by Josh Vogt
“Except for our escort back here,” he said, “Destin and Francis took most of the local Ascendants along for the fun. Even if they got the message out, reinforcements are gonna take time to arrive.”
They ran into the main hall leading up to the elevator. Dani paused in the process of tugging the gloves on.
“Uh … Ben? There’s nobody here.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. The mess he’d made by releasing the imprisoned creatures had been cleaned up except for a few scorch marks along one wall and an inky blotch dripping from the ceiling. The elevator stood open, inviting them in.
“Up we go, then.”
“Tally-ho,” Sydney murmured. “The windmills await.”
Dani shot him a glare, but received a charming smile in return.
They rode the elevator in silence, each tensed for what waited above. As the doors opened, Dani took in the scene in a glance.
The white-tiled hall stretched out wide before them. The glass panels on either side had frosted over, blocking sight of the cells and cages on the lower levels. Halfway down, another blockade had been set up, consisting of plastic yellow Wet Floor signs strung together by red-hot bands of crackling energy that Dani guessed weren’t healthy to touch. Cleaners crouched behind this barrier, spray bottles, pressure hoses, and soap dispensers readied like a firing squad.
The four Ascendants who’d brought them to the Recycling Center stood in front. They were battered, their formerly spotless suits now torn and stained, their faces bruised, and one sported a bloody nose. However, they looked determined as their bright auras cast the hall into stark relief. The janitors Dani had sent running had joined with ten other Cleaners, all of whom wielded the usual array of tools. She got the impression of a mob with torches and pitchforks preparing to storm the castle—though in this case, the roles were somewhat reversed.
“Impressive,” Sydney said. “I’ll never fault this company its efficiency. But all in vain, as I said before.”
He knelt and punched the floor. Cracks raced out from his fist and, before any Cleaners could react, four of them dropped through pits that opened beneath them. Their yells cut off with clatters, bangs, and groans.
The path of Corruption, however, diverted around where the Ascendants stood.
Ben put a hand out before Dani could move by him. “Get back. Let Sydney and me handle this, eh?”
“Like h—” she started to say.
“Zip it,” he said. “You’re strong, but you ain’t trained for this. I don’t want any deaths on your conscience.” With that, he stalked forward, attention locked on his coworkers.
“He’s right,” Sydney said. “Let us keep you an unsullied flower for now, shall we?”
Dani snarled as the mage left her behind as well. She hated to admit that Ben might be right. While her power didn’t threaten to take over her mind and body anymore, she didn’t know how far she could trust it. The very nature of natural disasters, minor or large scale, assumed plenty of violence and chaos would be involved. So she fumed as the men engaged the line.
Ben waded in first. His motions were stiff and guarded, but he kept his back straight, trying to defy his aged body. He swatted the mop at anyone who came within range. The Cleaners behind the barrier loosed a variety of missiles. He slapped some aside, while others were absorbed into the mop brush. One janitor threw a giant soap bubble his way. When the mop handle popped it, the resulting shockwave knocked him back a few feet.
While he kept the remaining Cleaners occupied, Sydney raised his hands and advanced on the Ascendants. Their auras mingled and expanded into a field that walled off their section of the hall.
The entropy mage set his palms against this glowing field and leaned against it. The light dimmed where he touched, but didn’t vanish. A high-pitched whine started up, and Dani imagined it came from the air molecules trapped between the opposing powers. Sydney pushed closer to the suits, erasing their auras an inch at a time.
A pair of Cleaners slipped around the sign barrier and flanked Ben without him noticing. One man held a plunger like a battle mace, while the other, a tall, thin woman, readied a broom.
Dani looked around for something to distract them with. She spotted the cart Ben had brought with them. Grabbing the handle, she jumped behind it and raced down the hall like a manic child in a supermarket.
“Hey!” she called.
The man spun her way and raised the plunger. Dani let the cart go, and it rammed into his hips. He shouted as he twisted down. An audible pop came from his knee and ankle. Dani winced, but couldn’t hide a satisfied smile.
The woman shoved the cart back past her prone companion. Dani easily sidestepped it and cocked an eyebrow as it rattled away behind her.
“Copycat.”
The man propped up on one arm, still holding the plunger. He glared at her even as his face twitched in pain. Then he suctioned the plunger to the floor. When he pulled up, it tore a head-sized portion of tile and concrete up with it. He lifted the chunk and flung it and the plunger her way.
Dani threw herself to the side. The concrete block crunched into the elevator doors behind her. Pebbles sprayed everywhere.
“Dani,” Ben shouted as he intercepted a soap-water javelin. “I toldja to stay back.”
“They started it!”
The woman swung her broom over her head. Air whipped up until she stood in the center of a small whirlwind. When she snapped the broom out in front of her, the whirlwind launched Dani’s way.
Disregarding Ben’s order, Dani reached for her power for the first time since being shoved into the furnace. Her lack of fear surprised her. Perhaps that aspect of her personality had been left behind during the purging ceremony. Whatever the case, she felt fully in control. Centered.
However, the magic within her recoiled, as if disliking being summoned rather than overwhelming her whenever it chose. Dani imagined it as a miniature of herself hiding in the dark corners of her soul, and shook a mental fist at it.
Don’t make me spank you.
Power surged through her and into the surrounding elements. Her senses expanded along with it, discerning all the potential storms she could brew in the confined space. But the maid had already done the work for her.
She latched onto the whirlwind and dove into it until she grasped the Pure core energizing the spell. Her enhanced sight traced the tendrils of power trailing back to the maid, like a leash on an attack dog. A snip and snatch had the leash in her grasp, and she sent the wind roaring back in their faces.
The maid slashed the broom down. It cut through the whirlwind and chopped it into swirling bits that fluttered aside harmlessly. The women faced off. Dani waved for her to come closer.
“I can take anything you throw my way,” she said.
The maid smiled. “Very well.”
A cushion of air picked the woman up and launched her forward.
***
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dani had an instant to think, Nice trick, before the maid hit. The collision sent them both tumbling. They slammed onto the cart, which rolled into the nearest pane of glass. The floor-to-ceiling window shattered, and they flew out over the edge.
The cart plummeted, scattering tools, rags and buckets, while the two women remained aloft on the conjured wind. They spun and grappled for control. Dani grabbed the broom handle and yanked the maid into a head butt.
The hit almost broke Dani’s nose, and she cried out as pain lanced through her face. It still got the reaction she wanted, for the maid’s eyes crossed and she released her grip. They flipped and fell with Dani on top. At the last second, the maid conjured another gust of air to cushion the drop—except Dani’s added weight smacked the maid hard to the tiles, and her eyes fluttered shut.
The maid’s body softened the hit, though it left Dani breathless for a few seconds. Light cuts stung her face, but she didn’t sense any major injury. All this personal contact though was ratcheting up her contamination alert into the red z
one. She wiped her forehead and was relieved to see less blood than she’d expect from a paper cut. Still, exposure was exposure and—
Deep breathing and slurping noises tore her away from the sanitation assessment. She’d landed near a row of dark pits with metal grilles over the tops. Gleaming eyes stared at her from between the bars, where the hungry noises also came from.
This large roomed housed at least fifty other cages, cells, and pits, each with misshapen occupants peering out. Some paced on hind legs. Others slithered. A few bashed themselves against their glassy walls in an effort to get at her. Only by chance had her fall not broken open any of their prisons.
She looked up to the ongoing fight beyond the shattered glass. Ben had knocked out the janitor Dani had lamed, and now blocked another barrage of watery spears. Sydney tore portions of aura away like tissue paper. He glanced over, and looked stricken at seeing her cast down.
“Dearest!” He turned from the Ascendants and made to run down to her. “Fear not. I’ll protect you.”
“Idiot,” Ben cried. “Don’t stop—”
As Sydney ceased pushing back their auras, the Ascendants’ energy pulsed in a single combined attack. Their golden light flared into a white nova that encompassed the hall.
Dani flung her hands over her face and squeezed her eyes shut. While the explosion of Pure energies was silent, the aftershock was not.
A wave of power threw her to the floor and skidded her along until she bumped up against a wall. Lights danced outside her eyelids. Glass shattered, the floor quaked, and the whole roomed tilted around her. But the wave washed over as if she were a rock in a riverbed. A distant part of her mind realized that she wielded Pure energy as well, and as such wouldn’t be negatively affected by the blast.
Ben and Sydney, however …
She opened her eyes as the last rumbles faded. Her head pounded, and all noise sounded distant, as if she wore earmuffs. She groaned as she staggered to her feet. With a hand on the aching small of her back, she got her bearings.
All the glass along the upper hall had been blown out and strewn across the floors. Ben had fallen to one knee and used the mop to prop himself up, while Sydney had disappeared. Only three Ascendants remained, and a few Cleaners slumped over their barrier, dazed. Dani pressed a hand to her stomach as nausea cramped it. Had one of the Ascendants actually destroyed himself to defeat the entropy mage?
In the brief lull, the elevator from the lower level opened again. The Cleaner Sydney had denuded stumbled out, an unconscious Lucy draped over his bare shoulders. He gaped at the scene until an Ascendant yelled something. Then he staggered past a rousing Ben and vanished through the exit portal.
One Ascendant moved toward the nearest stairs, while the other two came at Ben from both sides. Ben lurched upright. He’d grabbed a dropped spray bottle and blasted one of them in the face with a stream of water. The other he warded off with the mop, which writhed and snatched at their eyes.
A curdling hiss made Dani turn. She’d bumped up against the base of an iron cage, where a complicated network of chains kept its occupant bound in the center of the bars. The creature had three leathery wings, albino skin with red tattoos writhing across it, and rusted nails instead of teeth. Its eyes were positioned along its throat, rather than on its blank face, and it stared out at her with clear hunger.
Its voice sounded like cats being skinned alive. “Free the gnash, and it will aid you.”
“I … don’t think so,” she said.
It shifted. Chains clinked. “The gnash does not break its word. The gnash promises to only eat your heart after it has stopped beating. Such is the gnash’s mercy.”
Dani shook her head, trying to clear her fuzzy thoughts.
“The gnash thinks you will taste delicious.”
She turned to rejoin the fight, but paused as her gaze slid past the creature and fixed on the occupant of the next cell over. She cried out.
“Ben!”
“Kinda busy!”
“Ben, it’s Stewart! Stewart’s in this cage!”
“What?” Another yell, and the sound of a body hitting the floor. “Where’s Sydney? He got knocked down there with yah.”
“Uh …”
She whipped her head around and finally spotted the mage lying twenty feet away. He still breathed, though blood trickled from a cut on his scalp. When she knelt beside him and grabbed his shirt, his eyes opened but remained unfocused.
“Has the Valkyrie come for me?” he whispered. “Am I finally to ascend to the feast of the gods?”
Dani sighed. “All that bragging, and a few Ascendants get the better of you because you got distracted?”
She grabbed his arm and dragged him up and stumbling over to Stewart’s cage. He clutched her shoulder and a few other spots that would’ve had her punching him back down if not for the urgent circumstances. Once they got back to the cage, she pushed him up against it and took his chin to make him look at her.
“Sydney, I need your help.”
The entropy mage’s eyes brightened and he roused from the last of his daze. “What ails the fair maiden?”
She pointed to where Stewart stared out at them. Dressed in a gray robe, the trash mage had been curled in a fetal position when Dani first saw him. Now he’d noticed the commotion going on and had risen to pound at the glass containing him. Stripped of his garbage regalia, he looked like a bald old souse, uncertain of his whereabouts after emerging from a drunken stupor.
“Get him out,” she told Sydney.
Sydney’s nose wrinkled as he looked over the trash mage. “This bumpkin? Hardly worth your affections.”
“Sydney, please. He’s …” She stumbled as she started to say He’s Scum too. “He’s a friend. We’ve got to get him out.”
“My actions have already balanced any debt I owe. What would compel me to add another to our number? What token could you offer that would convince me?”
Dani barely kept herself from knocking him cold. This was not the time to bargain.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“A passionate kiss.”
“No. No way. Forget it.”
He turned his face aside and wiped a hand across the cheek. “Very well. Then a simple peck here, where I have just now sterilized the flesh. The merest balm to soothe my wounded soul. The slightest show—”
“Oh, shut up.”
She leaned in, brushed her lips over the smooth skin, and then stepped back, wanting nothing more than to take some steel wool and acid to her mouth. Grinning as if she’d just accepted a marriage proposal, Sydney tapped the glass, which vanished liked a popped bubble.
“And now, to avenge my honor and prove myself worthy of your affection.” Miming a swirl of a cape, he ran back to the stairs, where the Ascendant had reached the bottom. They clashed once more in a flare of light.
She caught the trash mage as Stewart weaved out of his prison. He sagged into her arms and almost dragged her to the floor. Inwardly cursing at all these men fainting on her, Dani patted his crusty cheeks—thank the heavens for gloves—and jostled him.
“Stewart. Stewart, wake up. We need your help.”
The man’s face screwed up, and he weakly pushed her away. “No. Please. Not another bath. I’s beggin’…”
A less gentle slap. “Stewart!”
“Eh? Lass?” He blinked around. “Oh. This place still. Was hopin’ t’was a nasty dream.”
She helped him stand and then oriented him so he noticed Ben taking on the two Ascendants on the upper hall.
Stewart chuckled. “The ol’ boy gots himself clenched in a mighty tight sphincter, don’t he? Always his way.”
“Can you help him?”
Stewart perked up. He pointed at the janitor cart that had crashed down with Dani. A garbage bag hung off one corner, weighed down by whatever trash it contained.
“Just get me over t’that beautie, and we’ll see if we can’t be workin’ up a ruckus.”
O O O
Ben tried to not faint. It had been too long since he’d channeled so much power for such a long time. The Ravishing clawed through his arm, and each time he had to snatch at another ounce of energy, it throbbed, trying to deny him access to the magic.
The two Ascendants fought in tandem. One darted in to throw a punch or kick while the other diverted his defense or struck his Corrupted arm with their aura, blazing the pain higher. He tried to keep that arm angled away, with little success.
Throwing Pure energies against Corrupt often had destructive results, but Pure against Pure felt like two battering rams repeatedly slamming into each other. The weaker one would eventually collapse, but neither had a distinct advantage.
He triggered another spray of water from the bottle he’d requisitioned. The Ascendant on his left bulled through it and struck his ribs with an elbow. Ben wheezed and tried to block with the mop. A foot stomped it down and it tore from his hands. A kick caught him in the jaw.
Strategy fled. Ben scrambled on all fours to get out of range. The Ascendants closed, ready to beat him flat.
Mebbe I shoulda retired when I had the chance.
Then a surge of energy enervated him. Not questioning its source, he lunged upward and caught the nearest Ascendant under the chin. As he stumbled back, Ben kicked the mop at the other’s feet, who jumped to avoid tripping over it.
As the Ascendants came at him again, he intercepted each hit and landed a few of his own. They backed up, frowns replacing their confident smiles. Ben rolled his shoulders, for once in five years not feeling the fiery aches in his knees or the knot of muscles down his back. His limbs felt lighter. His thoughts raced.
He spared a glance over his shoulder. Stewart stood near with Dani at his side. The trash mage clutched a soda can in one hand and waved at Ben with the other.
“Get on then, lad. Don’t be wastin’ the effort.”
With renewed strength, Ben turned to finish with the Ascendants. He hesitated in surprise as the Ascendants—and any Cleaners left standing—sprinted away. They fled through the window portal at the far end of the hall, as if called to retreat by some unheard signal.