"That sounds like a story!" Mary said, "Tell us, tell us now!"
"Were you a bit of a troublemaker, then?" Polly asked.
"Ooh! Is that why you're doing medical Magic?" Betty asked, "To make up for your previous crimes?"
"Firstly, I was never charged. Secondly, it was self defence, apart from one or two minimal acts of spite, and three, I do Medical Magic because it seemed like the best use of my time," I said a little defensively.
"Hey, Matty, is this you?" Betty, who'd been frantically tapping at her phone, said, holding up a picture of me from my duel with Andromeda Caine, a nasty piece of work who went rogue with her whole Hunter Team and nearly got me killed.
"Nope," I said.
Crap, I thought Cathy had gotten rid of all the copies of that!
"You didn't even look at it," Mary said suspiciously.
"Sure I did," I replied, casting around for a topic change, "When is this thing starting?"
Mary started tugging on my ear again.
"Just what sort of a snake did we let into our garden?" she asked.
"A constrictor. All I want is to give you a hug."
They all laughed at that, and Mary nudged my ribs.
"I don't think you're dangerous at all," she said.
"I agree," Betty said, "nobody who cries during Bambi can be dangerous."
"There was something in my eye! I explained that!"
"You cried during Buffy, too, was there something in your eye then as well?" Polly asked.
"Yes," I said with a grumble, sinking in my seat.
The girls sniggered again.
They chatted, thankfully avoiding any further probes into my past while we waited. Mary talked around me, leaning on my shoulder, and I watched as the rest of the spectators filed in, which included a solid chunk of the various Magical students.
After a while, the lights went down, and the teams marched in. I have to say that they looked quite impressive. Our side wore Stonebridge's black and gold on their padded leathers, the other Cambridge's blue (which was actually a kind of light green; no, I don't know why they called it blue).
This match would kick off the year's inter-school tournament. Normally a big rival of ours, we wouldn't have expected to meet Cambridge until the finals or semi-finals, as they were one of the larger Magic Schools in the country. The big Magic schools were at the Universities of Stonebridge, Cambridge, Bristol (they were near Glastonbury, one of England's confluence points, it attracted all sorts of the lunatic / elemental-druid fringe) and Winchester (same as Bristol, only with Stonehenge).
Most of the big universities had a team, but those four were the best, with Stonebridge on top; we generally attracted the Magicians from the older (and thus, generally more powerful) families, which gave us a stronger pool of talent to draw from.
The two squads for the night consisted of ten Magicians each. We'd likely tailored our squad to counter theirs.
The way those things worked was quite simple, really. There was an initial bout between team champions, which determined who selected a duellist first or second. Generally the winner chose second, so they could send their Water Mages against the opponent's Pyros and suchlike, providing the correct counters. Each duel was decided on best of three points, any magic touching a duellist's gauntlet shield scoring a point.
So that first duel was all important, and set the tone for the following matches, with each subsequent victory determining the selection order for the next round.
The Cambridge team was well turned out, shiny and tidy striding purposefully into the stadium. They were all young, strong-looking men and women, handsome or pretty. Most were powerful; their average strength was higher than ours, in fact.
It would be an interesting match.
Chapter 14
And it was too. An impressive performance by both sides that kept everyone interested. I found it a bit... watery, if you know what I mean. When I fought, it was always with terrible consequences in mind if I should lose. That made it sharper, harder... deeper, in a way.
Watching those duellists was like watching kids pretending to fight. I have no doubt that they were doing their best, giving it their all as they understood it. But, in the end, it just rang hollow. They fought like they had all the time in the world, with none of the desperation I'd felt when hurling energy at another human being.
I suppose I resented that, a little.
Stonebridge's team won, handily, and our small group filtered out with the rest of the crowd, I was lost in thought, just following the girls as they led the way back to Naiad.
"What's eating you?" Mary asked, poking me again.
"Just thinking," I said, smiling at her. She really was a nice person, very sweet, even if she was a little overbearing at times.
"About?" she prodded again.
"The philosophy of combat as it pertains to Magic, Society and self-preservation."
She blinked.
"I was thinking about dinner," she replied, making me laugh. She did that a lot.
We were walking along a wooded pathway near the edge of the city, about twenty minutes walk away from the main campus. The stadium was one of the new builds, and so was quite a ways off the beaten path.
"And I was also thinking that it's been too long since you treated me to something tasty," she added.
"Us, too, if that makes a difference," Betty chimed in.
I shook my head, mentally resigning myself to a severe lightening of my wallet... at which point the first of the figures stepped into the path in front of us.
He was dressed all in black, with a hood concealing his face and a strip of black cloth across his mouth and nose.
He wasted no bloody time, I'll give him that, he simply lifted his sawn-off shotgun and pulled the trigger.
Had he come up from behind me, I'd have died, right there, right then, with two twelve-gauge slugs in my face. As it was, I just got a Will shield in the way to stop the projectiles cold.
At which point, I felt the fireball coming at my head, from right behind me. I shifted my Will Shield into a dome, which caught the second attack, causing a minor explosion that lit up the dark. The girls screamed. Betty looked like she was about to bolt, but Mary yanked her down (and out of the line of fire of two more of the figures, who hopped out of the bushes.
A pulse of rage seared through my mind. It was one thing to come after me; I more or less expected that. What I simply would not tolerate was people hurting my friends. And these girls were my friends. They'd wormed their way into my life, and the idea of anyone hurting them, even accidentally, made me utterly furious.
My first attack was a shadow tendril which pulped the gunner's left shoulder and sent him spinning head over heels to land in the bushes. The pain overwhelmed him almost immediately and he passed out before hitting the ground. The latest pair hurled a combination of lightning and ice bullets that flashed against my Will Shield and made me grunt as too much energy was drawn from my Well.
I would normally have simply surrounded myself with Shadows, but I had the distinct feeling that if I did, the girls would panic, and likely try to run, which would be bad, to say the least. Whoever these people were, they were throwing magic around with no concern for bystanders, another point of contention, in fact.
So I took the extra second to conjure some proper shields, expanding them to surround the girls (which would weaken them a bit) before lashing out with my Shadows, formed into discreet tendrils. It was only the presence of my friends that prevented me making a true mess of those attackers. Even so, I still did some rather unpleasant things to them.
One of them managed to produce a fairly impressive shield; that was the Pyrokinetic. He did his best, but after casting Mage Sight, I saw that he was little more than a Wizard, and a young one, at that. An ant would have had better luck holding back a boulder. He went next.
I wrapped a Shadow around his chest, easily tearing through his shields, before squeezing just hard enough to break a few
ribs. He screamed, and then he howled as I hurled him at the other two Magicians with hideous force. The Pyro broke six more bones in his back and shoulders, but the men he landed on fared far worse.
The Air Magician, the one who'd thrown the lightning, was in the middle of an attack when the Pyro's legs hit him hard in the gut. He lost control of his energy, which roared through his own body before flaring into his partner. The Ice Mage screamed as thousands of volts passed through his body, charring his skin and, rather horribly, bursting an eyeball, which couldn't have been good for him, and that was all in addition to the broken bones caused by sixty kilos of rapidly flying Fire Mage.
They ended up in a smoking, broken heap and I glared into the darkness around us, searching for another target. I saw an energy signature, further away in the park, I only caught a glimpse of it before it vanished through a Portal, but it looked... familiar.
"Are you alright?" I asked, kneeling next to my friends.
"Alright?! That was awesome!" Mary squealed, "You said you couldn't duel!"
"That wasn't a duel, it was a fight," I replied.
"Sure looked like a duel," Betty said, smiling broadly.
"It wasn't," I replied, pulling out my mobile.
"And why would these people come after you?" Mary asked, "Were we right? Are you atoning for a dark past?!"
Her voice was approaching a pitch only audible to dogs...
"Yes, I'm an immortal hit-man, on the run for killing the son of a dangerous Sorcerer, and now he's out for revenge."
"Really?!"
"No, you donut!"
She flicked my ear as I dialled Hopkins' number, but before I could get the third digit in, there was a great flare of energy and Portals opened up all around me, swallowing my attackers whole before snapping shut again. I didn't even have the chance to see what was on the other side.
"Well, that's just not fair," I complained.
I still called Hopkins, though. Someone needed to know what was going on, and it wasn't like I could just blurt out that I'd been ambushed in the vicinity of Cassandra, she'd move a Warden in with me, and I'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.
After that, and with nothing else for it, I walked the girls back to Naiad, though I kept my eyes open for any threat. By the time we got there, I was so keyed up that I nearly Cursed a pizza delivery man. The girls didn't seem too traumatised, I was glad to see; it had all simply been an extension of the evening's entertainment to them. I'd thought about informing them of the danger, but I couldn't bring myself to destroy their innocence about the world. Mary was such a bright and hopeful thing. She believed that good would always triumph over evil, and that the world was essentially a good place. I wasn't going to ruin that for her.
Since they were so absorbed in their talk, I took the chance to slip away and back to my room, where I fell into bed. I sighed unhappily. It seemed that no matter where I went, trouble came with me. They still hadn't managed to completely clear up the mess I'd made fighting Solomon. Hyde blood stained something vicious.
I slid off to sleep, but it wasn't long before a trio of bodies landed on me, and woke me right up again.
"What?!" I said, darting to a sitting position, my Shadows coiling from underneath my bed and desk before I realised who it was, "Do you three have any idea how dangerous it is to startle a Sorcerer?" I said before flopping back onto my pillow.
"Spill!" Mary said, shaking me.
"I'm trying to sleep!" I protested.
"And we're trying to get a good story, now tell us what we want to know. We have ways of making you talk," Betty said, trying to be threatening, but coming across as gassy, if anything.
I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes.
"What do you want to know?"
"Who are you, and why would people try to kill you?" Mary asked, an almost fanatical gleam in her eye.
I sighed. They wouldn't leave me be until they got their gossip.
So I spun them a (mostly true) story. I told them about how Shadowborn were viewed in the Magical world and how I'd been tipped to be the next great evil of our generation. I made sure that they knew I wasn't like that, though I may have glossed over the whole 'Black Magic is inescapable to Shadowborn' thing. I didn't want them to be scared of me, and it wasn't like I could tell them I was an Archon, those four were horrific gossips.
In the end, my story only seemed to make things worse. Mary was practically drooling.
"Persecuted and alone..." she began, eyes gleaming.
"Oh don't start. I am not alone, and I am rarely persecuted."
"So, you're really not a duellist?" Betty asked, disappointed.
"Nope, sorry."
"Then how come you beat them?" Polly asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Because that wasn't a duel. It was a fight. I'm an exceptional fighter," I replied, repeating myself from earlier; they didn't seem to understand the difference.
They grinned widely, not the reaction I was going for...
"So you are dangerous, then?" Mary asked.
"Which answer gets you to let me go back to sleep?" I asked plaintively.
"Very definitely a no. Nobody really dangerous whines this much," Betty said ruffling my hair like I was a poodle.
"Do you want to get Cursed? 'Cause that's how you get Cursed."
"So, how did you end up learning to fight? Was there a master, did he make you carry things?" Betty asked.
"Yes, his name was Miyagi and he called me Daniel-san. Ow! You know, girls are supposed to be the civilised gender!"
Mary sniggered, withdrawing her swatting hand for another go.
"You should try talking to these people, I'm sure you can explain that you're harmless," Polly offered, she was the disarmament activist of the group.
"I'm not harmless," I explained, "I am, by any definition, horrifically dangerous."
"Then maybe you could actually become harmless? Peace is always the right way!"
"No it isn't," Mary chimed in.
"Since when has war ever helped?!" Polly snapped back.
"Depends on who starts it," Betty interjected.
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but I was trying to sleep..."
A hand was put over my mouth.
"And shall we discuss what happens when nations disarm? There will always be people who don't!"
"That is circular reasoning, and you know i-"
"Look, can you hens cluck elsewhere? I'm trying to sleep, here!" I said, finally shifting the hand.
Oh, bad move, three heads swivelled to track me, like turrets, the argument forgotten in the face of a common foe.
"Disrespecting the sisterhood are we?" Mary said dangerously.
"Getting a bit above ourselves, are we?" Betty added, her shoulders arching dangerously.
I called my Shadows and they dropped to the floor, squealing and giggling, thrashing about while attempting to escape the tickling lengths.
"Never trifle with a man who knows your ticklish spots," I said after they'd surrendered, looking distinctly dishevelled.
"What did I do?" Polly asked, having lost a shoe, "I barely said a word!"
"You had that same predatory look on your face," I said with a smirk.
"You must realise, this means war," Mary said with a pretty growl.
"You're bluffing," I said, "I'm the only one who knows where to get those pastries you're obsessed with."
Mary made a frustrated sound, and contented herself with dropping back onto my bed, and on top of my legs, too.
"You shouldn't be so mean to us," Mary said, with a hangdog look, "we're your friends."
The others clambered back up as well, eyes suddenly glistening, looking at the ground, toes scraping on the carpet.
"Wait, how did we get here? I had the moral high ground, I'm certain of it!"
"Well, it's gone now, so make your apologies, and maybe we'll let you off with a scolding," Polly said, enjoying my confusion, apparently.
"But I didn't do anything..."
I said, but that only seemed to cause three sets of lips to start trembling, "Alright, alright, I'm very sorry for... whatever I did."
"I suppose you could make it up to us tomorrow. Breakfast? At that place your friend Tom mentioned?" Mary said.
"Um, okay?" I replied.
"Good, then we forgive you!" she said, pecking me on the cheek. The others did, too, giggling as they left me in a flustered and confused heap.
To summarise, I'd just apologised for something I didn't do, to girls that weren't even upset, resulting in my paying for a huge breakfast that I didn't want.
How the hell did that happen?!
And those three, almost in spite of their impressive figures, could eat. And they loved Maccaby's, too. It also appeared that Tom had been blabbing about it, because it was two thirds full of students. Tethys was going to kill me if she ever found out that I was the reason.
So, naturally that was the day she turned up.
"Oh, God, these pancakes are better than sex!" Betty said, her eyes closed as she chewed.
"Then you're doing it wrong," I muttered, which Mary heard, snorted and insisted on repeating, which earned me two pinches and a swatted ear.
"Mathew Graves, what have you done to my diner?" Tethys said, laying her hands on my shoulders and leaning her chin on the top of my head, "And who are your friends?"
"Morning, Tethys," I said, "I thought we were meeting later for coffee?"
"Yes, but that bug I planted on your phone told me you were here, and I thought I'd join you. Why are there students everywhere?" she asked, her hands kneading gently at my shoulders.
"It's not my fault, I swear!"
And did she say that there was a bug on my phone?
"Do I have to extract the truth from you?" she asked, whispering in my ear.
"Mathew?" Mary asked, "Who's this?"
"Oh, sorry," I said, my brain coming back online, "Tethys, this is Mary, Polly and Betty, my house-mates. Ladies, this is Tethys, my friend, and partner."
"Partner?" Mary asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Business," Tethys said, "I'm the brains, he's the money."
"Money?" Betty asked.
I tilted my head up to glare, and she simply planted a kiss on my forehead and dropped into the booth next to me, her hand on my thigh under the table.
Heart's Darkness Page 20