Choose your enemies carefully s-2

by Robert N. Charrette

  The elevator doors on Hyde-White's residence level buckled and blew inward with explosive force. There was no roar of explosives, only the metallic scream of tortured metal and the shattering pop of plastics. Hart knew magic when she encountered its effect.

  Toylike, a four-wheeled silver thing rolled out from under one of the lobby's low tables and took up station in front of the opening. As the machine pulled into place, its turret swiveled to point a gun barrel into the shaft.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the drone began firing its weapon in shrill hiccups of shortduration autonre bursts. Hart heard bullets spanging off metal and concrete, but there was another sound as well, a high pitched whang which a norm would be unable to hear. The source of the sound appeared, as Glover drifted out of the shaft. Flares of light accompanied the strange sounds as bullets struck an invisible shield that protected the archdruid.

  The drone briefly ceased fire as Glover drifted over it and touched down on the thick carpet. The drone revved its motor and began to circle him, firing bursts at different portions of his anatomy in a random timing sequence. Glover watched contemptuously as the drone sought a weakness in his defense. On the third circle, Glover lashed out with his foot, deflecting the drone's course. Before its onboard expert system could compensate, the little machine hit a piece of debris from the doors and bounced into the air. It came down on its right front fender and toppled forward. Its momentum was so great that it rolled right through the open doorway of the elevator shaft.

  "Pathetic gadfly," Glover sneered as the machine vanished from sight.

  Hart dropped her invisibility spell and pointed her pistol at Glover.

  "Shouldn't have dropped the levitation spell, archdruid. You don't have an invitation to this party."

  Glover started at her words, but recovered quickly. "I have no further need for it and I don't need any invitations, elf. You are no impediment to me. I presume you were watching and saw how ineffectual guns are against a magician of my skills and power." "I saw."

  "You don't seem properly impressed." "Oh, I was impressed. That bullet shield is a real powerful trick, but I've got a few of my own."

  She dropped her aim to the floor by his feet and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The first explosive bullet shredded the carpet and pitted the floor. Its concussive force tossed the archdruid from his feet. The second bullet chewed through the flooring and into the subflooring, and the third punched through the ceiling of the floor below. The destruction was so rapid that the stages were indistinguishable to he eye. When gravity reclaimed Glover, it pulled him through the new hole. As he passed through the opening, Hart saw the shock and surprise on his face, but he looked physically unhurt. She was surprised at the effectiveness of his protection spell.

  Hart approached the gap cautiously, carefully testing the footing before trusting her weight to the weakened floor. Looking over the edge, she saw Glover lying on top of a pile of debris. His clothes were dusted over by late-falling chunks and settling dust. She had hoped the fall would kill the archdruid; it hadn't. He was dazed though and had dropped whatever spells he was maintaining. As a mage herself, she knew the strict concentration necessary to maintain powerful spells.

  "Are you awake, Archdruid Glover?"

  He groaned. Conscious, but not composed enough for magic.

  "I actually came loaded for bigger game, but a good hunter never passes up an opportunity."

  She fired three more times. Without the protection of his spell, he was just meat. Then, he was no more.

  Sam crashed into things as he ran. He needed time to gather his wits. Walls and furniture that were impediments and bludgeoning obstacles to him did nothing to slow the corrupted building spirit; it just walked through them as if the object wasn't there. The only things it detoured around were plants and the thieves' cache of art objects scattered around the residence. Fortunately, the spirit was moving more slowly than he, as its summoner, knew it could. Under control of the wendigo, the spirit seemed inclined to play with its prey.

  Gunfire from one of the drones reminded Sam of Willie. The plan had called for her to concentrate on dealing with physical threats while he handled the magic, Her drone's lack of success against the wendigo in his Hyde-White guise had put the monster in Sam's purview. Sam hoped she was doing better against the security guards who were probably storming up the stairwells by now.

  Collision with a musty tapestry told him where he was in the maze of the residence. The wendigo's sanctum was hidden behind the hanging. Its magical barrier would probably stop the spirit, but the small room would be a trap where the wendigo could deal with him at leisure.

  But, he realized, what would halt the spirit would blind it as well. In a desperate burst of speed, he cut around to the side of the sanctum, placing its barrier between him and the spirit. A groan like overstressed steel told him that the spirit had lost sight of him. If it hadn't been limited by the manifestation, he would never have been able to pull off this little trick. Sam ran down the first hallway and cut right, trying to keep the sanctum between him and where he thought the spirit was. The longer he could keep it up, the further away he could get. Breathing heavily and lungs burning, he stumbled into one of the few enclosed chambers of the residence floor.

  For now, he could run no more. He leaned his back against a wall and let himself slide down to the floor. Opening the seal on his leather jacket, he reached inside and closed his hand on the tooth. Peace, he told himself. Peace to find the center. His breathing slowed and his fear-fogged thoughts began to focus.

  He envisioned the building spirit clumping toward him. He visualized the strings of power that bound it to the building. Tracing their flow from the essence of the structure, he followed the threads to the spirit's manifestation. Because he had summoned the spirit, he knew how those mana threads were twined and knotted as they stretched to twist through the boundary of astral space. Without such a connection, the spirit would not have been able to manifest on the mundane plane. Sam felt along the strands of power, seeking to untangle them.

  Sooner than he expected, a groping, handless arm thrust through the partition. A second limb followed, then the rest of the spirit emerged through the wall. It was only a meter away. Sam could smell the mold and rotting garbage odor of it as it cocked one arm back to smash him.

  He tugged on the astral strings.

  The manifestation jerked. Sam tugged again, harder. The spirit staggered back a step and lost a bit of its substantiality. Digging mental fingers into the strands of power, Sam pried and pulled. As he unraveled the binding of the spirit's form, its physcal shape lost coherence, returning first to the liquid mist and then to nothingness. He had banished his summoning. It was a short-lived victory.

  The wendigo trotted through the door to the chamber. He betrayed no surprise. Having been in control of the spirit, he would have felt its dissolution.

  "An excellent banishment, if unexpected. You rebuke my nonchalance, and rightly so. She is coming and it will be better for all of us if you are dead by then." The wendigo bared his fangs and advanced, taloned fingers extended. "It is time for the end."

  Sam knew he was no physical match for the threemeter monster, but he scrambled to his feet, anyway. He crouched, presenting a smaller target. He hoped. The wendigo was stronger and faster than he was. Staring death in the face and having no better idea, he dove forward, surprising the wendigo and slipping beneath the outstetched paws. But Sam was not fast enough to escape unscathed. The wendigo whirled and raked Sam across the back, slicing fringe into a scattering of leather scraps and cutting through to shred the jacket and its lining. Four rows of fire burned into Sam's upper torso. The impact knocked him to the floor and beneath of the sweep of the wendigo's second swipe.

  Sam rolled away, trying to gain enough room to get to his feet again. Pain seared through him as he flexed his muscles to keep moving. Each time his back hit the floor, the agony spiked.

  An immense vis
e closed on his right ankle and he knew his maneuver had failed. The wendigo lifted him by his ankle and he dangled in the monster's grip. The Ares Predator slipped from its holster, whacking Sam's elbow as it fell. His arm went numb.

  "I thought you were Dog, not Rabbit," the wendigo scoffed.

  Inexplicably, the wendigo howled in pain and flung

  Sam away.

  Sam was parallel to the floor when he hit the wall. Pain exploded in his chest and he blacked out for a second. He came to on the floor. His ears were ringing and he felt like he was going to vomit. His left leg was twisted underneath him. He felt no pain from it, but by the angle, he knew it had to be broken. It hurt to breathe, causing sharp stabbing pains in his chest. Ribs broken too, he thought. No more running now.

  The wendigo was clawing at the back of his left shoulder as if madly trying to scratch an itch. He roared in rage and pain. Sam heard a metallic click, and the wendigo straightened up, one arm wrapped across his chest to hold the opposite shoulder. "Over here, furface."

  With the ringing in his ears, Sam thought he did well to recognize the voice as female.

  The wendigo turned to face the newcomer's voice. Sam could see blood leaking from beneath the blackskinned hand. Even through the scratches that the wendigo's own talons had made were closing as Sam watched, the monster still bled from the weapon wound.

  "You too. I should have known."

  "Payback time, furface."

  The wendigo dodged to one side and a whirring metal disk rushed through the space he had occupied. The weapon buried itself in the wall over Sam's head. He looked up. It was a spoked wheel with a series of wickedly sharp curved blades along its perimeter. It was a signature design, a shuriken in the shape of a Katherine's wheel.

  "Hart," Sam croaked.

  He could just catch glimpses of her beyond the bulk of the wendigo. She was a wraith in black leather, night to the day of the wendigo's white fur. Her right hand was cocked back, another of the shurikens ready to throw. In her left she carried a heavy pistol. Having watched the fruitless attacks of Willie's drones, Sam knew the gun would do little harm to the wendigo. The wendigo himself seemed contemptuous of it as well; his attention focused on the hand that held the throwing weapon. It must be the metal. Some awakened beings had allergic reactions to certain metals.

  For long moments the two opponents feinted. Each seemed unwilling to commit to a move that might open an attack line for the other. Hart's hand blurred forward suddenly, unleashing a glittering star toward the wendigo. He shifted to his right fast enough that the shuriken whizzed past. He had anticipated her throw, but had not foreseen the diving roll to her right that she made as soon as the throwing weapon left her hand. He checked his charge and started to turn to her new location. Hart fired from the floor and the wendigo's right hand vanished in an explosion of blood and shattered bone fragments.

  The wendigo's howl nearly deafened Sam. The sound, which should have been full of pain, carried nothing but outrage. He thought he heard the scream re-echo through the residence as the monster recovered from his surprise and charged Hart.

  Trying to stand, Hart missed with her next two shots. The bullets blew craters in the wall. As Sam had done, she tried to duck under the sweep of the wendigo's arms. Also like Sam, she wasn't fast enough. One arm caught her in the hip and sent her spinning into a bookshelf. Covered in blood, she collapsed in a pile of books, artifacts, and simsense cartridges.

  In two steps the wendigo reached her, but instead of going for her, he grabbed the top of the bookcase with his remaining hand and tugged. The heavy wooden shelves creaked as they leaned out from the walls, the anchor bolts squealing as they pulled free from their moorings. The shelves crashed down just as Hart scrambled out of their way on her hands and knees.

  "Do something, dogboy!" she shouted at Sam.

  "Throw a spell! Call a spirit! Do something!"

  What could he do? He had called a spirit already and the wendigo had corrupted it and turned it back against him with contemptuous ease. What could he do against such powerful magic? He was just a Dog shaman.

  He wasa151

  He was in a forest glade in the middle of a city, sitting on the grass. A mongrel sat by his side.

  "Dog!" Sam exclaimed.

  "Man," Dog said, mimicking Sam's intonation. "I was wondering when you'd get to me."

  "I thought you were always with me?"

  "I am. You're just not always with me. " "I don't know what to do, Dog. Tell me," Sam pleaded.

  "Tell you? You're the one out in the world, man. You've got to make your own decisions. You wanna be a pup all your life, that's okay. 7 can live with it, but you can't, 'cause it ain't gonna be a long life if you don't wake up and smell the world like it is. "The world smells like death." "That's the wendigo talking. I thought you were a man." "lam."

  "So show me," Dog yelped. "The men I know don't give up so easily. Fight it, man." "I don't know how," Sam complained. "If you don't despair, you do." Somewhere else, the wendigo advanced on Hart. She drew a dagger from her belt. The orichalcum symbols inlaid in the blade's side glowed slightly, the power of that most magic of metals would enable the blade's kiss to wound the wendigo. But it was only a dagger; he had talons and fangs, and was more than twice her mass.

  "He'll kill her," Sam said to Dog. "Yup," Dog agreed jauntily. "Then you. Then lots more people. You gonna stop him?" "What can I do?"

  "Where's your faith? Us dog types believe in you men types."

  Somewhere else, the wendigo smashed the dagger out of Hart's hand. The disarming move cost him a deep gash in his forearm, but he seemed content with the trade. His return strike was an open slap that caught Hart on her right temple. She tried to roll with the blow but the force was too much. She went down.

  "She's got no hope, Dog."

  "She's got you. Show some spirit, man." Sam felt utterly stupid. Dog had been telling him what he had to do all along, and he was just being dense. The wendigo had turned the building's spirit because it was primarily the spirit of the place; and places, no matter how pure they had been, could be corrupted. Places were just things made to be used. But people were more than things. Certainly they were physical bodies, but they were more as well, hearts and souls. Hearts could be corrupted too, but the soul's purest essence was not so easily swayed. Confused, tricked, and misled for a while, perhaps; but not forever, as long as there was hope and faith and belief in the ultimate goodness of life.

  The wendigo had embraced death and despair, but even his creed was tainted with hope. Though the wendigo called Blight his totem and walked a toxic path, he still saw a hopeful end. He used his corrupt tools in his warped fight to rid the earth of what he considered a plague. His was a terrible path, but ultimately a misguided one. For the shaman, Sam suddenly felt pity. For the wendigo nature of the being he felt no such pity. The being it had been deserved the pity, but that being had long since died inside the great furred body.

  Sam opened himself to the spirit world. Brighton Centrum was full of people, full of life. He avoided the dark corners and sought the light. In a rundown squat of a shack cobbled together in the mall space of a section scheduled for reconstruction, he found what he wanted. Nurtured by the love and hope of a family who had taken all the drek that life had thrown at them and stayed a family, a spirit dwelled here. It was a little grungy around the edges, but it had never known despair.

  Sam sang the song Dog had taught him, wooing the spirit. At first it seemed deaf to his pleas, but at last it heard the song and stirred. Sam coaxed it from its place with flattery and fed it his strength. The spirit drifted through the distanceless space and joined him. Sam rejoiced. He spoke to it of the urgency of his need. Its aura pulsed, flaring in indignation and rage as he told it of the wendigo. The spirit allowed him to sculpt its raw purity into a concentrated crystal of diamond clarity and adamantine strength. All the while, Dog sang counterpoint. As Sam returned his consciousness to the mundane world, the wendigo pinned Ha
rt beneath his foot. He leaned forward, putting his weight onto her chest. Sam heard her ribs crack. He feared for her life, but he was not distracted from the song. If he gave in to the fear, all hope would truly be lost.

  The spirit forged of man's nature manifested as a small child. It was dirty and wore ragged castoff clothing. It held a pipe in its right hand which it smacked grimly into the palm of its left. "Yo, furball!" it called.

  The wendigo turned his head at the new interruption. His eyes narrowed and nostrils distended as he drank in the power of the spirit. "You gotta go, furball," the spirit said. The wendigo moved faster than Sam had ever seen him do before. The foot that had been crushing the life out of Hart swept around toward the manifestion. The spirit blocked with one hand on either end of the pipe, stopping the blow dead. The spirit then slid its upper hand down to the lower, raised the pipe above its head, and slammed it into the wendigo's still-raised leg. The room shook as the wendigo crashed to the floor. The splintered ends of bones protruded from his leg.

  The spirit's assault didn't slow. Its pipe blurred up and down, pummeling the wendigo. The spirit's strength was magical, unconstrained by its physical appearance. The wendigo was no match for its fury.. Soon, he lay helpless.

  The spirit drove the end of the pipe through the wendigo's left shoulder and into the floor. With two swift hammer blows of its tiny fist, it bent the pipe over, forming a staple that pinned the wendigo to the floor. The fight seemed to go out of the wendigo and he lay limp on the floor. He watched fearfully as the spirit knelt on his chest and placed a hand on either side of his broad head. Their eyes locked, and the wendigo screamed.

  The air seemed charged with electricity, but Sam knew it was magic. He slipped into his astral senses and saw the storm of mana that raged between the spirit and the wendigo. Glowing like a sun, the spirit poured golden light from its eyes into the wendigo's dark orbs. At first, all that glorious light fought against streamers of darkness that emanated from the wendigo's eyes and wrapped around the twin columns of light as if to smother them. Seconds latera151or was it hours?a151the dark wrappings started to fade until they finally turned translucent and drifted away like smoke. The body of the wendigo began to glow from inside as the golden light poured into him from the spirit. The spirit grew dimmer as the wendigo grew brighter and brighter, until Sam could no longer bear the intensity. Just before he dropped back to his mundane senses, he thought he saw a shape within the wendigo's form. But the glare made it too hard to be sure.