It seemed like I was on that cliff forever.

  Even so, it startled me when arms grabbed me at the top, pulling me over.

  It startled me even more when I looked back to see Donal’s and Yanna’s heads pop over the side of the cliff just behind me.

  Only then did I look around at where I was.

  We were all housed in a cave carved directly into the cliff face, one that went a surprisingly good way into the side of the plateau above. From the texture of the stone, it appeared to be limestone. I saw water dripping down stalactites hanging from the walls, pooling in crevices at the bottom of the cave floor. Algae even grew here, although most of it was dark brown and black, and likely accounted for the smell of rotting vegetation that hit my nose.

  I looked back toward the cave’s opening.

  Five witches with rifles hung over the edge of the cliff, shooting down as more of ours continued to pull themselves up and inside the cave’s opening in the middle.

  Donal lay beside me on the stone, panting to catch his breath.

  When I met his gaze, he smiled.

  “Ye climb good, huntress,” he said, patting my calf. “Thank the gods of the underworlds. I don’t know what I would’ve done, had ye not.”

  I smiled back, shaking my head grimly. “Now what?” I said. “This will buy us time, but what should we do next, fearless leader?”

  He rolled over to his side and sat up, gripping my leg for balance. Still breathing harder than normal, he got to his feet next, and walked over to the edge of the cliff, staying to the side so he wouldn’t interfere with any remaining climbers.

  “How many did we lose?” he asked the warlock with the gun standing there.

  I recognized him; I was pretty sure his name was Warrick. He glanced up at Donal, his broad face smudged in dust from the shale hill. He was one of those who fell, while chasing and shooting after the armored trucks.

  “At least three I’ve seen carried off,” Warrick said grimly. “They got Miggs. Did you see?”

  Stunned, I looked around the cave, trying to refute the warlock’s words.

  I didn’t seem Miggs anywhere.

  When I looked back at Donal, his eyes were angry. “Ah,” is all he said. “Let me know if you need any of us to take a turn. Best if we don’t all use up our ammunition at once. Clearly they can climb this thing, too. I want the bullets used on the cliffs only for now.”

  Warrick nodded, once, in understanding.

  I stepped closer to the cliff’s edge at Donal’s words, looking down.

  Sure enough, the ravagers were climbing up the wall. There was only one place to really get up easily, in terms of the hand and foot-holds. It made me wonder if some of those had been put there deliberately, maybe by someone who had been living up here at one point.

  Either way, when I saw Warrick pick off another climbing ravager, taking him out with a clean shot to the head, it hit me just how temporary of a solution this really was.

  We would run out bullets soon.

  Then the ravagers would be upon us.

  Yanna must have seen some portion of my thoughts in my face. At the very least, she must have seen me doing the math in my head.

  “Don’t worry, princess,” she said, her voice openly bitter. “We’ll likely be dead from the loss of magics before the ravagers get up here.”

  I looked at her, feeling a drop in my stomach as I realized her words rang true, as well.

  Donal hadn’t meant his words figuratively, when he said that red witches couldn’t survive without their connection to their magics.

  He’d truly meant it literally.

  We would die here, and soon, regardless of bullets or ravagers. We couldn’t survive without our connection to that fire inside the world. We were red magic. That meant, on some level, we were
made of that fire. It was a part of us, like blood and breath.

  Looking down into the mouth of the cave, I felt my jaw harden.

  Then I turned back to Donal.

  “Come with me,” I said, my words a command. “Bring your gun... and a light.”

  Donal gave me a startled look. “I don’t need a light, huntress.”

  “Well, I do.”

  Donal blinked at me, his eyes showing confusion. After a bare pause, however, he nodded, without asking me any further questions. Grabbing a flashlight off the floor from an open rucksack, he flicked it on, walking behind me as I ventured deeper into the cave.

  “What are we looking for?” he said, shining the light on the walls.

  “Volcanic rock,” I said. “The black glass, if you can find it. The light should pick up any reflections we might miss.”

  Donal didn’t ask. He only nodded.

  For a long while, we simply walked deeper and deeper into that dark, with Donal flicking the flashlight’s beam around at all the walls. I had him check the ceilings too, and the floors, and a few times, we reached forks in the tunnel and I noted which ones we took.

  I had nearly given up hope, when we found it.

  In the very back of a tunnel, past the second fork we’d encountered in the twisting caves, embedded in the wall in a long slash, was a deposit of the black volcanic glass.

  I walked right up to it without hesitation.

  I laid both of my hands there, palms flat on the hard stone.

  As soon as I did, the cave around us began to tremble.

  “MAIA!” DONAL SHOUTED from behind me, panic in his voice. “Maia! What are you doing? You’ll bury us!”

  “No.” My voice sounded surprisingly calm. I shook my head. “Trust me, Donal. I won’t. It’s going to be all right now. We’re going to be all right!”

  He stood behind me, breathing hard. I could hear him, even through the rumbling sound of the rock shaking all around us, the silt falling to the tunnel floor from above.

  I could feel him too, taut as a bowstring as he hovered over me as if to protect me in some way he didn’t fully comprehend. I could tell it took every ounce of his willpower to not pry my hands up off that piece of volcanic rock.

  Then, all of a sudden, it came.

  I let out a gasp, jerking where my hands held the stone.

  I didn’t pull them away, however; I pressed down harder on the smooth glass instead.

  Hot red fire coursed up from my palms and fingers to my arms. It licked up my shoulders and neck, moving up into my head, then down through my chest and into my belly to my feet. I gasped, choking on the sheer intensity of it, especially at first, and then it was like I could breathe again, like I’d been resuscitated back to life.

  I let out a uncontrollable laugh.

  Every part of my skin hummed, filling me with heat, with a heart that beat so loud it deafened me. Once I felt it take over every part of me, I redirected the current, pushing the flame out of me and aiming it at Donal. I felt him gasp, his breaths growing hard in his chest, a near-groan as he adjusted to the influx of current.

  Minutes later, when his breathing began to steady, I widened that spigot still more, still keeping it on Donal, but spreading it out further, into the other witches and wizards at the other side of the cave.

  I heart Donal let out a triumphant cry.

  He was panting all over again then, breathing harder.

  That time, it felt like it came from emotion, though.

  Dropping the gun, he moved up behind me, clasping me around the waist. He hugged me, pressing his face against my neck.

  “Maia... Maia, my love. My goddess. My huntress. How are you doing this?” His voice was loud, nearly a shout above the shaking rocks and flames. “How are you doing this, Maia?”

  “I don’t know,” I shouted back.

  I was smiling though, and so was he.

  Both of us were grinning so widely it must have hurt our faces, but neither of us stopped.

  I could feel them there, just on the other side of that volcanic rock, trying to get to me.

  Trying to get to us.

  I whispered to them, and they whispered back, lashing their tails through the molten center of the world, swimming in diamonds and rubies and emeralds, singing to the sound of the creation before Othala became what it is now. I felt so much life in those vibrating throats, I could scarcely contain all of it. It made me want to laugh and sing with them, to dance across a meadow with all of my friends, all of us laughing together.

  I remembered what Donal said, about this magic being the magic of the world.

  A female magic. The magic of life.

  The thought brought tears to my eyes, but for the first time in my life, they were happy tears.

  Nothing had ever felt so right.

  The fire lizards continued to sing to me, and I to them. We spoke to one another in the ancient tongue, a language all knew, but all had forgotten. After a time I even knew what I was singing to them. I understood what I was telling them, too, what I needed from them, what I needed from myself. I was telling them how I wanted to make the world better.

  They listened to my words, and I could feel they agreed with me.

  They flicked their tongues in approval, coal-black eyes staring at me from the dark. A surge of affection rolled between me and them that brought tears to my eyes a second time.

  Set us free, they sang to me through that dark. Set us free... set us free...

  Remembering the lizard in the Water Market, I nodded, tears in my eyes. I will, I promised. I will set all of you free. And you will never be imprisoned again.

  They writhed around me happily, flicking their sensual tails, flicking their long black tongues as they climbed over one another to get closer to me.

  She has come home... she has come home to us...

  I had, I realized.

  I had finally come home.

  For the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I belonged.

  WHEN DONAL AND I emerged out of the narrow tunnel, into the lighter, higher space of the cave’s mouth some time later, I could barely see for all the red flames arcing through the room.

  Witches and warlocks hung on the cave’s sides, sending bolts shaped like dragons and birds down into the pitch black night, laughing their asses off as they watched them fly. I saw those bolts morph as they hit the ground, exploding over gray, hairless bodies and egg-like heads.

  Eyeless faces tilted towards us in the dark.

  Screaming mouths showed protruding fangs, claws extending as they howled.

  Those screams echoed against the cave walls, along with more of those eerie clacking noises and heavier grunts. I could feel us beating them back already, driving them away from the red fire and back into their darkness and ash.

  Donal and I joined them on the edge of that wall, his arm still coiled around my waist, and the two of us added our lights to those that danced around us. Watching the surging throng of hairless bodies stuck in the rocky canyon below, I saw red light after red light impact on those waves, pushing them forward and away from the cliff.

  Donal’s fire looked like a bird. It left his fingers and heart as a winged bird of fire, like a rising star from the ashes of this world.

  Mine, perhaps unsurprisingly, looked like a lizard.

  It writhed out of my hands with a twisting, thick body. Its sensual tail coiled and uncoiled behind it, at least twice its body’s length. A flicking black tongue came from black lips on a well-formed head, sitting high above a fire-crimson body.

  Donal laughed aloud when he saw it, in sheer delight.

  I watched it hit the ground at a run, driving the ravagers out of that canyon, flicking its tongue and tail and its thick-necked head back and forth to toss them out of the way. For a long few seconds it was the only magical being down there, as everyone around me, including Donal, stopped doing magics long enough to watch it make its way along the ground.

  When the fire li
zard barreled into a crush of snarling ravagers, forcing them out of the canyon’s mouth and down the ash and sand hill, the witches and warlocks around me let up a cheer. Donal, standing right next to me, burst out in another deep laugh.

  Smiling along with the rest of them, I directed my red-fire lizard to knock a bunch more ravagers down that same hill. More cheers went up as other fire-creatures joined me on the canyon’s ridge. I saw an elephant there, plowing more ravagers off that edge, along with a monkey tossing them down gleefully in each hand. A falcon knocked more down with heavy beats of its wings, right before a dolphin swam up through the earth in undulating waves, pushing more off the edge with its nose and powerful tail.

  In what felt like mere minutes, the area below the cliffs was clear.

  Then hands were patting me on the back, clasping my arms and hugging me as we watched the remaining ravagers flee, running and tumbling down that same ridge.

  Donal stood with me at the cave’s mouth, looking out over a land that still felt desolate, but not quite so dead as it had a few moments before.

  Now I could feel it, just under the planet’s crust.

  Life.

  The heat of the core, the fire lizards, the rivers of fire and gold that ran through the veins of Othala herself. We could kill much of this place, but we couldn’t kill her heart.

  That beat on in spite of us.

  That heart would outlast our history itself.

  “Where do we go now, princess?” a voice murmured by my ear.

  I looked up to find Donal smiling at me, love in his eyes.

  I smiled back, wrapping my arms around him, holding him tight, the way he did me.

  “Now,” I said, my voice as firm as the volcanic rock. “Now, Mr. Donal, we go back to the Capitol, and have a little chat with my Aunt Annika.”

  I said it loud enough that Donal wasn’t the only one to hear my words.

  For a long moment, the witches and warlocks around us only stared at me in bewilderment. Then Donal let out another rolling laugh. As he did, his eyes flashed like scarlet suns, and I remembered again, how much I loved that sound, even when it scared away birds.

  As if he’d broken them out of their trance, the red witches and warlocks around us broke out in laughter as well.