Fall From Grace, page 20
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
No! I barked inside my own mind, refusing to accept the rules of the game at face value. Magni will not die!
Hecate came to mind, and the words of her final message filled my thoughts. Every neuron acted as a detective, scientist, or philosopher, urgently working in tandem to decipher her suggestion to use my head.
I knew the answer was right there, just beyond my grasp, like an astronaut floating in zero gravity and trying to stretch their body to reach the desperately needed tool that hovered just out of reach while red lights flashed and warning sirens blared all around.
As my fingertip touched the edge of the answer, the game abruptly began.
32
MAGNI
With tentacles that were as thick as the ancient sequoia trees in California, the mass in the sky sought to crush every square inch of the platform that floated in a dead universe.
On the note of immediate survival, Magni turned and leaped through the gateway, not considering what would happen as he fell from the clouds.
A monstrous sound of impact made Magni shudder with how close he had been to becoming a 2D version of himself, squished smaller than a piece of paper. His cloned allies hadn’t been as lucky, however, seeming to lack an undeniable sense of self-preservation.
Wind didn’t rush past him as he fell, reminding him that he was an incorporeal being in the land of the living. Remembering Ludvig, Magni gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and took in his surroundings.
There, a few hundred feet below him, was his body being controlled by the Ether.
“I don’t think so,” Magni growled as he oriented himself like a missile and willed his incorporeal body to soar to his awaiting flesh.
As he struck home and entered his skull at incredible speeds, darkness exploded in his vision and impact rocked his mind, sending Magni tumbling into unconsciousness.
33
LOCKE
The giant spider’s hiss sounded like a dinosaur’s roar to Locke’s ears, making his stomach tighten and hands become clammy.
“We must not break anything in here!” Russell urgently said, making Locke roll his eyes and sigh at the restriction.
“May I ask why?” He had already guessed the answer, but wanted to hear it out loud regardless.
“Some of the relics could explode, taking all of Faerie with them.”
“Oh,” Locke let out with a flutter of his eyes and quick shake of his head, utter disbelief filling his thoughts. “I just thought they were priceless or something.”
“That too. But mostly the exploding part.”
“Of course…” Locke sighed, stilling his nerves and preparing for battle.
Elder Tafoya came to mind, standing in the Council’s training range and peering down at a fabricated Houston, demons pouring out from countless holes in the ground.
What did she say? Locke asked himself, cursing his human brain for not having an eidetic memory like John.
The image of her sending out a cloud of sparkles toward the manifested battlefield played out in Locke’s mind.
As the demons began dying without the human world suffering any casualties, Elder Tafoya turned to Locke and said, “Always another way.”
“Subtlety…” Locke mouthed to himself, changing the building energy from a violent, explosive attack to something befitting a delicate field of battle.
The monster let out a full-blown roar, exposing flexing mandibles the size of human arms, and burst forward with great speed.
Stepping forward with his lead leg, Locke held up his glowing wand and sent out a cloud of energy that sparked with electricity.
The monster saw the attack coming and leaped high into the air, latching onto one of the tall pillars before jumping back down.
Collapsing all of the cloud to a single point the size of a marble, Locke flicked his wand toward the hissing wolf-spider, but managed to only blow off two of its eight legs.
The creature didn’t seem to notice as it smashed into the stone floor where Russell had just been, turning the rock into dust with the kinetic force.
Russell finished a series of backflips that had taken him away from the spot the spider now occupied.
A wooden spear appeared on his back from a sheath that had remained unseen, until now.
The creature roared in agitation right as a sharp projectile lodged itself in the monster’s throat, cutting off the scream and replacing it with a furious gurgle.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Locke sent out another cloud of electrified particles, trapping the monster in a mist of lightning.
Fur was singed, flesh bubbled, and the creature dropped heavily to the ground after several seconds of torture.
Seeing the beast was down, Locke let the cloud dissipate, but kept a scowling eye on the thing.
Stepping forward, Russell grasped the spear that extended from the spider’s mouth, tearing it free with a sound that reminded Locke of stepping on dry leaves.
“Neat trick,” Russell told Locke, his smile just beginning to show his tusks of adulthood.
“Thank y—” Locke began, cut off by the spider lunging forward to sink its massive mandibles through Russell’s upper back, fangs exiting through his chest.
“I…” Russell mouthed.
“NO!” Locke bellowed as he leaped forward, pushed his wand at the center of the few remaining eyes of the giant spider, and exploded its entire body with a surge of raw, unbridled energy.
Parts rained down, turning into ectoplasm shortly after striking the ground and various shelves.
Russell collapsed to his knees, the spear falling from his weakening grip as the spider’s mandibles began turning transparent and melting from two gushing wounds on the troll’s chest.
“Stay with me, Russell. Stay with me!” Locke cried out, catching his young companion as he was falling to his back.
Looking down at the gushing wounds, he helped Russell ease into a lying position, a dark feeling gestating in his chest at seeing just how much blood there was.
Locke’s whirling mind flicked through all the healing spells he had learned, only to realize he had never tried them on a creature of Faerie, nor had he gotten to the advanced portions that dealt with catastrophic injuries.
“I…I’m scared…” Russell wheezed, blood streaming from both corners of his mouth as his wide eyes stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t be scared, Russell. Gh…Ghle is waiting for you…in the Veil,” Locke managed to get out through a constricting throat, hoping he was saying the right things to the adolescent, remembering he had talked about her. “You’ll get to play again. Just…just like when you were kids.”
“Ghle…” Russell exhaled, his eyes glazing over and the gushing blood slowing to a dribble as his young heart gave one final beat.
Locke kneeled in silence for a few moments before moving his palm over the empty eyes, closing them forever. With how Russell’s mouth lolled open, he could see the adolescent tusks now coated in crimson, portraying to the man a dark symbolism at the loss of an innocent.
“Thank you, Russell,” Locke said to the empty vessel as he patted the pocket holding the silver necklace. “I’ll make sure they’ll remember you for saving all of Faerie.”
A hiss came from somewhere beyond the safe’s entrance, followed by another, and Locke smoothly got to his feet, teeth bared in a snarl.
Turning to the small door with creatures moving in the darkness beyond, Locke sucked in a deep breath, screamed at the top of his lungs, and rushed forward, wand dripping with furious power.
34
JOHN
Depweg disappeared into an obsidian portal as another gateway manifested right behind where Magni hovered a hundred feet off the ground.
The long sword whooshed through the air fast enough to briefly break the sound barrier, like the tip of a whip, and sliced through where Magni was with ease, but his blade tasted nothing but air.
I watched in wonderment, briefly playing the scene back inside my head, and was amazed to realize Magni hadn’t moved, even at impossible speeds. The obsidian blade had simply gone through him without doing any damage.
A thought formed, and I looked down at my own weapons, both coated in heavenflame and elemental electricity, making me long for a way to share my power with him somehow.
Depweg’s manifested sword could destroy the summoned creatures borne from the Ether, but not the master who ruled over all of them. I likened it to how enough blunt force might be able to shatter my blood manifestations—before I’d donned my angelic armor—while at the same time, my body was considerably stronger, requiring more effort to potentially kill me.
With a gasp of understanding, I shot my face back toward the pair, about to shout my findings to Depweg, when Magni finally reacted.
Depweg was holding his sword with both hands at one side, the conclusion of his swing resembling a baseball batter who had missed the pitch.
A sheet of colorless Ether erupted out of Magni’s back, slicing through Depweg’s forearms as easily as a samurai sword swung at two small saplings.
Depweg forcefully sucked in a long breath in preparation for the scream of pain. His sword, which still had two hands holding the grip, tumbled toward the ground, along with the rest of Depweg. My heart dropped with him.
Magni’s entire body jerked once, as if something unseen had slammed into him from above, and his face began stretching downward like freshly made taffy.
His mouth elongated, the lower jaw drooping, and Magni’s face began resembling the mask from Scream. Fingers grew into skeletal spikes as the arms and legs stretched just a bit too long.
The creature froze in place as a physical wave glided from under the stretching skin, returning the grotesque features to normal in an instant.
“What the…” I mouthed as I watched in horrid fascination. A small part of my brain began to decipher what had happened, while the rest of my mind readied to fight.
Sensing my opportunity, I exploded off the ground with powerful legs and a single flap of my wings, which sounded like two cannons being fired at precisely the same time.
Teeth bared beneath my expressionless mask, I blurred through the air toward my friend and wrapped my wings in a loose circle around both him and his arms. Unfortunately for me, his hands were still clutching the obsidian sword, which cut through one of my wings like stabbing a butcher knife through a car hood.
“Eraaaah!” I belted out while doing my best to ignore the pain and maneuver Depweg’s hands back in place over his gushing forearm stumps.
Sensing an incoming attack and hearing a whoosh of air from where I calculated Magni had been hovering, I made a gesture that resembled a soul-loosening sneeze, and blinked us in a random direction. I could only hope it didn’t lead to us appearing inside a wall or tree…or anything.
Unfortunately, I was still carrying the momentum from blurring through the air to catch Depweg, and that coupled with the blink through the Tim Burton–esque courtyard…well.
“AAAAHHH!” I yelped as my movement was halted like a bicyclist running into a brick wall at 100 mph. Both my knees were shattered and bent backward as my face arced downward toward the ground.
Depweg had flown free from the loose grip my wings had around him, and he was now tumbling end over end and skipping over the ground as if he were a stone that had been expertly thrown across a flat lake.
The eerie and now recognizable sound of a reverse cymbal crash started as my numb legs began to vibrate.
“Oh shi—” was all I could get out before the ground exploded from under me.
I was punched in the stomach, chest, and worst of all, my balls as my brain tsked at my repeated mistake.
Just like when I had shifted to the hospital, a portion of my body had appeared within solid rock, and physics, even in Faerie, didn’t like that kind of nonsense.
The sensation of weightlessness took hold as I was flung into the air from the explosion; I just went with it, my limp body rag dolling in sickening cartwheels and flips.
After what felt like several minutes, the air whooshed out of me as I landed face-first in a grassy field.
“Ow. Ow, ow,” I groaned breathlessly while slowly pushing myself onto my back. “I landed on my keys!” My hand rubbed at my quad where my front pocket was, and then I remembered I didn’t have any keys. Instead, I was met with a divot pushed into my flesh, and I correctly guessed I must have landed on a particularly stubborn rock tough enough to indent my preter-flesh.
“Eeeeeeeeeee,” was the only noise I could make as my diaphragm relaxed and I sucked in a sharp breath.
From my vantage point, I could see there were now two holes in the sky, and they were dancing around each other.
After a moment, my vision began stitching itself back together, and the dual holes in the sky merged into a single one once more.
“It looks…like a butthole…” I chuckled to myself while staring at the anus in the sky at the center of the voluminous clouds.
With my eyes still locked on the cloud sphincter, my body repaired the numerous injuries—including the hole in my golden wing from Depweg’s sword, reminding me how obsidian directly countered the ivory and gold of my manifestations.
As the last of my parts popped back in place, an idea came to me. I narrowed my eyes at the hole in the sky.
“I must fuck that butthole…” I said without a trace of irony as Mjolnir flew back into my grip, already dripping with lightning.
I took a moment to once again appreciate how my manifestations knew when to disappear; otherwise, that tumble might have resulted in some nasty boo-boos for either me or Depweg…or both.
My will sharpened, and I focused on connecting a stream of electrical power from my body and straight up through the hole in the sky.
“How about a little electro-foreplay on the ol’ prostate, cuckcake,” I politely asked as raw electricity began dripping off my entire body, making me look like a Tesla coil.
“Eyaaaah!” I heard Depweg cry from somewhere nearby, making me drop all my focus at the urgent tone of his voice.
A scream could tell you a lot about what happened, even if under similar circumstances. Instances such as smashing your finger with a hammer or getting your hand caught in a car hood as it accidentally slammed shut both resulted in yelps of pain, but where the hammer would result in a quick, pained “Ah!,” the hand crushed by a slammed car hood might be more akin to a “AAAAHHHH-MyHandIsStillCaughtAndI’mPanicking-Aaaahhhh!” kind of scream.
Depweg’s was the latter.
“Fuck!” I barked while dropping my attack and sprinting at impossible speeds toward the sound.
An explosion demanded my attention where I had just been, and I dared a quick glance over my shoulder. A brilliant dome of pure electricity bubbled out like an EMP blast from the release of the gathered power I had dropped while sprinting away.
Noted for later use.
Turning my attention forward again, I quickly located Depweg, whose hands were just finishing the healing process, except for one tiny problem.
Magni was standing over Depweg, bending at the waist and pushing his palms through my friend’s flesh as it tried to regrow. Because my mind liked pattern recognition, I couldn’t help but imagine standing in the bread aisle at the grocery store and pushing my fingers through two complete loaves so that only the thin plastic held them together.
Depweg looked like he was being electrocuted, or maybe like he was sitting in a giant cast-iron skillet as it was being heated, squirming on his back in an effort to flee from the unimaginable pain of having someone inside of his flesh, right where all the clusters of nerves liked to stem from.
My stomach suggested now was a good time to churn and threaten expulsion as I saw how Magni wriggled his fingers. I could almost smell the cooking of meat from the energy Magni was pouring into his hands.
“Let him GO!” I bellowed as I blurred forward, shifting the hammer from my left hand to my right and coating it in electricity.
The Ether had just enough time to gaze over its shoulder and realize what was happening before I swung Mjolnir down and up, like a one-handed golfer, and smashed it into the side of his stomach.
Just like before, another bubble of energized matter burst outward, coating the three of us in charged electrons.
Though it didn’t hurt me, Depweg seemed to buck at the wave while Magni—who was in the middle of flying through the air—shrieked in rage and pain.
Daring a glance at my friend, I realized that maybe having Magni’s hands torn from inside his flesh might have contributed to the jolt of agony he’d experienced.
But I didn’t have time to focus on Depweg’s situation when I knew he would be fine in a matter of seconds.
Turning back to the Ether, who was wearing Magni like a protective skinsuit, I flashed my canines and let my eyes go full crimson as I let go of my inhibitions.
It was either Magni…or everything else, including my friends.
Now that the battle was on the ground, I let my golden wings vanish as I went after my opponent.
Magni smashed into the outside of the creepy, asymmetrical castle that looked like it had been created by a demented artist high on psychedelics.
I took note that he didn’t immediately recover after my charged strike, and dared a malicious smile.
The Ether shuddered again, and its features began morphing like before. The whole process seemed to pain the creature as it apparently fought to regain control.
In the back of my brain, the thoughts I had been working on since watching the first time it happened came to a conclusion and delivered the message to the forefront of my mind.
“Magni!” I blurted, hope blooming inside my chest. “Fight him, Magni!”
Another ripple appeared from just beneath the creature’s skin, and contorted features shrunk back to resemble an intact Magni.
My eyes dimmed to their normal purple as my resolve to kill Magni waned.
