by Charley Case
Fragar was worth every stone.
A whomp! thudded through Finn’s chest, followed by three more in quick succession. He lopped the head off one Rougarou while blocking the slashing talons of another with his prosthetic arm and glimpsed of the stasis mines activating.
A band of about twenty bewitched humans ran into the perimeter, their eyes red and swollen, and facial expressions blank if not a little sad looking. One of them crossed through the space above the converted hockey puck, and a sphere of constantly swirling white and blue almost instantly went from nonexistent to a globe forty feet across.
The bewitched people were stuck in that moment of reality, not blinking or twitching or even breathing. Time had stopped for them and wouldn’t resume until the mine ran out of stored power.
Finn took the opportunity to test a theory, and instead of blocking the second attack from the Rougarou, he sidestepped it. The swing hit no resistance and made the eight-foot-tall wolfman stumble forward. Finn grabbed it by the shoulder and sent a jolt of magical energy through his prosthetic while digging his finger into the tough hide until he gripped bone.
The Rougarou slashed at him with its free claw, but Finn batted it away, then spun in a circle while dragging the large beast around with him and picking up momentum. On his second rotation, Finn released his grip and threw the creature a good twenty feet, directly into one of the stasis fields.
Finn was a little surprised how deep it went before becoming stuck. He guessed it was ten or twelve feet. That was good. It gave him a way to deal with any bewitched that got through.
He checked on Danica and Remmy and saw that they were holding up well, and a truly deadly combination. Danica was making good use of the quiver that Mila had bought and Finn and Penny had modified for her. It used the same rune that replaced Fragar’s blade, but this one was manually activated and basically refilled itself with a copy of itself from when it was full.
Danica hit the button on the quiver as she loosed her last arrow and the quiver was instantly full again, but all the arrows she had shot vanished as well. The same thing happened with the axe—he simply never saw the blade disappear as the new one showed up.
Finn was surprised by how effective focusing on one portal was. Danica by far had the most kills of them all. She shot every thrall and Rougarou dead within a step of the portal. There were so many dead that the portal itself was becoming blocked, and anyone coming out ran into a chest-high mound of their dead comrades. Eventually, the portal closed and wasn’t replaced with another.
Danica picked another portal and started the process over.
Remmy was like a devil. She would appear for a few seconds to catch her breath, but Finn saw that she was taking his instruction to heart and had slowed her mad rush into a fluid dance, conserving oxygen and stamina. She could stay invisible for nearly a minute between reappearing. While she was unseen, she could slash down ten or twelve enemies with quick, precise hits. Even the towering Rougarou weren’t safe from the small goblin. They took more hits, but that was only a matter of time for Remmy.
Finn fell into a rhythm. He kept his berserker rage at bay for now since this battle was about controlling the masses, not killing as many as he could in the shortest time.
He slashed the arm and head from a Rougarou, then chopped down a thrall with an overhand blow. Punching a wolfman in the ribs while sending a jolt of magic into the arm made it hit twice as hard. The Rougarou coughed up blood as his torso caved in, then fell, his heart crushed by his chest.
Victoria was like an angel of death, sliding into and out of groups of enemies like a dancer. Everywhere she went, creatures and thralls fell by the handful. Her dance of death played out with a placid face of pure experience. Thousands of years of battle had beaten her into a fine-tuned killing machine.
The battle was going well, right up to the point where the stone pyramid exploded.
Mila’s smile quickly faded when the bright celestial light became shrouded with a black miasma that poured from Azoth’s void of a face.
His scream slowly died as the light became darker. Then that thick oily smoke rolled around itself and flowed back into the void. In seconds, the device was nothing more than a pinprick of light in a roiling mask of infernal magic.
Mila was ten feet away from Azoth in the relatively small interior of the pyramid, and she felt his power growing by leaps and bounds. She immediately realized her mistake and fired several bolts from the Ivar to land at least a few hits before it was all over.
Azoth didn’t raise a shield. Instead, he took the hits to the chest. The exploding bolts of magic blew his robe to charred shreds. He shrugged the garment off, revealing where bloody chunks of his stone-colored flesh had blown free, but they were healing before Mila’s eyes.
She had only seen him without the robe one time before and that was from a distance. This time, he was on full display. His oddly smooth-skinned torso led down to a mass of hundreds of black and purple tentacles that seemed to be in constant motion, even when he stood still. But his most disturbing feature, his void face, now looked far worse with Mila’s short-sighted failure on display.
The roiling black miasma flowed outward from the center as it enclosed the device. Then, less than an inch from the glowing core, it rolled back and flowed into the edges of his void. With the pinprick of light at the center of the smoke and the way it constantly moved in a donut-like pattern, it made looking directly at his face feel like falling down an endless pit.
“I should thank you,” he rumbled. “I worried at first, but this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. A fitting gift for your new god.”
“Go to hell,” Mila growled while firing a constant barrage from her pistol, even forcing more magic into the already-stressed weapon. The bolts grew brighter and thicker, and when they hit they did more damage, but it wasn’t enough. Azoth was letting her do it to prove how ineffective it was. He started laughing and spread his arms wide.
Mila growled and lowered the gun to her side. “Fine. I give up.” She slipped the Reaper’s case off her back. “Here. Take it and get the hell off my planet.”
She held out the case and walked toward him. He seemed surprised and let her get as close as she liked.
“A wise choice, ch—”
Mila tossed the case at his feet—or tentacles, in this case—where it popped open, revealing nothing more than an empty case.
When he followed the falling case with his sorry excuse of a face, Mila reached up with lightning-quick reflexes and grabbed the device as the thick oily infernal magic ate her flesh.
She screamed as pain unlike anything she’d ever felt ripped through her body.
Azoth backhanded her across the chest, sending her flying into the slanted far wall. She hit hard and slid down it in a crumpled heap, becoming wedged between the wall and the ground.
“How dare you?” he screamed, sounding like metal sheets being torn in half.
Mila only had a second to shield herself as Azoth sent a large black-and-purple orb striking across the space and exploding against the wall, the ground, and her shield.
The sudden sunlight blinded Mila as she tumbled through the air along with melon-sized chunks of stone.
Solid and familiar arms caught her before she slammed into the ground and set her on her feet.
“You okay?” Finn’s eyes locked on the Drude, who surveyed the situation with a calm posture.
“Not even a little, but I’m unhurt.” She looked at him with a worried expression. “I fucked up. The device is feeding him. He’s already too powerful for me to hurt, and he’s getting stronger by the second. How’s it going out here?”
As she asked, one of the stasis fields flickered then failed, setting loose the hundreds trapped in it. Finn dropped to his knee and quickly fed power into the ground, and the field snapped back up, recapturing all but a handful who had slipped past.
They exchanged worried looks. This was going down the toilet fast.
�
��I need to get that device from him. We can’t let it feed him any more than it has. When I tried, his magic burned straight through me. I couldn’t get it out.”
Finn frowned. “I can try, but someone has to keep the perimeter going or we’ll be overrun in seconds.”
A teleport bubble popped right in front of them and Rebecca was there with a wand out and looking around with wide eyes.
“What the fuck, Rebecca?” Mila shouted as she jumped forward and chopped down a thrall that was diving for the woman. Victoria slid by, killing six more thralls on Rebecca’s other side before disappearing into the melee once again.
“Mila! Penny told me the device will only feed Azoth’s power. You can’t use it on him!”
Mila saw Azoth aim at Rebecca’s turned back. Stepping forward and putting herself between the two, she raised a shield as another orb streaked across the rubble-strewn field. This time, instead of trying to stop the blast Mila deflected it, sending the orb arcing off into the distance where it blew the top off one of those little mountains.
Mila looked over her shoulder with gritted teeth. “A little late for the warning, but we’re working on it.”
Yaminah stepped out of the portal behind Azoth and made eye contact with Mila. The scarred woman gave her a questioning tilt of her head. Mila nodded ever so slightly.
“I need you to take care of the stasis fields. They’re quickly running out of power and Finn has his hands full,” Mila directed, only then noticing that he’d stepped away to take out a large group of thralls.
Rebecca pulled out a second wand and pointed it at a Rougarou as she uttered a short chant. The creature suddenly folded up into itself as if it had imploded. “What are you going to do?”
Mila set her jaw and started running toward Azoth. “Whatever it takes.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mila charged across the battlefield. Her speed let her sidestep the minions blocking her path. She would have cut them down, but she’d put her weapons back in their holsters since she needed her hands free for this.
Yaminah had begun her intricate spell before Mila had taken her first step, but it was taking a while. Mila worried that it wouldn’t happen in time, or maybe Yaminah was drawing her in for her master. No, Yaminah hated Azoth as much as Mila did—probably more.
Mila decided to trust the woman’s hatred for their common enemy instead of doubt her choice to trust.
At the last second, Yaminah’s spell finally activated. Mila was already leaping through the air, her feet coming up to hit Azoth in the chest. As Mila had predicted, he simply stood there, thinking himself invincible. It couldn’t have been a better opportunity.
Chains as thick as Mila’s forearm and fifty feet long shot out of the ground in a circle centered on Azoth like the spikes of a crown. Before the Drude could comprehend what was happening, the chains whipped around like a tornado, their ends still anchored in the earth, and wrapped themselves around his entire body, leaving only his head and shoulders exposed.
Azoth bellowed with rage and Mila saw him straining against the bonds, but another line of power from Yaminah pulled the chains back into the earth, making Azoth bend backward and taking away most of his leverage.
The move made for a perfect landing platform.
Planting her feet on his shoulders, Mila landed in a crouch and slapped her left hand onto the top of his head for stability. Cocking her right arm back, she formed her fingers into a claw.
“Pride before the fall, motherfucker,” she growled before plunging her hand into the void of his face and grabbing hold of the device.
This time, she’d prepared for the agony although it didn’t make it hurt any less. She fought through it while pulling with everything she had. She used her legs to push against his shoulders as she screamed with effort and pain.
Like a stuck door, when the device came loose it did so all at once, launching Mila off Azoth and onto her back a dozen feet away. She landed awkwardly, half on a chunk of the destroyed pyramid, and knocked the wind out of herself.
She realized that the burning pain wasn’t leaving her right arm, and when she looked down, saw that the device was still glowing and dumping raw magic with reckless abandon. It was celestial magic, and more than half was hers coming back to her, but it was still raw power, and her body was still a living thing.
The sound of a minor explosion made Mila look up as Azoth broke a second chain, the links shredding with a loud boom as they failed all along their length. The next chain was off a second later, and the next in half that time.
Before Mila could get to her feet, Azoth was free and turning his wrath toward Yaminah. The poor woman had done everything she’d promised she would, and now she would pay the ultimate price—and there was nothing Mila could do about it. They might have stopped him from gaining more power, but he was already more than they could handle.
He raised a stone-gray hand while building an orb that would end her life.
Yaminah didn’t look up at her slaver. Instead, she looked at Mila, her eyes pleading for help. The look was mixed with betrayal. Not for Azoth, but for Mila.
Mila channeled everything she had into a single blast of pure celestial magic. She didn’t bother trying to hold back. This was an all-or-nothing sort of moment.
She felt the swirling energy coalescing into a single attack that would raze a building to its foundations.
Before Azoth could send his orb into the cowering Yaminah, Mila let loose.
The sheer size of the blast made Mila’s eyes widen, not believing she had caused it. A six-inch-thick beam of pure white light tinged with gold lanced out from her palm and slammed into Azoth’s lower back, lifting him off his feet and sending him tumbling across the sands. He slid to a stop only a few feet from one of the stasis fields.
Mila climbed to her feet, her back feeling like she’d beaten it with a club.
A scream of mad rage turned Mila’s attention to her left, where she saw Missy climbing to her feet. Her chest was bloody, and the t-shirt she wore had a hole right through the middle where the bolt from the Ivar had blasted her out of the fight. Not enough out of the fight, it seemed.
The madwoman lifted her silver sword like it was a baseball bat and not a precision weapon. She continued to scream as her wings erupted from her back, the black having taken the entire wing instead of the half it used to be.
The sight made Mila cringe with sadness, then made her realize how defenseless she was without her power. She had used everything on Azoth. Mila knew she couldn’t produce a shield strong enough to stop a BB gun, let alone a swing from the mad Valkyrie.
Luckily, she wasn’t the only Valkyrie on the field.
Victoria shot past Mila like a comet, her golden wings springing to life and spreading wide. She slammed into Missy so hard that it made the sand at Missy’s feet jump into the air.
The two Valkyries slammed into the ground and blasted a foot-deep crater into the sand.
Mila suddenly realized how vulnerable she was. She had nothing. Spotting Finn fighting off four enemies at once, she noticed that he dipped to the ground and swiped a bare hand through the sand. Purple energy leaped to his fingers before going back into the ground. A spike of stone shot out of the sand a second later and impaled two of the four, letting him handle the last two with ease.
When she looked down at the device in her hand, she was shocked to realize that it didn’t hurt to hold anymore, then became worried that she’d done some kind of permanent nerve damage. She pushed the concern away and focused on the device in the same way she had when filling it.
She knew it shouldn’t work like this for a Valkyrie, but over the last couple of days, she’d had to admit that she was more than that now. She didn’t know why or how, but she knew it was the truth. If Finn could pull in magic, then she could, too. At least, she hoped it was like that.
Focusing on the device, she tried to do the exact opposite of what she’d done to fill it. It was awkward and her brain
didn’t want to let it happen, but Mila needed it to. She demanded it.
And then it did.
Power flooded into Mila. She felt her abilities return and her body heal, then she shook with potential. In a second, she had all she’d lost, and it was still coming.
She quickly realized that she needed to use it or it would burn her out. Like a light bulb with too much power, she would burn bright then pop.
Searing pain exploded in Mila’s side as the impact threw her to the ground, her arm snapping as she slammed into another piece of rubble.
Rolling onto her back, she saw Azoth slithering toward her, his hands already glowing with more power.
Mila tapped into the overwhelming flow of magic coming from the device and healed her broken arm almost instantly while simultaneously putting up a shield.
Two balls of infernal magic slammed into the barrier. It flickered, but was far from failing.
Mila scrambled to her feet and sent another blast at Azoth, but he raised a shield and absorbed the incredible amount of power like it was nothing. They traded blows back and forth, but neither of them could do much damage.
Azoth aimed another orb at her and she strengthened her shield, but at the last second, he turned and sent the bubbling black projectile at Yaminah.
The woman was still recovering from her last spell and was slow to react, but she turned a fatal blow into only a serious wound by rolling to the side. The orb aimed at her chest hit her right arm and side instead. The explosion sent her tumbling away, blood freely flowing from the wounds.
“No!” Mila shouted, redoubling her efforts and sending blast after blast at Azoth, but he blocked them all.
A stasis field flickered and failed behind the Drude, dropping several hundred bewitched people to the ground. Mila couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Carl and his team at the head of the group.
Mila dropped to one knee and pressed her fingers into the ground like she’d seen Finn do earlier. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she kind of forced her power into the mine. It snapped back on, catching most of the bewitched, but she didn’t see the G.A.E.L. team anywhere in the stasis bubble.
