They were covered in what looked to be black dust. Actually, dust is too nice a word. Dust just means something is dirty and neglected. This was malignant. Like a parasite. They were black spores that latched onto the spirit, sucking it dry.
The spirits were in torment, their faces wailing and screaming. They took it out on the shield. Slamming into it over and over again. Other than the flutter, it was totally silent. It was the eeriest sight I’d seen yet in the supernatural world.
Sometimes the hits would knock off the black dust, or whatever it was, and the spirit would just hang there, like it was too tired to move. Then it would get dust knocked on it from someone else, and it would go crazy again.
Some of the spirits looked old. Their faces were muddled and their bodies tattered and falling apart. Some of them looked fresh, their haunted eyes in full detail. Based on the what I was seeing these were the spirits of animals and even some people. I’m not sure what an afterlife is like, but I knew I didn’t want it to be this.
Whatever this was, it was unnatural, an abomination. We were being attacked by crazy ghost slaves. I had to protect the House, but I also had to do something about the spores. It was not ok that this was happening.
There must have been thousands of spirits. The air was thick with them. One time as a kid I’d seen a huge flock of birds fly over head. There had been so many the sky went dark and all you could hear was their wings and their cries. This felt like that. There was so many it felt like they would block out the sun.
I was leery about using my creations, but that is clearly what I needed to do. This wasn’t something I could handle myself. However, I didn’t want the dust getting on them and driving them crazy. I’d just have to be careful and test whatever I came up with to make sure it worked.
I needed something to clean off the dust. What popped into my mind was the granny with the vacuum cleaner that had helped me so much in the training circle. She had such a can-do attitude and that is what I needed now. I didn’t want to make one exactly the same. She had been the final piece in creating Penny and the start of my advanced magic. She was a great place to start, though. I began out with a plump figure, gray hair, bun in the back. I changed the color of her dress to pink. Hopefully Annabeth would like that if she was watching. Then I gave her fairy wings and a cute little apron covered with images of apple pies. She needed all the wholesome goodness she could get to combat this evil.
I looked her over and realized she looked like one of the fairy godmothers from the Cinderella cartoon. A granny fairy godmother, that sounded perfect for this job.
I wanted her to be safe too, so I gave her rubber gloves and a white breathing mask to keep out the dust. She needed a weapon, though… Hmmmmm
I gave her a dust buster. And what’s better than one? Two! She was now a dual wielding dust sucking badass.
I added some safety glasses, because, you know, safety first. She needed to be as real and as grounded as possible. I took a moment to go over all the details. Then I stuffed her full of magic. Hopefully the detail and the density of magic would overcome whatever the black spores were going to try to do to her.
I was undecided about adding a duplicator belt, but finally decided to give it a go. Having lots of granny godmothers would save a lot of time and magic. If she could pull in magic and duplicate on her own, then this would go so much faster. I wasn’t sure how much damage the spirits were actually doing to the shield, but the quicker they stopped, the more shield would be left.
I didn’t add a walkie talkie. It seemed like my new denser creations could communicate with me without it.
I was nervous, but I sent her off. There was a hanging spirit close to us so I directed her to try that one first. She gave me a happy wave and got to work. It seemed like she had hardly started when she stopped and flew back to me. Her dust busters were full. They weren’t very big after all.
Time for an upgrade. At least she hadn’t lost her mind to the black spores.
I added two canisters, one on each hip, and included hoses to connect them to the dust busters. I made the canisters so they would spin the dust at a high rate of speed and separate the magic from the black part of the dust. Hopefully, without magic powering it, the black part would just blow away. Actually, I needed a place for the black to go, so I added an exhaust on the back of the canister so it could expel out the back. Just for fun, I made it a dual pipe chrome exhaust. Go big or go home!
I didn’t know if it this whole canister thing would work, but the idea was to give her pure neutral magic to duplicate with. In the magic world, intention counted for a lot, so it might be feasible.
She had hardly used any of my power, but I gave her a top up anyway and sent her off again. This time it worked like a charm. Like a magic charm. She sucked at the dust and a pure magic glow grew in the canisters. There was a lot of black smoke coming out the back, but it now seemed harmless and dissipated in the air. When she had enough, she backed off, harnessed the new magic, and duplicated.
Now there were two granny godmothers working on the spirit. Soon it was four, then eight, then sixteen. As the spirit got cleaner, it gradually shrunk in size. It stopped having the big head and the weird body. Instead it started turning into an orb of pure light. When the last of the dust was gone, the orb did a little dance in the air. Then it pulsed, and just vanished. The granny godmothers went to work on the next one.
There were several hundred cleaners before we ran into the next problem, the grannies themselves were getting dirty. Some of the smoke from the canisters was sticking to them. I wasn’t sure if it was still toxic, but I didn’t want to chance it.
I got on the sidewalk and made a granny wash. Like a car wash but for grannies. I didn’t want them to actually get wet, so I made a series of arches filled with feather dusters. The granny godmothers could fly through the arches and get cleaned up. Just like new.
I let them know, and soon the dirtiest of the godmothers flew over for a tickle and a clean. They loved the feather dusters and soon the air was filled with laughter and happiness.
As they kept multiplying, they couldn’t get through the cleaner fast enough so a line started forming. I made the arches bigger, added more dusters and finally had to make a whole new set of arches so we could run two rows at a time.
That wasn’t enough so I added two more rows of arches. I had to stop at that point. It was taking a lot of power to keep them charged and make sure they stayed clean. The lines to the arches got longer, but I was doing the best I could.
I had thousands and thousands of granny godmothers working on spirits, but it seemed like we had hardly made a dent. My happy housekeepers were doing their job, cleaning and duplicating. I just couldn’t keep up with getting the smoke off of them. I needed a better way to clean the cleaners.
Then it hit me. I needed a prewash.
I asked for some volunteers and the lots of the grannies that had just been through the feather washer flew over. I modified their canisters so they were much bigger and no longer had the dual exhaust. Instead, the side of the canister came off for dumping. The idea was for the prewash crew to clean most of the smoke particles off the regular grannies. They would collect the particles in the canister and it wouldn’t escape to get on anyone else. Once the canisters were full, the prewash cleaner would fly down the street and empty their canisters well away from the current action.
The idea worked. Now the cleaner grannies were much less dirty when they went through the feather washer. The lines moved much quicker and it took a lot less power from me.
I’m not sure how long we were at this, it seemed like a good while, but I finally noticed the fluttering sounds had died down. The spirits seemed to know we were helping. Instead of hanging in the air, they actively came over to get cleaned. My vision was filled with spirit orbs doing victory dances and flashing out to wherever they were going. If felt like we had our own fireworks display.
The end came quickly. The granny godmothers had dup
licated so much they vastly outnumbered the remaining spirits. As the last ghost flashed out of existence, I ordered a general cleanup.
“Find any of the remaining black particles and clean them. Clean the House shield, the air, and the ground.” I wasn’t sure if the black parasites could multiply on their own, but I knew I didn’t want that kind of magic anywhere near my home.
The cleaners scattered and it was done. Then I ran everyone through the granny wash, even the prewash crew. When it was done, I absorbed the feather washers back into Penny.
I felt tired and low on magic, but at least the attack was over. Hopefully the House was alright and they hadn’t done too much damage.
I felt proud of me and my crew. I wouldn’t have been able to handle this when I first started being a supernatural. My creations and I had come a long way.
I was still feeling very satisfied with myself when all the granny godmothers suddenly took to the sky and pulled back toward the shield. Instantly I was on the alert. I couldn’t see anything or hear anything, but something had spooked them.
I waited for a long moment. Long enough that I was wondering if I needed to circle the House or something. Maybe there was something going on outside of my range. I was just about ready to move when a mage, dressed in black armor and riding a black saber-toothed tiger padded into view.
I know I should have focused on the mage first, but the tiger was all I could process. First, it was supposed to be extinct. Second, it was huge. It must have been four feet high and easily 700 pounds. It had powerful shoulders and wide paws. Its teeth were longer than steak knives and looked like they could filet me quiet easily. It carried the mage, armor and all, like it didn’t even notice the rider on its back.
The mage was no joke either. He was covered in black overlapping scales and a full helmet sat on his head. It covered up all his features and was intimidating as hell. I say he, but it could have been a powerful woman. The only thing that wasn’t black on the both of them was the broadsword strapped to his back. It had an interesting looking handle. It looked like it had some sort of basket weave around the main hilt.
I’d been thinking this fight was over. It looks like it had just started.
John could take on something like this I was sure. He was tough, strong, and his thrown rocks were no joke. They hit with the power of small bombs. I, on the other hand, had no armor, no powerful magic, and no real weapon. I still had my shillelagh but this was way out of its class.
The saber-tooth tiger got about three feet away and stopped. The mage didn’t say anything and neither did the tiger. Not that I expected the tiger to say anything. This had already been a crazy day, though, so anything could happen.
With the added height of the tiger, the mage towered over me. I was getting flashbacks to Isobel on her golem. This was not good. Not good at all.
I felt scared. Like deep down quaking in my shoes scared. I didn’t want to get crushed or eaten or cut to pieces. I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to pee.
I did not want this fight. This was a fight I couldn’t win. Give me thousands of tormented spirits any time. That I could handle.
I looked again and it occurred to me that the tiger was made up of the same black spores I’d taken off the spirits. It was just in a dense, solid form. A very scary saber-toothed form.
If the tiger was made of this black material, how about the armor? It looked like it was too, although it was even more dense than the tiger.
This mage must be some sort of necromancer if he could torment spirits and get them to do what he wanted. His magic was versatile too, if it could be used as armor, a mount, and spirit control. I felt a bit jealous. If I could do big magic then I could do stuff like this too.
We had the brief moment of inspection. The calm before the storm. The moment where we sized each other up, and I was found wanting. And then it started.
The saber-toothed tiger started to lower himself to let the rider off his back, when a black and white fur ball pounced onto the scene.
It was Bermuda. All three pounds of him. Fluffed and hissing and spitting mad. My heart sank. Not again!
He dashed up to the tiger, not intimidated at all by the hundreds of pounds of difference between them, and swatted it across the nose.
The tiger howled and jumped back. A puff of black smoke rose from where Bermuda had scratched him. The mage wasn’t expecting this at all. Instead of a nice dignified dismount, he fell on his ass. Legs in the air, flat on his back, arms flailing, on his ass.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. All that tension had to go somewhere.
The tiger roared and went after Bermuda, who took off like a shot.
“Grannies, help him!” I shouted. No prehistoric pile of shit was going to hurt my baby. Hundreds of thousands of granny godmothers heard me. They felt my anger. My fear. And they geared for war.
Their eyes turned red.
Their wings grew longer, slimmer, faster.
Their canisters spun up, and they flew into action.
The air was thick with granny power as they speed after the black tiger.
They were fast, and soon they were gone. Leaving only me and the mage.
He got to his feet, pissed as hell. Or at least he moved that way. I couldn’t really tell with the helmet on.
He drew his sword. I drew my shillelagh. And we went at it.
I was very aware that a steel sword beats a wooden shillelagh any day, so I didn’t try to block. Instead, I used the club end of the shillelagh against the flat of his sword and tried to bat the sword away.
It mostly worked. It helped that the sword was heavy and the mage was slow. Now the mage was no longer on his mount, he was actually only a bit taller than me. I’m sure the armor was slowing him down too.
He was strong, though. Really strong. I was doing a lot more dodging than batting. I was able to hit him a few times, but my club didn’t even make a dent. I didn’t have anything that could actually hurt this guy.
I did find out what that weird handle was for. The woven cage on the hilt protected the sword wearer’s hand. I still tried to whack it and see if I could get him to drop the sword. It didn’t happen.
I found a brief moment to summon a flasher. He flared his trench coat and blasted the helmet where the mage’s eyes should be, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all.
I was faster, but he never stopped attacking. At some point I was going to make a mistake. We fought on the sidewalk, in the street, even on grass in the park for a bit. We were back on the sidewalk, and I moved inside his guard instead of backing away, when it happened.
I moved closer to keep the sword from hitting me, but he let go with one hand and backhanded me. It was a solid blow, well timed, and it rattled my cage.
I hit the ground, stunned. He stepped forward, planted his foot on me to keep me from rolling away, and drove his sword into me.
He didn’t stop either, he drove it all the way through me, into the ground and kept going. Only one thing saved me. I’d dropped the shillelagh at the last moment, grabbed the sword with my bare hands and tried to shove it out of the way. It hadn’t made him miss me, but it had thrown off his aim a bit.
I think he was aiming for my heart. He’d missed. Instead it had gone high and to the left. I have no idea what organs he had gone through, but I was alive. For now.
He went to pull up the sword and have another go, but the sword was stuck. He had slammed it in me almost to the hilt, which meant it had gone through the sidewalk under me and the earth underneath that.
I heard a distant voice. “Ahhhh. Back in stone again.”
What the heck?
The mage tugged and wrenched at the sword, trying to get it free from the earth, but it was set. The sword wasn’t going anywhere.
Finally, he walked away and began pounding on the House shields with his fists. They were making a booming sound so he was magically enhancing them somehow.
I counted this as a victory. I hadn’t gotten eaten
by the tiger and I hadn’t gotten cut in half. I’d also taken away his sword so he couldn’t attack the House with it.
On the other hand, I had a freaking sword through me. Holy crap. Only a few hours ago my worst disaster was that I couldn’t get a charm to work. Now I was staked to the ground. I never would have thought in a million years that my day would end up like this.
Being pinned to the ground is a scary experience. I felt trapped. I couldn’t move much or I’d just cut myself open even more. If the mage couldn’t get the sword out with all his leverage and strength, then there was no use me tugging on the sword. There had to be another way.
“You can do this!” I gave myself a mental pep talk. “You have been punched in the face by a golem. Then got the crap kicked out of you by a powerful mage. This is nothing. This is less than nothing. It’s a minor inconvenience.” Ok, I didn’t really buy that last part but it helped to talk all brave. It was either that or completely freak out.
Then I thought of my favorite Monty Python movie. “It’s just a flesh wound!” That cracked me up and the panic receded a bit. I finally felt brave enough to check out the damage.
The sword had gone in between my ribs. I didn’t have any broken or chipped bones. That was a big plus. It had gone in my upper left side and missed my lungs and heart. That was also good.
Of course, you can’t have a sword all the way through you without having a lot of damage. I wasn’t going to die immediately, though, and it even looked like the sword was sealing the wound a bit. I was bleeding, of course, but it wasn’t coming out in buckets.
I had a good day, maybe day and half, before I would bleed out. Plenty of time. I started laughing hysterically, which made everything hurt worse. Ok, maybe I wasn’t handling this as well as I thought.
In the movies they never freak out like this. If this was a movie, I’d get some extra strength from somewhere, pull out the sword, holler a bit to show the audience I was in pain, and then chase after the mage like I wasn’t damaged at all.
Misfit Mage Page 34
