by Tao Wong
Ten minutes later, I wiped my hand across my face, knocking my sunglasses aside slightly. I readjusted them as I looked up to call to my partner. “Hey, I’m done with the first part. Can you… Alexa?”
I frowned, staring around me. After a moment, I shrugged my shoulders and found a comfortable seat out of the sun to rest my eyes, figuring the blonde would find me when she was done. I fished out a pair of painkillers and dry-swallowed the gel pills down, cursing Alexa quietly for taking the water with her. After that, I closed my eyes to rest while I waited for the medicine to kick in.
“Probably shouldn’t have pushed for five today,” I muttered to myself eventually. The soft crunch of bare earth had me half open my eyes and look up as I began to berate the woman. “You know, for a… what are you—”
“Night, night!” the thin teenager said, a wide grin on his face as he swung the crowbar at my head and interrupted me. I twisted aside too late, the blow landing on top of my head and sending pain exploding through it. Even as I cried out in anguish, a second hit arrived and sent me into peaceful darkness.
Chapter 17
“You need to check on him. This isn’t the movies. He could be dying over there!” Alexa’s voice came to me as I woke, an unusual thread of concern running through her voice. I groaned as conscious thought returned, along with a splitting pain through my skull and a slight case of wooziness. As I opened my mouth, I felt a slight tug on my scalp, then the cracking of dried blood along with a fresh stab of pain.
“See, he’s awake. He’s fine,” a familiar voice said. “Anyway, you supes are all protected, right? Have some healing factor working for you?”
“That’s not true at all! And not if you hit him in the head. Especially not twice. What were you thinking?” Alexa snarled.
“I thought he’d just, you know, fall unconscious,” muttered another voice. I recalled this voice, and a flash of anger helped clear some of the woolliness from my brain.
As I shifted, I found I could barely move, my arms, legs, and body tied to a chair. With effort, I cracked my eyes open and regretted the move immediately as ice picks were driven into my head. My eyes watered, and I whimpered as my eyes reflexively shut once more.
“Shit, I think he’s got a concussion,” Alexa said. “Henry. Don’t fall asleep again. Do you hear me? Don’t fall asleep. You might die.”
“Not true actually,” a third, nasally voice said. “Most recent recommendations are for an individual to sleep through minor concussions to increase healing speed.”
“What part of cracking his skull is minor?!” Alexa said testily, her voice rising. “If you check my bag, the blue water bottle is a healing potion. If you feed it to him, he’ll get better.”
“Oooh, let’s feed the wizard a potion that we don’t know. How dumb do you think we are, lady?”
“Try some of it yourself first then!” Alexa said.
I tried to listen to their conversation further, but the pain in my head pushed against my consciousness, and I faded out. The next thing I knew, someone was dribbling a liquid into my mouth. After spluttering a bit, I eventually swallowed the drink rather than choke to death. You’d think a healing potion would taste good, but mostly it tasted like battery acid. Thankfully, the potion got to work right away as it cleared some of the mushiness in my brain and reduced my pain.
“Man, I should have drunk some of that. Look at the scalp go—”
“Now let us go. If you don’t…” Alexa said, her voice rising.
“Oh God, you’re going to threaten us now? I think you’re misunderstanding the situation you’re in,” the leader’s voice said.
“Please.” I groaned. “Please…”
“Go on, Henry,” Alexa said encouragingly.
“Shut up!” I said. Each word uttered was a cudgel to my poor senses. Stunned silence filled the room before laughter and giggles exploded from around me.
“You—” Alexa fell silent. However, outside of occasional snorts of laughter, our kidnappers and Alexa thankfully complied with my request.
No longer assaulted by the noise, I focused on the notifications I saw beneath my eyelids.
Henry Tsien dealt 29 damage by Wizard Wannabe.
Henry Tsien dealt 43 damage by Wizard Wannabe.
Henry Tsien has gained 24 health points due to resting.
Henry Tsien has gained 25 health points from Minor Healing Potion.
Once again, I was grateful for the increased healing rate that resting and the system had granted me. Receiving over half my health pool in damage from blows to the head was probably a guaranteed concussion. Heck, the way my thoughts kept shifting and the throbbing pain probably meant I had one, lessened as it was by the potion. However, if we had been kidnapped—and I’d have to assume we had been—lying down on the job was probably not the best option.
I focused, pulling on my mana as I called forth my Heal spell. It was a struggle, the pain and the fact that my arms were tied didn’t help. I chanted the words under my breath and failed as an unexpected throb broke my concentration. Again, I tried and failed. Only on the fourth attempt did I finally get the result I desired.
Heal Cast
24% Synchronicity
Without the system help, I probably couldn’t have called the spell into being at all. I groaned slightly as I felt mana quicken the healing process in my body, minor cuts and bruises fixing themselves even as the wound in my head slowly fixed itself.
“Oy! What are you doing,” the leader of the teenagers asked and followed it with a kick.
I grunted, my concentration broken and the spell dissipating. The backlash was painful enough that I faded out for a second.
“Gupta. I thought you were watching him.”
“Sorry. I was getting a drink,” Gupta called. I mentally allocated the voice to the South Asian.
Tired of not being able to see, I started the laborious process of opening my eyes. I cracked them open by a slit, letting them adjust a bit before I stared around the room. I winced, having to pause when my head spun again as I moved too fast once more. Not surprisingly, the idiot teenagers were our kidnappers, the leader of the group glaring straight at me. The room we were in was a dull grey and made of concrete with no external windows, lit by harsh, white fluorescent lamps.
“You doing okay, Henry?” Alexa asked me, her voice low. I turned my head in the direction of her voice, craning my neck to the side to see the initiate trussed up beside me.
“What… what happened?” I slurred slightly, my throat dry.
“I heard something around the corner, and when I went to check it out, they led me on a little chase. By the time I got back, they had you. They threatened to kill you if I didn’t give up too,” Alexa said.
“You believed them?” I said, staring at the three teenagers who had moved away and were arguing in front of us. From what I could pick up, they were fighting over guard duties. Thinking back to their threat, I couldn’t believe it. Sure, they had beaten me up, but kill me? Whatever the movies said, there was a big difference between punching someone and actually killing them. And those three…
“No. But I was scared they’d lose their grip and hurt you. Thought I’d have a chance to turn it around later,” Alexa continued to whisper.
“I take it that failed too.”
“They’re surprisingly good at tying knots,” Alexa grumbled and tugged on the arm restraints again to show me. “And they’ve been keeping a pretty good eye on us. But I’ll get us out soon.”
“Great. Then I’m going to sleep. Wake me when you’re ready,” I said.
Alexa opened her mouth to say something else, but the group broke up, and Gupta came back to glare at us. I shut my eyes rather than stare at him, trusting Alexa would come through. In either case, I was of no use to anyone in the condition I was in.
***
“Henry. Wake up. Wake. Up,” Alexa half whispered, half hissed at me, pulling me from the comforta
ble darkness of unconsciousness to the painful reality of life.
Henry Tsien has gained 17 health points due to resting.
Not much of a change, but at least some. I looked over at Alexa when I opened my eyes and then followed her insistent jerking of her head to stare ahead. Gupta had been changed out with Tall-and-Thin, who was sitting on a seat with a graphic novel in his hands, watching us occasionally. The bare concrete floor had been painted on, and a very ornate, mystical-looking magic circle had been drawn on it. It looked all kinds of mystical, but with the knowledge Lily had inserted in my head, it also looked very overdone. Sure, it’d work—the same way a car in the 1900s ran. Wherever the other two were, I couldn’t see them with my limited viewpoint.
“This the part they get around to killing us?” I asked Alexa.
“No one’s killing anyone,” Tall-and-Thin said. “We’re not killers.”
“Yeah, my concussion says otherwise.”
“We healed you,” Tall-and-Thin said.
“And we’re grateful, Ozzie,” Alexa butted in. “Aren’t we, Henry?”
I stared at Alexa as she jerked her head toward Ozzie and tried to tell me something with her eyes. After a while, I sighed and nodded in agreement.
“If you aren’t about to kill us, what’s the plan? Tie us up and make us watch you guys do magic badly?” I asked.
“Oh, no. You’re quite important to all this. Well, your blood,” the teenage leader said from behind us. He walked around our chairs, interrupting the conversation to smirk at us. I really, really wanted to hit him now.
“Shouldn’t you say that with a lisp and some fake fangs?” I asked. “Or are you guys just minions?”
“Neither,” the leader growled and kicked my foot.
I winced, and he glared at me.
“It’s because of you we’re forced to do this. If you’d just listened to our warnings, we could have done this a lot easier.”
“Zac, you’re about to start monologuing,” Ozzie said, dropping a hand on Zac’s shoulder.
“Of course I am. That’s what bad guys do!” Zac said and grinned.
“Yeah, but—”
“Relax. We’ve got them tied up. I told you. If they had any real power, they’d have dealt with us already,” Zac said, glaring at Ozzie until Ozzie pulled his hand back. Zac turned back to us and smiled. “All we needed was the barrier to drop a little more, and we’d have been able to successfully finish the summoning. But no, you had to kill our Devil Rats. And then, you had to start sealing all the places of power too. So now, here we are.”
“You’re the idiots summoning the Devil Rats?” I asked. Just as suddenly, pieces started clicking into place. By their very presence, otherworldly beings frayed the edges of our reality. Creatures like the Devil Rats might do only a little, but get enough of them together, and the barriers would drop. These guys didn’t have a lot of power, but boosted by a place of power and with a barrier that was lowered, they might actually have been able to summon something. As I looked at Ozzie, the nagging feeling that I’d seen him somewhere before came back along with a memory. The imp.
“Are you insane?” Alexa growled. “Don’t tell me you’re going to summon a demon to torment the bullies who beat you up?”
“Shut up,” Zac said, glaring at the blonde. “I’ll let you know nobody bullied me at school.” Maybe not Zac, but I noted how both Ozzie and Gupta shifted at Alexa’s words.
“If you say you’re summoning a devil to trade your souls for power, I’m going to save you the trouble. Those trades never work out the way you think they will.” I watched Ozzie and Gupta flinch slightly, and I groaned while Zac just glared at me at first and then his friends.
“We got this. I had my dad help me draft the contract,” Zac snapped.
“Your dad?” I cried incredulously. “What is he, a demon lawyer? Wait, are there demon lawyers?” I asked Alexa.
“There are, but—” Alexa paused, shaking her head after a moment. “There’s no way it’s his dad. We’d know of him if he was.”
“My dad’s the best corporate lawyer in the state!” Zac snapped even as the pair behind him goggled at the byplay between Alexa and me. “I told him I needed it for my role-playing group, and he helped draw it up.”
“You got your dad, a human lawyer, to write up a contract to sign with a demon for your role-playing group.” I said the words slowly, hoping Zac could hear how dumb it sounded. Then again, self-delusion was big with this kid. Maybe I needed a bullhorn and some flashing lights too.
“It’ll work. And at worse, we’ll just send him right back,” Zac said.
“You two seem a bit saner. You do understand how messed up this is, right?” I looked past Zac, fixing my gaze on the pair of teenagers behind him. Zac growled and backhanded me, making my headache explode again and stars dance in my eyes. By the time I recovered, I was gagged. When I craned my neck to the side, I noticed Gupta finishing Alexa’s gag too.
“That’s better. You’ll see. You’ve got a front row seat.” Zac reached behind him, pulled out a knife and showed it to me. As I instinctively flinched backward into my chair, Zac sniggered. “Hold him.”
Ozzie came forward, gripping my left arm tight before Zac dropped the knife to it and cut my arm free. A brief second later, I felt the blade bite into my flesh followed by the warmth of my blood spilling out. Rather than just leaving a single slice, I felt Zac stab it in again and twist, opening my wound and forcing a muffled scream from my throat. My arm jerked reflexively, and Ozzie had to put his weight on it to keep my arm still as it bled into the iron bucket.
“You didn’t have to do that, Zac,” Gupta said, his voice filled with worry. “You could really hurt him.”
“Fuck him. He’s just another damn wizard. The girl will give him another potion to fix him up later anyway,” Zac said. “Now he knows not to laugh at me.”
I glared at Zac, making a mental note to kick him in the balls a few times when I was out. Alexa next to me had struggled briefly when she’d seen the knife but now had fallen strangely silent. Praying she was working on getting us out of here, I growled at Zac to keep his attention on me, which just made him smirk.
“That’s enough,” Ozzie said finally, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group.
Gupta had grown a little pale, having walked away back to their magic circle to study it in detail. Zac continued to smirk at me, watching the blood flow with a little bit too much of a crazy look on his face.
“Just a little more,” Zac crooned to Ozzie.
“No. That’s enough,” Ozzie said and then turned to me, meeting my eyes before he continued. “If you promise not to do anything stupid, I’ll get the bandages and wrap you up.”
“Mmmphhfff,” I mumbled. Taking this as assent, Ozzie moved away and came back, relieved to see I hadn’t tried anything. In a few seconds, he had rather expertly bandaged my wound and then tied me to the chair again using the remaining bandages. Obviously, the kid had taken some classes in first aid.
“Good. Now, come on. We can’t let the blood get too cold,” Zac said as he lugged the pail to the circle. I growled, watching as the group grabbed cups and dipped them into the pail. They took out paintbrushes and went to the circle with my fresh blood.
If it hadn’t been my blood, I would have screamed at their laughable incompetence. You didn’t need that much blood for a spell or, hell, use the circle itself. You just needed it during the sacrifice. The purpose was the link, which was as much symbolic as it was physical. Sure, more helped, but the amount they’d grabbed from me was ridiculous.
“Stop giggling!” Zac snapped at me as he looked up, and I blinked.
I was not giggling. I was not… right. That was me. I paused, forcing myself to focus again as I realized what had happened. The blood loss really was getting to me. Or was it the concussion? Maybe a little bit of both and the fact that I might actually die here.
Heal.
My kidnappers were too focused on their own task now, Gupta content to stand with his back to me while Zac and Ozzie took station at the other points of the triangle in their freshly painted blood circle. I watched as they began the ritual, chanting together from the pieces of paper they held. After a few seconds, I stopped listening and focused on my spell, unable to grasp the ritual.
It had little to do with the complexities of the ritual or my lack of knowledge, though I’m sure it had something to do with it. But like their ritual circle, much of what they chanted was utter rubbish, made-up words and extra garbage that did nothing but waste time and power. In either case, I had better things to do with my time. Like heal.
I turned my head to the side slowly, careful not to shift too fast or disturb my spell I had cast. Alexa met my eyes when I looked at her, fury radiating from her body as she sat in her chair. A slight movement had me looking down, and that was when I noticed her hand shifting - back and forth ever so gently. My eyes widened, and I looked back at the idiot trio, glad to see they were caught up in their ritual.
Relieved, I focused on our kidnappers and my spell instead, stoking my concentration with the promise of coming revenge. Because what I had seen were the slowly fraying edges of the rope as Alexa cut her way free.
Chapter 18
“Ilarx Jaa Ba!” the trio chanted again. This was the third time that had been said, and unlike most of their ritual, those three words made my spine tighten and goosebumps appear on my skin. A part of me knew why—the words were the creature’s True Name. It was the most powerful way to call a demon across the barrier and also explained why the trio felt they could do it even with their low level of power. The idiot trio must have had heaven-defying luck to have gotten the True Name of a demon.