Magi Legend

by Andrew Dobell

  Amanda didn’t want to have to dispose of the bodies from the fight anyway, so bringing them here seemed like the logical choice.

  Moving into the bigger room, she saw several more doorways and none of them gave any clue about where they might lead. However, there was a clear path through the dust and debris that looked like it was in regular use, plus, it just felt right. Leading the way, Amanda stalked through the room and out into the corridor beyond, nearly walking into someone coming the other way. On instinct, Amanda grabbed him, clamping her hand over his mouth to stifle his yell for help before reaching into his mind with her Magic. He wasn’t a Magus, that much was clear, and it didn’t take long for her to work her Magic and knock him out.

  Falling limp in her arms, she carried him into the room and dumped him in a corner, out of the way.

  “That was close,” Liz commented under her breath.

  Amanda opened a Mental Link between them all. ~Link talk from now on.~

  They all nodded.

  ~Sounds good,~ Yoh said through the Link.

  Moving on, Amanda followed her instincts or took the most likely route, but it was a maze of random rooms and corridors, connected without any discernible rhyme or reason.

  If the enemy couldn’t easily find their way around your base, it made an attack less likely to work.

  Amanda felt she possessed a good sense of direction though, and was doing her best to keep a rough mental map of which way they had come.

  A couple of turns later, they found themselves in a corridor lined with doors that had barred windows set into them, and Amanda remembered a similar corridor in Lucian’s Columbian mansion. Looking through the first window with some trepidation, Amanda wondered what she might see inside.

  It was a cell, as she had guessed, but it was empty. There were signs of use, though.

  Some of the doors further up stood open, and as they advanced, it became apparent that most of them were empty. Of the few that did have an occupant in this corridor, they were all dead.

  ~Do you think there might be more cells somewhere?~ Liz asked through the Link.

  ~I wouldn’t be surprised,~ Amanda answered.

  ~We need to do a sweep of rooms after we find Nymira,~ Gentle Water said.

  ~Agreed,~ Amanda nodded. ~But we need to find Nymira first. She’s the priority here.~

  They all agreed and moved on, leaving the cellblock behind. Another couple of turns and they found themselves at the entrance to another room, but this one had a lot more furniture and décor, although most of it was not the kind of thing Amanda could see herself using in her own home. Some of it was clearly Voodoo paraphernalia, and the rest was just macabre.

  Amanda understood the idea of Memento Mori, but keeping real skulls on a shelf amidst bones and jars of formaldehyde stuffed with hands or organs, was just strange in the extreme.

  Nymira might call herself the Voodoo Queen, but Amanda felt sure that she would be disowned by the majority of people who honestly practised true Haitian Vodou. Nymira’s Voodoo was a perversion of the faith, used for her own ends to inspire fear and obedience in her followers.

  Pressing on, Amanda could hear voices in the distance. She reached the short connecting corridor into another large room. Sure enough, she could see Nymira in there talking with two other people, one a dark-skinned woman with a shaved head, the other a fair-skinned man with mousy-brown dreadlocks. Amanda stepped out and strode into the room with her friends behind her. The time for stealth had passed. Amanda wanted to end this, once and for all before Nymira killed anyone else.

  “You can’t run from me, Nymira,” Amanda said.

  Nymira looked up from her companions, fury brewing a storm across her face at Amanda’s insult and intrusion. “Who’s running?”

  “You Ported away before we’d finished our little meeting,” Amanda explained. “So rude.”

  Nymira looked like she wanted to punch Amanda in the face, but she hesitated. Amanda couldn’t help the slight smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She guessed that Nymira had been caught unawares by her apparently sudden increase in power, and now she wasn’t sure what she could or should do. Previous fights had inevitably gone Nymira’s way. Amanda had been able to defend herself to a point, but ultimately, Nymira was older, more experienced, and more powerful.

  The tide had turned, however, and now the Voodoo Queen was nervous. Amanda could see her hesitation, but she also knew that Nymira didn’t want to lose face before her followers. She had to remain a strong, effective leader or everything could be lost.

  Nymira stepped forward. “Then let’s finish this, once and for all.”

  The two Nomads with her stepped out sideways, their Aegises being pumped with Essentia to boost their strength.

  Pumping Essentia into her shield and drawing more of the Aetheric energy into her body, Amanda conjured an Aegis over the room. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  Nymira glanced sideways, noticing the effect

  ~Your trapping us in here?~ Liz asked over the Link.

  ~You can get out if you need to,~ Amanda answered, having keyed the Aegis to herself and her coven mates so that they might pass through it. ~You guys take on Nymira’s friends, I’ll deal with the Voodoo Queen myself,~ she said.

  ~As you wish,~ Gentle Water said.

  ~Are you sure?~ Liz asked. ~I mean, I know you beat her at your house, but what if that was a fluke?~

  ~Trust me,~ Amanda replied. She didn’t have time to explain.

  Nymira didn’t give her time. Magic flew as Essentia lanced at Amanda and crashed against her shield in a shower of pyrotechnics in her Magical sight. Her Aegis held though, as Amanda bolstered her shield.

  “Sneaky,” Amanda said.

  A second later, Amanda unleashed a furious volley of Essentia Strikes at Nymira, hammering on the Nomad’s repaired Aegis.

  Beside her, Nymira’s two allies rushed forward, their Magic flying. Gentle Water faced off against the woman while Liz and Yoh engaged the man. Amanda continued with her endless Magical attacks, sending blast after withering blast of Magical energy at the Nomad while mixing in bolts of lightning that strobed bright white light through the darkness of the Haitian garrison.

  Nymira held her ground. She defended against Amanda’s attacks while trying to keep her defences up and running. But Amanda kept up the pressure, lashing out with every kind of energy attack she could think of.

  Nymira was forced to spend more time keeping her Aegis running, allowing Amanda to focus more on her attacks.

  “You can’t win,” Amanda warned her, “and you’re not leaving here.”

  Changing tactics, Nymira stopped attacking Amanda. Instead, she redirected her Essentia Strike to hit the Aegis that Amanda had created to keep them from Porting out. It was nowhere near as strong as Amanda’s own personal Aegis, and within moments, cracks appeared.

  Amanda set some of her minds to the job of cancelling Nymira’s attempts to create an escape route and successfully stopped her from breaking down the Aegis that surrounded the room.

  Nymira cursed as she did her best to defend herself, scowling at Amanda through the flaring Magic that split the air between them.

  Suddenly, blocks of masonry shot out of the walls and smashed into Amanda and her Aegis. Some of them were huge. As one particularly sizable chunk skidded over the stone floor, Amanda leapt over it towards Nymira, landing before her.

  Amanda landed a couple of solid blows before Nymira managed to deflect a few of them, but she was on her back foot as Amanda pressed her advantage.

  And then Nymira’s Aegis fell, cracking like an egg and then dissolving into nothing as Amanda punched her again and again. Nymira’s attempts at defending herself grew more and more feeble as her face grew ever more bloodied, until Amanda felt her give up and she dropped to the floor.

  “You… win…” Nymira stated.

  Amanda looked down at the broken woman and stood tall. This was the monster who had kept this part
of the world’s Magi community living in fear for hundreds of years. She had little sympathy for Nymira. She was less than human as far as Amanda was concerned.

  “Any last words?” Amanda asked.

  “You can’t kill me,” Nymira taunted her. “You don’t have it in you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’m sure we will. And no, I have nothing to say to you.”

  “That’s grand. I’d hate to drag this out any longer than necessary.”

  Nymira gave her a look of dismissal.

  “Defiant to the last, I see. So be it.” Lightning ripped out from her hands and smashed into the prone figure, lighting up the room for a second before it faded. The blackened form of the former Nomad, now missing her head and part of her upper body, lay prone, lifeless, and quite dead.

  Amanda turned to her friends.

  The male Nomad was dead, killed by Yoh’s lethal claws while the woman lay at Gentle Waters feet, battered, but alive and unconscious.

  “I won’t kill her,” he said.

  “I understand,” Amanda replied. “She can stay there, but we need to sweep through the place and see if Nymira has any other prisoners.”

  Gentle Water nodded as they retreated from the room and started to make their way through the complex. They found living quarters, storage rooms, strange ritual rooms filled with Voodoo iconography, and more cells. Most of the prisoners they found were dead, but a small handful were still alive.

  They’d all been Riven humans so far, and grateful to be set free. It took some searching, but they did finally find a couple of exits out of the subterranean complex into the city above, allowing the Riven humans to leave this nightmare behind.

  As Amanda watched Yoh guide the last group of Riven out, she heard Gentle Water call out. Following the sound, she found a small cell, tucked out of the way that would have been easy to miss.

  Amanda stepped up to the doorway to see Gentle Water crouched by the side of a dirty bed. Sitting on the edge of it was a woman with long dark hair whose body glowed in Amanda’s Aetheric Sight, marking her as a Magus. The room had been surrounded by a subtle Aegis, which Amanda spotted the remains of as she surveyed the room. The woman looked terribly weak.

  She sat shivering all over, her hands shaking like crazy. She was so thin, she looked malnourished.

  “You found her like this?” Amanda asked.

  “I spot Aegis,” Gentle Water said. “She was inside, asleep. I break Aegis to get her. She drugged, but I take drug from body so she wake up.”

  Amanda stepped into the room and crouched down beside Gentle Water.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  The girl smiled back at Amanda weakly. “I think so, I’m... where am I?”

  “Haiti, under Port-au-Prince in Nymira’s Sepulchre.”

  “Nymira… Ugh,” she groaned.

  “What’s the matter? Are you alright?” Amanda asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine. Everything’s a bit... foggy, but... Nymira. She attacked us.”

  “Us?”

  “My coven, she killed some of them. Are the others here? Are they okay?”

  Amanda shook her head. “You’re the only Magus we’ve found so far, at least, outside of Nymira’s coven.”

  “Damn. Who are you?”

  “I’m Amanda, this is Gentle Water. We’re here to help. Look, don’t worry, Nymira’s dead,” Amanda explained.

  “But, where’s my coven? Did she kill them?”

  Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know, but if they were brought here with you, then, maybe… Look, let me help you. We’ll have you back on your feet in no time.”

  The girl looked at them both, her wide, dark-rimmed, bloodshot eyes darting between them before she nodded in resignation.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Amanda said, reassuring her.

  “I… I know. I just... I feel helpless.”

  “There’s only one person to blame for that.” Amanda reached out into the local Essentia and brought the girl back up to full health, nourishing her body. As she worked her Magic, the girl’s body started to fill out and take on a better shape as colour flushed through her cheeks, and the bags under her eyes filled out and faded away.

  “What’s your name?” Amanda asked.

  “Sabine, but some people call me Voodoo.”

  “Heh, ironic,” Amanda said, raising her eyebrows. “Any idea why she kept you alive?”

  “I have an idea why that might be,” Sabine answered as she sat up a little straighter, looking much healthier now.

  “Go on.”

  “I used to be in the Arcanum before I went through my Epiphany and became a Magus. I was trained by them and was on track to be an agent, but that all changed when my Magical potential was awakened.”

  “So, you joined a coven?” Amanda asked.

  “That’s right. I moved back here… Well, not here, not to Haiti. I moved back to New Orleans where I’d grown up. Victoria helped me find and join a coven there.”

  “So, Nymira wanted the information you had on the Arcanum?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “How would Nymira know that about you?”

  “No idea. It wasn’t a secret, though, people knew. Someone might have talked,” Voodoo mused.

  “Okay,” Amanda said. “Well, you’re free to go.” She made a mental note to go back to one of the unconscious Nomads to see if her story checked out.

  “Heh. Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically. “I’m not going back to New Orleans, not after what happened.”

  “So, where will you go?”

  Sabine shrugged. “No idea. I might go back to Victoria in DC, I guess. See if she can help me find another coven.”

  Even better, Amanda thought. She could find out through Victoria if Sabine’s story was true.

  “Look, do you wanna come back with us? You can stay at our place for a while, at least. We have enough room.”

  Sabine smiled. She was a beautiful girl, Amanda decided. She had lovely tanned skin and dark black hair that was looking much more lustrous than when they’d first found her. Now that her body was looking more nourished and less like a bag of bones, she was quite curvy, too.

  “Are you sure?” Sabine asked.

  “Of course. It’s not a problem at all. We’ve nearly finished our sweep, and then we’ll be heading back to New York.”

  “Excellent, thank you,” Sabine replied, grinning.

  ***

  Anastasia directed her Aetheric craft to come into a low, stable orbit around Earth, and watched on the viewer as the large glowing blue sphere of her home planet settled in below the Obsidian Fire.

  The ship’s stealth Magic would hide it well enough from the Riven telescopes below, allowing her to leave it here for the duration of her time on Earth.

  It had been a while since she’d been here, and things had changed for her.

  She remembered the mission that Yasmin had sent her on, out into the void, and smiled to herself. That had been a long time ago now, and so much had changed.

  She looked back at the screen before her and scanned the images that she’d called up, having trawled them from the Riven Internet on Earth below.

  “What on earth are you looking at?”

  Anastasia looked up at Scralex, who stood above her. “Just picking out my outfit.”

  “Really? Are you serious?”

  “Of course,” Anastasia replied.

  “But, you’re not seriously considering that, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Scralex asked, incredulous. “Have you gone mad? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  Anastasia smiled to herself, she was enjoying stringing this out. “But of course. Hang on. Let’s see what I look like.” Anastasia got up and worked her Magic. Essentia whipped around her like a whirlwind, transforming her fitted ship suit into something that approximated the image on the holo.

  “There, what do you think?”

&n
bsp; “You don’t want my honest opinion.”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Well, the Void Knights will no doubt have something to say about it.”

  “I bet they will. But I’m interested in what your impression of me is now. If you saw me like this for the first time, what would you think of me?” Anastasia asked.

  “I’d think you were some kind of dumb blonde whore. Even Yasmin would think less of you in that.”

  Anastasia smiled. “Perfect. That’s exactly what I was going for.”

  “Really?” Scralex asked.

  Anastasia worked her Magic and conjured a reflective surface that hovered in the air beside her. She turned and looked at herself. She ran her fingers through her hair that was held up in long pigtails, and then adjusted the sexy school girl outfit, complete with white shirt tied under her bust, red paid mini-skirt, over the knee pop socks, and black heeled pumps.

  “Really. I want them to underestimate me, that’s the whole point,” Anastasia answered, pleased with her look. She’d stand out, but she didn’t mind, that would actually work in her favour too.

  “Well, mission accomplished then,” Scralex commented, with one eyebrow raised.

  -Somewhere in the Middle East.

  “Where do you think it goes?” Lillia asked. She was shining a light into the darkness beyond Kennedy, through a carved archway that led deeper underground. The shaft of light from the hole above them didn’t reach the walls of the cavernous room they stood in, but Kennedy’s torch picked out a few details. The room must have been thirty metres across, he guessed.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never come across anything like this before,” Kennedy answered. “What about you, Sandy?”

  “No, this is a new one on me, too,” she replied. Sandy was as experienced as he was in exploring ancient sites of archaeological and historical significance in the Middle East, and this find was a new one for both of them.

  “So, you have no idea what this is?” Lillia asked. She looked a little scared, which was understandable. She was the youngest of the team, a graduate, and this was her first time in the field.