Legacy First Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3 of the Legacy Series

by Ryan Attard

  I blocked a strike and vaulted over the pole. My leg shot forwards, catching him in the chest. I pulled the spear and he stumbled towards me as I spun my sword and slashed. He yelled in pain as a deep cut across his chest and shoulder appeared. I slid Djinn down the length of the spear and channeled a small blast of power. The weapon shot from his hands and clattered ten feet away.

  I moved in for the kill.

  My father snapped the heel of his palm at me and a blast of air punched into my stomach. The shot was enough to lift me off my feet and throw me across the room.

  As I gasped for breath and tried to get back on my feet, I saw him pull out another vial and inject himself. He convulsed on the ground and blood spluttered from his wounds before quickly sealing. He stood up shakily.

  “Never had to use two before,” he rasped. “I suppose this is your true power, then. I want it.”

  I tried to get on my feet, but he snapped his hands and a blast of air smacked against my back, driving me into the ground.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Are you really that insane?”

  His eyes widened. “Because I found it, Erik,” he said. “The power source. It’s here, Erik, right beneath our feet, and we are feeding off it constantly.”

  “What are you talking about, you crazy old man?”

  Dad let out a growl and pushed both palms downwards. I felt as if a grand piano had been placed on my back and the ground was sucking me into it.

  “I found something right beneath our feet, Erik. I don’t know what they met during their last expedition, but our ancestors didn’t come home empty-handed.” His voice was quick and erratic. “And it’s our power, Erik. We have it. It’s the power passed through the generations.”

  He walked around. “At first, I thought I found a way to stop my wife and me from having our powers drained. But when I realized you were twins, I knew there was no spell we could cast that would cover both of you. So, I came up with a plan. I tested the power, and it led me straight to the source. And then I realized I needed that power. I could have brought her back to life. I could have brought all of you back to life with that power.”

  He bent down and grabbed my hair, twisting my head to look at him. “I will become a god, Erik, and I will shape the world as I see fit. I can have my wife back. I can have a thousand of her. You and you sister will become the perfect children, and we will live an eternal life in the world I built for you.”

  He cupped my face. “Join me, son. Give me back my power. Give me the power of a god, so that I can give your mother life again. I will make all the monsters go away. Just. Give. Me. Power.”

  His face had a wild, psychotic expression as he squeezed his hands around my face. I saw veins breaking in his eyes and sweat rolling from his brow. My father was sick, in all senses of the word.

  “Gods don’t exist,” I replied. “You’re just a junkie who’s willing to kill your family for a fantasy. You killed your wife for nothing. You killed my mom for shit, and I will kill you.” I spat in his face.

  He let go of me and walked a few steps away. He extended his palms and the weight on my body doubled.

  “My sources tell me that you have impressive healing abilities. No doubt linked to the power source. But I wonder, will you be able to heal when the gravity around you is so strong that it crushes you?”

  I felt myself being squashed into the tile floor. Breathing had become impossible, and everything ached. I heard something snap and felt a shot of pain.

  I heard my father chuckle. “Let’s hope Crowley likes his payment a little flat.”

  Great. I was going to die, and the last thing I heard was a junkie’s lame pun.

  Suddenly, the pressure was gone. I looked up.

  A desk slammed into my father, carrying him into a wall. Gil stood at the entrance of the fire escape and waved her hands. A blast of air shot right into my father’s face, smashing his skull against the wall.

  “Get away from my brother,” she growled. “Daddy.”

  Chapter 27

  The two spells acted against each other. Dad’s gravity spell was crushing me while my own healing magic kept repairing the damage. If Gil hadn't shown up, I would have been caught in an infinite loop; but once the gravity spell was turned off my body was back in shape and I instantly regained full control. I scrambled to my feet.

  “I thought you were supposed to go after Crowley,” I told Gil.

  “The little rat escaped,” she muttered. Her face was flushed with anger. Crowley must have used an ace up his sleeve to give my sister the slip. But no matter—all that mattered was she was safe.

  “I told you, I don't want you to be around this.”

  Her eyes locked onto our father, who was slowly getting up. “I can handle it,” she replied coldly. “Besides, you and Dad are equal in terms of power right now. You've got the strength and he's got the versatility. It's a stalemate.”

  “And you're here to turn the tables in my favor.”

  “Our favor. We're in this together,” she said as she readied herself.

  Dad's figure rose. Steam emerged from him and I saw veins popping out. One lens of his spectacles was shattered and the rims curled unnaturally around his face. His eyes were wide, bloodshot and feral.

  “Oh, isn't that nice.” His voice was broken and raspy. “Brother and sister united against their big, bad daddy.”

  He inhaled deeply. “You can't hurt me!” he yelled maniacally. “I am better than you, you insolent children. That is my power and you don't deserve it. It’s mine!”

  A lance of power shot at Gil. She remained immobile, a lopsided smile on her face.

  My sword intercepted the shot. I poured enough power inside the blade to counter the energy of the lance, dissipating it.

  “Who do you think you're dealing with, Father?” Gil's voice sounded deeper than usual. It sent shivers down my spine and I sensed enormous power in just those few words. It was the same power generals conveyed when hyping up their soldiers, the power to terrify their enemies and make their allies feel invincible.

  “Individually, we are just Warlocks,” she continued, “and powerful ones at that. But together, we are a legacy. The future of our bloodline. I will not let you destroy our family. Not while I am alive.”

  She looked at me with a fierce expression that was both frightening and impressive.

  “Erik, Magnet, now.”

  I nodded and stepped in front of her.

  Magnet: the most powerful collaboration spell we knew. It needed time, precision, power and impeccable teamwork.

  Gil needed time to gather her energy and channel some of the most advanced magic in existence. As usual, it was my job to keep the nasty at bay until the time was right.

  “I don't know what you two are planning but the time for games is over,” Dad said. A lance of intense red fire leapt toward Gil.

  It was one of the basics when fighting magic users: target the wizard standing still and gathering magic. They were sitting ducks.

  But Dad made the gravest of mistakes. You never, ever, underestimate your opponent, no matter how small they were.

  Djinn's blade intercepted the fire and I pushed against it, parting the flame. I pushed even harder, until I felt myself running forwards. Straight towards my father.

  “I'm your opponent,” I said as I came upon him. The tactic took him by surprise and he barely dodged my swing. The short sword's blade was coated in flame, azure fire that emanated power and intent.

  He grabbed two pieces of metal, remnants of what was once a shelf holding lab tools. Instantly, he transmuted them and swung two scimitars at me. Gil was right. He had power and precision. It would have taken me half an hour to transmute scrap metal into a pair of swords. But I had my body on my side and my training. Swords, spears, magic—none of it mattered. I was trained against that sort of thing.

  No matter how many times he tried to take my head off, I parried and blocked, countering each strike with a slash. His
body healed the wounds with a violent hiss, no doubt a handy side effect of the drugs he had pumped into his body. He slammed both pommels of his swords together and channeled his magic once more. The metal twisted and fused on a molecular level. A spear formed and he resumed his earlier tactic of keeping me at bay with its length.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a spot on the ground beginning to warp, then spin like a little typhoon. Slowly, it grew and expanded to the size of a football. I gave Gil a quick glance. She nodded.

  The spell was ready.

  I ducked beneath Dad’s swipe, and with my deft footwork managed to make him turn his back to the warped space. Energy beams shot out of Djinn, driving him further backwards. He pushed forwards in a natural reaction. When a person is pushed, they tend to push back. He must have thought I was trying to get behind him and strike more vulnerable areas. He wasn’t completely off. He took a step backwards as I viciously counterattacked and drove the tip forwards. I raised my weapon as if to block and then let it fall, exposing myself. The tip of the spear penetrated my stomach and tore its way through.

  It wouldn’t have worked for anyone but me. The normal instinct in any fight is to avoid harm, even the smallest of injuries. But my experiences with pain had rendered me immune to most natural reactions. I was not afraid of pain anymore—I didn’t have a reason to be. I could heal from almost anything.

  I once read somewhere that ninety percent of pain was anticipation—it was all in our heads. It was the fear of pain that make you either froze up or react faster than before.

  I had completely accepted pain and the fear of it. I could heal instantly, so who cares how bad the damage was?

  Djinn embedded itself on the ground, and I wrapped my hands around the spear. Pain ripped through me but I chose to ignore it.

  My father was too stunned by my actions to resist. His foot stepped on the warped area and his body began twisting.

  The nature of the spell was to feed on the victim’s magic and expand itself, locking the target into that particular space. It was some heavy-duty spatial magic, the kind that usually went terribly wrong.

  Black-hole-in-the-middle-of-the-room wrong.

  It takes decades for most wizards to even attempt the simplest spatial magic, without fainting after the first two seconds. Gil had managed to combine spatial magic with Abjuration—if that wasn’t the mark of a genius, I don’t know what was.

  The spell engulfed me, too, holding me in place, which was just fine by me. I could still move my arms. The spell sucked off magic at a steady rate, and while it drained my father, I had a lot more juice in reserve. I wrenched the pike out of my stomach and dropped it away.

  Time for phase two.

  We dubbed the spell ‘magnet’ because of its nature. It latched onto victims and leeched off their energy, using that same energy to power itself. But the most important factor was what happened next. Any external spell coming into contact with it was enhanced tenfold due to spatial condensation and the redirection of the victim’s energy.

  In essence, the spell sucked the victim’s power, used that power to lock them in place and increased the final blow dealt to them.

  I let out a long yell, pulled back my fist, and drove it into my father’s mangled figure. I channeled power into my fists, each of them juiced up with enough magic to shatter rock.

  I kept hitting him.

  A flurry of fists flew between us, and with every strike I heard something break inside him. Pain stabbed along my hands and arms that originated from the same power that healed me. The kind that I couldn’t block out, no matter how much I tried. But I kept punching. I was determined to keep hitting him, with enough power to rip out a Baku’s head, with enough power to kill a phoenix.

  With enough power to destroy this evil once and for all.

  Each strike was enhanced ten times, and just one would have been enough to fell a Behemoth. But when it came to the villains who killed my mother, there was no such thing as overkill.

  Only vengeance.

  I stopped only when my hands fell limp to my side. Dad looked like a scarecrow that had been through a hurricane. Gil was on her knees, and the spatial spell had dissipated. I felt my healing repair the damage to my arms, and as soon as I had motion in my right hand, I pulled back my fist and channeled all the pent up magic I had left. All the anger, hate, betrayal and sadness flowed from the dark corners in my head into that fist.

  I punched him, determined to destroy him once and for all. Determined to end this nightmare forever. This would be the last strike, the final blow dealt to our own personal monster.

  After this, there was just hope of a better life. A life where none of our family members tried to kill us. A life where my sister and I could live in peace, away from nightmares.

  The punch threw him across the room. He made a glottal popping sound, the kind that planes do when they break the sound barrier. My entire body shook, and I heard a popping sound come from my shoulder. No matter; my injuries would soon heal.

  All that mattered was that it was finally over.

  There was no evil laughter or a declaration of power. All we heard after I had blasted Dad was breathing. A small intake of air and a raspy exhalation, which marked the smallest signs of life.

  I grabbed Djinn and made my way towards my father. Take him down now, before he can recover, I thought.

  My father slowly—impossibly—stood up and crushed an empty vial beneath his boot. Something was seriously wrong with him. His shoulders were dislocated, giving him elongated, droopy arms. He walked with a limp. One of his knees was no longer there. Instead, he simply flicked his leg in front of him and pushed his weight on it until he stepped with the other foot. A large section of his torso was gone, exposing to the air a set of small abdominal muscles that squirted blood every time they contracted. His jaw hung at an angle, and his neck twisted to one side, giving him a serpentine look.

  In his hand, the one that was not a mangled raw mess of nerves, he clutched a syringe. This one appeared stouter than the others and had two vials attached to it. One had the opaque violet liquid, and the other was filled with a dark blue liquid, like ink. The syringe had two needles. He stabbed it into his thigh and pushed.

  The effect was immediate. He let out a scream and blood oozed from his body like a burst water balloon. I heard a sound like a million rubber bands being snapped. His wounds began healing.

  He still looked weak and mangled, his face and body spasming with pain. He looked in no shape to fight, and I took the opportunity to strike.

  But I made the same mistake he did earlier and underestimated him.

  His movements were a blur. I felt a blow on my head and wrist. Djinn fell from my grasp and Dad spun low. His leg snapped into my chest and I went flying, slamming against the opposite wall, a full two meters off the ground.

  Not losing his momentum, my father wrenched out two pieces of wood from the remnants of a chair and channeled magic into them, morphing them into short, thick stakes. He threw the wooden stakes at me, telekinetically controlling their trajectory. Both impaled my forearms, pinning me to the wall.

  I saw him flick his palm. Djinn levitated and shot forwards…

  Straight into Gil.

  Chapter 28

  “NO!”

  My throat hurt, but it didn’t matter.

  Gil—she was dead.

  She was dead, just like in my vision.

  She was dead, and it was all my fault.

  Dad burst into a fit of coughs that morphed into an eerie giggle. I screamed again, but the wooden stakes pinned me helplessly to the wall. I was too tired to channel magic, and my weapon was taken.

  “I meant to use the prototype for the Ritual,” Dad said as he pulled the syringe out of his leg. “But given present circumstances, I’d rather take the option at hand.” He crushed the vial and dropped it. “You will both die now, and that is that.”

  “I’ll kill you!” I screamed. My feet stomped against the wall,
but I couldn’t budge. “You hear me? I’m gonna kill you, you monster!”

  My father simply laughed and tutted, as if he were scolding a child. I heard Gil moan softly. She coughed and sprayed blood from her mouth. I saw her figure emanate soft, white light and she managed to pull Djinn out of her. The blade clattered once on the ground.

  “Quite the warrior, over there,” Dad said casually. He folded his arms and looked at her. “I want to watch whatever she’s going to try. I’m interested in her power, too.”

  Sadistic bastard. He was going to watch his own daughter die slowly from blood loss. All for the sake of power, for some stupid ritual.

  Gil looked at me and slowly—very slowly—she winked.

  I saw her fingers trace a symbol on her forearm with blood, and a gust of wind erupted in the room, obscuring our vision. Mephisto appeared in front of Gil on one knee. His arms were outstretched as the wind picked up and surrounded them like a barrier.

  Dad’s eyes widened. “You,” he spat. “How dare you betray me? You are my familiar.”

  “No longer,” the demon replied coolly. “You are no longer my master. You are not the man with whom I contracted our agreement. On breech of the contract, I hereby sever the bond between us.”

  “You cannot do that.”

  “Your power waned and you are no longer the man you were, neither in body nor in spirit. You are a corruption that is spreading to me,” Mephisto continued, as if my father had never spoken. “I am now temporarily bound to a new master.” He picked up Gil and looked at me.