by Alex Steele
Isn’t this fun?
The mayhem magic collided with the creature’s tail and halted the swing. At the same time, Alruna slid under the beast with her sword stretched overhead. The glowing blade sang as it skidded across the hard scales, throwing sparks in every direction.
With an enraged roar, the creature launched itself upward. The hard thrust of the wings kicked up ash and debris making it almost impossible to see.
It’s impressive she’s even still alive.
“Shut up,” I muttered, not sure how to deal with the voice in my head that had shown up at the least convenient time. “Does this thing have any weaknesses?” I shouted as I stood and faced the creature.
Alruna spun in place, hitting the creature with the flat of her shield then driving her sword into its side. It skimmed along the scales, unable to pierce it. “No.”
It has one.
“And what is that?” I asked quietly, hoping the valkyrie couldn’t hear me talking to my imaginary friend.
Me.
“What the hell does that mean? What are you?”
The mayhem magic stirred and flowed out in front of me. The opaque cloud hovered there for a moment and I felt the strangest sensation that it was…looking at me.
“That’s impossible.”
I heard the laugh again. Maybe you’re just crazy. But I suggest giving it a try.
There was no time to debate my sanity with my own magic.
Before I could overthink it, I lifted my hands, gathering a ball of mayhem magic between my palms. Rather than making it as large as I could, I packed as much power as I could quickly muster into the sphere. It crackled with dark energy and the thing inside of me cackled with glee.
Let’s play.
“Distract it!” I shouted.
Alruna didn’t hesitate. Lightning leapt from her sword in three quick strikes, all hitting the creature’s face. The electricity scattered over the scales and white light raced down the length of its body. No damage was done but it roared its displeasure.
I charged in, launching the sphere ahead of me like a baseball. It rushed through the air and hit the creature near the flank. The black magic exploded, for a moment blending into the scales. The angry roar became a wail as the creature flung itself backward, writhing in pain. The obsidian scales melted wherever my magic had touched it, turning to black dust.
Alruna looked back in shock. “What was that?”
“Mayhem magic.” I began forming another sphere, ready to pick this thing apart when a chorus of angry shrieks split the air.
A swarm of the same small creatures that were keeping the other valkyries busy flew toward us.
“I’ll hold them off!” Alruna shouted, flying toward them with lightning already leaping from her sword.
I turned back to the creature. It lowered its bullish head and charged.
Fifty
Exhaustion was creeping up on me. I'd struck it a half dozen times, but it wasn't slowing down or tiring. It was only getting angrier. The missing scales were growing back on the first place I'd struck it. If I was going to take this thing down, I had to do more than pick at it. I needed to do a lot of damage very fast.
“Black...well.”
I looked over my shoulder as Swift crawled out of the shield I’d left her in, berserker magic sparking all around her. She was close to going into a rage again. Her veins glowed under her skin and her eyes were solid pink.
With effort, she pushed herself upright. “Are we winning?”
I snorted. I knew she’d come out of it eventually. She was too stubborn to let sheer terror hold her back. “I wouldn’t say that, but we haven’t lost yet.”
“Whoever kills it gets bragging rights.” She pushed her shoulders back and stretched out her hand. Her mace formed in a rush of wind. The head of the weapon was twice its normal size with a sharp spear jutting out of the end of the handle.
“And loser buys lunch,” I added with a grin.
She nodded with a feral smile and charged in. I followed her, summoning another sphere.
“Now!” I shouted, launching it into the air. Grabbing the handle of the mace with two hands, she stopped and swung it. Pink met black as she hit the sphere like a ball and sent it soaring toward the creature’s head. It exploded near the base of the broken horn, shearing it off and knocking its head back.
All around us, the fight raged on. Lightning streaked through the sky every few minutes, illuminating the damage. A horn sounded in the distance as some kind of rallying call. I hoped it wasn’t a call for retreat at least.
Swift slid under a swipe of the front claw, thrusting up with the handle of her mace. The spear hit the creature’s side but couldn’t penetrate the scales.
The beast reared up, its claws scoring deep gouges in the concrete as it did so. It leapt forward, moving faster than a beast that size should be capable of and charged me. I threw up a shield and I ran straight toward it. This thing was pissing me off and I was tired of playing tag with it.
The mayhem magic surged ahead of me, forming a wedge-shaped shield. We collided with a boom loud enough to shake the ground. The creature pushed against me with a roar. My feet began to slide back and my arms shook with the effort of maintaining this amount of magic.
Swift charged in from the left, bringing her mace down on the creature’s neck. Her blow knocked it off center and I was able to push forward. My magic rushed forward and pushed it back into the building, pinning it. It struggled against the weight of my magic, tail lashing wildly.
Alruna flew dangerously close to it. Distracted by the wyverns, she didn’t see it in time to move. The tail struck her shield arm and lifted her off the ground. One of the spikes pierced her fully, jutting out of her back coated in blood. Her sword tumbled from her hand as the creature slammed her back into the crumbling wall and she disappeared in a cloud of dust.
When she didn’t emerge, I twisted my magic and it spread out over the beast like a net. It roared as the net tightened, tearing and biting at everything it could reach to free itself. Flames shot out of its mouth which I barely managed to avoid as I raced toward the place she’d fallen. Swift beat me there. She lifted the chunks of concrete that had fallen on the valkyrie and threw them to the side, taking out one of the wyverns that was diving toward them.
Sliding to a stop, I dragged Alruna out of the crevice she was wedged in. Her pale face was covered in dust, turning the blood into a thick, red paste. She gasped for air, but blood bubbled up through her lips.
“Shit, try a healing spell––”
“No,” Alruna said, interrupting me. She reached up and grabbed Swift’s arm. “Take my armor and shield. Fight. You cannot help me.”
Swift’s eyes widened. “I can’t just leave you here to die.”
“Valhalla beckons me. You cannot stop it.” She fumbled with the strap of her chest piece, determined to give it to Swift. “This armor will protect you from Fear, and from other things. You must take it before it’s too late.”
“Go, Blackwell. I’ll help her as much as I can,” Swift said, pushing me away. “You’re the only one able to damage it right now.”
I hesitated but she was right. I wasn’t a healer and the creature would free itself soon. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Alruna was dying and without a proper healer we couldn’t stop that.
It’s getting loose.
There was a loud crack and I looked back in horror. The side of the building had caved in and the creature was ripping away the last of the magic I had bound it in.
Nothing I had done so far had slowed it down for more than a minute. These blasts weren’t doing anything. My fingers itched to hold a sword again. I froze and looked down at my hand. I had created the spheres, packing them full of my magic so they could do more damage.
Now you’re thinking.
I held out my hand, letting the world fade away for a moment and focusing on only the magic. The dark magic flowed out from my palm. A handle formed first.
There was no design, just a solid handle that looked like it had been carved out of obsidian.
As my hand closed around it, the mayhem magic surged around me, wrapping me in darkness. The wind rushed around me like a tornado, picking up debris and small pieces of rubble. I felt the magic shift in me and I pushed it into the handle. Like twitching a single muscle, pushing the magic into a new shape was a matter of focus.
A new kind of strength filled me. The exhaustion faded, replaced by the destructive power of the magic I’d always carried. When I opened my eyes. the storm had ceased. I faced the monster, Fear itself, with a sword in hand.
This was nothing like my katana. It was twice as long and at least a hand’s breadth wide the whole way down. The end was squared off, but still glinted with a sharp edge as I lifted it. The blade thrummed with the magic I had poured into it. I slashed it through the air, testing the weight, and a smile spread across my face. This felt right.
The creature jumped into the air, wings unfurling with a loud snap, and flew toward me. I charged in as well, kicking off the ground with a surge of magic that launched me above it. It twisted mid-air as I dropped down toward it.
I swung the massive sword at its foreleg. This time the magic didn’t just damage its scales, it sliced clean through the leg. The creature wailed in pain and launched itself higher. Viscous blood rained from the stump.
My feet hit the top of the last standing building and I slid a few feet, almost toppling over the edge. I ran for the other corner, wanting this fight as far away from Swift and Alruna as possible. Fear shrieked in rage and another wave of fear rolled over me. It took little effort to shake it off now.
Isn’t this more fun?
“I wouldn’t call it fun,” I muttered as I launched myself off the roof of the building. Instead of falling like I’d intended, mayhem magic burst from my back, forming bat-like wings that propelled me up into the air. I flailed for a half-second before they caught me. “What the hell are you doing?”
Just leveling the playing field. Don’t fight it.
I could move the wings, but they seemed to act on instinct, twisting and retracting as I moved to the left and the right. Fear, seeming to have recovered from the loss of its foot and bellowed as it raced toward me. It was flanked by hundreds of the obnoxious little wyverns. They flowed around him like a dark cloud, blotting out the sky.
“How do you feel about gravity?” I asked the voice in my head.
The voice chuckled. Oh, that is devious.
I traced a rune in the air but didn’t stay still. This spell needed to be bigger than I’d ever attempted before, which meant I needed multiple runes. The wings propelled me through the air faster than I’d expected. I glanced down and the blur of the destruction below made me dizzy, so I forced my gaze back up.
Fear was closing in but I needed to get behind it to make this work. I completed the second rune then raced to the next position. There was a howl behind me and I flipped around just in time to see a half dozen of the wyverns flying toward me.
Without waiting for them to catch up, I darted in, swinging my sword with a shout. Mayhem magic flowed from the sword toward them in an arc. Two managed to dodge, but the rest were cut in half. I charged the other two, making short work of them. They were easy to kill but I needed a better way to take care of them when I fought Fear. They made up for their weakness in sheer numbers.
A pillar of light shot up from the ground behind me and I whipped around in shock. Swift stood in the center of it, head thrown back, as the strange light surrounded her. She had put on the valkyrie’s blood-stained armor. As I watched, the hole in the armor where Alruna had been wounded closed up, healed by the light somehow.
Fear’s wail brought my attention back to the creature. I just needed one more rune, but with it closing in fast, it would be impossible to do without help.
“Swift! Distract it!” I shouted, launching myself higher in the air.
She stepped out of the light and summoned her mace. Her veins stood out on her skin, crackling with magic as the mace formed. She had skipped straight to berserker rage. This was going to be fun.
She got a running start, then leaped toward the massive creature. Lightning arced from her feet as she soared through the air. Fear turned its head at the last moment and reared up. Her first blow hit its back leg, knocking it back.
I turned my attention back to my task. We needed to get this thing back on the ground. The wyverns swarmed after me. I pushed myself to fly faster and reached the final point I needed. I drew the rune as quickly as I could. They closed in as I traced the final stroke.
For a hundred meters in a perfect sphere, gravity doubled. Normally, it would end gravity first, but I had reversed the rune to give myself an advantage. I dropped twenty feet before my wings adjusted and caught me, but Fear was driven to the ground due to its massive size. With a roar, it crashed into a building, crushing it into rubble. The creature thrashed, flames shooting from its mouth as it struggled against the unnatural pressure.
My muscles strained as I shot toward it, counting out the seconds in my head. Five. Four. Three...I lifted the sword overhead and swung down toward the beast. Its tail hit me in the back, sending me tumbling through the air. If it hadn’t been for the wings, I would have been skewered like Alruna.
My wings flared out, stopping me in place as the increased gravity released, disappearing completely. Being able to fly made this part so much easier. Fear rolled, using its claws to keep itself on the ground and snarled at me. It clearly didn’t want to risk flying again which would only make this easier for me.
Swift was hovering above the building that housed Pandora’s Box, drifting slowly upward. Her new armor glowed with power. The lingering effects from Fear’s nightmares seemed to have completely dissipated now that she wore it. The smaller creatures seemed to have fixated on her. She swung her mace in a broad arc, smashing through several of them with one blow and launching herself backward. No gravity meant no friction. Hit something hard enough and you’d fly in the opposite direction until something stopped you.
Fear charged at me, his bulk making the ground shake. I darted upward then dove toward him, knowing I had only four seconds before gravity increased again. It would be three times the pressure of normal gravity this time. I’d never gone through more than three cycles of this spell before, but I had a feeling it would take more than that to finish this fight.
I slashed downward, aiming for Fear’s head, but it dodged the strike, moving faster than I’d expected. Twisting into a dive, the tip of the sword skimmed along the back of his head, slicing its flesh open. Fear pushed upward unexpectedly and slammed into me. I rolled along its back, almost losing my grip on my sword.
Getting my feet back under me, I rolled off the side and kicked off, sending myself racing back toward the ground. There were two seconds until gravity returned and I did not want to be this high up when it happened.
Ten feet from the ground, the crushing weight of three-times gravity slammed me into the concrete. My wings flared out, softening the impact just enough that I landed on my feet. Fear hit the ground a few yards away. The impact rattled my teeth.
I ran toward it, my magic the only thing keeping me upright, and slid under a swipe of his tail as I raced toward its head. I really needed to cut that thing off.
A blast of magic from the top of the building lit Swift up in a blaze of pink, but the wyverns swarmed her, blocking her from sight. She toppled from the corner of the building. Fear twisted its long body and charged me, head down. I was forced to block the thrust of his remaining horn. I couldn’t get to her and fight this thing at the same time.
She can take care of herself. Focus.
I planted my feet and pushed back, magic giving me unnatural strength. This must be how Swift felt all the time with the berserker magic pumping through her veins. Fear bore down, almost forcing me to take a step back. My wings morphed behind me, digging into the ground to help me push back.
Gravity vanished and my feet slowly lifted from the ground. Fear pushed in hard, but I was anchored with my magic. It twisted its head suddenly and the edge of the horn caught me in the chest, knocking all the air from my lungs.
I flew back, unimpeded by gravity. My magic reached out and dug into the ground, forcing me to stop, but Fear was charging in recklessly. I braced my sword against my waist and flung myself forward with a shout.
Lightning flashed all around us as we shot toward each other, neither of us able to dodge now. Time seemed to slow as Fear’s claws stretched toward me. With a push from my wings, I skimmed over them and plunged my sword straight into its skull. Its entire body shook from the impact.
Terror unlike anything I’d felt before, even when I’d been trapped in the nightmares, exploded outward in a visible wave. I gritted my teeth and clung to the sword, twisting it ruthlessly. The mayhem magic surrounded me like a shield but nothing could stop the fear pouring out of the monster completely.
I pushed more magic into the sword, forcing it to expand inside the creature’s skull. If needed, I would rip this thing apart from the inside out. Fear writhed underneath me but it couldn’t shake me off.
End it.
With a shout, I pushed myself off its head and ripped the sword free. Blood sprayed from the wound. I lifted my sword overhead and swung down hard as gravity returned, now six times greater than normal. The edge hit Fear head on and split its head and neck in half. The creature fell to the ground with a boom like thunder.
I landed in the midst of the gore, my shoulders hunched from the weight pressing down on me. I canceled the gravity rune quickly, and turned to find Swift. There was no time to celebrate this victory until I knew my partner was alive.
You’re so sentimental.
“Shut up,” I muttered as I raced toward the building Swift had fallen from. The wyverns that had been swarming us had vanished, as if they’d been tied to Fear somehow. I’d never heard of a monster summoning other monsters, but anything was possible apparently.
