by Amie Gibbons
Wait, I could see her life-force. My powers!
The flowers chirped and hopped over to Millie, flinging needles at Ravena as they flanked her.
I swooped up her other potion and threw it at Ravena too fast for him to react.
It exploded on the ground in front of him and he stumbled, shaking dirt out of his hair.
Ravena lifted his hands and the air glowed around us. The needles stopped flying and I glanced over. The flowers stayed on either side of Millie, petals up and flower faces looking around like bodyguards.
I turned my attention back to Ravena and focused, smacking my arms down.
Ravena hit the ground so fast he would’ve pancaked if he wasn’t a god.
Ooooookay.
He got up and stared me down.
“You chose poorly,” he repeated the same thing he’d said before I faced down his minion.
Something told me this fight wouldn’t be nearly as easy. Or as lopsided.
I was facing down one of my own here.
We didn’t move, didn’t circle each other like fighters. This wasn’t a battle in a ring with kicks and punches. This was magic. And here, even with an equal amount of power, he had the experience, the training. Even a large opponent could be taken down with the proper training on leverage and soft points on the body… and weapons.
Weapons!
Even someone like me could still fight. I just had to feel out his weak spots. Hit him in his sensitive bits.
I thrust magic at him, rough, wild, willing him away like I did at the courthouse.
He stumbled and caught himself.
“My turn,” he said.
I threw up my hands, willing a shield to life. Why hadn’t I ever practiced before?
Magic of red and green washed against my shield, dissolving it as I threw myself out of its path.
Red and green? Almost Christmassy. But Ravena’s magic tasted of blood and sickness, not the colors of Christmas, or even the colors of nature.
This wasn’t blood of animals you killed to eat, this was blood of your enemies, spilled to quench the thirst of the powerful wanting nothing but more power.
The world peeled back, the grass below us opening up like an onion.
I saw the earth, saw her teeth, her eyes. She cried out and puked magic. It landed over a city I didn’t recognize. Any one of a hundred big cities across the globe.
The bubbles!
One of them burst. And I could see it.
I reached out to it, felt it, it wasn’t gone yet.
The future?
My eyes could’ve been closed, could’ve been staring into space. I didn’t know where Ravena was in a physical sense, but he was here. His anger... his fear painted his location.
I reached for the bubble of reality, of the soldier long dead, grabbed him, said a prayer for his soul to find peace if it even still existed.
I threw the bubble at Ravena. The sides slipped, like gel trying to escape in a drop here or there. I gathered it, held it together, forced it at him.
It disappeared.
What?
I followed it with my mind. Traced its unique scent, taste, color scheme? Something like that for a sense most humans didn’t have.
I could tell when I found it. That sense, my Sight, recognized it. A line of gods glowing with swallowed moonbeams took it, lifted it up.
“Good, yes,” I thought at them.
“Cassandra?” Apollo’s voice came from the mass.
“What are you doing?”
They pitched the magic ball forward, it still hadn’t popped yet. It was near. They tracked it using Apollo. He found it just as I had. Was this his plan? The one he didn’t want me to see?
The ball flew, not through space, not exactly. It moved on a psychic plane and hit a whirling purple thing… one of those wormholes?
My blood ran cold and my physical body hit the grass.
That’s what they were doing with the negative energy they couldn’t cleanse. Forcing it into that other reality. Making those poor people deal with it.
Dooming them was more like it.
“No!” Apollo said. “The world is already dying. We’re getting the survivors out. They have a unique energy. We can track it easily. We’re getting the people out of there by trading the bad energy for them.”
“Then why do you feel so guilty?”
“Because the souls of the warriors we are sending away will never be reborn. Their energy will forever be lost.”
The god version of murder. Apollo’s grief and guilt ate at my stomach and I pulled back, tears stinging my eyes.
The magic fought back. Wanted to stay in the world.
No wait, that was the other world… maybe. It didn’t want it. Knew what it was. Oh well. The others thrust it in, forcing it down the channels that world already had opened by sending power here. The world was under where it was supposed to be, just like this world was over.
Balance had to be struck.
The magic slid into the world, flickers escaping out the wormhole’s mouth. All on the mystical plane of psychics. Anyone watching would’ve just seen a wormhole. Not that that wasn’t enough for a shock.
“Balance,” I thought.
“Exactly,” Apollo said. “It wants its magic back.”
“But this magic’s bad. It’ll hurt the world.”
“The world’s not sentient. The people are. It’s a trade.”
“It all is, isn’t it?”
Tears burned behind my eyes. For the people who’d never be reborn. For the souls they were well and truly dooming.
For Apollo, because he was doing what was necessary, and he was going to have to live with it.
And for me, because that knowledge, that this tradeoff was okay with me…
Broke my heart.
Something smacked me down, pinning me to the grass.
My mind snapped back to this reality. Oh yeah. Ravena.
The whole vision took maybe five seconds. But that was more than enough in a fight. He stood five feet away, eyes glowing that same pus green of a sickly wound.
He grinned.
“Big. Mistake,” he said, the pause between the words evident.
He lifted his hands and I felt up the magic keeping hold of me, pulling back up the magical reality around me, the Sight, the eye, my powers, whatever. I saw the power. If I could see it, I could fight it.
I broke through the magic cocoon holding me down and bounced to my feet, just in time.
Ravena shot little darts of power at me, the white and brown of the bad magic solidified, made real in his body.
Maggots squirmed on the brown and green shafts, obvious to my eyes even so far away. It didn’t make sense if I thought about it in physical terms. It just… was.
The darts came fast. Not fast as bullets, but still.
The gun!
I hit the ground, rolling under the first volley of darts. What would happen to that magic? Since it was used for bad and shot away, did that use up the bad energy and make it neutral again? Or would it just keep flying to run amok until it caused enough problems to be spent?
I didn’t know enough about magical theory to guess.
Couldn’t worry about it now. Couldn’t take care of the chaos in the world until I took care of myself.
I ran for the gun. In the middle of the magic swirls of energy, it was the one normal thing. One human, mundane, dull thing.
I slid behind it, dissolving the rope connecting it to the contraption with a wave of my hand. Left it on its wooden stand though. Kept it still for aiming.
I pointed the gun at Ravena, poured my speed into my finger, and opened fire.
My finger vibrated, slowed by the heavy trigger. That was okay, the gun wouldn’t have been able to keep up had I gone any faster. The bullets pounded into Ravena, enough to keep him focused on popping them out and healing himself.
The magic pouring through him made him glow, and it obviously wasn’t going anywhere. These bullet
s were. I had maybe a minute left before they were spent and I lost my distraction.
I focused on the bullets in the drum, the black and gold pieces of metal. The mundane lumps of coal amidst the bejeweled and golden room my Sight turned the world into.
I took out drops of magic, put them in the metal, and kept shooting.
It was obvious when the dosed bullets started flying out. They streaked through the air with red and gold tails and a whistle.
Ravena’s eyes flew wide.
One hit him in his right side and he went down to his knee, pressing his hand to his side as I tried to angle the gun down. He pulled his hand away a second later and rolled away and to his feet, the wound apparently healed, but red stained his hand.
I can hurt him!
I followed him with the gun.
Ravena disappeared before the second shot got off, and I released the gun and whirled just in time to catch him appearing behind me.
The stand boxed me in and with Ravena blocking the back, I was stuck. I flung myself over the wooden stand.
I was a god.
I was powerful.
And I was fucking fast.
Momentum’s a beautiful thing. I hit the ground and whipped around the stand, smacking into Ravena’s back and knocking him into the gun.
The entire front fell out, the gun clunking to the ground with Ravena on top of it.
He pushed himself up and whipped magic at me. I dodged, still watching the world through magic colored glasses. He couldn’t get anything past me like this. Then again, if he wanted to hit me with raw energy, he’d probably pound me into pavement. Or grass, whichever.
Was I babbling? Probably.
I stretched my awareness out, searching for some freaking backup. Gods popped up on my radar like it was a screen. There was a group a bit away and magic flew so thick and fast the light blinded me.
Shit, Ravena wasn’t the only one attacking. Still, we had them outnumbered, right?
I focused on them and willed Apollo to pop up at my side.
Nothing.
Ravena grinned, shooting magic out of his entire body like a wave of white. I dodged and it followed me. I poured on speed, running away with lightning legs. He may have been more powerful, but I was faster.
Faster could do a hell of a lot of damage to powerful.
More maneuverable and smarter were better still.
I looped around, closing in on Ravena and streaked past him. He whirled and slowed his magic wave to move it around him.
I smacked into him, picturing myself going into his body, not just hitting it. I shoved my hand through him with the momentum, grabbed onto something squishy, and pulled.
“Gurg,” Ravena said, choking as I pulled on whatever I grabbed. The white wave came at me and I twirled us, shoving Ravena into it.
The wall of his magic disappeared into him and he collapsed, weight pulling him off my hand. I stared down at him.
Is that it?
My fist was covered in redish goop and blood and I wiped it off on my shirt. It smeared across the fabric, making a mess and not doing much else. I scrubbed at my hand with another spot of my shirt.
Snap out of it!
I forced my hand down. It couldn’t be that easy to kill a god. If he wasn’t playing possum, he was injured and that was it.
My money was on the first.
I turned tail and ran for the others, focusing my Sight on them again.
They looked like a rainbow wall to my magic. All tangled and smushed together so I couldn’t tell one from the others. I couldn’t tell distance. The world was a two-dimensional painting, magic upon magic, but no depth.
I sensed it before I heard it.
And threw myself to the side just in time.
Magic bulldozed by me and I pushed up from the ground by my palms. Too slow.
Ravena grabbed my hair as I turned and yanked my head back. I glared, ready to throw everything at him.
The world froze.
“You really never learn, do you?” Ravena asked, voice as calm as any lawyer in a negotiation as he let me go.
I looked around. We were back in the same pit as before. I slammed a fist into the rock wall, feeling nothing. Apparently I didn’t learn.
“What do you want from me?” I cried, clenching my fists, holding back the tears.
How was I going to get out of here this time? It wasn’t like there was anyone left to rescue me.
He squinted, like he couldn’t figure me out, and his face softened. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he pitied me.
“I want your powers. To get them, all of them, I have to kill you. This really is nothing personal. But I want you to understand why you’re dying. What you’re dying for.” He nodded. “I think you deserve that. To know you’re dying for a greater cause.”
“Bullshit.” I backed up, God only knows where I thought I was going. “You want to rub it in.”
He pressed his lips together in a little smirk and bobbed his head, stepping towards me. “Perhaps.”
“I think you don’t really want to kill me,” I said quickly, backing up til I tapped the rock wall as Ravena closed in.
Still couldn’t feel it.
Because it’s not real. “You’re procrastinating. Drawing it out. Why?”
Yeah, because he wasn’t going to see though my obvious procrastination.
Ravena stopped in front of me, planting his hands on either side of my head. Too close, too intimate.
Too much like what Apollo would do.
Apollo had to do the joining thing to take my powers. Gods can’t just yank them out of you.
“You need my cooperation, or something, now that my powers are fully in me, don’t you?” I searched his face. “Just like you couldn’t take my powers when they were in the phone. You can’t just kill me and get my powers. Otherwise, why would you have to use the bubble thing?”
Ravena smiled. “Keep talking, Cassandra. We have all day in here.”
“What do you want? Why can’t I just give you power and go on my merry way?”
He snorted. “Besides you already saying that’s what you wanted then attacking me?”
I shrugged a shoulder. Couldn’t argue that.
He leaned back, holding up a hand. A shard of quartz, maybe ten inches long and three inches at its thickest point, appeared in his hand.
“Do you know what this is?”
I focused on it, letting my Sight dive in. A dot of darkness swirled within the middle of the cloudy crystal, almost looking like it was sucking the clouds out. A black hole heart. Can you say symbolic?
Moisture fled my mouth and I knew exactly what it did.
“It takes power. It’s like the crystal Hades was trying to use.”
“Sucks it into a pocket reality, to be withdrawn later. But it has to want to go first, at least a little. The channels must be open.”
“Like what Apollo did to me, only into an inanimate object instead of a person.” It wasn’t a question.
There was a… yep, definitely had an idea. Just wasn’t sure how to implement it. I kept my eyes from dancing as I worked it out, locking them on Ravena’s face.
“Well then, you want to convince me this is the greater good.” I held out my arms. “Go ahead. Show me.”
He turned his head and squinted out the side of his eye at me. “What are you plotting, Cassandra? You must know after the power you all have been pouring into me that you can not possibly hope to take me on now.”
I took a deep breath. The best lies were based on a kernel of truth. “I know that. Right now I’m really hoping to delay you as long as possible in the hopes of someone coming to save my ass.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, you,” he said through chuckles, “silly, stupid woman. We are outside time, in our own minds. Like a dream. Hours will pass in here with only minutes in the real world. We have all the time in the world. Benefit of our powers.”
“Ours! I can do this, too?”<
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He raised his eyebrows, blinking. “You’re doing it right now. This isn’t possible save between two powerful psychics. I’m sure Apollo would learn how to implement this… eventually, if he were going to live long enough.”
I shook my head. “You can’t kill him.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can. And that the others are as we speak.” He rolled his finger. “You know, once we’re back in the flow of time again.”
“What do you want to show me?”
“No more arguments? Come now, little lawyer. I expected more out of you.”
“Can’t know what to argue until I have the facts.”
“Alright.” His smile made my stomach curl in on itself and I whimpered as he touched my face. “You asked for it.”
Please God, let this work.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I closed my eyes and opened them as hot breath washed over my face. No, not breath, air.
Ravena was gone. Cracked and thirsty desert ground lay under my feet.
I looked around, nothing but the jaundiced, hard packed dirt. Sand blew across the land in gusts popping up wherever they damn well pleased.
“A vision within a vision. This is so Inception,” I said. “And it isn’t real.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
I jumped and turned, hands up, ready to shoot out something far more deadly than any firearm could manage… hopefully. Ravena stood in front of me, at least, I thought it was Ravena.
The demon was bent over, ragged grey cloth barely covering the important parts downstairs. The sand blowing had to be hell on the tender bits under there. His skin was loose and thin. Dehydration, if I remembered my first aid correctly. His face was rough, the reddening from wind and sunburn obvious even through the dark tint.
“You brought me here for a reason, Ravena. Drop the act.”
“Not,” he said, “an act.” His voice was slow and slurred, tongue too heavy and dry to properly form the words.
“You’re speaking English. Obviously this isn’t a real memory.”
He chuckled, but it held none of the rich flavor of the laugh not two minutes ago. It was a wheeze tinted with mirth, if that.
He stood straight, the suit back on and his skin clear as a Neutrogena for Men ad. “I thought you were supposed to be the empathic, sweet one?”