In The Wind, Part II

“Beck, wait-“

            “You know,” she purred, “Technically speaking, I haven’t actually hurt anybody yet. I’d be honored if you were my first.” She pronounced a string of gibberish, seemingly from memory, and gently lowered to the floor once more, standing nearly a foot shorter than me.

            I didn’t feel very big, though. “All right, listen-“

            “I AM DONE LISTENING! Fastoi’vaire!” Beck pulled her arms apart in a violent double swing, and the marble beneath my feet split and tore itself from the foundation with a sound of shrieking metal. I was knocked senseless, tumbling away on a wave of churning stone, trying to keep my limbs tucked close to my body.

            Beck wasn’t like Nick, or the renegade Reader. She didn’t wait around to see if I got up. I was barely rolling to a stop when I heard another screech of unknowable syllables, and only rolling behind a convenient slab of marble saved me from the wave of ice that rolled over the entire area. A spell I recognized- the first one she’d ever cast, pinning me to her kitchen wall.

            Hard to believe I was feeling nostalgic for that hideous night.

            “Dead yet?” came her mocking voice. “It’s hard to tell. This place is a mess.”

            I peeked over the iced-over slab of stone, scanning desperately, trying to get my bearings. Beck’s freezing spell had radiated outwards in every direction, coating every surface for meters with a thin later of ice. Bad enough, but the swirling, chaotic energies at the center of the Nexus mall were still screaming in their wide path, melting and vaporizing gallons of ice, filling the air with steam and fog.

            I could see several feet, but not much more. Whiteness obscured the grand arena, cutting me off from locating Lee.

            On the other hand, maybe Beck couldn’t see me, either? I dashed from behind my cover, sprinting for my life towards one of the thicker columns that ringed the mall. The side facing Beck’s spellwork was devastated, but there were still a couple of feet of stone between me and the next magical nightmare she came up with.

            A familiar droning sound echoed through the Nexus, something I remembered hearing before. I couldn’t place it- until I saw the snaking tendrils of solid light, whipping around like the arms of an octopus, probing the fog. Hunting. So she was blind, too. Good.

            Maybe good, I didn’t know. I was really playing everything by ear.

            “Lee?” I chanced, swiveling my head around, flicking my eyes down to my Text, trying to figure out if any of the squiggling lines were-

            “Chrenjuil!”

            I spun aside, barely in time to avoid a lance of some kind of invisible force, only marking its passing by ripping through the swirling mist. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course Beck would be keeping her senses enhanced, which of course I should have been doing too.

            Whipping, frantic ropes of light swung  through the whole area in an arc, flaying chunks of concrete from my pillar every time they struck. She was looking for me, keeping me cornered, afraid. Somewhere, I heard a male voice shout in surprise, and some kind of sucking “pop!” sound. Lee, hopefully finishing off the Necromancer.

            A shadow shambled into my sight range, swaying through the mist, and I realized it was Wylla just in time to rush forward and catch her as she tumbled forward. Her warm, gracious face was pale and drawn, and she was gasping alarmingly.

            “Wylla!” I hissed, expecting a thunderbolt in the skull any second, “You’ve got to get out of here!”

            “No,” she croaked. Too loud. “I can help…”

            “There you are,” said a cold voice. I immediately grabbed Wylla and picked a direction, leaping out of the way and hoping I wouldn’t land even closer to Beck. Behind me, something red flashed and exploded, lighting up the expanse of mist for an instant. I heard stone crumbling violently. So much for my cover.

            Wylla was gasping for breath, and I reluctantly left her on the floor, fumbling to open my Text. The page Lee had chosen for me was alive with dancing, silvery Glyphs- but astoundingly, they actually meant something to me.

            I stared at shining nonsense and it was as plain as English block letters. Lee had mentioned the Text would become easier to read, at some point.

            “About time,” I grumbled.

            “You’re really going to just keep making noise?” Beck’s voice rang out. The mist parted instantly, pulling back towards the walls of the Nexus, revealing the destruction to me for the first time. The entire center of the floor was a crater, layers of building material ripped from the ground by Beck’s magics and flung in every direction, laying waste to the colorful storefronts and seating areas. I figured it was some kind of miracle the skylight was still intact.

            Far away, Grand Master Ramage was slumped against another pillar, apparently out cold.

            Ten feet away, between me and the crater, stood Beck, alight with crackling gemstones and smiling mirthlessly. Small, glowing shapes rotated slowly around her in midair, which I recognized instantly as Glyphs. She was keeping her whole library right in front of her for easy access. Amazing.

            “I thought the cat and mouse game might be a fun diversion, but you never learn, do you?”

            “Sometimes I do,” I remarked, and pronounced the first Glyph I’d ever felt confident about. Eye-searing lightning exploded from my open hand, instantly reaching towards Beck with deadly fingers.

            She spun, faster than I could believe, catching the bolt on a shield bracer and launching it into a second-floor bookstore, then dropping into a shooter’s kneeling position and answering with an identical bolt, which hit me square in the chest.

            The world went white, and I woke up a second later, just in time to experience slamming into a pile of stacked restaurant chairs.

            So much for confidence. I could actually smell myself cooking, which disturbingly made my mouth water. It turns out we smell a lot like pork when we’re fried, and I was sickeningly hungry.

            Well, I decided, futilely trying to extricate myself from the tangled aluminum chair legs, I guess I’m gonna die now,  after all. At least I got a good shot off.

            Above me, a series of booms echoed through the Nexus, and with an incredible crash and a shower of plaster, Nick the Necromancer exploded outward from a third-floor wall, falling to the floor of the Nexus mall like a douchebaggy comet. He didn’t get back up.

            And Lee dropped catlike to the floor, halting her momentum at the last possible instant with the spell from one of her pendants. She placed herself between my crash site and Beck, who looked flustered for the first time all day.

            “You okay?” she called over her shoulder, never removing her eyes from Beck. Her clothes were covered in white dust, and there was blood running down one side of her head, but she faced my deadly ex without a single sign of fear.

            “Pretty beat up,” I groaned, “But I’m all right. You?”

            She laughed. “Almost sweating.”

            Beck was crouching, motionless, eyes locked on Lee’s as she seemed to be studying the situation. Finally, she shrugged, as if dismissing some question. “There would have been a place for you, Lee. The world will need people like you.”

            “Apparently it already does.” Lee adjusted her stance, planting her boots and cracking her small fists.

            “You’re going to throw your life away for him? For them?” Beck demanded, gesturing up at the beautiful arc of Earth. “I looked up to you. Just a couple of weeks ago, I thought you were the most incredible person I’d ever met.”

            Lee said nothing. I clambered to my feet, finally disentangled. Wylla was lying nearby, barely moving. I didn’t think any of my bones were broken, so I limped up to stand near Lee, facing Beck with what I hoped was proud defiance. I probably looked like a scarecrow.

            Beck’s eyes narrowed. Lee tensed.

            And then they launched absolutely massive spells at each other, simultaneously, a foot-thick bar of white light plowing into a blob of tumbling green fire, resulting in an earsplitting BANG. They were both moving and flinging attacks with breakneck speed by the time I’d even registered the fight had started.

            Lee swiped a laser-focus line of fire across the room, searing a smoking line through everything it touched, but the beam shattered against a bubble-like barrier Beck conjured, which she projected outwards with the force of a bomb, which Lee caught on her shield bracer and slid backwards, grunting with effort.

            They were trading spells, reacting to each other’s violence as though the whole affair had been planned and rehearsed. Lee drew her gun with blinding speed, and just as quickly it was ripped from her hand and flung far across the mall by a coiling tendril of solid light.

            I couldn’t even tell if one of them had the upper hand. It was too fast, too insane, more than I could even comprehend, let alone survive. I hung back, scanning my Text, waiting for an opening that never seemed to come. They conducted the entire brawl at close range, Lee aiming snap kicks and vicious elbows in between spells, some of which actually connected.

            “All this power,” Beck taunted, “And you’re swinging at me like some kind of gorill-“

            A particularly brutal hook caught Beck across the jaw, and she reeled, staggering back. She was lucky Lee was her physical equal; a normal-sized person would have broken her neck with that strike.

            Part of me felt a pang at seeing her hurt.

            The rest of me took a deep breath and bellowed “Sharna!”, seizing the unprepared Beck in an invisible grip, and squeezing. She flailed horrifically in midair, twisting in place against my grasp, screaming curses and spells, explosions of light and sound filling the air, shaking the ground. Chips of stone rattled on the floor.

            Lee halted in her assault, exultant. “You got her! Finish it!”

            I could feel her body somehow, small and blazing hot, soft and pathetic in my psychic fist, wriggling like a kitten.

            I could have crushed the life out of her with less effort than a thought. She was wild, uncontrolled, more violent than I’d ever seen her, pouring wave after wave of thoughtless force from her body.

The longer I held her, the more the entire Nexus began to tremble. Cracks in the great marble floor deepened, and for the first time, the glass of the skylight showed the spiderweb signs of being ready to shatter.

Her eyes met mine, saw my raised hand and glowing brand. I saw it come together in her head- I was the one holding her captive. It was me, of all people, who had her beaten.

The scream that erupted from her at that realization was like nothing I’d ever heard. Wordless, shrieking, painfully high and clear, reverberating off itself to give the impression of a hundred screams in chorus, eerily like the effect of reading a Glyph. Multiplied a dozen times.

I felt my supernatural grip failing, jolts of feedback rattling through my body painfully. Gritting my teeth, I channeled the swirling energies of the Nexus into strengthening my own spell. I made myself a conduit of irresistible force, dumping enough power into maintaining my hold to level my old apartment building.

It just wasn’t enough. Beck shone like a dying star, every color of light radiating from the eye-searing gemstones covering her ruined robes. Waves of force pulsed harder than ever, several times a second, buffeting me back. My brand was agony, the rest of my body just a bit less so.

A mighty crack echoed above the cacophony, and another. Beck’s radiance dimmed slightly. Too slightly. For all the energy I was absorbing, for all the strength and confidence I’d convinced myself I had now, she was still too good. Too determined. Too talented, too prepared, too invested in something that mattered to her, consequences be damned.

Everything I’d never been.

“I’m gonna lose her!” I cried at last to Lee, whose eyes widened in what couldn’t have been fear. She flipped out her Text, preparing to add her own effort to the fray, and opened her  mouth to cast a spell of some kind.

Beck’s insane voice came again, the multitude screaming “NO!”

I felt my grip evaporate as though it had never been, spare energies bursting from my skin as colored light, and knew I’d be dead in half a second if I didn’t do something. A quick scan of my Text yielded hope-

“Rashiell!”

The shield wrapped around me just ahead of Beck’s supernova, whiteness obliterating everything outside my little bubble, a roar of sound beyond understanding, and just as soon, it was over. Crackles and pops from Beck’s direction made me curious, but I was still blinking afterimages from my eyes.

She wasn’t dead. I hadn’t even had the audacity to hope for that, so I wasn’t especially surprised. She lay on the ground, panting, colorful smoke and sparks rising from the crystals all over her body. Some of them were visibly cracked.

I rose to my feet, wobbly. Off to my side, Lee remained behind her shield bracer’s dome, watching Beck with weary eyes.

The storm was slowing, reduced to little more than a vortex of energies, quietly rotating in place above the crater.

To my astonishment, a tall, suited figure made its way through the smoke, tottering across the shattered floor, and knelt at Beck’s side. “You all right?” the shape asked, and I realized it was Nick the Necromancer.

Her voice was weak. “Nick… I broke my augments. Overloaded them. Only way. I need… I need to…”

Nick shushed her, a finger across her lips. “It’s fine, Rebecka. It’s all fine. We’re done here. Let me help you up.”

I watched them, cautious. Feeling was returning to my fingers and toes, and I managed to stand more or less without trembling. “You can’t just walk out of here,” I called, preparing to shield myself against some kind of surprise. “I won’t let you.”

“Oh, you won’t?” Nick taunted, sliding an arm around Beck’s limp shoulders. “Look at you people. Just look for a second.”

He swept his hand, the one wearing the Phylactery, around the Nexus. Far across the mall, Grand Master Ramage lay defeated against a pillar. Wylla was crumpled on the floor near a restaurant, Beck was hanging from Nick’s shoulder like a sack of rice, and Lee and I both looked equally shaken.

Without the storm to draw from, neither of us would have the juice for an extended battle, and there was no telling what kind of power was stored in the Phylactery. Nick wasn’t kidding; he could do whatever he wanted and everyone knew it.

He laughed. “See? We’re done here. Sorry about the mix-up. This didn’t pan out the way I’d expected it to.”

I was furious, but what was there to do? “So what, it’s back to fighting crime for us, coke and hookers for you, and we just forget this ever happened?”

The Necromancer’s eyes flashed at the taunt, but he grinned. “Sounds good. And look,” he said brightly, as Beck stirred, “I’ll even have company now. Dead people are such a bore, sometimes.”

He glanced down at Beck and grinned. “Things tend to go my way, in the end.”

Beck smiled.

Then she clapped a hand to the bottom of his jaw and coughed out a word, and the top of his head exploded upwards with a fwump sound. His eyes rolled back into his ruined head, his body tumbled to the marble. Beck shrugged his arm away as he fell, drawing herself up to her unimpressive full height.

Without a sound, she gestured at his rag doll form. There was a faint click, and the Phylactery detached itself from his dead hand, to float over to Beck’s outstretched palm and chain itself securely in place.

“I was trying to say,” she growled at his body, “that I needed to borrow this.”

She turned to face Lee and me, murder in her eyes. Even with ragged, destroyed clothes and broken crystals, frayed and burnt hair, tears of what seemed to be blood running down her cheeks, she only looked more dangerous than ever.

It didn’t even seem to be on her mind that she’d just executed someone. I wasn’t going to miss the a*****e either, but…

Lee took a place at my side, shield raised. I held my Text ready, breathing deeply, heart racing with terror. I looked over to Lee. “Can we handle this?”

“Wish you hadn’t asked. I doubt it.” Her voice shook.

“I see.”

She was silent for a second, seeming to decide something. “It’s been an honor working with you,” she said softly at last. “I’m sorry about how this started. And how it ended.”

“For a couple days in the middle there, life was pretty cool.” I tried to sound brave.

“That’s about the best anyone can really hope for,” she answered.

Beck raised her free hand lazily, like a queen. “Just so you know,” she jeered, “ you haven’t saved anyone. You haven’t made the world safe. Not from me.

“You fucked this up, so kudos, but it doesn’t matter. The spellwork was for everyone else. I can still take over for me.” The Phylactery glowed with misty light, shining from her eyes as well, making her look alien and cold, rubbing out that last familiarity. “I can take what I deserve. I don’t need any help.”

Lee advanced, snarling, and Beck aimed a bolt of white fury at her. It slammed against her shield and knocked her back, stumbling. I called out a Glyph of my own, striking against Beck’s hasty shield with crushing force, grunting in pain as my body paid for the spell.

For a few brutal seconds, Beck traded blows with Lee and I, standing firm against our assault and returning it in kind. I felt myself growing weaker by the second. The echoing explosions caused by our spells hurt my ears, and I could barely see to read Glyphs.

With a snarl of effort, Beck hurled a thunderbolt of stolen lives at Lee, followed instantly by a wave of invisible force. Lee caught the bolt across her shield, staggered, and was swept violently off her feet by the second spell. Her head struck the marble floor with a loud crack, and she collapsed, motionless.

No time to panic, I told myself miserably. We didn’t expect to win.

At precisely the same instant, Beck and I fired beams of solid light at each other. The beams met with an incredible hiss, like something red-hot plunging into water, twisting and writhing at the point of impact, too bright to look at. What appeared to be molten metal jumped and poured from the clash, and I realized the forces at work must have been causing fusion.

Like, the nuclear kind. Scary.

Our eyes met as we both tried not to look at the horror we were both still pouring energy into, hers full of rage, mine… well, I guess I’ll never know what I looked like, just then. What I saw there, though, made my heart leap in my chest. Behind the fury, behind the determination, behind her terrifying talent, the battle had finally touched her.

She was tired.

She wasn’t invincible. I don’t think I really believed it until just then.

“You know what,” I shouted, wondering if she’d even hear me, “I think you’re bluffing!”

In response, she bared her teeth at me and thrust her shoulder forward, the light from her hands increasing in intensity. The warping… thing happening between our spells crept closer to me. I was horrified to feel the impossible heat, already more than I could tolerate, like putting my face in a hot oven and keeping it there.

She couldn’t have much gas left. She couldn’t.

I shook with exhaustion, keeping my eyes open through force of will. More. I allowed the spell to continue, resisted with all my might, pushed against her onslaught.

“I can do this all day,” I assured her through chattering teeth. “You’re not so good at this without the toys, are you?!”

She screamed, beyond the use of words. The light grew brighter. The miniature sun we’d created inched closer. I smelled the stubble on my face burning. My lips were dry, cracked open painfully. I had shut my eyes, but the light was still making them ache through my eyelids.

She didn’t quit. She wasn’t going to quit. She would die first.

Fine, I decided. So will I. I took a deep breath.

“If you think you can kill me, b***h… then DO IT!”

I opened myself to the magic completely, releasing control, allowed the spell to take what it would of me, if only this nightmare would end. I felt my heart skipping beats as the heat grew. I staggered back, away from the light, and it didn’t help at all.

I was dying for the second goddamn time in an hour. It always did take awhile for me to get things right.

And just like that, the pressure eased. Beck screamed in frustration. I chanced opening my eyes, squinting against the light, and saw her knees buckle. I watched her sinking into a kneel, panting heavily, glaring balefully at me and reaching with every ounce of her willpower to burn me out of existence…

…and with a final effort, she twisted her arms, redirecting the whole mess straight upwards. I was dragged to my feet by the force of it, releasing the spell just in time to avoid being dragged along with it, up and up and up.

The thing we’d made together crashed through the Nexus skylight as though nothing were there, and a howling wind filled the entire Mall as it was opened to the empty sky of the Moon.

I stared in horror, pulling my eyes down just in time to see Beck glare hatefully at me and vanish in a whirl of light. Teleported. Gone. Just like that. I had no idea how to feel about that, just then.

Lee lay on the floor with blood around her head, clothes whipping and snapping as the vacuum began to claim everything that wasn’t nailed down. I staggered towards her, clambering over blocks of marble and concrete, beyond exhaustion, beyond pain.

I grasped the necklaces around her throat, mysterious gems and pendants, and pulled them carefully over her limp head, dropping them onto my own neck. If there was some energy I could use in them, great. If not, I would die looking silly.

“Sharna,” I gasped, a surprising effort, and lifted Wylla’s faraway body from the ground, levitating her close to us. The spell didn’t kill me, so I assumed the necklace gambit had paid off. I let her fall when she was close, stumbling against the screaming wind to drag her towards Lee’s prostrate form.

I would not say corpse. Not yet.

It was hard to breathe without air, I discovered. Even harder to speak. Hard to pluck the scotch tape from my Text with blue, numb fingers. Hard to turn pages in the irresistible gale. Hard to remember where the right Glyph was, hard to hold my friends in my arms and shout desperately to nobody.

I’d never done the hard thing, before.

Yayin Aayatana.

Everything spun away.

Reviews

[EarthExile]

No, that's not the end.