A lone armored figure rode down the road toward them with a white flag flying from the head of his spear. With a start, Sally recognized the young Sheriff who had retrieved Jason when they’d first arrived in Rugby. His face looked completely lifeless, as if he’d been drained of all his vitality.
“State your business,” he said without emotion.
Juice raised his visor and spoke with a clear, calm voice. “I am Juice, commander of the armies besieging your fortress. I seek to negotiate with my opposite among your number.”
“Wait here,” said the Sheriff tonelessly, and spurred his horse back up the road toward the castle.
The six heroes waited as patiently as possible, which was the purest kind of torture for a speedster like Sally. She fidgeted and twitched with nervous excitement until Juice had to order her to remain still.
The sun gleamed behind the castle, casting a long shadow across the plains. A small group of riders came down the side of the mountain. Jack led the group. Sparks flew from the hooves of his great black horse as he led the group down from the summit fortress. The Sheriff was with him, as well as four other people. Sally examined each one for potential threats. All seemed to be people who the Archmage had turned to his cause: a soldier wearing fatigues under his armor, a woman wearing what might have once been a business suit, and two young Hispanics who would have looked far more natural in professional sports team gear and bling than the suits of mail they wore.
Sally’s heart beat so fast and hard she was surprised blood wasn’t shooting out of her pores with each contraction. Her perceptions rode on a hair trigger, and she barely kept them in check so she could still follow what was going on. If they zoomed up to top speed, everything around her would seem to stop and she could neither listen to nor talk to anyone else because of the widening variance between her personal speed and that of the rest of the world.
Jack neither raised his visor nor took off his helm. “Speak.”
“All I see before me is a suit of armor,” said Juice. “And no sign of the man I used to call friend. Is this some kind of trick? How do I know you are indeed the leader of these men?”
“I’ll not remove this helmet,” said Jack. “But listen to your gut, Juice. You know it’s me.”
Sally’s breath caught in her throat as she imagined the wry grin on Jack’s face underneath the black helmet.
“Now, I haven’t got all day. Speak your piece and be on your way and perhaps we’ll meet another time on the field of battle.” Jack tapped the hilt of his great sword against the saddle horn for emphasis.
“An excellent suggestion.” Juice stretched his neck to one side, then the other, and was rewarded with audible pops as his joints reorganized themselves. “Let’s play.”
The code phrase, pulled from the movie Desperado, triggered a powerful spell which Will had embedded within the illusory armor. With a great squall of guitar histrionics, pure white energy arced between the members of Just Cause. Sally dove off her horse and moved to the middle of Jack’s group. For a fraction of a second, she would be in the most danger because she was the only anchor for the spell, and during that time she would be frozen in place.
She felt the energies hold her in place as easily as if her feet were made of steel and someone had turned on a giant electromagnet in the ground. The spell’s power formed a ring of energy with her and the others as edge points, and entrapped Jack and three of his people.
“What is this?” cried Jack as he brought his sword up in a threatening manner.
A magical vortex appeared in the center of the dome, similar to the one which had trapped Sally and the others and sent them back in time. This one was much smaller and completely under Stratocaster’s control. The tug from it was weak enough at the edge of the dome that even petite Sally could resist it. Inside, it was a much different story as Jack and his three soldiers struggled to keep from being sucked into it.
“Attack them, you morons!” Jack yelled toward the two Hispanic boys, the only ones outside the field of magic. They drew their swords and spurred their mounts into a charge.
The ground heaved and buckled underneath their horses and threw the boys from their backs.
Sally heard Stratocaster’s chuckle as if he were beside her instead of miles away.
The vortex spun faster. It shot off random sparks as it doubled, then trebled its pull. Unable to resist its fearsome power, Jack and the others disappeared into it.
The energy ring collapsed in on itself and exposed the Just Cause heroes to its pull. Sally steeled herself for a stomach-twisting ride and flung herself into the vortex. Within the magical gate, she felt her body turn and bend in strange and impossible ways. It wasn’t painful, just terribly disorientating. She felt no sense of up and down; gravity was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Lights flashed before and behind her eyes and a whine of feedback assailed her ears. The unpleasantness lasted for a few moments, and then the whirling stopped and reality resolved itself once more…
… into the confines of The Bunker.
Just Cause’s underground training facility was already state-of-the-art. Nanotechnology had given it thick, energy-absorbing walls where the heroes could cut loose with their powers without fear of damaging anything. Normally, the stadium-sized room would be set up for some kind of training scenario, miniscule robots building up the setting one molecule at a time. Now it was empty, with walls and floor bare and the naked sodium arc lights high overhead. Arcane symbols were inscribed on the center of each wall, as well as the floor and ceiling. As the team arrived within them, a secondary spell linked into their armor activated. The symbols illuminated and burned with ghostly blue and purple flames, sealing the chamber from the Archmage’s flow of power.
Stratocaster had labored for hours in preparation for this chamber to insulate Jack and the others from the reach of the Archmage’s magic. Once inside, only the magic that Jack carried with him would still function. Without a link to the Archmage, Stratocaster hoped Jack’s powers would wane quickly and they could break the hold over him.
The other heroes appeared in the same positions they had been in when the magical gate first enveloped them. The three soldiers with Jack looked around in shock. The members of Just Cause were better prepared and leaped into action.
“Switchboard, put them down,” Juice ordered.
Switchboard focused his psionic powers to force the Sheriff, soldier, and the business woman to slump forward on their horses, peacefully asleep. Jason and Sondra hurried to pull the the civilians and horses to safety.
Jack sparkled with his own magical energies as he raised his sword and charged. Juice leaped from the back of his horse, more comfortable fighting on the ground even though it put him at a tactical disadvantage against a mounted foe. As Jack’s dark charger rode in, Juice’s illusory armor vanished. Crackling electricity surrounded Juice as Doublecharge hit him with as much power as he could take. His strength and toughness escalated geometrically with the influx of electricity.
Jack’s sword became limned with flame and cut downward at Juice, who ducked and rolled as the blade whistled over his back. Jack wheeled his horse around, bringing his sword up in an arc intended to cleave Juice in two. As his arm reached its zenith, Sondra flew past and delivered a hard kick to his wrist to knock his aim off. Overbalanced, Jack needed a moment to recover from his heavy swing. Juice braced his feet and swung a massive fist across the horse’s face, which sounded like a ballplayer cracking off a home run hit. With as much electricity as Doublecharge had pumped into him, the blow could have knocked down a building.
Jack leaped clear as his mount tumbled to the floor to lay still. It burst into flame, burning into a greasy hunk of charcoal. One challenge down, thought Sally. Four to go. She had to wait for an opening to fulfill her part of the mission.
Jason body-checked Jack across the floor. Juice leaped on him in an instant and pinned his sword arm to the floor. Jason was right behind him as Jack thrashed on the floo
r with a strength he’d never possessed before. Jason flung himself across Jack’s legs, adding his own strength and weight to Juice’s until Jack was immobilized. As Juice worked at wrestling the sword out of Jack’s grip, Sally darted in with a spray can in one hand.
She raised the nozzle and aimed it right at Jack’s visor slot and depressed the sprayer. A thick stream of insulation foam shot out, expanding as it contacted the air. In her sped-up perceptions, the foam seemed to move with glacial slowness but she could clearly see it push into the helmet. The Archmage may have planned for the helmet to protect from physical or energy assault, but apparently hadn’t anticipated a subtle insinuation as this. They’d argued at the planning session about this strategy Sally proposed, but even if it hadn’t actually worked, the foam would still have covered the helmet and still made things more difficult for Jack.
In the moment’s distraction from the foam filling Jack’s helmet, Sally released every buckle which held the armor onto him. Second challenge, thought Sally. Jason and Juice, who had been unable to break Jack’s grip on the sword, hurled him across the chamber. Jack impacted high on the far wall. Pieces of armor flew in all directions when he struck. The scattered parts flared into crimson smoke.
Still unhurt, he dropped to the ground and ripped off his helmet. He leaped back into the fray with superhuman speed and strength. His flaming sword whirled so fast it seemed like a solid disk of fire. Sally circled him as she tried to find an opening in his swirling swordplay so she could do something.
The sword flashed down and around, slicing into Juice’s chest. He yelled in surprise and pain as he fell backward with blood spraying from the deep cut across his pectorals. Juice’s supercharged toughness hadn’t done more than provide a token defense against the magical blade. Jack squared off with Jason and pushed him inexorably back with flicks of the sword. Sondra dropped out of the air next to Juice. Besides Jason, she was the only one strong enough to easily move the big man, and she dragged him back to safety.
Jason dodged and ducked to stay out of range of that wicked blade. Sally saw his feet tangle in the legs of Jack’s dead horse. The look on Jack’s face was of murderous triumph as he brought the sword around for a killing blow. Sally flung herself across the room to hit Jack’s sword arm with all her might. Somehow, impossibly fast, he twisted the blade in midair and suddenly the point was only inches from her sternum. She ducked under the edge and felt a line of fire across her shoulder and back as the blade cut through her costume and skin. It burned like acid, but she only cared that she’d deflected his attention from Jason for a moment.
Jason laid a massive uppercut inside Jack’s guard. The impact lifted Jack up and away. His sword spun away to stick into the floor point-first. Then Jason was holding Sally, cradling her in his arms, trying to wish away her pain.
“I’m okay,” she gasped. “Stop Jack before he hurts someone else.”
Jason nodded and ran, leaving Sally to wince at fresh waves of pain.
Jack leaped back to his feet, his face red with fury. Clad in only a loincloth, his muscles stood out in sharp relief under the bright lights of the Bunker. Sweat glistened on his skin. His eyes were shadowed under his brow, but a gleam of hatred shone from each one. He looked like he belonged on a movie poster for some epic fantasy where women wore chain mail bikinis and heroes slaughtered orcs by the hundreds.
Except in this film, Jack was the bad guy.
He held out his hand toward the sword. It quivered, and then flew out of the floor to spin toward him. Sondra dove into its path and grabbed hold of the hilt in midair as it sailed past her.
“How dare you touch my blade, woman?” yelled Jack.
Sondra cupped her wings to resist the pull of the sword, but was forced to drop to the ground and brace herself with her sturdy legs. The muscles in her arms stood out in sharp relief as she tried to hold the sword back from Jack’s will. “You can’t… fight us… forever,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Jason reached Jack and wrapped him up in a bear hug, only to yelp in pain and surprise as frost suddenly rimed his arms and chest. He jumped back and slapped away the icy coating. Doublecharge flew over to help Jason as best she could; her electrical powers would be useless against Jack. Switchboard stood still with his fists clenched in concentration. Sally could practically feel the psionic energies he hurled at Jack, but so far to no avail.
Sondra’s boots scraped across the floor as the force of Jack’s will on the sword increased.
“Yield!” he shouted.
“Never!” retorted Sondra.
Jack made a waving motion toward Switchboard, who fell back with blood streaming from his ears. Sally tried to get to her feet, but the pain from her wounds made it impossible to do more than just sit hunched over in agony.
“Sondra, how can I help?” called Doublecharge.
“Get him to use up his power faster!” Sondra’s boot soles squeaked against the floor as the sword pulled her closer and closer to Jack.
“Power?” laughed Jack. “I’ll show you power.” He flexed his fingers and the sword pulled Sondra off her feet. She extended her wings to keep from skidding across the floor and wound up gliding only a few feet off the floor.
Switchboard rolled over and squinted at Jack, concentrating so hard that his psionic output distorted the air between him and Jack, putting all of his power into a single telepathic spike to break through the magical shielding.
It all happened very quickly, even in Sally’s sped-up perceptions. Jack’s expression softened and he looked confused. “Sondra?” he whispered as she bore down on him, sword in hand. She couldn’t turn or stop in time, and Sally watched in horror as the magical sword slid through Jack’s torso and its flaming tip emerged from his back.
Doublecharge screamed for the paramedics.
“Hi, honey,” said Jack to Sondra in a faint voice as his hands explored the sword stuck through him. The weapon wasn’t burning any longer, but neither did it fade away like the bits and pieces of his armor and horse had. “I think I’m having a bad day.”
“Oh, baby! I’m so sorry!” Sondra cried as she cradled his head in her lap. Her wings folded over them both like a feathery cocoon.
“Always said I was stuck on you,” said Jack with the ghost of his wry grin.
A small army of paramedics descended upon the injured heroes. The five interns moved uncertainly among them. Carver and Octane hung back, knowing their powers were useless in a post-combat situation like this and they’d just be in the way. Ment went right to check on Switchboard, who was barely conscious. The paramedic feared he’d suffered some kind of brain injury. Ment took Switchboard’s head in his hands and concentrated.
Sally knew from reading his file that if anyone could heal brain damage, it was Ment. She winced as a paramedic applied antibiotic burn cream to the long slice on her shoulder and back while another jabbed a needle into her arm attached to an IV bag. “Take it easy, would you?”
One paramedic started a bag of plasma and injected something into the IV while the other squirted medical-grade super glue along the edges of the cut and pushed the skin and tissue back together. The pain of her wound became more tolerable as whatever drugs he’d injected took effect. “This will probably leave a scar,” said the medic behind her.
“Lovely.” Sally made herself sit still and watch the proceedings involving Jack.
His invulnerability, long thought to be absolute, had at last showed its Achilles heel: he was vulnerable to magic. The medical staffers couldn’t figure out how to remove the sword without causing further injury. “Even if we can get it out,” muttered one of them, “we won’t be able to repair any damage surgically because of his damned invulnerability.”
“I can’t feel anything at all,” whispered Jack.
“I think his spine is severed,” said another doctor.
Minerva stepped up to the group with Snowball in tow. She tapped Sondra on the shoulder. “We can help him,” she said, “but yo
u have to trust us.”
Sondra wiped her eyes. “Do it. Let them work,” she told the paramedics, who respectfully stepped away.
Snowball gulped as she saw the wound Jack had sustained. She glanced at Minerva, whose face was intense and shadowed under her helmet.
“Just like we discussed,” said Minerva with quiet urgency.
Snowball nodded and carefully straddled Jack. She placed one hand on the blade on either side of his body. “Hold him still,” she said.
Cold white light illuminated the blade edges. The temperature in the Bunker dropped noticeably, an impressive feat considering it was approximately the volume of a dome stadium. Frost built up on the blade and around the entry and exit wounds. It was a slow, careful process, but when Snowball stepped back, ice coated the sword wound on both sides. Sally shivered; she could see her breath in the air. She couldn’t imagine how cold Snowball must have made the sword. Jack’s flesh had turned pale and he was unconscious. Sally couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not; he looked dead. The air blurred around him. Sally thought it might be his remaining magical energy flowing away.
Minerva felt around Jack’s torso and used her mysterious powers to somehow confirm what was going on inside him. “Good,” she said to nobody in particular. She slid the sword out of him with her bare hands, but the superchilled metal didn’t seem to faze her in the least. The blade made a scraping sound as it emerged from Jack’s frozen flesh. Once it was clear, she tossed it away and it shattered on the floor as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. She turned to Doublecharge. “Doublecharge, can you use your electricity to heat conductive metal?”
Doublecharge thought about it. “Yes. What do you need?”
Minerva drew her own sword from the scabbard at her waist. “I need you to heat this until I tell you to stop.”
“What are you going to do?” Doublecharge’s eyes narrowed.
Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage Page 19
