Reviled

by Dean C. Moore

  The wizard bent at the knees into a fighting stance, raising his arms to send a similar message, even as magic swirled about his hands, preparing to fire in multiple directions without his even moving.

  “Stand down, Augustus. We’re here to protect you.”

  “What happened to the other ones that were protecting me?”

  “They made off with our dragons, and I’m guessing are officially retired from the protection racket. They may come out of retirement again once the Dark Matter Man is gone.” The one doing the talking was African American, with full lips, and a broad, flat nose. She was striking in her all-white huntress’s outfit with her matching ivory bow, white antelope leather satchel, and her golden arrows. Her eyes were an electric green—lit with energy—once the opaque white veneers were slid back. She broadcasted her name into his head, “Aba.”

  The blind huntresses—who apparently just hunted blind—were all hypnotizingly beautiful, enough so to use that as a way of disarming their enemies, or at least slowing them down; to buy them time, perhaps if they had become exhausted and vulnerable. The women seemed to read his mind and smiled vaguely.

  They were all showing him their eyes now, perhaps to earn his trust, to show more of their hearts and souls on the other side of those eyes. They were more vulnerable with their sight engaged—ironically. So perhaps the show of vulnerability was a peace offering to earn his trust. Either way, he really didn’t have the luxury of turning them down. It was night in the city again, when all manner of evil came out to play; all the more so in the sector of Syracuse referred to as Shelley’s Victorian England. That was true before the Dark Matter Man’s arrival, and it would be true long after he was gone.

  “Fine,” he said, relaxing out of his stance. “You’ve taken your game up a level since last time, I hope, after that pitiful display.”

  The women tensed, marshalling their self-control, all except for the one who appeared to be their leader, the ebony-skinned one, Aba. She just smiled. “Yes, Augustus,” she said. “Let’s hope the same can be said of you.”

  “It can.”

  The one to her left was Native American, dressed accordingly, the radiant eyes of citrine yellow. Her skin was redder than it might normally have been under the amber lights of the whale oil street lamps. Or maybe she was still flushed from the running. Her long, straight black hair was no doubt used in combat as a weapon—much as the Chinese martial artists had learned to do long ago. “Makya.” Her name resonated in his head—no doubt put there by her—like the beat of a drum.

  To her left, the Asian woman looked more Samurai warrior than huntress, though he supposed there was little distinction that mattered for his purposes. Her eyes glowed orange. Her build was more petite than the others, but her face made up for it in its ferocity; her features were like the familiar template used in Manga anime cartoon characters, as unisex as they were striking. “Tokoe.” Her name sliced through his mind like the susurrus of her sword, leaving whispering echoes in its wake.

  The souped-up, magic-infused eyes of the huntresses had obviously been meant to enhance their night vision. The larger than life eyes in general would have also helped in that department. It was Augustus’s guess that they’d once grown too dependent on that enhancement, and had since changed tactics, perhaps coming to the realization that some adversaries couldn’t be tracked by sight no matter how well one saw at night.

  The next three, on his right, were also dark-skinned, but of progressively lighter shades ranging from mahogany to coffee with a touch of cream. He found them to be more exotic than Aba—though he may have been prejudiced on the matter; Aba’s jewelry suggested she hailed from Ghana, which would make her no less exotic, technically, than any of the others.

  Aba’s three black compatriots sported adorned heads, unlike Aba, whose unadorned scalp was as bald and as polished as an 8-ball; their jewelry placed them from different quadrants of the globe.

  One was an Egyptian with caramel-colored skin, and finer, more chiseled features. “Asim.” Her voice resonated in his head with the sound of a metal rasp filing wood. Her maroon hair was clearly a wig—of the kind common as far back as ancient Egypt; that one saw etched in hieroglyphs. Her eyes were electric blue.

  One was from Trinidad, as colorfully dressed up for carnival as ever—only in huntress drag that would not impair her movement. “Savita.” Her name played in his head like the tympani of steel drums. Her short hair was carved in labyrinthine patterns that might well have been yet another form of magic. Her eyes were electric red.

  The last remaining black huntress was from Kenya. A Maasai. “Heshima.” The throb of her name in his head made his brain bleed. The bald dome of her skull was tattooed, and had been elongated, wrapped from birth to force the bizarre growth pattern, the way the Chinese wrapped the feet of their female children to mold a particular look. That was not a Maasai practice, but her jewelry suggested she had adopted the Massai ways all the same. Her eyes were electric purple.

  Augustus knew his jewelry, so found it easy to place them geographically; many mounted jewels traced their forms back to magic-endowed shapes whose meaning, power, and value had long since been forgotten.

  They each sported more weapons than were immediately evident; most of the death-dealing instruments were camouflaged amid the colors and patterns and shapeliness of their figures, flowing right along with them.

  “I need to find some place to rest,” Augustus said. “I’m not a hunter. I can’t run day and night, like this. My magic has been keeping me going, but I need it for more important things.”

  The girls nodded. “We anticipated as much,” their leader, Aba, said. She handed him a flask. “Drink. We use the herbal mix to keep our legs from getting heavy.”

  He guzzled the concoction. But before he could lower the bottle, their eyes had all morphed to that opaque white again, the veils dropping down. They sensed something stalking them.

  The Native American huntress inhaled deeply, analyzing the air. The others seemed to be employing their sixth sense no less probatively.

  “It seems Soren has also shifted his fighting into a higher gear,” Aba mumbled.

  Augustus wondered why the huntresses had bothered to reveal their names. Names held power, especially with those married to magic. Sure, it was one more sign of their willingness to be vulnerable with him as a way of gaining his trust. But they likely wouldn’t all survive; whoever remained would be easier to remember; that was the time for introductions.

  Until then, all that mattered was that he survive long enough to become one of the ancient ones. Wizardry grew more powerful the longer one lasted across generations. If he could endure long enough, their sacrifices would all be worth it. The good he could do for the world then….

  “First lightning, then thunder, then Soren,” the Native American, Makya, said. “Same as before.”

  “He does like his flashy entrances,” Aba replied. Her confident smile was as much a way of setting the tone for the group as holding her own emotions in check, Augustus surmised. “Can you tell where?”

  “The center of the circle,” Makya said. She was referring to the spot where Augustus was a moment ago, but one look at the girls’ transformed faces, and he’d made a quick decision to join them on the perimeter.

  “Perfect.” Aba smiled in a most unfriendly manner.

  The lightning struck the center of the circle, splintering and burning the asphalt and boring a hole the size of a tea cup’s saucer. Thunder followed even as the hole was forming. Then, as predicted…. Soren manifested without his robe, and, with a thought, sent the patches of nanites on his surface off his body; they coalesced into a staff in his hands. He seemed no less determined to use his beauty to hypnotize the girls than they were determined to use their beauty to hypnotize them.

  The girls gasped, and took a collective step back, not used to having the tables turned on them. Soren couldn’t see their reactions, of course—as the women had once again made themselv
es invisible—but Augustus could.

  The Tesla-like ball that his body became discharged lightning in all directions, striking everyone in the circle. But the girls had also cloaked Augustus with invisibility, and shielded him. There is evidently a lot more in that potion they had me drink than they let on.

  The lightning bolts coming from the “bulb” in the center and headed in all directions, meeting no resistance, continued their meandering paths until they illuminated something else that was there, hidden in the darkness, no less invisible.

  The dragons.

  Six of them. One of them in front of Soren, on the street, one behind, each just beyond the perimeter of the circle of hunters he was standing in. One dragon had grabbed on to the side of a building, its wings spread wide; the other, its partner, struck a similar pose along the side of the building on the other side of the street. Both maintained a good distance off the ground. And the remaining two dragons perched overhead, flapping their wings as they hovered in place. Their shrieks—now that they no longer needed to remain cloaked—pierced the night. Perhaps the sounds had been calibrated to help shatter whatever trance Soren was in, so he could no longer emit the lightning bolts.

  The dragons were still just energy tracings, invisible except in outline, but the more energy Soren hit them with, the more they seemed to materialize. The girls had learned to use his ability to channel increasing amounts of energy against him—toward their own ends. Marvelous. Augustus took heart.

  By the time Soren caught on to the ruse, the dragons were fully incarnate. No two the same. Each one, much like dogs, reflecting something of the blind huntress it was keyed to in its overall look.

  They all blasted Soren with the full fury of their might; their flames, overlapping one another, each a different color according to how hot each dragon’s flames burned. The huntresses hadn’t moved, immune to the flames, as Augustus was now. He appreciated the stony dispositions set on their faces, even if Soren could not.

  Augustus was beginning to realize that these huntresses were as endowed in the wizardry department as they were in the huntress department, and possibly versed in forms of magic entirely alien to him. Could a long-term alliance with them be just what he needed to enhance his mastery of his wizard’s craft, in order to survive long enough to become an ancient wizard? He chose to count their entry into his life just when he needed them most, too, among the good omens. Along with the fact that the Soren/beast dyad was screaming in agony and withering under the combined force of the flames.

  It took nearly a full minute, but when it was done, Soren and the beast were little more than a burn mark on the ground in the center of the circle.

  Another good omen.

  “Show yourselves, girls. We’re all friends here.” The voice was Soren’s, and it was coming from all around them.

  A distinctly bad omen.

  When Augustus turned about on himself he saw the different Sorens perched on the roofs, and on the balconies of the upper stories of the buildings. Apparently, he had any number of expendable selves now that the girls could choose to exhaust their dragons upon. The first round had truly gone to Soren; the huntresses had fallen into his baited trap.

  Augustus chose to take that as yet another bad omen.

  “Maybe I can convince you to come out of hiding,” Soren coaxed, continuing to speak in six part harmony. Each Soren immune to the dragons’ redoubled efforts to take the clones out, until Aba gestured with her hand to save their energy. A gesture that the various Sorens couldn’t see, but the dragons, no less keyed to the girls, perhaps having drank the same potion, did. They desisted as commanded, though Augustus could tell it wasn’t easy for them; the winged reptiles were quite worked up.

  The dragons took to the air, after each one had picked up a version of Soren in its beak or in its talons. Together, the dragons crushed or bit off the heads of their prey and swallowed what was left, whole.

  The various Sorens exploded inside the dragons, sending them into free fall. They leveled the buildings they landed on. The ones clawing on to the sides of the buildings, in order to slow their fall, merely found a different way to collapse the tenements, widening the circle about the blind huntresses.

  The were-creatures the dragons unwittingly exposed, morphing inside their apartments, finished their transformations, took one look at what was going on, and decided their enhanced abilities would serve them best fleeing the scene.

  The dragons limped, if they could still move, as others rolled over on the ground in agony, all trying to cough up what they’d just swallowed, too late.

  But after some staggering about and further screeching out in anguish, they managed to get up on their feet—and morphed out of dragon mode back into wizards.

  Augustus gasped. Dragon morphs!

  They were a rare kind of wizard, very ancient, from the Chinatown district. At least that’s where they were rumored to be holed up. No one had ever seen one before today. They probably hadn’t morphed in hundreds of years or more. Not a whole lot of places to hide a dragon these days, and it wasn’t like you wanted to announce yourself as a dragon morph and get everyone eager to obtain such magic chasing after you. Your life was hard enough when you weren’t on the run all the time, as Augustus could attest to firsthand.

  The girls had decided to recruit ancient magic to fight an ancient force associated with the cabbalistic magic that had taken hold of Soren. Smart. But smart enough?

  So long as these wizards had a lot more up their sleeves, maybe.

  The Soren-beast dyad manifested again, just one of him this time. He addressed each of the girls individually, who had yet to move, anticipating his return to the center of the circle. With Soren’s reappearance, the dragon morphs had taken a big step back, even if the girls refused to move.

  “Makya,” Soren said, addressing the Native American, “Your Hopi name means Eagle Hunter.” He talked straight at her as if he had no trouble seeing her past her invisibility cloak. Maybe he didn’t need to see her, so long as he could home in on her darker thoughts. “This huntress past life you’re channeling, it’s not who you are in this life, Makya. Until you embrace all of who you are, you cannot truly come into your power. Such self-hate to obscure yourself so entirely…. I can’t imagine.”

  “If he’s inside her head, he’s inside all our heads,” Aba blurted. “With me, now! And grab the wizard.” The girls bolted, running in formation about Augustus. He found himself suspended in an energy net between them, fastened to their waists. It was all he could do to keep from bouncing up and down, as if on a trampoline. He decided to stop fighting it, and to use the trampoline to get the height he needed to wield his magic, keeping Soren in sight, even as the distance between them increased.

  The dragon morphs had remained behind to contend with Soren, buying the huntresses time to make their escape.

  But Augustus was curious to test his new magic, too. No matter how high he vaulted on the trampoline, and no matter how long it took him to fall back onto it, the net was always beneath him. The huntresses used the time he was off the net to put even greater distance on Soren, and they used the magic of the net to keep Augustus forever in their midst.

  Now, before he could decide which magic to send Soren’s way, he needed to assess how the dragon morphs were doing; so he spent many of those early leaps simply watching the light show.

  Not exactly from a distance. In his mind, he could see everything unfolding around Soren as if from up close; he was keyed to the dragon morphs, who remained keyed in turn to the blind huntresses and their potion, even though the ancient wizards had now morphed back into human form.

  Augustus’s virtual front row seating definitely lent some drama to the light show.

  Of course, that was as much curse as blessing.

  ***

  The dragon morph Kang’s ramblings were causing Soren to levitate off the ground. While troubling, that wasn’t what truly pissed him off. It was the fact that Kang’s magic was reca
lling all the other Sorens about the city, currently engaged with the master wizards in a number of districts. They slammed into him, their bodies merging, one after the other, putting an end to the fights in those districts, and cutting off Soren’s pipeline to the intel they were collecting from the various wizards, their strengths and vulnerabilities.

  Soren, the scientist, used to the beast taking the driver’s seat in these encounters, found himself once again in control. The beast needed to know how Kang’s magic worked, and for that he needed Soren’s rational side as much as Soren needed the beast’s intuitive side.

  Soren attuned his ear to Kang’s mutterings, breaking down each of the sounds into their discriminate parts, the actual words. The wizard, somehow, over the eons of his long life, which now numbered in the many thousands of years, had managed to decipher some of the cabbalistic symbols and the human words associated with them. Though crude approximations of the actual sounds meant to be uttered by alien larynxes and voice boxes, and spilled across alien tongues, mouths, and palates, the pronunciations were close enough for the Beast’s purposes; as soon as Soren and the beast, working together, had alighted on what was going on.

  The Beast moved quickly to decipher more of the language, or at least the words associated with the picture drawings, and he cleaned up the language at the same time, with his and Soren’s more sophisticated understanding of how to make the sounds. Of course, both were tapping Lar’s mind and Ramon’s—courtesy of Naomi’s mind link, which the beast had learned to piggyback. So long as she maintained a psychic connection to the others in their family, Soren and the beast had access to it, too. And Cypher was quite the cryptologist and linguist—more so than he knew, for he was still unable to access so many of his abilities, walled off in an unconscious realm; he was nearly as afraid of what those abilities could do as Naomi was afraid of what she could do. Though in Lar’s case, the source of the fear was quite different; he just refused to believe he was that good, and so repeatedly severed the line to the genius within.