by Jean Johnson
Udrin’s shock did not last long. In fact, he switched from a gape to a grin, and even applauded in three loud claps. “Nice entrance! Very nicely done! Very intimidating. I suppose you’re here to scare me into behaving in constricted, el-fae ways?”
“You insult your mother’s kin?” Ban asked, curious. If this was an Efrijt thing, a treachery . . .
“What? No no no . . . well, yes.” Udrin corrected himself, first scrubbing the air with a hand, then twitching in a jerk and turning it into one of his characteristic, chaotic little dance moves. “They are as beneath me as the trees are to a soaring hawk.”
“So you side with your father’s kin?” Ban asked next.
“Oh, please,” Udrin scorned, wrinkling his nose and baring the hints of his tusks. The lower canines looked the same, at most half a fingernail’s length longer than human teeth. But when one of the clouds in the sky drifted its shadow across the valley floor, Ban realized the youth glowed. Skin only, not including his clothes, and only discernible in the deeper shadow of hems and cuffs. That was the source of the eerie disconnect between how the boy looked and how he should look.
“You think you are above them as well?” Ban asked, relaxing a little. Treachery from Medjant Kumon on top of Udrin’s troubles would make this situation very difficult to defuse successfully.
“They are a worm to the hawk,” Udrin replied, fluttering a hand in dusting-off dismissal. “Hawks do not eat worms. They don’t take orders from them, either.”
Ban dared to stroll a little closer. The longer he could keep Udrin talking and thus distracted, the more time the others would have for coming up with a solution to this problem child. “That’s good to know,” he stated quietly. “I never liked the idea of them trying to influence you, just to use your magics in place of their own.”
Udrin sagged his mouth a little, and flipped up both hands. “I know, right? Just because they’re responsible for my existence does not give them the right to dictate it! And it doesn’t give you that right, either.”
Enduring the finger pointed at him without a flinch, Ban met that scarlet glare levelly. “Both of your parents are concerned about your health. We know you’ve been eating mercury dust, guessing you stole it from the mines at some point. Your judgment will have been impaired by the metal trying to poison your Fae side. We know you want to access more of the magics of this world. But the more you try to reshape yourself to be more Fae-like, the stronger your impairment becomes. The mercury needs to be extracted and your mind and body given a chance to rest, before your experiments continue.”
Udrin’s expression turned stark for a moment, then his face scrunched up and he let out an enraged scream. “I will not be denied this power!”
Ban sidestepped the blast of magic flung his way. Udrin had never had the best of aim when stressed. “I am not suggesting that,” he replied calmly. “But I can see quite clearly your body is shaking, your aim is off, and your judgment is impaired. You should be more worried about the mistakes you are making with your body as you alter it.”
“Silence!” Udrin flung another shimmering sphere of energy at him.
It missed, of course. Udrin growled, watching it fly past Ban’s smoothly swaying body. The shimmering golden-white bolt slammed two seconds later into an unsculpted bit of cliff face next to the auditorium entrance in the distance. Faint cries of shock and fear reached their ears from the humans who had taken refuge in the theater space during Udrin’s initial attacks. They had watchers in other locations, true, but those watchers now knew they were in danger of being hit, and the ones on the balcony ducked back out of sight.
Ban glanced over his shoulder to watch it sail off and impact with a distant crack. He saw the humans hurrying away. Turning back to Udrin, he arched an eyebrow and shifted his palms to his kilt-wrapped hips. He needed to keep the half-breed’s attention on him, and not on those far more vulnerable citizens around them. “I know you can aim better than that, Udrin. At least, when you’re not impaired.”
Yelling, Udrin raised his hands—and raised columns of earth to either side of Ban, kicking up clouds of dust with a rumbling screech of stone grating too quickly on stone. “I hate you!”
He slashed his arms down and out, then swooped them in and slapped his palms together. Ban jumped high, clearing the twin columns crashing together right where he had stood. Years ago—mere decades ago, not even a full century—he would have killed any opponent trying to kill him in a similar fight. The part of him that had survived thousands of years of torments knew that the easiest and safest thing to do was to kill the boy now. It would be so easy to boost his fall instead of slow it, to summon a weapon and just . . . Yes, easier, physically.
But Jintaya had reminded him that everyone deserved a second and a third chance. Not much more than that in his opinion, but he would try. Once upon a time, he had been arrogant and hurting from the actions and carelessness of key figures around him, and ready to lash out without much thought for the consequences.
Drifting back down with the help of the feather tattooed on the underside of his left arm, Ban landed atop the half-crumbled rocks. He braced himself in case Udrin tried to mire him in the stone, ready to leap or to shatter, but spoke calmly while the chunks of rock shrapnel pattered onto the ground and the dust slowly settled.
“You are free to hate me if you like, but that doesn’t give you the right to try to kill me, Udrin. Hatred doesn’t give any—” Yes, there it was, a spearshaft of stone stabbing up in a burst of rubble and sand, trying to impale him. Ban leaped again, this time moving to his left. He landed and spoke firmly over the noise of pattering stone. “Hatred doesn’t give anyone the right to kill anyone else.”
Udrin reared back at that. His snarl shifted into a broad smile after a moment. The transformation perturbed Ban, since it showed just how badly the mercury poisoning had affected Udrin’s personality.
“Oh, but what about science? The art of studying a situation through observation and experimentation?” Udrin asked cheerfully. “After all, I am curious about how many different ways I can make you die!”
Fire burst from the palm the half Efrijt youth shoved his way. At the same time, stone erupted from the ground on either side of the outworlder, too, trying to force Ban into impaling himself. Instead, he flung himself forward, tumbling twice before thrusting up to his feet right in front of Udrin. Though the youth had some of his father’s height, Ban still stood over a head taller. From this close, Ban noticed that Udrin no longer glowed quite so much, thanks to the energy lost from fighting him.
“You have yet to kill me,” Ban told Udrin, keeping his tone calm and mild. As he suspected, his very calm goaded the youth into trying . . . with a blast of searing fire slammed straight into his naked, tattooed chest.
It hurt. Dying always hurt. This time, his last breath came with a whiff of scorched meat, and the pain of slamming his back and head into the hard stone lining the grand plaza. It took a few seconds to actually die, to feel his life essence slipping away into blissful cool darkness . . . only to be yanked back seconds later in time to hear a demand.
“What does it take to permanently kill you, anyway? Poison? Magic? Being charred to ash?” Udrin asked, tipping his head and eyeing Ban like a particularly puzzling insect.
Ban folded his arms across his chest. “Not even an instantaneous disintegration worked. I am immortal, and unstoppable.”
Udrin narrowed his eyes at that.
“Your mother is worried about your mental health. The mercury has affected you badly. You need t—”
Ah, death by flash-freezing. That was a different flavor of pain, one he hadn’t felt in a while. His vision frosted over, the liquid in his eyes crystallizing, but he did see the incoming blow that shattered his body. Three seconds later, Ban re-formed, arms still crossed. He tipped his head in silent, sarcastic inquiry.
Udrin responded to tha
t by lacing his fingers together, flexing them, and trying again. And again. Each death hurt, but knowing that Udrin squandered both energy and time with each attempt made it worthwhile. Guessing that the youth’s attention might waver between kills, each time he came back, Ban provoked him with a word, a phrase, a look.
After Ban’s sixth or seventh death, Udrin paused long enough to scowl and demand, “Doesn’t all this death hurt?”
“Of course. But do keep trying. It’s mildly entertaining,” Ban replied. “You are getting more creative with each attempt.”
Whatever he said, however, caused the youth to rear back, poppy orange eyes widening until the whites showed all the way around. “. . . Of course,” he breathed, looking astonished. “You’re trying to delay me . . . You’re making me waste anima!”
He attacked again, this time opening up a pit and slapping the leaping outworlder down into it via tentacles of pure force. Ban managed to land safely enough, but the pit slapped shut over him, leaving him in pitch dark. Flexing and blinking, he activated his vision tattoo with a twitch of his facial muscles, allowing him to see the chamber as if it had been lit from a sourcepoint just above his head. The whole thing was small . . . and the sandstone felt spongy under his boots
Frowning, Ban touched the rounded wall . . . and felt his fingers sink into the stone. He tried to dig into it, to push it aside, but the stuff stuck to his hand. Annoyed, he flexed an arm tattoo and broke free. Chunks of rock pattered down, one even smacking his shin as it bounced to the floor . . . and then sank into that floor. The hole he had made smoothed over at the same time.
Turning to look all around, Ban realized there were no air shafts. The floor clung to his bootsoles, but didn’t let him sink through. From far too much experience with this sort of thing in his distant past, he knew he had at least a handful of hours of oxygen, since the diameter of the roughly cylindrical room was almost wide enough to stretch out his arms, and almost high enough to hold those arms straight over his head. Ban knew that if he lay down and breathed in his exhalations, he would eventually get sleepy, suffocate, and perish peacefully from the carbon dioxide that would build up in the bottom of this pocket.
His brief experiments had shown the other cleverness of this cage. If he tried digging into the walls, the walls would trap his hands and feet. Explosive forces might break some of the wall material, but if Udrin had made it thick enough, it would re-form faster than he could damage it. And if it was damaged enough, it might stab through him, immobilizing him long enough for repairs to be made before he could die and re-form.
But Ban knew something he had never told anyone else. He was not trapped, down here. Not after fifty or so years of learning how to control constantly dying of suffocation in similar enclosures, in one of the Netherhell realms that had held him captive for decades. With effort, he could focus as he died and rematerialize above ground. He could even rematerialize in a particularly familiar place on worlds were portals were easily made . . . but they weren’t so easy to make here. Portals also were not his strong point as a mage . . . but he was a mage, as well as a Painted Warrior. He was not nearly as trapped as Udrin thought him to be.
He did not lie down, but he did lower himself to the ground, adjusting the folds of his war kilt while settling crosslegged so that he sat comfortably. Breathing deep—the air down here was just fine, for now—he centered his emotions, calmed himself, and touched his earring to activate it.
“Éfan, Jintaya, Udrin has realized I was trying to distract him and waste his energies. He has temporarily neutralized me, but I should be able to get myself free. It may take me a little bit of time, however. Consider me out of action until you see me again, which will be either in the plaza, or in the stronghold.”
“Are you all right?” Jintaya asked. “What happened?”
“I’m fine. He’s trapped me underground in a sticky bubble of self-healing stone—do not attempt to get me out,” Ban added firmly. “That includes you, Kaife. He may be watching my surroundings for signs of Fae interference, and will try to latch on to your energies and drain you dry. I don’t know how much I drained him, nor how close he is to his goal. Have you figured out a way to stop him yet?”
“It doesn’t look good,” Éfan told him. “He siphoned enough energy from Krue, Fali, Adan, and me to get very close to the tipping point. What we’ve seen from Jinji’s scryings of your fight, I don’t think he’s spent nearly enough of that. But I do have several neutralizing artifacts that I developed to shield our personal quarters from inadvertently absorbing anima while we rest, or cast magics absentmindedly. Kaife is busy moving them underground to surround the plaza, and will activate them shortly. That should confine him to just what anima is found right there.”
“We’re also repurposing a few of them to be worn, so that we can go fight him,” Zedren added, his tone distracted in that way that told Ban he was making those changes right then.
Muan spoke next, reassuring him on a different point. “Ban, don’t worry about the humans. Jinji says Udrin has gone back to doing his odd little dance, so Kuro Chadesh has gone with Rua and Shava to get the humans evacuated from the general area. Chadesh cannot do anything to help in this fight since his magics are weaker than an animadj, but we also don’t want the humans trying anything, in case Udrin decides to try stripping the anima out of their bodies, too.”
“Don’t let them get too close,” Ban warned her. “If they catch his attention, he will seek to drain them. I don’t know what his range is.”
“I don’t think he does, either,” Éfan stated dryly. “Which is our only advantage at the moment. How long will it take you to get out of wherever you are?”
“I’m not sure. It will take a few minutes to set up the sequence of spells, which may work on the first try, or it may take several. Portal magics are not my best, and barely work anyway on this world,” Ban confessed. “But each time I die, I have been able to ‘shift’ my rematerialization point, especially in situations where my body has been displaced by solid masses . . . such as that boulder that fell on me shortly before discovering that the Efrijt had arrived. I’m beginning to curse that it ever fell, diverting my intended path.”
“I remember . . . We’ll be ready shortly for trying to pincer him,” Éfan said. “If you can get free and distract him again, that would help, but we will not count on it.”
“How are you going to get out of there, Ban?” Shava asked him.
“Since the laws of both physics and magics for this world insist there is no capacity for phasing through other objects in this universe, I will attempt to fill this pocket I am stuck in with solid matter. I will kill myself at the same time, so that my rematerialization takes place in the next nearest space large enough to contain me.”
“That sounds . . . unpleasant,” Jintaya murmured.
“It won’t hurt for long,” he reassured her.
“I know, but you still shouldn’t have to suffer.”
“I will be fine,” Ban said. “I’m going to be removing the earring along with my clothes in a moment, storing it the same way I store my clothes. I will need to concentrate, as well as preserve it from being crushed into uselessness. Please be careful, all of you. He cannot take my magics and keep them after my deaths, but he can take yours.”
“An admirable ability, though I’m not sure if it’s a peculiarity of your home dimension, or your immortal state,” Éfan said. “Whichever it is, I wish it applied to us. But we will be careful, yes. Good luck, Ban. Die well.”
“Die well-aimed,” Jinji offered dryly. “I don’t think you’re in an area of the plaza with any of Parren’s underground catch-basins, but if you are, they’re rather full at this time of year.”
“I will try to be careful.” Ban tapped the earring to silence it, then banished it along with his clothes. Time to get himself out of here, before his host grew too powerful again.
***
Battling that damned outworlder had been too much of a waste. The local energy reserves did not suffice for his needs anymore. In fact, he couldn’t reach as far out as he had been reaching when gathering the resonances of the ambient anima. It was almost as if . . .
Anomalies approached. Blank spots, moving dots of silence amid the harmonies of this world. Udrin ceased his humming and his dancing, turning to face the direction of their approach. They were not humans, some of whom were moving away, while others darted in to grab the halters of the four-legged animals around him. For a moment, Udrin almost let himself be distracted by the thought of pulling energies from the living beings, rather than using the energy stored in the stones beneath their feet.
A glittering flash of sunlight on gold recaptured the youth’s attention. Armor. Of course they’d come armored. Oh, look, Fali is up and about. He recognized the subtle differences in her armor; he’d sparred with her in lessons on Fae-style fighting techniques, as well as with the others. I’ll have to drain her, and her mate, Adan . . . and there’s Kaife and Parren . . . Definitely Krue in that fancy Guardian armor of his . . . and there’s Éfan . . . but what, no Jinji? No Kefer?
He didn’t expect to see Jintaya; the Mother-of-All didn’t believe in violence as anything other than a last resort. But he did see Zedren, recognizable only because his armor contained more artifacts than actual defensive segments. Those artifacts, he realized, contained the blanking-out effects that had impinged on his aetheric awareness.
They have some method to block me from the anima? He blinked, analyzed that, and nodded his head, acknowledging their cleverness. Of course, they would. They don’t want me to outpower them. I remember Éfan mentioning he had developed methods of stopping the anima from flying to them while they slept. But they have forgotten something, he knew, and looked down at his wrists. The cuffs he still wore stopped Fae and Efrijt powers from being used, but not the anima. Their machines would stop the anima as well, once they got close enough to enclose them around him, since they radiated countering energies.