by CM Raymond
****
Hearing the blast, Ezekiel took the stairs two at a time, his robes flowing out behind him. Sliding around the corner, the first thing he saw was the mystic who had greeted him earlier at the door, unconscious—or perhaps dead—on the floor.
Three men were standing over him, one of them holding what Ezekiel only surmised was one of the magitech weapons he’d heard so much about. A chill passed over his spine as he thought of what other perversions Adrien was creating within the walls of Arcadia.
The oldest, and clearly the leader of the gang, looked up at Ezekiel. Recognition washed over the man’s face. The guard had been issued descriptions and even drawings of the powerful, old Unlawful running around. And that Unlawful was now within his sites.
The guard’s eyes turned black. He drew a sword, and with a flick of his wrist, it burst into flames. Clearly, the man was well-trained.
“Hurting the mystic was a mistake, friend,” Ezekiel said. “Perhaps if you laid down your weapon and let me attend to him, you can find mercy in this place.”
The large guard sneered. “You are the one who will be begging for mercy when we’re through, old man.” The guard nodded to his partners and they stepped forward, both with magitech weapons drawn.
Ezekiel sighed. “So be it.”
The man on the left fired, and a ball of energy flew toward Ezekiel. But the old man could move faster than most expected. He sidestepped the blast and waved his hand upward. The marble tile underneath of the advancing guard came to life. Ezekiel closed his hand as if holding onto a rope, and a hand made of tile reached up from the floor and grabbed the guard’s leg. Ezekiel pulled his hand down, and the marble hand followed suit, pulling the guard. The man disappeared into the floor.
“Dirk!” The other fool yelled as his partner vanished before his eyes. He turned his weapon on Ezekiel, but never had the chance to fire. Ezekiel waved his hand and the weapon exploded, releasing its energy in the face of the man who held it. The guard screamed in pain then dropped to his knees.
Ezekiel had dispatched two guards in as many moments, but they were only pawns compared to the third. The man smiled, his black eyes lifeless. “Well, at least the rumors about your power were true. I might actually enjoy cutting you to pieces.”
The soldier threw his arm forward, and a large copper urn sailed over his head. Ezekiel reached out a palm and pushed the missile aside, but it was only a distraction.
The guard had charged forward at a sprint, his flaming sword swinging overhead. Ezekiel raised his staff just in time to parry the blow. Light flashed as their two weapons met.
****
Stellan was surprised that the Unlawful’s staff blocked his sword. He had expected his weapon to split the stick and the old man in two. Clearly, he was a powerful magic user, and he must have been actively enchanting his staff, increasing its strength.
No matter, thought Stellan, I’ll find my opening.
Stellan hammered his sword again and again, attacking at every angle. But each time the old man managed to block it, his staff and robes twirling in a tight dance. Before long, their positions were reversed, and Stellan was the one forced to block the deadly rod of oak. The old man’s eyes burned red, and the anger in his face was just as clear.
When the old man feigned high, Stellan fell forward. He raised his sword to block the crushing blow, leaving his lower half undefended.
The Unlawful took full advantage of the misstep and swung his staff low. It crashed into Stellan’s knee, and he screamed in pain. But the guard kept his wits about him and slashed his sword outward, forcing the man back.
Stellan accepted the fact that this strange old man had him outmatched in hand-to-hand combat, so he tried another tactic. Before the Unlawful could move, Stellan dropped his sword and reached both hands outward. He pulled with all of his strength, and a window high above the old man shattered, raining down shards of razor sharp glass.
The old man twirled an arm above his head and pushed his palm forward. The glass followed his command and recreated itself as a glass wall in between the two magicians.
Stellan took the opportunity. He grabbed his sword from the ground and drove it forward. The wall shattered around his arm—it was worth a few cuts to finish the old man. But as he broke through the wall, instead of flesh and blood, his sword found only air. The old man was nowhere. Stellan had stabbed only a hollow reflection.
He looked left and right, then a sinking feeling hit his stomach. He turned around, just in time to see the Unlawful’s staff swinging through the air. It cracked the side of Stellan’s head and stars clouded his vision.
In a desperate attempt to save himself, Stellan swung his flaming sword upwards, but the old man was ready. He caught Stellan’s hands in his own. A cold feeling spread from the man’s flesh and slowly, from the hilt to the tip, the fire in Stellan’s sword turned to ice.
When the ice reached the tip of the sword, the blade shattered, leaving nothing but a jagged piece of frozen steel sticking out of the hilt.
The old man twisted Stellan’s arms and forced the broken sword through his chest. Stellan coughed up blood as he looked down at the hole in his chest. With his last breath, he raised his head.
The last thing he saw was the strange old man’s blood red eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The guard slumped to the ground, hands still grasping the blade sticking from his chest. Ezekiel saw the black in his eyes turn gray, and he knew the guard was dead. For a moment, Ezekiel thought of his mother and smiled. He was a helpless child no longer.
Ezekiel turned to look around the room and his eyes landed on a magitech rifle pointed right at him. Apparently, the guard who took the full extent of the blast earlier wasn’t out of the fight.
He raised the weapon, but just as he was about to fire, he began to scream. The guard dropped the gun and began clawing at his own face. He then ran forward blindly, screaming before he crashed into a wall, his head rebounding off the stone, dropping unconscious to the ground.
Ezekiel looked up and saw Julianne standing in the doorway. Her eyes were white blanks, and they held no warmth in them.
He smiled, “I thought you mystics were people of peace. How did you say it? ‘Not accustomed to the martial affairs of this world.’”
Julianne’s eyes regained their color, and she looked down at the unconscious guard. “It was only a simple illusion. Who knew he would freak out so badly? And just because we prefer not to fight, doesn’t mean we don’t know how.” She gave Ezekiel a wink.
A cough broke the moment, and Ezekiel stepped around the carnage to find the doorman who had been taken down by the magitech weapon. His eyes were wide and he was shaking. Blood seeped from the man’s stomach, and Ezekiel could smell burnt flesh.
Julianne reached down and touched the man’s temple. She spoke a word of comfort and Ezekiel could see the fear and pain disappear.
But Ezekiel wasn’t ready to let this man die, no matter how peaceful Julianne could make his passing. The fight had taken nearly all Ezekiel’s energy, but there was a bit left. Laying both hands on the man’s torso, his eyes burned red. Ezekiel could feel the man’s body responding, the wound working double time to heal itself.
When Ezekiel had finished, the man was still unconscious but breathing steadily.
Her voice was next to him. “Thank you, Ezekiel.”
Ezekiel slumped down to the stone floor. “Don’t thank me just yet. I just killed a man, one of the Governor’s soldiers on your doorstep. When that man doesn’t come home, there’s going to be hell to pay, and the devil himself will bring it to your doorstep. I may have just involved your temple in my war, whether you wanted it or not.” He looked up to her, “For that, I am so very sorry.”
Julianne looked over at the dead man, a smile on her lips. “Oh, we are involved. But maybe Adrien doesn’t have to know that just yet. Who says that his dead soldier won’t be going home?”
Ezekiel looked over at the man
he had killed and Julianne’s plan suddenly became clear. “Do you think you can pull it off?”
“I was Selah’s prized student, remember? Handpicked to replace him. I spend my days leading the mystics in prayer and meditation. My nights are spent exploring other worlds with my mind. I think I can handle a little mimicry for a few weeks. But for us to fool Adrien, it will depend on you.”
Ezekiel cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“Adrien sent three men here,” Julianne answered as she looked around and pointed. “One’s dead,” she turned to the one she had attacked, “and another’s unconscious. But the third… “ she looked down at him.
“Any chance you could dig him out of my floor?”
****
The plate of vegetables and wild pheasant let off a fragrant smell, and Parker drew in a deep breath, enjoying every moment. Food like this wasn’t abundant in the quarter, and he had no clue when the last time he had eaten anything like it. “This is amazing!”
“Yeah. Magic has its benefits.”
“Wait. You…”
She loved fooling him, and this was no exception. “Leftovers. Zeke brings it in from somewhere.” She shrugged. “Too many questions about magic and druids and history to get a question in about the food. And by the time we eat, I’m so exhausted I’d eat Sal here if nothing else was around.” The dragon scampered under the chair and hid from its master. She tried to look under the chair, “Hey! I’m just kidding, boy.”
Parker thought about the dragon and the lycanthrope and all the other things he assumed were just myths. “Little small for a dragon, don’t you think?”
Hannah slapped his hand and let her fingertips linger on his knuckles for a moment. “Manners, Parker. He can hear you.”
She laughed, but as she picked up her plate, pain like a jagged blade stabbed into her brain. The plate slid from her hand and shattered on the ground. “Shit!”
Parker jumped up, concern was written clearly on his face. “Hannah! What is it?”
She held a finger in the air. Pushing out everything around her, Hannah attempted to control her mind, to remove the pain and assess what the hell was assaulting her.
Then it struck her. “It’s William. He’s in trouble.”
“How the hell…” he started.
“He’s in pain,” she said through clenched teeth. “I can feel it. We have to go to Arcadia.”
****
Hannah and Parker kept silent as they trekked miles through the woods back to Arcadia. Darkness had surrounded them as they drew near to the city walls.
Hannah created a flaming torch in her hand to light the way. She kept its power low. They didn’t want to alert anyone of their presence, and she knew that if things got bad—really bad—she was going to need all the power she could muster.
“Gates will be closed,” Parker said.
“I should be able to do something about that.”
“You want to announce our entry by blowing down Arcadia’s front door? Real subtle, magic girl. I thought you said you needed to be smart to control magic? I have a better idea, let’s do this the old-fashioned way.”
Parker led them around the southern wall of the city. Extinguishing her flame, Hannah stayed close to her friend who knew the outside of the walls like he knew the best places to pull a trick in the quarter. They got to a spot where Parker crouched low. “Follow me,” he whispered before disappearing into the darkness.
Hannah and Parker crawled through the drain pipe and under the city wall. Splashing through several inches of water—at least Hannah told herself it was water—made the trip close to unbearable.
What was worse was that it smelled like a mix between cow feces and lycanthrope brains. She had to hold in her dry heaves more than once. But she would crawl through worse if it meant helping her brother. Finally, they popped out of the pipe on the edge of the Market Quarter.
“Piece of cake.” Parker smiled.
“I didn’t think of cake once down in that shithole.”
He shrugged and led the way toward QBB.
Hannah noticed how quiet it was on the city streets. Normally, in the market, people would gather, drink, and tell stories into the early morning hours. You couldn’t say that unemployment was without its benefits. She mentioned it to Parker, and he told her that after she and Ezekiel left, when the Governor and Chancellor got serious about finding them, a curfew had been issued in the city. Breaking the curfew was punishable by jail time.
Hannah cursed them, and the way they were ushering Arcadia into a deeper circle of hell. As they turned for Queen’s Boulevard, they saw two men at the toll.
“Maybe it’s Jack,” Hannah said.
“Don’t count on it. Jack doesn’t work the toll anymore. In fact, I haven’t seen him since you left. This new guy ain’t so friendly, and I doubt his friend there is a barrel of rainbows either.” Parker placed his hand on the small of Hannah’s back and pulled her in close. “You don’t have time for this. If your magic head is right, William needs your help. Give me a minute with this guy, and then you slide by.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, when he sees me, I’m not going to have to do much of anything…”
****
Monte took a slug from his friend’s bottle and winced as the homebrew burned its way down to his gut. “Shit, Hank, this sure ain’t the mystics’ elixir, but it’ll do the job.”
“Well,” Hank said, “beggars can’t be choosers. We don’t all hold down a government job like you, you ungrateful twat. And they don’t call me Wildman just for my work in the Pit.”
The men laughed, passing the bottle back and forth. Since the curfew had been set, Monte’s job had gotten a hell of a lot easier. Sure, there weren’t as many tolls to skim, but he got paid to sit on his ass and do a whole lot of nothing. The streets were quiet at night, but if any shit hit the fan, he didn’t hate the fact that Arcadia’s best fighter was with him to handle a tussle.
“Hey, check this out,” Hank said, giving Monte a backhand on the shoulder and nodding down the Boulevard.
A drunk with a jug swinging by his side stumbled down the alley. Piss drunk, the man started belting out the Arcadian anthem at the top of his lungs.
“Oh, this one’s going to be fun,” Monte said, getting up off his stool.
As the dunk got closer, Monte squinted, trying to bring the man’s face into focus through the haze of his friend’s booze.
“What the hell!” Hank shouted, suddenly recognizing Pitiable Parker from the Pit. But his recognition was too late. As Wildman’s vulgar tongue filled the alley, Parker swung the jug with precision. It shattered over the brawler’s head, sending shards in every direction.
Monte cursed and dove for Parker, but the kid was too fast, and Monte was a bit too drunk. Parker ducked his giant arms and spun off down the Boulevard.
Getting to his feet and steadying himself, Monte picked Wildman Hank up off the ground. His friend’s temple was leaking blood, shards of the jug still impaled in his face. “Let’s get that son of a bitch.”
The two friends raced down the dark streets with murder in their minds after the kid from Queen’s Boulevard.
****
Rather than teleporting the last leg of the journey, Ezekiel decided to walk it. The last few days had taken more out of him than he had expected, and he thought that stretching his legs would use less energy than another jumping spell. Nevertheless, he was exhausted when he finally arrived home.
Collapsing on the couch, he exhaled. Reflecting on the meeting at the monastery, he was reminded just how precarious things were in Arcadia and realized more than ever how much there would be ramifications on all of Irth if things didn’t work according to plan.
The fight with the Capitol Guard was a hitch he wasn’t expecting, but the arrival of the Chancellor's men had drawn Julianne into the fray.
Before Ezekiel left, he dug the guard Dirk out of the ground and helped the myst
ics wipe his memory.
Julianne had appreciated that act.
Then he watched as Julianne took on the exact likeness of Stellan, the man that Ezekiel killed. In a few days, she would lead the brainwashed guards back to Arcadia. So, Julianne was on board. Time would tell if the other mystics decided to get involved in the fight against Adrien.
Unusually quiet, he thought. More often than not, his arrival would spark the appearance of his smart ass little student.
He pushed himself off the couch and walked the halls of the tower, looking for Hannah, but the place was empty. He stepped outside the front doors and scanned the edge of the forest.
Nothing, he thought. Something isn’t right.