by Renée Jaggér
“Uh,” he called back. He’d been separated from her by a good fifty feet in the chaos that had ensued. “I’m kinda busy here.”
The girl cursed; he was right. The rest of her friends needed him to keep them alive, as he was their chief expert on defensive magic.
She returned her attention to the battle ahead and found that the air was going dark as dozens of crones, packed so tightly together they were like a single entity, flowed between her and the others, moving at terrifying speed.
“No!” Bailey cried out. “Goddammit!”
She recalled her earlier observation that the closer they got to the source of the problem, the more dangerous and intelligent the specters were becoming.
The swarm that had ambushed them had positioned itself so that Bailey could not unleash a super-powerful attack to neutralize them all without potentially overpowering Roland’s shield and injuring or killing her allies. The barrier he’d conjured was sufficient against the lower-middle strength blasts of the crones, but it probably couldn’t withstand a nuclear blast summoned by a deity.
Suddenly the shield died, and the snakelike line of crones flew away. Suspended in their midst was Roland, his mouth hanging open in shock.
Bailey screamed and flung herself at the spirits, throwing bolts of lightning and plasma that picked off a portion of them, but not enough to free her beloved. She swung her sword wildly, forgetting Balder’s training, damaging adversaries who came too close.
But Roland was gone.
Behind her, someone yelled, “Bailey! We need help!”
She spun and saw her remaining allies pinned down under the onslaught. The five casters were desperately trying to reconstitute a shield, while the agents fired their rifles again and again. Bailey summoned a horizontal wave of plasma fifteen feet off the ground that burned through the majority of the crones hovering over her friends. After that, they were able to get things under control.
But the majority of the horde still roiled in front of them, and it was advancing.
Loki appeared out of the crowd, staggering toward the werewitch, raising a limp hand to get her attention. She stared at him, her brain still trying to unravel what had happened.
The god of mischief gasped, “We have to get him back. Fast,” his voice sounded strained and hoarse, and he was paler than ever. “Not only for personal reasons, but because they’re going to use him.”
The girl trembled with rage. “How?”
“As a battery,” Loki extrapolated. “Stealing the power of witches was their game all along, wasn’t it? But if that crystal is their primary power source, then having it absorb his strength will cause it to filter out to the entire horde. And he, while not on our level as gods, is a mortal caster of unusually great ability. By adding his power, they can increase their average strength to a uniform baseline level much higher than it is at present. Individual specters would be a match for individual mortal witches, rather than needing a dozen or more at a time to overpower a single person. Imagine if the Venatori were slightly less talented, but had attacked you with thousands of troops instead of mere dozens or low hundreds, and you can see why—”
“Fucking-ass shit!” Bailey burst out. “We have to get him back!”
Loki sighed. “Yes, I was getting to that part.”
Chapter Fifteen
Roland’s vision gradually returned to him. He almost wished it hadn’t since he wasn’t sure he wanted to see where he was.
Since the witch-specters had captured him, he’d fallen into a semi-conscious fugue state in which there was nothing but a vague and chaotic procession of lights and colors, hideous noises, dizziness, and nausea. It reminded him of the bizarre, fucked-up dreams he’d had in the hospital while drugged up and recovering from his numerous injuries over the last several months.
His senses came back, and the world around him took on a semblance of order. He was standing up straight, though awkwardly; his feet seemed to be braced on a small, irregular surface that could not support him. Then he grasped that his arms were raised and bindings were holding him in place.
His eyes made out the dark skies of the canyon realm, as well as the shifting translucent hues of the wafting crones and the emerald energy they’d seen surrounding the giant crystal.
The green light was coming from all around him, and from behind him as well.
Oh, crap. He tried not to panic. Did they crucify me here simply to be nasty, or is there something even worse about to happen?
He could still move his head, so he did, rotating his neck and glancing around to take in his surroundings in more detail. Once again, he wondered if it might have been better if he were still blind and insensate.
He was perched high on the giant crystal. His feet rested on an irregular protrusion of its surface, and his arms and shoulders, as well as parts of his torso and legs, were fused to it with strands of a thick, sticky substance. The stuff was a dull bluish-green interspersed with bright flecks.
There was another thing. A power or entity, difficult to identify but all-encompassing and weirdly familiar, was...inside him. That was the only way to describe it. He wondered if he was demonically possessed.
No, he thought. I’m being drained. I feel weaker than I should. Part of my magic isn’t there anymore; it’s like I’m bleeding out. This crystal is sucking my powers into its core to sustain itself.
It must have been able to hear his thoughts, or at least sense the general nature of his moods and feelings since it responded at once to his inner monologue.
“Roland,” a voice called. It was not particularly loud, yet it seemed to reverberate across and through the air all around him; it was omnipresent and insinuating. It was a raspy crone’s voice, but something about it reminded him of an obnoxious young woman with delusions of class.
He swallowed; his throat was sore, and his mouth was dry and sticky. “Oh, hi,” he shot back. “Nice to hear your voice again, Callie. Do you have a cold?”
“Shut up!” she snapped. He still could not tell where the voice was coming from. “You know what’s going on. I’m going to win, and you lost. And I’m gonna kill Bailey as slowly and painfully as possible. She deserves it, and she definitely doesn’t deserve you. At the same time, you’re mine. Finally.”
“Oh,” he countered, “I’ve been strung up for sperm donor duty at last, then. Why are my pants still on? For that matter, where am I supposed to drop the ol’ seed? Is anywhere on the crystal fine, or does it have to be in a special receptacle?”
The glow of the crystal pulsed with an angry fire. “Ha-ha, very fucking funny,” the hag’s voice snarled. “I don’t need your body anymore. I’m past the point of that shit. Since you thought you got rid of me—twice—I’ve only gotten stronger. I’m made of magic now, and since you’re too stupid to use your magic the right way, I’m taking it directly from you. There’s nothing you can do, so just cry into your chest or something. Otherwise, shut up and wait for the end.”
The wizard snorted, though his insides roiled with the beginnings of abject fear and despair. He could tell that the witch had drained a substantial portion of his strength, so she might well succeed at her goal.
But up ahead, beyond a couple of rock spires and through the haze created by the mass of crone ghosts, he could see movement and flashes of light and hear the noise of battle. His friends were coming for him.
“The end?” he posited. “I think you mean, wait for Bailey to show up and finally kick your ass into oblivion where it belongs. This is tasteless and shady even by your low standards, Callie. If you’re going to drain me—and in a way that I don’t get to enjoy, sadly—you might as well do it right fucking now because time is basically up.”
Once more, the light grew brighter and more abrasive.
“Okay,” the hissing voice said. “You asked for it.”
The sense of bleeding, losing something, having his essence pulled out of him increased and intensified. Not by much, but enough for it to cause an
unsettling pain unlike any he’d felt before. It wasn’t excruciating, but it terrified him. It suggested that when the process was over, there would be nothing left of him.
Goddammit, he swore as he tried to struggle free. But it was hopeless; his bonds were too tight, his mind too addled, and his arcane abilities too weakened. I had to go and shoot my mouth off. And so my girlfriend—fiancée—saving me is the only good-case scenario. Bailey, I trust you.
Bailey let out an animalistic bellow of frustrated rage. The sound was echoed by the men and women who fought by her side. Their courage, the efficacy of their weapons, their intelligent tactics—nothing was enough.
It was useless, she decided. As powerful as she was, she could not move fast enough to get past the endless swarms that filled the gorge, nor could she wipe them out faster than they could be spawned by the central crystal and the other gelatinous nodes scattered across the realm, which still produced the creatures on the side.
The only way she could take out the main crystal at this distance would be to create so much destruction that Roland would likely be hurt or killed.
Leaping forward, putting her head down and extending her arms in front of her, she dismissed all thought of herself as a woman and allowed the beast within to take over.
Her hands struck the ground as clawed paws, and her form grew and elongated while sprouting dark fur. A red screen descended over her vision, and all her senses sharpened.
Her clothes shredded away. She could reconstitute them later. The smaller, more convenient wolf form she’d cultivated would not be enough here; only as a full-sized monstrosity could she hope to triumph. The sword fell to the ground, and distantly, a part of her consciousness surrounded it with a powerful shield to protect it from theft or damage. The rest of her mind focused solely on charging ahead.
The lycanthrope barreled forward, surrounding herself with a profusion of curved and angular shields coated with blazing flames of arcane plasma. She was like a living battering ram advancing at the speed of a truck burning nitrous oxide. Specters in her path were destroyed, her advance tossed aside the ones that tried to get out of the way and failed. Others fled to the sides, howling and shrieking.
As the werewitch ran, she left bombs in her wake—floating wards that would protect her from her own attacks, but which she set to detonate in flashing fireballs of magical energy.
The specters that moved in behind her or tried to flank her once she’d passed them crashed into the traps, their ghostly, distorted faces screaming in rage one last time as the spheres of burning destruction engulfed their forms and blotted them out. The horde parted down the middle as Bailey plowed ahead.
Trailing her was the small army of agents and witches, the green beams of their rifles carving up what resistance remained. The casters contributed bolts of lightning and sheets of flame as well. The mortals had, for the moment, abandoned pure defense in favor of an overwhelming offense.
Entire sub-hordes of the Caldoria McCluskey’s incorporeal clones burned, disintegrated, and faded. A moment earlier, they had clogged the very sky, but as Bailey raged through them, they ceased to exist. Only their arcane residues remained, mostly invisible, immobile, and powerless.
As the air cleared before her, Bailey saw that one last line of defense stood between her and the giant crystal structure. She realized that it would pose a challenge far beyond what they’d faced so far. Callie had saved her most powerful clones for the most important job.
There were about twenty of them. They were twice the size of the others, and therefore twice the size of a normal woman. Rather than looking like semi-spectral apparitions of a humanoid crone in dark, tattered robes, with all the natural colors that would imply, these phantasms appeared to be made of rarefied arcane force.
They glowed brightly, the illumination of their pseudo-bodies shifting from blue to green and back. Their eyes were bright points of eerie cyan. Crackling bolts and sparks moved along the edges of their trailing robes or between their gnarled, pointed fingers, sometimes leaping into the charged and hazy air that surrounded them.
Bailey skidded to a halt about a hundred yards before reaching them and performed two supernatural actions at once. First, she shifted back into human form, surrounding her naked body with a form-fitting shield darkened to provide the same benefits as clothes; she had other things to worry about than redressing herself properly.
The second was to magically seize control of the slight shockwave of kinetic force and dust she’d created by braking and push it forward, expand it, and lace it with elemental and arcane attacks. It became a tidal wave of sorcerous annihilation, advancing toward Callie’s elite guard.
But if it gets through them, Bailey told herself as she stood up straight on two legs, I’ll have to stop it instantly. Otherwise, it will reach the crystal...and Roland.
It did not get through them, though. Bolts of power flowed among them, creating a shield of multifarious rainbow colors, though it looked unwholesome, like light reflecting off an oil slick. The empowered shockwave crashed against it and both were neutralized, leaving the twenty overpowered spirits hovering before a cloud of smoke.
Gnashing her teeth, Bailey extended an arm behind her, hand open. Her mind sought the sword Balder had given her, and the blade flew to her from where she’d left it, landing in her palm.
The elite specters advanced on her, letting out echoing trills that were like nightmare versions of bird calls amplified a hundredfold. Bailey ran up to meet them, charging her sword with fire and lightning and the raging plasma of the arcane.
Up close, the entities were an order of magnitude more horrible to look at than their lesser brethren were, which was saying something. The grotesque haglike semi-decayed features, being larger, were more blatant and intimidating, and their wafting robe-shreds resembled the tentacles of squids or octopi floating in the black waters of the deep ocean.
Bailey suspected that getting close was exactly what she wanted to do. They were ghosts made of magic, the arcane equivalent of smart drones. They were not fighters.
The first two hit her with blue-green beams surrounded by spirals of sputtering pink plasma-lightning. She took the blows, absorbing and diffusing the energy, gritting her teeth through the intense pain and forcing a portion of it to the sides to assail the more distant of the guardians
Then she was right on top of the two lead ones, her sword cleaving into them. Their arcane structures were denser, harder to cut, but by no means invincible. The goddess’ blade, powered by her anger and drive, annihilated them. Tremors went through the air as they dissolved.
She repeated the process for three more, tanking their attacks while knowing she was losing strength and being gradually damaged, but eliminating her enemies in the process.
I can’t do this for all twenty. It’d be a suicide attack. I need to be smart and survive this to save Roland.
She reasoned that the guardians were each approximately the same strength as a powerful mortal sorceress. Gathering her wits as she plunged into battle against them, she shielded herself properly, identified the nature of the attacks they used and countered them with hovering wards, and created thick walls of ice and fire to divide their number into piecemeal groups.
Operating on focused rage instead of the blind variety, Bailey gained the upper hand. All of the elite specters fell before her sword save four, whom she’d boxed off behind an ice wall, their only line of escape being across a thermal column that would incinerate them in an instant.
They probably have enough intelligence to put the fire out or melt the ice, but by the time they figure that out, the agents will have reached them and can blast them to hell. I’ll have reached the big bastard-thing controlling this whole mess.
She charged again, encountering another wave of lesser ghosts. Their overall number had not diminished much. New ones were being created to replace the heavy losses.
Breathing deep, Bailey encased the crystal—and her fiancée—in the most p
owerful shield she could muster, then nuked the valley before her. Everything turned white, then black; she blocked the sonic boom and heat waves from traveling behind her and killing her friends, instead folding them back on the blast’s original targets.
When the smoke cleared, half the valley was empty of Callie’s loathsome servants.
But there were more flowing over the surrounding cliffs in a blackish-blue cascade of dark sorcery. Always more; the enemy’s ability to spawn the things was seemingly unlimited.
Bailey turned to the massive crystal, which finally was close enough for her to toss a softball and hit it. I need to end this right now. And I think I know how to.
First, she jumped straight up into the air, the motion transforming into flight as she soared higher. She hovered at the same height as Roland, who stared at her in a mixture of relief and amazement, though anguished exhaustion was apparent in his expression.
“All right, dork,” she told him, “quit screwing around.” She swung her sword half a dozen times, deftly severing the strands of sticky residue that bound him to the crystal, and caught him as he slumped away from it. With his form over her shoulder, she floated back to the ground and gently laid him in the dust.
His mouth opened and shut without speaking.
“You okay?” she asked. “I have to destroy this thing...”
Gasping, he managed to reply. “Sorta. And yes, you do. Be careful, though. Callie. Her consciousness...”
The truth of Roland’s words was proven instantly.
There came a terrible ripping sound, and before Bailey could strike at the crystal, she and Roland were forced back by a combination of a gale-force wind and an earthquake. They stumbled over the bucking ground.
When they looked up, the disembodied forces that had gathered had gained a body.
The towering avatar of Caldoria McCluskey sneered. “I won after all, like I said I would. I already had enough power drained from all those other people, far more than you ever suspected. I have Roland’s too now, and I’m back. You’re fucked!”
