The Adventures of Grave 4, page 12
“Good,” she nodded. “I bet you had to twist your mind into a pretzel to pick it up with your handicap.”
The beast in me growled. It didn’t like that she thought of me as handicapped.
“That’s a good workaround, but it takes one thing you won’t always have. Time.”
“But if things are life and death and I need it, it won’t be an issue,” I countered.
“Marcus,” she gave me an exasperated look. “Your instinctive way of controlling magic is great. It makes it easier than most spell-slingers have it, but you still need to do things the right way. No shortcuts.”
“Okay, but I still don’t know how to do it,” I was frustrated and taking it out on her.
“It is all up here,” she tapped her temple. “You just need to have your breakthrough moment and that’s not something I can help you with.”
It was a little confusing. It was wrong to use these mental workarounds I was coming up with, but at the same time that was all I had to work with, and I had to wait for some undetermined moment that she couldn’t quantify for me. Magic was weird.
“Grab another sword,” she could tell I understood my predicament, but it was important not to get bogged down by it.
I did what she asked.
“And another . . . and another . . . and another,” it became clear what she was doing.
She wanted to test both my power and my focus. Since I’d never really had to use this spell much, she needed to see what I was really capable of. I grinned as I grabbed more and more weapons and quickly saw the issue I needed to work through. It wasn’t power. I had no problem grabbing everything. Even after the rack was empty, I felt like I could keep going all day. The problem was focus. Despite this not being telekinesis, there was still a mental component to it. A component she made clear as she pulled her sword handles from her belt and ignited them with magic.
“Defend yourself!” she yelled as she sprinted at me.
I brought the first broadsword I grabbed between us, but she easily batted it aside. I wasn’t ready for it and felt it knocked from my magical fingers.
“That’s embarrassing,” I grumbled to myself.
It was a good thing I had plenty more where that came from. A pair of spears came diving in toward her, but she did some cool move where she spun and bashed them both away. I didn’t lose control like I did with the broadsword, but I also didn’t like how she could swat them away like that. I was an S-Class and it felt like I was a regular vanilla human stabbing, striking, and on occasion parrying her own attacks to try to get through the wall of weaponry toward me.
Quantity gave me a quality defense, but I needed it to be better. Yume was incredibly skilled, versatile, and adaptive. Plus, what she could do in a support role was incredible. Still, I should be able to do better when fighting her with my greater magic.
“If only it was as easy as bracing,” I thought of the concept Ramona taught me. Bracing was the counterforce an enhanced Neohuman could produce on their surroundings. If I was braced, just about anyone short of Ranger would find themselves on their ass if they tried to kick or punch me as my strength trumped theirs.
“Wait. Could it be that simple?” I focused on a blade Yume was coming up on. I heard some clatter to the ground as I refocused my mental energy, but that was okay.
It was a polearm she was coming up on and prepared to knock away to continue her advance. I poured a little more magic into it and braced it as I would myself in a fight. Yume hit it and it didn’t budge.
“Ha!” I yelled in victory. Only for her to jump, hit the braced polearm, and use it to vault up and over the remaining weapons between us. She landed with a flourish behind me and leveled her sword at my neck.
“Gotcha,” she panted but looked pretty proud of herself.
“Might want to look again,” I nodded behind her to where a trio of swords was ready to cut through her neck, spine, and knees. I knew better than to leave my rear unprotected.
“Draw?” she offered and I agreed as I let all the weapons drop.
“I see you figured out some of the shortfalls of this particular spell,” she stated.
“I can pick up a lot but it’s hard to control it all. A little experimentation and I’ll figure out what a good max number is and then train with that amount. Also, the stuff I control seems to be controlled at human-normal levels unless I apply more power, but that application and focus can affect my control of the other weapons. Again, that can be fixed by finding a good number to work with.”
“Excellent,” she beamed. “Look, you don’t even need me.”
“I do for the new spells,” I gave her puppy-dog eyes.
“Not yet,” she fluttered her own eyelashes in response. Apparently, two could play that game and she was better at it.
“Fine. Some explosive punches coming right up,” I waved my arms and used a broad swath of my recently trained up not-telekinesis to push all the weapons out of the way.
Yume frowned, gathered them up in small batches, slotted them all back in the racks, and then vanished the rack out of the protective bubble by having it fall through the floor to land back with the other weapons.
“I might still have a thing or two to learn about that spell,” I admitted as I admired her clean-up.
“Or cleanliness in general,” she smirked as I considered the ease with which I could pick up dirty clothes and dishes now. I’d never have to do mundane chores again.
I was smiling at that as I watched her put her hands on her hips, lean back, and take a deep breath. “You good?” I reached out to her.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Not all of us are fountains of endless magic,” she waved me off. “Explode some stuff with your punches. That’s an order.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I focused on a space six inches in front of where I could fully extend my fist and executed a perfect jab.
Nothing.
“Keep trying,” she stood nearby and critiqued me.
I kept trying. I tried a mental workaround like I had before. Nothing. I tried cursing myself out to motivate myself through negative reinforcement. Nothing. I tried positive reinforcement, but that hippie crap didn’t work either. I even had Yume whisper the things she wanted to do to me once we were alone. Nothing. Honestly, if a sexy Asian girl whispering nasty things in my ear didn’t make things explode, nothing else would.
“Fuuuck,” I exhaled as I threw my thousandth punch. That was not an exaggeration. I counted. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t winded thanks to my enhanced gifts and could have kept going. In fact, that was the problem.
No matter what I thought or did, the spell wouldn’t activate while it knew my A-Class enhanced powers were more than capable of handling the task.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Yume finally called a stop to it once it was clear that continued failure was becoming unproductive. “You’ll have your moment. I promise,” she caressed my face and planted a kiss on my cheek to make me feel better.
It worked, but what would work a lot better was, “Can I try a new spell now? Pretty please,” I tried puppy dog eyes again.
She gave me an exasperated sigh to warn me not to expect her to roll over so easily in the future but pulled out a piece of folded-up paper. “Fine. But,” she pulled it out of reach before I could get to it. “You’ve got to promise me you’ll keep working on the spell. We both know having extra explosive power to your punches will go a long way in your grand plan of world domination.”
“I’m not planning world domination,” I feigned surprise. “Yet,” I gave her a mischievous smile as I snatched away the new spell. I felt like a kid at Christmas.
“I thought about what you’ve already accomplished and what we worked on today. You’ve got a solid base,” she stated. “So I wanted to compliment that. This spell should help.”
“An illusionary spell,” I scanned the text and how to cast it. It didn’t seem that difficult, and like a lot of the other spells I’d read, it had progressing levels of difficulty. The base level seemed easy enough, but I’d have to cast it to see if my mental block got in the way.
“Okay, start by . . . never mind,” she sighed. “You’re already doing it.”
There was a swirl of light that moved from the ground up in a corkscrew pattern and when it winked out, two Marcuses stood in front of the spell-slinger.
“Making an illusion of yourself is a logical first step because you’re intimately familiar with it,” she explained as another swirl of light whirled next to her. Voila. A second Yume appeared. “Apparently, you’re intimately familiar with me too,” she frowned as she critiqued my second attempt.
I just wiggled my eyes at that. She didn’t know, but I’d delved around in her body’s eldritch energy pathways when we were scrying to find Ramona. It didn’t get much more intimate than that.
“This is pretty sweet,” I grinned as I made some motions and both illusions mirrored them.
“It is, but if you want them to act independently of the caster, that’s going to take a lot more work.”
As if to prove her point, I tried to make my copy mirror me while hers mirrored her. No dice.
“You need to use the crawl, walk, run methodology with this spell. Literally, you have to start by getting the illusions to do base actions before they can operate somewhat independently. This is an illusion spell after all. They aren’t real, physical copies,” she swiped her arm through her copy and it passed right through it.”
“They’d still be great as a distraction,” I dismissed her illusion and focused on the one of me. I poured more power into it in the hopes it would give me better control like the not-telekinesis spell but only succeeded in blowing it up in a shower of sparks. Poor fake me. Apparently, this spell progression required a lighter touch.
I resummoned the illusion and took her methodology literally as I lay down on the ground. Then, I got up while I had the illusion stay down. Who knew something so simple would require enough effort to make me sweat.
“Gabi gave me the footage of the bank job to review,” Yume stated as she watched me work. “I saw that after the fight you had a little trouble ditching Miss Marvelous. This will be a perfect distraction to allow you to escape in the future.”
My eyes brightened at her words. “You’re brilliant,” I was so focused on getting my illusion to roll over like some newborn that I missed her smile.
Time lost all meaning as I worked on improving my illusion’s independent motor skills. Time was actually what I needed to make it work. There weren’t any shortcuts here. Just good old-fashioned, magical elbow grease. By the time she told me to call it quits, I’d gotten fake-me to stand under his own power. Although, he wobbled precariously at times. Still, that took a human baby months and months to learn. I did it in an hour tops.
It was hard for her to pull me away from a spell I was invested in improving, but the best way to do that was . . . “New spell!” I grinned and rubbed my hands together excitedly as she waved the ancient-looking paper in my face.
“Yes,” she giggled as I snatched it from her. “For this one, I’m looking to improve one of your weaknesses.” That sobered me up from the high the last spell gave me.
No one liked being told they had weaknesses, but I wasn’t bullheaded enough to think I didn’t have shortcomings.
“One of the biggest I can see is speed,” she stated.
“I’m not slow,” I replied defensively and showed her by running around the inside of her protective circle. My powerful legs propelled me farther and faster than a normal human. Once I got the rhythm right, I could probably keep up with a car on a city street. Maybe not the highway, but I could get close.
“You’re not, but this is a whole other type of speed we’re talking about,” she clarified.
“Like Ranger speed,” I grimaced.
I remembered how all the warning I had before he punched me was the rumbling of his incoming body rocketing through the air at supersonic speeds. One second, I was alone, and the next, his fist tried to shatter every bone in my body. If this made sure he never snuck up on me again, I was going to learn it pronto.
“I’m assuming I fuel my body with magic to make myself faster,” I started to read the page.
“No! No . . . no . . . no,” she shook her head as her eyes went wide. “Magic is meant to be cast. Allowing it to build up in your body can be extremely harmful,” she gave me a serious look. “After seeing that you can survive a punch from Ranger, one of the ways I’m worried you’ll kill yourself is trying to do something crazy with magic. That’s why you should never, ever build it up without a spell ready to release it. I don’t care if it’s an eldritch fart that could knock down a skyscraper. Don’t do it. Please, promise me,” the look she gave me showed real fear behind her dark eyes.
“Okay,” I opened my arms for the hug she wanted. “I promise. I won’t do something stupid, well . . . that stupid,” I corrected myself. I was going to do something stupid at some point or another. That was a given. I just wouldn’t blow myself up with magic. It was a solid compromise.
“So, how does this bad boy work?” I released her and got back to reading.
“You mean bad girl,” she grinned now that I’d appeased her. “I invented it myself. There are a couple of ways to do speed, but this is the most efficient and comes with some pretty awesome perks.”
“You create a bubble around yourself,” I frowned.
“A time dilation bubble,” she clarified. “Think of it as a field. When someone or something comes at you, it must pass through that field. In its most basic form, the spell will slow someone down.”
“That sounds pretty simple,” I considered as I turned the page over. It was one of the wordiest spells I’d ever seen.
“Simple is relative,” she frowned. “Magic is incredibly technical, but also nuanced. It’s part art, part science, and with a healthy dose of chaos. Think of it like the English language.”
“Now you lost me,” I admitted.
“I before E except after C. There, their, and they’re. While I’m very proud of my spell, it’s got some downsides,” she admitted.
As someone about to learn said spell, I wanted to know exactly what those shortfalls were. I had hopes of stopping Ranger’s speed advantage, the dynamic nature of Miss Marvelous’s powers, and even the ordnance Dr. Jones would bring to the fight when I finally faced him. Was this the spell that would give me the advantage I needed?
She read the question off my face. “I designed it specifically to counter a speedster who was stealing from our shop a few years back,” she gave me the background. “But that’s its purpose . . . to stop people, not necessarily things. Still, I’ve continued to build on it since then. If you keep on reading, you’ll see the more power applied to it, the more it can alter the field to affect things like bullets, missiles, artillery, and even arrows or rocks fired from a slingshot. Put enough power into it and you can damn near freeze anything before it reaches you.”
For Yume, that meant there might be a way to stop her from getting shot. I was all for that. My spell-slinger was way too breakable for my liking. As for me, I could feel my lips peel back in a shit-eating grin. If I poured enough power into the spell, I could make Ranger a sitting duck. Now, I just needed to figure out how much power it took.
Thankfully, that desire provided the fuel for me to cast the spell. I needed to know I could hurt the man who killed me. There was no want involved.
“Now to cast it . . . you already did it didn’t you,” she sighed as I nodded excitedly. When I was extra motivated, I could do anything I put my mind to.
“Remember, people and things react differently to the spell,” she called over one of the medieval swords to her with her own not-telekinesis spell and swung it at me. Her sword sliced through my speed field without slowing down despite the power I put into it, and I had to step back to avoid taking an embarrassing hit.
“But if I hold an object and swing it at you,” she moved forward to the edge of the bubble, swung, and her hands and the sword froze.
“That’s weird,” I admitted as I reached forward and poked the sword.
“It is. Remember, I before E except after C. This is one of those times. Despite being weird and confusing, it’ll come in handy if a speedster tries to chop your head off at Mach Three.”
I agreed.
“Now, pour more power into it,” she instructed.
I did as she wanted and poured more power into the spell. I mean a lot of power. I wasn’t going to lie. I wanted to impress her. She developed a kick-ass spell, and I wanted to show her its full potential. I wanted to be able to stop bullets, missiles, and all the other crap feds and capes would throw at me. She stepped back so her hands wouldn’t get caught in the field, swung again, and the blade passed through at about half speed.
“Huh,” I frowned. I put a lot of magic into that. It should have stopped the sword.
“I see you noticed the problem,” she saw my face. “Mucking about with time doesn’t give you a one-for-one return on your eldritch investment, and honestly, I don’t know why. It could have something to do with a substance’s rate of decay, maybe it's all about organic versus non-organic matter, or it could be as simple as existence doesn’t like spell-slingers screwing with the fundamental forces of the universe.”
So much for Yume being bulletproof. I knew for a fact the amount of power I put into that iteration was something she wasn’t capable of. At least I could still stop people. That increased my advantage against feds like Ranger and Miss Marvelous.
“I can do better,” I shook out my arms and refused to accept defeat. “Let’s see how far I can push it,” I rose to the challenge.
I pulled power into the spell. Then, I pulled some more. When I felt like I was a balloon about to pop, I grabbed up a few more handfuls and stuffed them in there. The struggle was real. As I shoved more and more power into the spell, I was pretty sure this might be the most eldritch energy I’d ever used. Even my blast that leveled Pack’s underwater HQ felt weaker. I wasn’t going to lie, it was exhilarating to test myself.
