Scorched Earth

by Randall Pine

  Gladys zoomed through the night, dodging trees as she picked up speed. Once she’d gone far enough away from the open ground, she curved back, making a wide arc around the clearing. She came back around on the far side, coming in fast and hard, and she smashed into the cloaked man’s head, knocking him unconscious. He fell to the ground, hard.

  Gladys zoomed back around the clearing and settled into Virgil’s open hand. “You are so much cooler than Simon’s key,” he decided.

  “Virgil! Come on!” Simon hollered. He was running toward the clearing, where the Refracticore continued its awful magic ritual. The men and women being shot through with the energy all looked different now—younger, and healthier, their bodies aging backward through middle age. They were still too enraptured in the magic and hypnotized by the sensation of strength to pay Simon and Virgil any serious mind, and Simon slipped between two bodies easily. With a heavy shield raised, he ran into the clearing, ducking beneath energy bolts and warding off attacks of quick, popping lightning from the Refracticore as he closed in. The stone shot three streams of electricity his way, electricity that was purple and hot, not like the shimmering golden bolts that pierced the older people around him. Simon made a quick mental note: Gold bolts are youth; purple bolts are death. But his shield caught the attack easily and held off the deathly purple magic. He dove in, and with his free hand he grabbed the golden staff. The Refracticore sent a powerful shockwave down through the metal, and it hit Simon’s hand with the force of a Mack truck. The energy slammed through his body, and Simon was lifted off of his feet and thrown backward, out of the clearing. He spun through the air as he flew, only semi-conscious, and didn’t stop until he slammed into a tree at full speed. His shield took the brunt of the impact, but it shattered as soon as it struck, and the force of the collision knocked the wind from his lungs. He fell down onto the ground in a dazed and trembling heap.

  “Simon!” Virgil screamed, watching his friend streak through the air and smash into the tree. He turned back to the Refracticore with fire in his eyes. He shot two quick energy bursts at the stone, but they too glanced off the surface of the Refracticore without causing damage. The stone fired back at Virgil with a bolt of purple energy. Virgil blocked it with a shield and ducked behind a tree. “Come on, come on, come on,” he said to himself, his heart beating frantically in his chest. He looked up at the energy column and envisioned the matching column that was currently planted somewhere in Templar, impaling teenagers with its life-draining rays and shriveling them like centuries-old mummies from the inside out. “Think!”

  And then three distinct and important things happened in very quick succession.

  First, Virgil was struck with the realization that as soon as the ritual was finished, he and Simon would be confronted with a small army of young, strong men and women who had no problem draining the literal life out of minors and who were almost certain to serve at the murderous pleasure of the shadow-creature that restored their youth. So whatever he did to end this madness, he had to do it fast. The last thing he wanted to do was use his powers to fight for his life against a few dozen strong, healthy twenty-somethings.

  The second thing that happened: while he was considering that, a tree on the other side of the clearing actually opened, its trunk swinging outward on a pair of hidden hinges, and the woman in the silk cloak emerged from one of her secret passageways. She stepped out into the forest, closed the door behind her, and took quick stock of the setting. She saw the man in the canvas robe lying unconscious on the ground, and her lips curled down into a hard scowl.

  “Leonard,” she spat, sounding annoyed. “Useless.”

  And the third thing that happened: she looked across the clearing, through the web-work of golden energy bolts, and saw Virgil standing there.

  Virgil gulped so hard, he choked.

  He summoned Gladys on instinct, forgetting about the protection spell around the clearing in his panic, and launched her toward the woman. Gladys hit the invisible barrier again, and this time, she didn’t bounce back into Virgil’s hand; she fell to the ground and rolled away, as if she were dazed.

  “Oh. Right,” Virgil said.

  The woman in the cloak reached up and touched the purple pendant around her throat. It began to glow with a deep light of shadow magic. Her mouth moved as she recited a dark spell.

  “Simon!” Virgil cried over his shoulder. “Help?”

  But Simon was still lying on the ground, dazed and only just beginning to get his bearings.

  Virgil’s whole body tensed. He powered up his hands, and they glowed with bright orange light. He stood with his knees bent, his legs cocked like springs, ready for whatever the woman could throw at him.

  Or so he hoped.

  The pendant grew brighter and brighter in her hands, and her lips moved quicker and quicker. Suddenly, the light trail in the sky above them retracted, shrinking away from the city of Templar and reeling back to the energy column that shot up from the Refracticore.

  Virgil looked up and gazed at the rapidly-shortening light trail in confusion. Then he looked back down at the woman in the purple cloak. She wasn’t frowning anymore; now she was grinning, a sharp, dangerous smile that sent a chill through Virgil’s heart. She let go of the pendant, and he saw that the purple light had transferred to her hands, which glowed from the palms. She raised her hands into the air, held them above her head for two seconds, and then she brought them crashing down, both slicing through the air, throwing the purple shadow-light to the ground.

  The sky above Virgil opened up, and a brilliant, white energy column surged down on him from above.

  Virgil threw up his hands, forming shields against the heat and light, but the Refracticore’s power was far greater than his own, and the energy column smashed through both kinesthetic barriers as if they had been made of brittle glass. The powerful electricity crashed down on him like a wave.

  All he could do was scream.

  Chapter 28

  Simon’s vision cleared, and the forest filtered back into focus.

  He looked up and saw Virgil staring toward the Refracticore.

  Then a surging column of energy flashed down from the sky and consumed his friend in a blinding-white deluge of scorching heat and pain.

  “Virgil!” Simon screamed, pushing himself to his feet. He didn’t think, he just acted on pure instinct. He flicked his fingers as he ran forward, and a shield appeared in his hand. He threw the disc like a Frisbee, straight into the path of the energy column, above Virgil’s head, but as soon as it hit the crackling white light, the orange magic fizzled and disintegrated into nothingness.

  Simon charged forward, holding out his arms and forming a kinesthetic plow with his hands, and he plunged toward Virgil, trying to knock him free of the lightning column’s grip. But the plow cracked and splintered when it hit the light, and then it disintegrated, too. Simon nearly went head-first into the life-draining electricity and just barely pulled himself back in time.

  “Virgil!” he screamed again, but if Virgil could hear him through the surge of power that was sucking out his youth, he didn’t show it. Simon watched with horror through the veil of white-hot light as Virgil’s skin began to grow dry and cracked, and a streak of his hair began to fade from brown to silver.

  Simon’s howl of rage shook the leaves on the trees around him.

  He turned toward the Refracticore, and for the first time, he saw the woman in the purple cloak standing across the clearing.

  An anger that he had never known caught fire in his chest and burned through his entire body.

  He stomped toward the clearing, firing a stream of bright energy blasts at the woman. The balls of bright orange light were wild, uncontrolled, and filled with fury, but they moved like homing missiles, swerving around the elderly energy-suckers, dodging the Refracticore, and screeching straight at the woman, a steady barrage of powerfu
l magic blasts. The Refracticore managed to fend off about half of the shots, zapping out thin bolts of purple electricity and disintegrating the magic orbs as they flew through the air. The other half did make it across the clearing, but the stone in the woman’s necklace glowed brightly and formed a translucent purple shadow-shield around her. The energy blasts collided with the shield and dissipated, leaving the woman unharmed.

  The fire in Simon’s belly raged. He threw more and more blasts, his arms pumping like pistons, firing shot after shot after shot after shot. But every single attack was either thwarted by the Refracticore or evaporated by her shield, and after almost thirty straight seconds of firing a furious flurry of attacks, Simon was out of breath, his arms were tired, and the woman was completely unharmed.

  And her smile…her cold, cruel, vicious smile remained.

  Simon felt the heat of Virgil’s energy column on his back. He turned to look at his friend. Even through the glare of the electricity, he could tell that Virgil’s fingernails were turning yellow and brittle. The people in the clearing were sucking the life out of him, all at the same time, and he was going fast.

  If an individual lightning bolt from the Refracticore’s energy beam could drain a healthy teenager into a barely-breathing corpse in less than an hour…and if eight lightning bolts could kill a football player in just a few minutes…then a full-bore energy column sucking out his youth meant that Virgil only had seconds to live.

  Simon didn’t know what to do.

  He switched off his mind. He let the power inside him take over.

  Instinctively, he knew that fighting the woman would do no good. Even if he managed to take her out, she wasn’t the immediate threat; the Refracticore was. Though revenge against the mysterious woman for everything she’d wrought might be cathartic, it wouldn’t stop the evil gemstone from draining his friend’s life and redistributing it to a group of craven, selfish octogenarians. It wouldn’t save Virgil. And even though she had no magic of her own, she seemed to be protected by the shadow-creature’s magic that lived within her necklace; forcing his way through a black magic that powerful would be a waste of time.

  So he focused on the Refracticore.

  Virgil had found in his research that the stone was indestructible. Simon clenched his jaw.

  He was going to test that theory to its limit.

  All of these calculations were made within the flash of an instant. Simon raised his arms, pointing his open hands directly at the Refracticore gem. His anger and terror and helplessness exploded within him, like an all-consuming atomic blast, and he screamed as he fired two steady columns of powerful orange magic from his palms. Like the streams from two flamethrowers, the magic surged forward, slicing the space between two of the elderly figures and streaming straight at the Refracticore. Simon put every ounce of magical force he could into the power blasting out from his hands. The gold of the Refracticore’s staff began to glow red with the heat of his fire.

  He blasted the magic until he had no more to give, and when the stream of energy trailed off, Simon sank to his knees, exhausted by the effort. He looked up at the Refracticore stone.

  It still sat in its mounting, strong and whole, still firing out golden youth-energy bursts to the people in the clearing.

  “No!” Simon bellowed. He dug his knees into the earth, and he thrust his hands into the dirt, pressing his fingers down into the soil, past the roots of the grass, into the heart of the mud. He screamed with all of his fury, and he sent a reserve energy he didn’t know existed down into the ground. All around the clearing, small, green tendrils burst through the groundcover, twirling and unrolling as they grew into hundreds of stout green stalks. Each stalk bloomed with a fist-sized aqua-marine flower, and all of the petals from the flowers opened at the same time. Small, orange spheres the size of ball bearings floated up around the trees as they were released from the flowers like spores. The orbs floated upward a few feet, until they were suspended above the ground at the same height as the Refracticore…and then, in a furious onslaught, they pinged across the clearing, cracking into the gemstone like a hailstorm from all sides. The forest filled with the hard sounds of metal cracking against diamond, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, like machine gun fire.

  When the flurry of ball bearings subsided, the balls fell to the ground, where they sank back down into the dirt, to once again become one with the earth…and the Refracticore gem remained unharmed.

  “No,” Simon whispered softly, shaking his head in disbelief.

  He collapsed forward as all strength and hope evaporated from his body. His chest heaved as his lungs clawed desperately for breath, and every muscle in his body burned with exhaustion. The soft dirt felt cool against his burning skin. He raised his weary eyes to the energy column and to his best friend, trapped inside and being drained of his life. The silver streak in his hair had extended to full white, and the rest was beginning to pepper in with silver. His arms were shrinking, the muscle draining off of his bones, and his skin was so dry that it was practically translucent. Wrinkles pinched at the corners of his eyes, and Simon watched as one of his friend’s teeth fell out of his gums.

  Tears streamed down Simon’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Then something in the foreground of his vision caught his eye.

  Simon pushed himself up to his knees. He crawled forward, staring down at Virgil’s wooden curiocus ball.

  And suddenly, the answer was simple.

  Simon grinned.

  He knew how to defeat the Refracticore.

  He dredged up the little strength he had left and hauled himself to his feet. He swayed like a punch-drunk boxer, trying to keep his footing. The woman in the cloak had been watching his magical onslaught with interest bordering on awe, and she watched him carefully now, from her perch near the van. The Refracticore continued its awful distribution of Virgil’s power, and judging by the looks of the old folks around the circle, its work was almost done.

  Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Simon as he approached the clearing one final time.

  He held up his hand and called up every drop of magic he had left. A kinesthetic shield formed in his palm, small, and thin, and weak. He hoped it would be enough. It was all the magic he had left.

  He closed his eyes in concentration as he walked toward the circle, his shield held out before him. He crossed into the clearing, and the Refracticore fired a purple energy blast his way. He opened his eyes just in time to see it, and he moved his hand, blocking the shot. It took a chip out of his shield, but the structure held. He continued forward, walking straight toward the gemstone. The Refracticore fired more shots, and he caught those, too. His shield cracked, then it split in half. He used the last of his mental strength to hold the two pieces of the shield together. He just needed a few more seconds…

  The Refracticore attacked more ferociously as he approached, but Simon pushed on. He sidestepped some of the energy bolts, while others hit the shield and broke it into more and more pieces. He was barely holding the orange surface together. A few more hits, and the shield would disintegrate. He needed to move faster, but his body was so tired…

  He trudged forward. The woman in the cloak watched him with interest, clearly wondering why he would choose this particular method of suicide. It did occur to Simon that that’s exactly what this might end up being, if he couldn’t reach the Refracticore in time.

  But if he died, he would die trying to save his best friend.

  And, he figured, there were worse ways to go.

  He took another step. The Refracticore fired another shot; this one shattered the shield into a thousand tiny shards that exploded out from his hand and rained down on the ground like bits of broken glass. Simon’s legs gave out beneath him, and with his last ounce of strength, he pitched himself forward. He reached out with one hand, and just as the Refracticore shot out one final purple bolt of
deadly, malignant power, Simon’s hand brushed the refracted surface of the gemstone…

  And then the Refracticore was gone. Vanished into thin air.

  The energy blast reaching up into the sky dissipated instantly. The purple clouds cleared, and the shortened light trail evaporated, along with the energy column that was consuming Virgil. In a split second, all the energy and power and lightning and magic dematerialized from the space, and there was nothing left but a ring of now-young people gathered around an empty golden staff.

  Simon collapsed, hitting the ground with a hard thud. Exhaustion wracked his body, and the world began to swim out of focus. The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was the woman in the purple cloak ushering the residents of Furtive Hills back into the van and jumping into the driver’s seat, revving the engine and tearing away down the bumpy path.

  A heavy curtain fell over Simon then, and as he drifted into darkness, he smiled.

  Chapter 29

  “What…happened?”

  Virgil came to on the wet, dewy grass, alone near the edge of the clearing, surrounded by the dark of the nighttime forest.

  His eyes had a hard time adjusting to the dim light, and his memory was fuzzy. He remembered the woman in the purple cloak…he remembered a bright flash of white…and he remembered pain.

  An awful, unbearable pain.

  “Simon?” he asked. But he couldn’t see through the trees.

  He placed a hand against a tree trunk and used it to help himself up to his feet. His bones ached, and his entire body was trembling. He felt as dry as a desert, and everything popped and cracked when he moved.

  He stumbled forward on shaky legs, toward the clearing where the Refracticore had stood, sucking up his energy and transferring it to the assembled group. That was only…minutes ago? Hours ago? Days ago? He had no sense of time. But the clearing was empty now.

  As he stumbled into the open circle, he realized that wasn’t entirely true. The gold staff remained, still stuck into the earth. And next to it lay Simon, collapsed in a disastrous heap.