Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  It looked like it was night, and the mages had gathered in the park to attack the House. They were launching giant magical boulders at the House trying to break through the shields.

  I could see inside the House, down in the basement, where our defenders were gathered. There was a room with a giant crystal growing out of the floor. Sandy, Annabeth, and Tyler were gathered around the crystal touching it. It seemed like they were reinforcing and directing the shields somehow.

  I looked back out to the park. There were a lot more mages than I’d seen the other night. There must have been more than 50 teams and each team had about 10 people. So 500 magic users trying to bring us down! That seemed like an awful lot for us to withstand.

  Each team was broken down into a couple people to shield the team, and the rest to attack the House. Most of the teams had magic wands that fired bolts of power. A few of the teams had magical catapults and they were firing these large glowing boulders. They arched way up in the air and then came crashing down on the House shields. These were the hits I was hearing. They made a heavy boom when they landed. If the impact wasn’t enough, they also exploded and sent smaller shards of rock everywhere.

  The only offense we had was John. He was standing on the front lawn throwing baseball sized chunks of rock. He was only one person, but his offense was still pretty awesome.

  He was a canon all by himself. I’d seen what his thrown boulders had done in the park fight with Isobel. They were nothing to sneeze at. What he was throwing now was smaller but much faster. I could see his magic flaring with each throw. He was doing something magically to increase his speed and power.

  His shots landed with a boom of their own. Defending shields would crack and sometimes they would shatter. He kept targeting different groups. I guess he was trying to find the weaker ones.

  I’d originally thought the House shield was solid, but then I realized it was flowing and spinning. Some parts of the shield were thicker than others, and that seemed to be by direction of the defenders in the crystal room.

  I watched one of the big boulders come in. The House shield tripled in size where it was going to land. The rest of the shield got a bit thinner, but it wasn’t anything the wands could punch through yet. When the boulder landed and exploded, the shields spun, directing some of the force down and to the side.

  The wands didn’t have the punch the boulders did, but they weren’t ineffective either. Several groups were targeting the same spot, trying to overload the shield in that area. It was easy to redirect the wand fire and the House shield needed to constantly reinforce itself in a new area.

  It felt like Sandy was anticipating the boulders, Tyler was spinning the shield, and Annabeth was reinforcing for concentrated wand attacks. They were a good team.

  I sent a query out to the House. What do you need me to do? What I got back was so surprising.

  I got back a sense of endless love and patience.

  We were in the middle of a war, and the House wanted to let me know it loved me? I was shocked. The House was communicating with me directly and I could feel it on so many levels.

  On one hand it was ancient. I felt a sense of age that I couldn’t comprehend. It felt like the House had a presence and a purpose since the earth was formed. That was more than I could wrap my brain around so I hurriedly let that go.

  On the other hand, it felt so very new. Sandy had said this branch of the House had only been around for about a year. It was like the House was a giant tree, and this part of the House in Louisville was a little bud on a branch.

  It wasn’t old and strong like other Houses. It was still new and still weak. I got a sense that if the shield came down and the House burned, then its presence in Louisville would be gone.

  If I knew this, it made sense that others knew this. That’s why we were having this war. The mages wanted to burn down the House and claim Louisville for their own. It wasn’t just the mages either. There was no way Isobel had made those golems. Someone else was helping them in their war.

  Aside from the age of the House I also got a sense of its purpose. It was built to provide safety and acceptance for supernaturals. It wasn’t just a house. It was a home. And a home in the best sense of the word.

  It was peace, fun, relaxing, happiness, connectedness. It was a place of healing and a place of hope. A place of learning and knowledge.

  At the root of it all, it was love.

  Not wimpy flighty love. But deep, powerful love like a force of good in the world. It swept over me and somehow, in the midst of this battle for House survival, I felt joy and happiness.

  I’d found a new group of friends. I had a place to belong and I’d been missing that for such a long time. I now had a little magical coin that I felt attached to and missed her when she was gone. I also had a kitten now. He seemed to love and wanted to protect me. Even when he clearly was out of his league.

  Now the very House I was in was letting me know it accepted me and wanted me to stay.

  I was so lucky. I’d been so hurt and so lonely for years. Sure, there had been some guys I’d connected with. But I hadn’t felt loved. Their place hadn’t felt like home.

  Once I found poker, I had money to start taking care of myself. I still didn’t have a home, but I had enough for a room and a cheap meal. It was still lonely but I had hope. One day I’d have enough money to retire from poker, buy a house, and settle down somewhere. I’d find someone nice and we would make a home together.

  I thought my death experience was the end of all that. In reality, it had been a new beginning. My plans for poker hadn’t worked out, but it seemed like I already had the results I wanted. I had friends, a House that wanted to me my home, and a whole new magical life.

  I felt blessed. Even with my face smashed in, my ribs cracked, and all my other injuries, I felt like I was home. I felt loved.

  Wow, this House was a serious trip. Next thing you know I’d be hugging the walls saying “I love you, man!”

  I pulled myself out of my introspective moment and focused on the battle again. Everything that I’d just said I liked about this place was in danger. My friends were in danger. My home was in danger. I was in danger.

  There wasn’t much I could do about this battle, but I vowed I would find a way to make a difference in future ones.

  The mages were not going to win. They were not going to kick the House out of Louisville.

  This battle was coming down to who had the most magic and who used it best. The House shield was still strong, but noticeably thinner than it had been before. The enemy was still catapulting magic boulders, but it looked they were almost out of ammunition.

  Even the magic wands took magic, and the auras of the casters were much dimmer. They had certainly done some damage but it didn’t look like they were going to make it through.

  That’s what I thought up until they fired their last boulder. That’s when they took the magical catapults apart and turned them into one giant battering ram. Oh crap!

  The teams with the wands started focusing on the shield right in front of John. The battering ram had room for more than 100 people and they lined up and started hitting the same spot.

  It wasn’t just the weight of the battering ram either. The ram itself was magical. The mages were not only physically pushing the battering ram, they were also powering it. When it physically slammed into the shield, a pulse of light shot down the ram and exploded against the shield as well.

  This was the serious effort to get through. Everything up to this point had just been to weaken our defenses. Tyler left the crystal room and ran out the back of the House. I could see him circling around the block. He was going to attack them from the back.

  He was going to be outside the shield so I hope he knew what he was doing. We had to do something, though. The House couldn’t take many more hits like this.

  It was just Annabeth and Sandy in the crystal room but they seemed to be doing ok. John was still in front of the House, and he was up
ping his game too.

  His magic flared and a giant rock shape gradually formed out of the ground. It was a stone cylinder. Like a giant can of coke on its side. It was huge, easily eight feet wide and six feet tall. I couldn’t imagine how much it weighed. Tons at least.

  John’s magic flared and it started rolling toward the mages. His magic flared up brighter and the rolling rock picked up its pace. He kept up the pressure all the way to the shield wall. It was going as fast as a normal person could run when it passed through the shield and smacked into the battering ram.

  A battering ram is by default an unwieldy device. It’s designed for forward power. It doesn’t have any dodge capabilities at all. When you make it big enough for a hundred people, it is even more ponderous, and there is no way it could get out of the way in time.

  Rock trumps wood, even a massive wooden device like that. It smashed the front of the battering ram and threw the whole thing backward. Most of the mages couldn’t see what was going on so they were totally unprepared when the battering ram suddenly jumped back. They were all lined up pushing these wooden pegs attached to the main shaft. When the ram jumped backward, these wooden pegs slammed the mages in the chest, knocking them over. Without them holding it up, the whole wooden structure fell to the ground, pinning a lot of mages underneath.

  John’s rock had so much momentum it kept going. It rolled up over the top of the battering ram and down most of its length. When it finally stopped rolling, the center part of the ram snapped. The weight was too much for it to handle.

  All the mages trapped under the battering ram or its handles were crushed. I know supernatural bodies can recover from a lot, but I don’t know how they could survive this type of damage.

  I had totally different feelings running through me. On one hand I was shocked by the carnage. I didn’t want anyone to die. Even if they meant me harm, I wasn’t comfortable with killing people. On the other hand, I wanted to jump up and down with joy. With one bold move, John had taken their battering ram and changed it from massive weapon to massive liability. The enemy was in shambles. Most of them were trying to lift the broken ram and get it off their fallen companions. Lots of the sups were too injured to continue and they were being levitated to the back of the battlefield.

  In the midst of all this confusion, shields were dropped and John took advantage of the distraction. He started power throwing his baseball sized rocks again, and this time they found targets. When his rock slammed into a mage you could hear the bones break. The mage would fly through the air and land like a rag doll. They didn’t get back up again.

  Lots of mages didn’t have personal shields, and even when they did, they weren’t powerful enough to stop John’s projectiles. He was throwing with both hands and every rock was finding a target. His accuracy was insane.

  All looked lost for the enemy, until stinky Isobel showed up. She was on her golem throne and making a late entrance as usual. I guess she figured she’d either show up late and be the hero, or all the hard work would already have been done. Either way was a win for her.

  With one gesture she threw up a giant shield that John couldn’t get through. The remaining mages flocked to her and organized a better defense.

  Her magic still looked like maggots on rotten meat. I was glad I wasn’t close enough to smell her. She was powerful though. Really powerful.

  She’d brought her inner posse with her. Their magic also looked rotten, although not as rotten as Isobel. I took a quick look around. The mages we had been fighting up to this point just had regular looking magic.

  She was good at organization too. Damn it. It didn’t take long before she had the teams back together, fully shielded and loaded with wands. She dropped her shield and, with a rallying cry, she led her army back toward the House.

  With the battle ram fiasco and John’s quick work he had knocked about half the mages out of the fight. That still left about 250 still to go, not counting Isobel and her inner posse.

  Considering John was our only offense, he was a one-man army! He certainly earned battle MVP in my book.

  The teams settled back in and started concentrating fire at the front of the House. Isobel and her group started doing some sort of group ritual. I didn’t know what it was for exactly, but it looked like they were doing a modified charging circle and gathering neutral magic.

  Everyone was focused on either the front of the House, or the ritual with Isobel, and that’s when Tyler went to work. He started at the back of the rear-most team of mages and went to town. He had what looked like two stone batons. They weren’t that big and they didn’t glow or anything, but they sure were effective. He was quickly and efficiently moving through the team and taking them out. In most cases it only took one blow to the head. Sometimes a mage would dodge or duck and then it would take two hits. It never took three. He didn’t seem to exert much energy or make a lot of fuss. Instead, he was smooth, like water. Flowing from mage to mage and leaving behind no threats. A few of the spell slingers had personal shields, but the batons went right through them.

  John saw what Tyler was up to, so he stepped up his rock missiles to keep the attention on him. Mages were running low on magic and sometimes his rocks would punch right through their group shields and take someone out.

  Tyler took out three teams before anyone noticed what he was up to. By then it was too late. The teams were too tired to defend from both John and Tyler. The remaining mages turned and ran, leaving only Isobel and her final team in front of the House.

  John turned his fire on them but they had a larger shield protecting them. He still managed to crack it and almost got through before it was reinforced. Tyler wasn’t idle either. His batons could get through the shield but he couldn’t.

  He ran around outside with one hand on the shield. It didn’t cover their circle evenly. That’s probably because it originated with Isobel. There were several mages at the opposite end from Isobel that were very close to the edge of the shield. So close, that Tyler was able to hit them with his batons.

  The mages collapsed and so did their magic circle. Isobel started cussing. I’m sure it was difficult to keep up a defense and run a circle at the same time.

  Whatever they were working on was stable, though. It didn’t collapse with the circle. Instead this blob of energy sat pulsing in the air.

  I guess Isobel just figured she would go with what she had rather than trying to rebuild the circle, because she took the magic blob and hurled it at the House shield.

  The blob didn’t seem that big or that solid. It was only about the size of the magic boulders they had tried earlier, and they hadn’t gotten through.

  This wasn’t a boulder, though, and it wasn’t designed to power its way inside. Instead it hit the shield with a splat and coated it like a ball of hot oil.

  I first thought oil, but then I realized it was some form of magical acid. It started sizzling and eating away at the House’s defense.

  Sandy left the crystal to Annabeth and sprinted out of the room. It didn’t take her long to reach the front door, but in that time the acid had spread and now covered a quarter of the shield. I guess the shields naturally had some spin to them and that was working against us now.

  The spin was just distributing the acid to a wider and wider area. It also seemed like the more the acid ate, the more powerful it got. It hadn’t been on there long but I could see some parts of the shield were very thin and about to break.

  As soon as Sandy hit the yard, she yelled at John to get out of the way and she let loose. Sheets of flame flew from her hands and landed on the hostile magic. It resisted for a moment, but Sandy was persistent and her fire was powerful.

  She burned right through the bulk of the acid, then started on the places it had spread too. Sandy wasn’t holding anything back and, about a minute later, the danger was over.

  For a moment, there was quiet as both sides stared at each other. The mages had come prepared to do battle. Their magic boulders, the batte
ring ram, the magic acid—any of these were good enough to take down the House shields on their own. Even the mass of mages with their magic wands might have been enough to do it.

  We had our own unique talents, though, and somehow we had countered every one of their offenses. I guess Isobel and her crew didn’t have anything else to try, because she signaled her gang and they started to retreat.

  They kept up a large shield and everyone stayed inside it. There wasn’t an opportunity to take any of them out. Tyler stepped back to the front lawn, and the three of them watched the mages back away.

  The mage with the all black aura made an appearance. She walked out slowly, leaning on her cane and started levitating the fallen people off the battlefield. She didn’t look at the House or acknowledge it in any way. Since she wasn’t attacking, our three defenders just watched and left her alone. She moved quickly and soon the battlefield was empty.

  The battle was over. We had won.

  Except for a massive rock and a battering ram there wasn’t any evidence of the assault that had just happened. Even that was soon gone. Now it was clear of any hostile forces, John went out and broke the rock apart and sank it back into the earth. It took much longer, but he was able to do the same to the battering ram.

  He made the wood decompose and fall apart. Some of it was on the road, so Sandy levitated that into the park. Finally, it sank into the earth just like the stone had. Then the three of them joined Annabeth in Sandy’s kitchen and the victory party started.

  The House gently floated my awareness back into my body again. I was still on my cot in my throne room. I snuggled down in my blanket in my safe place and tried to process what I had just seen.

  This was modern times. Louisville was in the middle of America. Sieges with catapults and acid magic just shouldn’t happen. This supernatural world was a whole new ball game.

  Annabeth and I were very lucky that John, Sandy, and Tyler were here to defend us. Without them the House would be gone and I’d be Isobel’s slave right now. The thought chilled me and I shuddered. I don’t know that I had ever seen real evil before, but Isobel was as close as I wanted to get.