Issue #59 – Return of the Magi
Part 4
The Sword That Defends formed in Wayne’s hand and with one swing, he cut himself free of the stone grip holding him. Wasting no time, he lunged forward and cut the zip cuff binding Dana.
She leapt to her feet and swiftly summoned the Shield That Overcomes. Just in time, as it turned out, because Theresa reflexively took control of the bricks scattered about the ground and launched them at the pair like a blast from a colossal shotgun.
Instead of just blocking them though, Dana thrust the heels of her hands forward, causing the shield to lurch and deflect the bricks back at Theresa and Jennifer. In midair, each one suddenly shot off in almost a right angle courtesy of Jeremy.
“Are these two as tough as Inexorable?” Chaos asked Occult.
“Not as tough, but they can take it.”
With a quirk of Chaos’s arms, the reservoirs on his wrists clicked open and delivered measured doses of water into his palms which he quickly converted to glowing spheres of pent up energy. “Then let’s test their limits.”
Dana blocked the first hastily thrown Chaos Nova, bracing against the explosion as she did, but the second was lobbed in a high arc that landed behind her and Wayne. The blast blew them both off their feet.
“I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be needed at the tower.” Chaos said to Occult before rising into the air.
Manikin struggled as Facsimile cuffed her hands and feet so she could get back into the fight. The construct locked gazes with Occult despite the shadows gathered around the latter’s face.
Occult swallowed, trying to remedy her dry mouth. “I… what about you?”
Chaos ducked past the shield and swung for Dana, who blocked it and slid away. This left an opening for Wayne to charge him with the sword—only Jeremy jerked it out of his hands as he raised it, causing him to charge directly into a gauntlet assisted haymaker.
“They’re the distraction! Once you any the others stop Morganna, they’ll stop fighting.” Chaos shouted, not daring to take his eyes off Wayne, who recovered amiably thanks to his non-stop training.
Said training also meant that being unarmed didn’t limit his offensive abilities all the much either. When Chaos swung at him again, he stepped into it and pulled the hero out of the air by the shoulder and belt. Swinging him around, he slammed Chaos hard into the ground, only to get much the same treatment by Facsimile, who barreled into him in the form of a golden tiger.
A low drone filled the air as back-up arrived, courtesy of Elle, in the form of a swarm of hornets.
“Go!” Chaos shouted at Occult as he got to his feet.
Occult took a deep breath and one last look at the cold, penetrating stare of Manikin. Then she turned away to face the tower.
Morganna was there. Her aunt was there.
And a hard choice was waiting there as well.
From her reagent pouch, she produced a twist of horse hair, and with a word, she opened a teleportation portal at her feet. Mind awash in anxiety, she sank into the astral plane.
***
Codex saw Inexorable coming from her and forced herself not to telegraph her movements. Her armor was meant to protect against weapons fire and knives, not the force of a bus crash, which was what Inexorable was capable of and if he saw through what she was doing, she’d be too close to avoid him for long.
So when the time came, she shot form the hip. Her arm twitched and three fragile capsules shattered on the ground. Their payloads escaped and mixed in the air, transforming into an explosion of gray smoke.
The move was timed perfectly; just before Inexorable reached the still intact field of ice between them at speed. Codex ducked low and rolled as he slipped and was propelled by his momentum through the smoke and into the sealed entrance of the tower.
A hollow, resounding thud went up as the indestructible man hit the stone wall at speed. Spiderwebs of cracks expanded from where he hit, but contrary to the plan, he didn’t break through even with Zero’s efforts to make it more brittle.
Inexorable shook off the collision and turned. Rock dust powdered his hair and the side of his face. He coughed once, then spat to the side to clear his airways. Ski mask had come off in the confusion. “You think that was funny, huh? Well we’re gonna she who’s laughing in a minute.”
A beam of black heat hit him squarely in the chest, driving him back until his back hit the wall.
“None of this is funny.” said Darkness. “Maybe you don’t get just how dangerous the woman in that tower is.”
“Ha.” barked Inexorable. “And you’re gonna go with that as your reason to go in against the crazy bitch? You must not have a whole lot going on upstairs either. Nah, I think I’ll take my stand right here.”
Zero came down to hover in the midst of the disappointing smoke. “We already beat you once before.” There wasn’t any threat or arrogance in her voice, just the quiet statement of fact.”
“With tricks. With a spell to turn off my powers.” Inexorable challenged, feeling his anger well up again. “You want a rematch, then come on. All three of you!”
Darkness let fly another blast of black heat, but this time, he saw it coming and stood his ground in the center of it. “There’s four of us.”
Inexorable snorted, flicking a look toward Hope, who was just standing and staring. “What, her? I like the sexy new outfit, but everybody knows she never does anything besides drag one of you off if you go down. What is she, a healer? She gonna get rid of me with soothing action?”
“Soothing probably wouldn’t be a bad idea right now.” said Codex into her comm.
There was no time for him to wonder what that meant, as the moment she said it, the indignation and mounting rage that had driven him to charge into the wall lifted like a thick, velvet curtain drawing away from a stage. Just as heavy and even more disorienting was the feeling of comfort and peace that replaced it.
“I… huh?” he started.
“It’s alright, Jay.” Codex said, her tone suddenly calm and motherly. “After we’re done here, I’ll make sure you get to visit with your family.”
Fighting to keep his eyes open and alert, Inexorable shook his head. “How d’you know me? You don’t know my family.”
“Mother Roberta, sisters Celestine and Dominique?” said Codex, “All there in your prison file, Jay. I bet they’ll be pretty disappointed—more disappointed than when they heard you were running the Lobos—when they hear you’re trying to help someone trying to destroy the world as we know it.”
Very carefully, the walked toward him, or rather toward the wall. She’d never seen Hope’s powers hit someone so hard and didn’t know how long she could hold it on him like that.
Inexorable swayed when he went to shrug. “I didn’t go out and ask for this. Ya’know, Manikin… she ya’know, broke in on me. I was just tryin’ to sleep. And then… I mean have you seen what I can do? Tell me it’s easy to give up.”
Codex slipped past him, giving him a quick pat on the shoulder. “Oh, mama knows, Jay. No one blames you.” Except for the police, the City of Mayfield, City of Fredricksburg, the ROCIC, and me, she was careful not to say.
“Yeah they will.” Jay babbled. “I’m just another thug to these assholes. But they don’t get it. I got to be the goddamn man. Sure, Morganna’s crazy, but you should see where I live and M—she gets me anything I ask. She’s great.”
Codex took a case off her belt and flipped it open. She believed in being prepared for anything, especially given that she didn’t have powers that could be used to brute force solutions. And when a brute force solution was called for, nothing said brute force quite like her four small blocks of plastic explosives.
“’Great?” she asked, partly out of genuine curiosity and partly to keep him talking and unfocused. “I thought the manikin was just a golem… a kind of magically powered machine.” As she talked, she pressed the explosives into the widest, deepest cracks and pushed the detonators in with her thumb.
“She says, but if she is, she’s like the robot on that show. Only thing not human is what she’s… Hey. What—what the hell am I saying?”
With only three bricks in place, Codex turned, and knowing what was coming, juked to the side. Just as she expected, Inexorable’s fist flashed past her and into the wall, punching a hole in it. In the time it took him to extricate himself from the wall, she was off, running and calling up the detonator controls on her palmtop.
The charges went off with a thump and the sound of scattering debris. None of it reached her, as a shield of overlapping, red plates interposed itself in its path.
“That’s not going to work.” Occult was standing with Hope now. Her own palmtop, the one containing the Books, was in her hand.
“I was afraid of that, but the analysis I got on the plane just turned up normal granite.” Codex admitted.
Occult shook her head. “We need to develop some tech that can detect magic.” She pointed as Inexorable emerged from the blast center and was met with yet another shot of black heat. “This is a wizard’s tower. The important thing here is that among… well a lot of other things, they were designed to be fortresses. Not only are they tough, but they regenerate. The hole you just blew; if it even got all the way through, is going to be too small to squeeze through by now.”
Zero and Darkness were both forced into aerial gymnastics as Inexorable started tearing up the ground to throw chunks of it at them.
“How do we take it down then?” Codex asked.
Still flipping through the Book of Reason, Occult shook her head. “I’m not sure yet. There’s a lynchpin of some kind called the ‘tower seed’; the coupling between the structure and the energies it draws from the local leylines. The tower can’t hold together if it’s even shifted a tiny bit out of alignment.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming.”
Occult scowled at the Book. “And a big one too: the seed is embedded in the foundation of the tower. We’d need a blast big enough to breech the wall and the bottom floor in order to shift it.”
“Should have bought more explosives.” Codex muttered.
***
At the top of the tower, Morganna caressed the face of her original body with both hands. Alone in her sanctum, she had removed her dress entirely and was leaning over the basin. She was so close that all the separated her eyes from the eyes of the body were a handful of inches and the crystalline, blue liquid.
“Mine.” She said in a half growl. “I will… return to you. And then… then I will be rid of her and have my… my power back.”
Her hands roamed to the top of the body’s head. She imagined that she could feel the honed reflexes and inflections that made up the spells she’s learned and stolen in her time. As addled as her mind was, she was exceedingly competent with magic.
And that was why she was here. Magic wasn’t just a force to be manipulated; to master it was an effort of the mind, the soul, and even the body.
Anyone could use their mind and perform a ritual, but it took a special soul to cast spells quickly and with minimal reagents. And to truly master it, one needed to train their body to perform the motions and form the words reflexively. It was a process that took years of training without certain forms of dark magic, and without it, some spells were all but impossible to cast correctly.
Her body was a spellbook that, once combined with her mind and soul would make her powerful beyond imagination—and this time, there was no one strong enough to stop her
“Breath.” She spoke the words in her old tongue, Middle English, and as she did so, she exhaled. Ripples formed between them and the breath became visible as pale, white smoke as it sank through the water to seek the body’s nostrils. Despite being fully submerged, Morganna’s body began to breath; slow and deep from her core.
Something like a smile, but bereft of warmth and humor appeared on Morganna’s face and she started to climb into the basin.
A shock of pain wracked her, pulling an agonized groan from her and causing her to topple off the side of the basin.
She rose holding a hand to her temple, a spell on her lips. Rose sparks danced across her eyes, intensifying until they overtook the natural color of her eyes. In her perception, the room changed; everything took on the rosy hue, the walls and floor turned translucent, and far below, she could see the purple and silver light of the tower seed.
And before her stood a tall, dark man. He wore a scarlet robe over armor made of hammered metal, and brandished a bronze spear and a copper shield.
“You.” She said, squinting at him. “I don’t…don’t know you.”
“I am Ephemeral.” said the young hero. “And I know you; what terrible things you’ve done to people I care about , what you would do if given the chance. I am here to stop you.”
Morganna glanced back at her body. It was just another inert and barely visible thing on the astral plane, but the spells animating it until she was returned to it shimmered white there. An astral side attack might serve them.
“Astral beast” she babbled, “You cannot stop me. There aren’t… are none alive that can stop me. I’ve… I’ve waited. And worked. And… I… I deserve this. Nine hundred years. No more waiting. Not by… not by you.”
Red light filled her hand, both on the material and astral planes, a roiling storm that boiled the astral plane around it. She drew back that hand, prepared to strike.
But slender fingers, colored a sickly inter-meshing of green and deep blue on the astral, caught her wrist.
Morganna turned and was stunned to find herself staring into those same eyes that stared back from the mirror at her these past two years: Tatiana Farnsworth.
About Vaal
Landon Porter is the author of
The Descendants and
Rune Breaker. Follow him on Twitter
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