by Bob Dattolo
“I healed you.”
She pulled her pants down, followed by her underwear, and rubbed across her pubic bone. “But…it’s gone! My scar is gone! What…how did you do that?”
“I wanted you to be healed. From everything. Why?”
She paled. “I…I got hurt when I was younger. I can’t have children. Did you heal that, too?”
I don’t know how I knew, but I did. “Yes. Is that bad?”
I’ll assume that being caught up in a crying hug isn’t a bad thing. It is a weird thing though, since she’s in her bra with her pants and underwear down around her knees. But I’ll take it. What I’ll also take is the delightful images of those bastards screaming as they’re cut and cut and cut again.
I pulled away from her and laughed, rage diminishing. “Want to know the best part? Everything they did to you? They put stuff inside of you? It’s happening to them. All of them. Guys too. So if you can imagine someone ramming something into their penis and the amount of blood and screaming involved, maybe you’ll be able to sleep better tonight.”
She collapsed into her chair and stared up at me as I waved at the crushed tables around us. The demolished remains quivered briefly before tumbling and moving, grinding along until the tables were restored, with everything on them as they were to begin with.
The cafeteria was nearly silent as I stepped away from Lacie to see an angry group of people coming into the door of the cafeteria.
“Oh, would you look at this? I think we have some guests, Headmaster Burnes!”
True enough, every teacher that I know, including some that I’d only seen in passing, was in the room with us already. I have no idea when they entered, yet they’re there. They all look like they’d seen a ghost. A big, scary ghost.
They haven’t seen anything yet.
The man at the head of the group that entered stared around the room, dripping scorn and anger in palpable waves. “Where is the bitch that hurt my son?!”
No one responded, but they did look at me. He followed suit, along with the others behind him, as they spread out a little. It left me facing five angry looking guys with just a horde of people behind them.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have a clue who your son is.”
He growled, which sounded pretty good. “When I want you to open your mouth, I’ll cram my cock into it. Shut up, whore! Where is the dead bitch that hurt my son?”
The group parted a little to reveal a woman carrying a bloody figure. I giggled when I realized it was Corey.
“Oh hey, Corey! Nice of you to stop in. I wasn’t sure if you got your panties out of your sandy vagina yet or not. I mean, I only did to you what you did to me. Then again, what you’re experiencing right now? It’s what you did to Lacie. I hope you’re enjoying that. How did you like it when someone crammed a fist right up your penis? I’m betting it flayed you open like a hotdog with a firecracker shoved into it. That’s a shame, too. Although, that probably means there’ll be fewer rapes going on around here, so I consider that a good thing. Shame about the others, though. I don’t know if they were as big a bag of bastard as you were, so it kind of hurts to have them lumped in with this whole mess when you may have ordered them to do it or something like that. Then again, Lacie stood up to your stupidity, so maybe they should have grown a pair and stood on their own feet instead of following you. Personally, I’m thinking Wanda got the better end of the stick on that whole mess, since having someone cram a baseball bat in her vagina has got to feel better than what it did to you guys. I mean, really, you know when you blow into a popped balloon and it just makes that pppbbbffllll kind of sound? I think that’ll be you guys when you pee.”
Magic coiled around three of the men and the others twitched and grew a little.
“That’s her, Dad.” Corey’s rough voice cut through the angry voices of the people.
I pointed at him. “See now, that’s funny. Even you realize that your stupidity didn’t fall far from the tree, to the point that you have to tell him that I’m the girl? You’d think he got that from what I just said, but I guess not? I mean, you’re his son, so you’d know whether or not he could manage to get a right answer on a single option multiple choice test.”
Headmaster Burnes moved forward. “What is the meaning of this? You are not authorized….”
“Quiet!” The guy I’m assuming is Corey’s father snarled at the headmaster. “This dead girl destroyed us! Hundreds of millions of dollars gone! Everything we’ve ever built, gone! All of it!”
I mimed playing a violin. “Can you guys see my really tiny violin over here? It’s small. Crazy small. I’m playing it because you’re singing such a sad song that I thought you should have accompaniment. Your son and his little cronies did the very same thing to me yesterday. They broke into my room and stole everything I own, except the clothes I was wearing and my cell phone, and burned it all. Everything that I own. The first new clothes I’ve ever gotten. The first laptop. So, guess what? Since they were laughing as they did it, I figured they must looooove burning stuff. So I reciprocated and burned everything of theirs. That also means everything of yours. I’d apologize for that, but your sons and daughter started this. If you want to blame someone, blame them.”
A guy on the side edged forwards. “You’re a dead girl!”
I looked down and then back up. “Nope. Alive. You’re not very bright either, are you? It’s a shame. How do you guys even know how to have sex to have kids? Did someone have to walk you through the hard parts?”
One of the men coated in magic stepped up. “Girl…I have to give you credit for your ability to anger people so much more powerful than you are. It’s astonishing, it really is. But Leon is right, you are a dead girl. Or soon to be dead girl. And, just like you took from us, we’ll take from you. Meaning, your friends.” He cast his hands out and magic shot out into the crowd.
Without meaning to, magic flew from me and coated each of the students and faculty members. His magic coiled around them as they screamed, but couldn’t touch them.
That made me laugh as he looked around in shock. “Aww, that’s too bad. It’s a good plan though, it really is. Distract me by hurting my few friends? Hurting my teachers? It’s a good plan, assuming you’re a complete psycho.”
Corey’s dad bristled. “Enough! We challenge you, dead girl! All of us against you!”
The entire group watched me as if tasting my blood. The shame of it is that I planned to taste theirs. At least as many of theirs as I can before they take me out.
“What are the rules of this challenge?”
One of the guys that hadn’t spoken before smiled at me. “Rules? None. We fight until we make you ours or you die. When you’re ours, you’ll pay for the next hundred years for what you did to us and to our children!”
His statement made me smile in return. “Really? No rules? I can do whatever I want to you and there’s no one to call foul?” My mind took off down dark, dark paths filled with screams and blood and utter mayhem. It didn’t come back until Corey’s dad laughed.
“Girl, no one will call foul, but you won’t be doing anything at all. You will be our slave.”
I don’t think anyone expected me to throw my head back and laugh, especially not as hard as I was doing it. “Oh, you’re cute, you know that? I won’t be a slave today. No…no I won’t. I accept your challenge. Me against all of you. I take it we don’t want to do this in here or anything like that?”
Headmaster Burnes swallowed hard. “Uh, no? Outside, please. I…I can’t condone this. I don’t agree with a group challenge to a new mage that is not even 17 years old.”
“Too bad, Burnes. She’s ours, and I’m going to be wrist deep in her asshole in five minutes, then she’ll truly suffer for the next century.”
The entire group moved outside, and I got to see my challengers for the first time. There are far more than I would have expected. Once they stop walking, they’re loosely grouped toge
ther, and it looks like the smallest group of them has 12 people. They’re on the side with Wanda, so I assume they’re all mages. The largest has 37 people. They’re behind Corey. Seeing my wrecked fellow students makes me smile. Good, now they see what Lacie had to go through. What kind of person cuts up another with a silver knife because they didn’t follow orders? That’s a level of crazy that I just don’t get.
Headmaster Burnes stood between me and the huge group of people. “I don’t support this, but it loosely falls within our rules. Not by much, though. Then again, I think you’re all making a big mistake.”
“Get on with it, Burnes!” Corey’s mom snarls.
He sighed and shook his head. “This is a challenge to capitulation or death. No rules. Nothing will happen until we cast a circle around you all. This is a fight to the death, with only the winner being able to decide if it is over.” He looked over at me. “That means that if you give up, they decide whether or not they continue or kill you. If…if you give up, they’ll take you.”
I smiled at him and nodded. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m not leaving here unless I’m a corpse or splattered with their blood.”
“Fuck you, dead girl!” Corey’s dad yelled. “You’re not leaving here on your own!”
Burnes moved from the area and the teachers worked together to cast some sort of glowing shield around us. The circle is almost a hundred feet across, or possibly even bigger. That’s not a huge space when I’m faced with something like 130 or 140 people. Not really at all.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Corey’s dad. That’s where you’re wrong. You see…my mom gave me some advice. She told me to let parts of me out that I’ve been keeping bottled up. I promised myself that I’d take her advice, so, yeah, get ready to meet part of me that no one has ever met.”
A bunch of them laughed. “Girl,” one of them drawled, “unless it’s a bleeding version of you being pissed on, we ain’t meeting her.”
I’m not sure what they saw, but their laughter died down as I smiled. “No…No, I don’t think that’s a version of me that you’re going to meet.” The little shackles I had created around the horrific visions that have been plaguing me since coming here broke as I opened wide the cage in my mind holding the part of me back that wants to revel in pain. Tiny snippets of me have come up when I’ve swallowed blood or licked popped eye goo from my fingers, but I’ve never allowed it all to come up.
This time it did.
And it is not impressed.
I watched idly as magic after magic ripped across the space and tore into me, only to sink deep and be absorbed. The first hit hurt, and I screamed, but it quickly turned to pleasure as the rest hit and filled me. Fire and ice and wind hit me and sank in, followed by what I can only think are magic missiles. That sounds stupid to say, but what else can I call short rays of light that come tearing at me like laser blasts? The first and second tore chunks out of me, but the rest hit without doing any damage. My laughter caused more than a few screams as the injuries healed in a rush of tissues as I moved forward.
My challengers began cursing as dozens of shifters moved into their animal forms. What had been a decently large space to begin with got amazingly small when more than a dozen rhinos were added to the list. That doesn’t even count the wolves. At least 40 of them swarmed, rushing ahead of the rhinos as they jumped on me.
None of them ever touched me.
Instead, they were blown backwards, backs shattered, until they rammed up against the lighted barrier. Their yelps and squeals of pain made me wet.
The first human reached me, hands brimming with power, as he punched at me. I had a brief moment to think that he must be conjuring stone or metal power or something like that, when his fist crashed into my face.
The bones in my face deformed with a painful crunch as my sight became a crazy quilt of sky and ground before I slammed up against the dome as well.
But I didn’t stay down. My jaw clicked back into place as I stood, still laughing.
The rhinos reached me at a run, although I’m not sure what they expected to do when they got to me. I’m backed up against a magical barrier. Were they planning on crashing into the wall? That doesn’t seem like a great idea.
I waved my hand at them and they froze, mid step, then they bellowed in utter pain as my magic threw them to the sides of the area. If they were human in an accident, I’d say they left their shoes behind from the impact with a car but…it’s not just shoes that they left behind. No, not just shoes. They left their skin. All of it.
Gray piles of rhino skins lay pooled in front of me as the shifters bellowed out their pain, but I ignored them. I’m pretty sure that’ll grow back at some point.
Ahead of me, the remaining standing men poured out their magic at me, but none of it struck me. Not in the way they were hoping.
I moved back into the middle of the area and looked around. Everywhere were cursing adults as they tried to help an injured shifter or cast spell after spell at me. The options in my head were many and varied, and all of them left me feeling elated to think about.
Eventually, I hit on something that just made me smile.
Raising my hands, a swirl of magic coiled above me. At first, it just moved around lazily, but then it began to move faster and faster, moving from a rich gold color to deepest, darkest black. When enough of it had collected, I cast it out into the little arena.
No, I wouldn’t be leaving here a slave. No sirree. I would not.
The formerly loud adults became deathly silent as my spell hit them. The silence lasted for 10, then 20 seconds, then it’s like the gates of hell opened up as they screamed.
I walked through the writhing adults as my magic went to town on them. I know it doesn’t look like much to the others outside the circle watching, but everyone inside with me is reliving every bit of pain they’ve put others through in their lives. Every bit…just multiplied by a certain factor. Namely their age.
That means if they’re old and they’ve been bastards? Yeah, that’s a lot of pain.
By the sound of things, most of these people are old.
As I moved through the people, I’d touch this one or that one and push more magic into them. As I did, various things would happen. One began burning, every inch of him on fire as I walked away. Another had his skin peel off in long strips. Another had bugs crawl up out of the ground and start tearing at him. The next got up and found his closest loved one and began tearing into her with his bare hands and eating chunks of her.
The entire time, I laughed and laughed as the circle degenerated into some level of hell that I can only guess at.
That didn’t stop me.
I let the screaming and random pain go on for nearly an hour before I walked to each and grabbed them, this time somewhat intentionally pulling at them, and draining them. With each one, their screaming reached truly amazing proportions, while a rush of pleasure and power flowed into me and settled deep inside.
One by one, they died. I kept my fellow students and their parents alive until the end, finally letting the pain drain out of them so that they were at least somewhat coherent.
I waved to myself. “I’d like to point out that I’m not a slave.”
Corey’s dad waved feebly. “I give up. We give up.”
More laughter from me. “Oh no. You see, I was told in the beginning that the decision about what happens in this challenge is up to the winner. And I’d like to think that I’m the winner of this little showdown. Who knew when my mom told me to let this part of me out, that it’d be so much fun for me and not so much fun for you?”
“Who’s your mom?” Corey’s mom was barely understandable from the damage she’d taken to her face.
“Rasphael. The fey? Perhaps your children mentioned her? I may have only met her a few days ago, but I’ve been told that she’s rather well known. She’s the one that let me know that I should experiment a little. See what I can really do. You know I’m glad I took her advice
, because this has been a lot of fun!” They were all worse for wear. “And, now I think it’s time to end this little mess up. I still don’t understand why you decided that this was a good idea, but here we are. I didn’t want this. But I will finish this.”
The mom stared at me in horror. “Rasphael?” When she turned to her son, I thought she was going to hit him. “Why didn’t you tell us she’s tied to the fey?”
My renewed laughter blotted out whatever his response was. I’m honestly not sure if he even answered. Not that it mattered.
No, what mattered is that they died. To a person, all five of my classmates and all ten of their parents died. In the end, most of them were spraying blood from their mouths with each attempt to scream.
Instead of using magic to drain them with a touch, I drank from each of them, feeling their power, their very life, pour down my throat. It wasn’t until I killed the fourth that I realized I could just about hear them screaming somewhere inside of me. Along with the others.
Oh. My.
I think I like this.
When I was done, I stood up and looked around at the space.
No one and nothing inside was moving. I was the only one left alive out of everyone that walked in here. Good. Very good.
You know, I’m thinking that I believe just a bit more that I’m not human.
The barrier remained in place as I approached it, to find a horrified set of school administrators on the other side. They stared in shock as I stopped on the other side of the light wall. I gave them a minute before saying, “So, you guys gonna drop this or what? I’m pretty sure I’m the winner.”
Rachel and Steph laughed from about 20 feet away, making me smile. Inside, the part of me that I let out coiled back up and slid into the background. Unlike before, I didn’t shackle and cage it. Instead, I just let it nestle there in the dark in a comfortable cubby hole just in case it’s needed again.