Mage Among Supers 2, page 5
The Scorpions attacking her shouted louder as their frustration grew while Mind Game slipped between them, virtually untouched, a blur of bright color who stood out all the more strikingly in the dimly lit club. When she hit, she hit hard, pouring all her self-defense training into the strikes. It was a style of fighting that valued survival over honor, and more than one Scorpion went down clutching his crotch.
Flashes of light burst around Crypto as she fought, the white flare of electricity leaping from her stun batons. She didn’t fight alone but with a drone floating at her shoulder. The last time I’d seen her drones in action, they’d been fitted with cameras to gather evidence at Bladeline Industries, where we’d been taking down Kurtis Kane. But this time, the drone was equipped with some sort of gun instead of a camera. There was a whining sound from a rotor inside it, then a fut-fut-fut, and a Scorpion went down with a line of small projectiles protruding from his chest.
Crypto herself could be as dangerous as the drone. She didn’t have the moves that the others had, but she had the kit to make up for it. When one of the Scorpions caught her in a choke lock, she jabbed him with an electric baton and squeezed its trigger. The Scorpion jerked as high voltage raced through him. He let her go as he spasmed away.
Another of the Scorpions kicked Crypto, knocking her back beneath the club’s PA system. As he closed in, she looked up at the speakers, and her eyes narrowed. The R&B rhythm turned for a moment into a high-pitched wail, with the speakers pivoting to point at her attacker. His face curled into a silent scream, and he clamped his hands to the sides of his head as blood trickled from his ears. Then smoke rose from the overloaded speakers as the discordant sound subsided.
Another pair of Scorpions were closing in on Crypto. She raised her baton, but only a small jolt of electricity flared from its tip. That was enough to drive one of the attackers back, straight onto the blade of Hoplite who was coming up behind them. As the other one turned to face her, Crypto smacked him over the back of the head with the baton, and Hoplite hit him with an uppercut that tossed him into the wall.
Across the room, several Scorpions were closing in on Mind Game. One-on-one, she could avoid them by seeing what they planned to do, but against a group like this, she was running out of space and struggling to follow all their thoughts at once. Then Crypto’s drone floated in, firing its tiny darts at the Scorpions. One collapsed, the back of his tracksuit riddled with holes, and the others scattered to stop the device gunning them all down at once. Mind Game emerged from the middle of the melee with a look of relief.
By now, I’d taken down several of the Scorpions, but more were coming in from the back room. Leading them was a guy with a face full of tattoos and a familiar-looking amulet hanging around his neck: a silver skull. He charged at me, and I shot bolts of elemental magic at him, but as I’d feared, they dissipated as they got near the skull. Its necromantic power didn’t just draw down the power of death to give its wielder strength, it also drained away the raw, living power of the elements to protect him from magical attacks.
Without direct magical attacks, I had far fewer options, but at least I had some. In fact, I had the option to fight fire with fire—or, more accurately, skull with skull. I touched my own silver skull, which now hung from my wrist along with my other amulets, and spoke in my mind to Li Han.
‘You ready to provide that help you offered?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he replied.
A cold power chilled my flesh as the spirit of the long-dead warrior flowed through me, filling my body and mind with his fighting skills and instincts honed by years of war. As one of the lesser Scorpions flung a punch at me, I easily caught his wrist, snapped the bone with a sharp twist, and kicked him so hard and precisely that he slumped completely unmoving to the ground.
But that wasn’t what I’d dipped into the amulet for. The main contender was coming my way, his own silver skull shining as it swayed against his chest.
“I don’t suppose you’re here to shoot the breeze?” I asked. “Maybe compare the dancers and talk about what makes for a really good stripper pole?”
He sprang into a flying kick. I whirled aside and grabbed his leg as he went past. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion while at the same time rushing by. I could see each movement and its implications, plan and respond, even though only flashing fractions of seconds were passing.
The Scorpion, still hurtling through the air, twisted out of my grip and grabbed my robes. As he turned, he lifted me off my feet, flinging me over. I punched out with the flat of my hand, pushing myself in one direction and him in the other. We landed by opposite ends of the bar, staring at each other.
“Nice moves,” the Scorpion said and bowed his head in something close to respect, “but they’re not going to save you.”
He charged. I leaped straight up, one foot shooting out in a kick toward where his face would be. He caught my foot. My other foot lashed out, and I spun myself through the air. My robes flowed like a whirlwind. There was a crack as I kicked his forearm. I landed in a handstand, sprang back up with a flick of the wrists, and my knee smacked into his face.
With blood streaming from his nose, he punched me, and I was too close to dodge the strike. It flung me against the wall, leaving me bruised and aching on both sides. I slumped for a moment to the ground, but there was no time to recover as the Scorpion was coming straight at me. I rolled aside, and his foot smashed the floorboards where I had been.
‘Go left,’ Li Han told me. ‘He’s weaker on that side.’
I hadn’t noticed it myself, but the dead warrior was correct. I shifted to my left and swung my hand, striking at the Scorpion from his right. He was slower than he had been, his block less strong. It was only a fractional difference, but everything helped. I kicked, and he was a moment too slow to avoid my foot smacking into his knee.
He grunted and stumbled. I channeled the power of fire through the skull into my hand, and my fist glowed with blazing heat. The Scorpion blocked my next punch and bellowed as the heat left a blistered red patch of skin on his arm. Distracted by the pain, he was too slow to dodge my second strike. I hit him in the face with all the force and heat I could, and he fell, flames searing his head.
My body was trembling from the sheer power of the forces that had flowed through me. It was a long time since I’d unleashed raw, unshaped magic like I had in that punch, and it was a dangerous thing to do—one that left me weary and raw. I took deep breaths and looked around. The ladies were still fighting, but they had the upper hand. It wasn’t over yet, but it soon would be.
Then the door to the back room burst open, and an icy wind rushed through the room. I gagged on the sudden wave of dark magic surging over and through me. The others weren’t sensitive to magic like I was, but they still shivered and gritted their teeth as they looked around.
Another wave of magic washed through, fire and air this time, the heat made more painful by the contrast with the cold that came before.
A man strode out on a wave of magic. He had piercing green eyes on a pale face and wild red hair shot through with streaks of white, sticking out around his head in every direction. Long black robes with streaks of dramatic white flared around him.
Dozens of amulets hung from his wrists, and in his hand was a wand like the one I used but made from a darker wood with strands of silvery metal spiraling around its haft. He was the first true wizard I’d seen since coming to this world, and one I would have recognized in an instant anywhere.
He looked at me, eyes wide with shock.
“Ben Blackridge?” Fenton Ashbearer called out. “Is that you?”
The rest of the fighting subsided around us, the Offenders and the Scorpions stopping to stare at this extraordinary figure and the confrontation about to take place.
“It is me, Master Ashbearer.” I bowed my head. “I’m honored to see you again.”
A confused jumble of thoughts and feelings filled me. Respect and appreciation for the teacher who had given me my craft. Disgust and anger at the necromancer who had sunk into foul magics. The warmth of friendship and the bitterness of its loss. Even a swelling of homesickness, stirred by what he represented.
“I heard rumors that there was another wizard in the city,” Ashbearer said. “I never imagined it would be you.” His eyes narrowed. “Why is it you?”
“I think you can guess that, Master,” I said.
He nodded slowly, then muttered magic words. A blade of fire flared from the tip of his wand.
“They sent you to hunt me down,” he said, his voice dripping with venom. “They couldn’t stand that I was stronger than them, so they drove me out with their petty rules and restrictions. And they couldn’t stand that I had trained a worthy successor, so they had to poison that tool, turning you into the blade to stab me in the back, using my affection and your knowledge of my powers against me.”
“I failed our people when I didn’t stop you. This is my penance.”
“Penance?” He snorted. “As if this has anything to do with you. I made my choices, and it’s only the weakness of lesser mortals that has labeled them as sins. But I have found a place where I can grow stronger, where I can find the power and support I need.”
“You don’t belong here, any more than I do.”
Even as I said the words, something about them felt strange. Sure, I didn’t come from Caliber City, or even from this world, but I was settled here now. I had a home and relationships. At what point did belonging begin?
It didn’t matter. Right now, all that mattered was bringing Ashbearer in, safely ending his dark practices, and letting those back home see some justice done for his crimes.
“Join me,” he said. “I have so much more that I can teach you now.”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” I pulled my robes open to reveal the tattoo over my heart. “I’m under a geas. The magic compels me to bring you back.”
“Magic can be undone.”
“My own honor compels me.”
Ashbearer sighed. “This was always your problem, Ben. You’re too caught up in outdated ideas of morality to do what modern magic demands.”
“You mean I’m a decent human being?”
“I mean that you’re a failure, an embarrassment. At least now I can deal with that shame.”
The fire died from his wand as he let it go and took hold of another amulet, though I couldn’t see what its shape was. He whispered words I didn’t know but whose very syllables made my flesh crawl.
Now I knew who had made the necromantic amulets, and I wished that I didn’t. To know that he would trap a soul like Li Han, destroying his freedom and warping his soul to give power to merciless gangsters… What had become of the man I knew, the man who taught me, the man who made me who I was? Had something broken him, or had the facade of goodness always been a lie?
He raised his hands. Strands of invisible power flowed through the air, coalescing around the bodies of fallen Scorpions. With monstrous groans, they rose again, some standing on broken bones, others with blood flowing from their lips. Their eyes were clouded over, their expressions empty, and the air around them stank of an accelerated rot.
At Ashbearer’s command, the zombies shambled across the floor.
Chapter 5
The zombified Scorpions shambled toward us, their eyes vacant and mouths gaping, a low drone emerging from between slack lips. Was this a symptom of brain death accompanied by a living body, or did the sound somehow connect to the magic flowing through them?
Either way, we had to fight.
One of the zombies, its body riddled with darts from the drone, lumbered straight at me. I sidestepped, but the zombie was surprisingly agile. Despite its slack expression and stumbling steps, it almost caught me with its grasping hands. I slammed my foot down, breaking its leg, and it sank to one knee, but while a living human would have buckled over screaming, the creature kept moaning and flailing its hands in my direction.
The darkness of the necromantic magic was all around me, so thick in the air that I could taste it. Bile rose in my throat. This was foul stuff. Magic that gave its user power without consideration for the consequences. Something greedy and toxic that tainted everything it touched.
We had to stop these shambling corpses before they got out into the street.
Once again, the strip club filled with the sounds of fighting. Against the Scorpions, the melee had been almost an athletic flurry of fists and feet, bodies maneuvering with skill and dexterity. Things were different now. My comrades fought with the same gifts as before, while our opponents lurched and staggered, yet still somehow managed to land blows, menace our movements, and make themselves into a real threat.
But while the others were fighting the zombies, I had a more serious foe to contend with.
Fenton Ashbearer strode toward me. The power and dignity of a wizard in full robes, his cloak flapping and his hair wild around his head, was at absurd odds with the surroundings. It was hard to look majestic when striding past half-empty beer bottles, a discarded pot of glitter body paint, and the world’s least hygienic buffet.
Ashbearer tried to exude the kind of assurance and strength of will that a wizard carried themselves with back home, but he couldn’t help being undermined by the passing lights of a disco ball and the whole room’s smell of spilled whiskey and desperation.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said.
“You mean you’re willing to give up?” he asked.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Of course it isn’t. But do you really think that I’d give up either?”
With blurted words and a flick of his wrist, he flung a fireball in my direction. It was an opening gambit, one I easily deflected with a wind shield. He was testing me, seeing how far I’d come in the past few years while also showing his willingness to fight if that was what it took. But he wasn’t truly trying to kill me yet, and that had to be a good sign. Maybe there was some chance that I could win him around.
I sent a few fire darts his way, then called air into my feet and charged up the air like it was a staircase in front of him. He swung a sword of flame my way, and I leaped aside, landing amid the broken glass by the bar.
“I see that you’ve added a second element,” Ashbearer said like he was talking to a colleague, comparing offices or company cars, not the stuff of life-or-death struggles.
“I learned it from you,” I said. “Or at least from your notes.”
“My air grimoire.” He flung a spinning disk of earth my way, its edges hardened by blades of earth. I leaped up onto the bar, and it slammed into the boards beneath me. “I wondered where that had got to.”
“It’s in good hands, I promise.” To prove my point, I raised my wand and summoned a wind blade. It was next to useless as a weapon, functioning at best like a whip, but it was a good demonstration of how quickly I’d mastered the extra element discussed in his book.
“It should be back in mine. Return it and we can forget this ever happened.”
“Tell you what, surrender and I’ll let you have it back.”
“A little light reading while I rot in prison for all eternity? I think not.”
He shot more elemental bolts my way, made of earth this time, each one a stone spear. I ducked down behind the bar, and they slammed into it, their points penetrating several inches through the wood.
I hated this. Not just the need to fight for my life, but the need to fight against him of all people. Ashbearer had trained me, nurtured me, and made me into the wizard I had become. Fighting him was like fighting family. Worse, it was like fighting a part of myself. I had to find a way to end this without killing him.
“This doesn’t have to be the end for you,” I said. “There are still ways for you to contribute to society. If you promise to stop your necromancy, perhaps we can find another way, instead of you wasting your remaining life locked up in a dungeon. You gave me so much. Wouldn’t you like to help others, too?”
“Help others?” Ashbearer’s laugh was an ugly, angry sound. “I spent years helping, training, supporting, and what did I get in return? Rejection, exclusion, my ideas shut down, and my powers limited by petty minds. No more!”
He flung his arms wide, and a wall of flame rushed across my corner of the club. Bottles exploded and spilled spirits leaped up in amber flames edged in blue.
“Here, I am free to pursue what is needed!” he bellowed. “I have such great plans for this world. Until now, it has not known the taste of magic or the wonder that our arts can bring. I will change that. I will show them a universe of possibilities.”
As flames spread across the bar and the slick of spilled liquor behind it, I felt the heat closing in on me. I dashed out of the cover that had become a trap and ran at Ashbearer, flame blade extended, air shield out in front of me. That shield deflected the blasts of magic he flung my way, blowing them off course into the walls and ceiling. But as I swung the sword, he flung himself aside on a great gust of wind, and my blow missed him by a whole foot.
“This world has its own ways,” I said. “Its own powers. Its own authorities. If I don’t stop you, then someone else will, and they might not be so merciful.”
“Mercy?” The very word made him sneer. “I don’t need to worry about mercy. I have my own backing. Powers that can make sure my plan happens. You think I’d crawl for the mercy of these wretched, mundane people? That I’d slink back home like a snake and admit defeat to the small-minded mages there?”
He touched an amulet shaped like a set of teeth and spoke magic words. The floor beneath my feet split and rose, closing in on either side of me like a jaw clamping shut. A burst of air through my boot amulet flung me clear, but the rush of the magic meant that the movement was clumsy. A zombie hit me as I flew past, knocking me off course, and I slammed into the floor.
Around the club, the others were still going strong. Crypto beat at the ungainly shapes with her stun baton, and her drone circled overhead, spraying them with darts from its guns. The pain of the attacks, which had floored living opponents, didn’t do much against the zombies, which kept on fighting even when hundreds of volts were flowing through their bodies. But while it was harder to take these opponents down, the slowing of their movements, however slight and variable, made it harder for them to hit Crypto, too. She was able to fend off the attacks and keep clear by backing away while her weapons did the hard work.
