Wanderers: Ragnarök

by Richard A Bamberg

  I dropped my palmed iron bearing into the leather pad and started it spinning.

  Rowle’s dragon had silently watched our tete a tete, but now it stretched out its wings and leapt into the air. I tracked it without moving my eyes off Rowle. It gained altitude and lit atop the courthouse.

  “Come on, Raphael; I’m offering you a chance to join the winning side,” Rowle said.

  “Your side? Why would I change one master for another?”

  “I think master is a little strong. I see us as near equals in the future. When the world is divided among the conquerors, we’ll have similar ranks, comparable titles. I can teach you so much, Raphael.”

  “I already know how to kill, Rowle. I’m just more selective in who I do it to.”

  “As naïve as when I left you all those years ago. You know you can’t best me. Very well then, Raphael, give me your best shot. I’ll spank you down just like I did then.”

  A blast of fire swept across my right side and engulfed Rowle. I didn’t take the time to see who had cast it but released my stone immediately while triggering my favorite tat and jumping left, away from the heat that I felt even through my shield.

  The fire wiped the cocky smile off Rowle’s face. He concentrated and pushed more power into his shield until the flame was a couple of feet away from him. His hair was crisping from the heat.

  My ball bearing struck his shield and released its energies, adding to the light show, and forcing Rowle back a step. We’d been too close to each other for the bullet to gain enough power to accomplish anything. I summoned the lightning even while I took another iron bearing from my jacket pocket, placed it in my sling, and started it spinning, all the while backing away from Rowle.

  Lightning struck Rowle’s shield in a scintillating burst of energy rivaling the enormous flame that still scorched the ground around his shield. The earth was boiling white hot under the onslaught of energy. Waves of heat still reached me through my shield and I finally had to look for the source of the flame. It was just too damn powerful for me to ignore.

  Abigail and her coven stood outside the destroyed entrance to her shop. They’d drawn a circle while Rowle and I were talking. Now, while the other members poured energy into Abigail, she used that energy to power her spell. A damn fine fire spell if I’d ever seen one.

  I cast my iron bearing neither upwards nor toward Rowle. The trick had worked with Surgat, but I was sure Rowle had seen it; he’d be looking for something coming out of the sky. I had to be more creative in my attack.

  I sent energy into the bearing, allowing it to gather speed and magical energy as it flew. I kept the lightning going, my favorite tat, and then summoned the wind. A wide spectrum attack was the most draining on any shield. A good shield can block a single attack without much trouble, but the more ways you attack it, the greater the diversity of the assault, the harder it is to concentrate on all of the attacks without something failing. If we could keep up the assault without giving Rowle a chance to counter-attack, we might survive the fight.

  I brought the wind screaming in from the four corners combining those winds again to form a vortex, a tornado that reached down from a cloudless sky and roared down the street toward us. My tornado hurled cars, bodies, and everything else it came across. A minivan flew over my head to crash into a building farther down the street. Sparks flew as grit, stones, and pieces of shattered concrete disintegrated against my shield and the witch’s circle. Rowle’s shield would be going through the same assault, but those sparks were lost in the greater glory of flame and lightning.

  Rowle still reeled under the multiple assaults, but he began to use his own offensive spells. He sent lightning against the witch’s circle. That attack had a dual purpose. First, it forced the coven to put more energy into their own shield, which reduced the power they could put into Abigail’s flame. Second, there’s only so much charge potential available at a given spot. Since I was tapping the same charge with my magic, Rowle’s tapping it reduced the power of my lightning strokes. It was the perfect counter to our attacks.

  I saw him smile. The bastard thought he was so damn good.

  I felt for the energy still riding in the conduit beneath the street and drew it to my lightning. My lightning bolts regained some of their lost strength. The look on Rowle’s face was a plus. He hadn’t sensed where my lightning was getting more strength and he didn’t like that.

  A great shadow, cast by the nearly full moon, moved between us as the dragon glided past. That damn dragon had killed Walt. While Walt and I fought Rowle, the dragon threw the fight Rowle’s way. It was rare for a familiar to join a full out fight, but I was damn sure not falling for that trick again. That’s why I’d summoned the wind. Not even a dragon as big and as bad as this evil sonofabitch, can fly into a tornado and hope to survive. I willed the tornado closer and tried to think of some trick I could pull off before Rowle figured a way past us.

  Rowle beat me to the punch. He triggered a tat pattern I didn’t recognize. It glowed black against his skin.

  Now that was just wrong.

  Wanderers have a variety of types of magic they can access. Many glow with their characteristic color. Blue for wind, gold for lightning, orange-red for fire, etc.; you get the drift. Only night magic glows black.

  Blackness seeped up from the ground. A cloud of something oozed out of every split in the earth and moved in sweeping undulating motions toward the witches’ circle. It wasn’t anything I recognized, but the witches had a good circle up and had plenty of power to feed it. I was sure they’d be safe from whatever this thing was, but it was bound to hurt their offensive against Rowle.

  Even over the roar of the tornado, the thunder of the lightning, and the consuming maelstrom that was Abigail’s fire spell, I heard the loud boom of the handgun.

  A bright spark exploded against Rowle’s shield adding another complication to his defenses. He faced me again, his tats still glowing, maintaining their various spells. Where was Rowle storing so much energy? I could already feel the drain on my life as I held the various spells in play. No Wanderer gets his power for free. Life energies are tapped and a younger man should have a larger reserve than an older man, but yet Rowle was handling so much and I didn’t see any signs of age on his face.

  There was another boom of the heavy handgun, closer this time, from somewhere to my left. I kept my own spells going and sneaked a glance over my shoulder.

  Special Agent Biers was walking down the middle of the street toward a man engulfed in fire, lit by lightning, and being towered over by a massive tornado that snaked down out of a clear sky. As she walked, she fired her pistol at Rowle.

  The lady had moxie.

  This was the moment we had a chance. With three different attacks, we actually had a chance against Rowle. I called my little bullet down. It hadn’t been in use as long as the one I hit Surgat with, but it was now or never. Rather than aiming it at Rowle, I directed it down the center of my tornado’s vortex. The dusty whirlwind, lit from my glowing comet, cast a surreal flickering light around the square. I forced the comet to curve with the tornado’s winds pushing the comet faster all the while I maintained the spell that concentrated more energy into what had been a little iron bearing.

  Agent Biers was nearly to me, a dozen yards to my left, and her big ten-millimeter pistol locked open. She ejected the magazine and drew another one from her belt.

  An instant later, Abigail’s fire went out.

  Uh-oh. I glanced toward the coven and saw that the black goo that had crept out of the earth had enveloped the witch’s circle. Somehow, the goo was impervious to their fire and had blocked it efficiently and totally.

  A smile crossed Rowle’s face. His shield held back my lightning and he was now free to concentrate on me. His lightning left the black mass that had been the witch’s circle and walked across the ground toward me. If he’d cancelled it, even for an instance, my lightning would strengthen.

  The earth around Rowle’s circ
le began to cool, losing some of it molten glow as now only my lightning sundered it. I braced my shield for the contact of the lightning and pulled the tornado closer. Rowle must not have time to react when I sent my comet toward him. Anything more than a second and he would have a chance to stop it.

  To my left, Biers’ gun barked again. Rowle’s lightning walked across the street and past me.

  Hell, he was going after Biers. What was the point of that? He knew she couldn’t hurt him unless his shield dropped. He should have gone after me.

  The asshole wanted to see if I’d try to save her. It would mean reducing my focus on attack and put more into defense. The rat bastard! He’d kill her if I didn’t do something.

  I waited as long as I could while Biers stood her ground and continue to unload ineffectively into Rowle’s shield. When it was obvious, she wasn’t going to run, not that there’d be much point in trying to run, I shifted the focus of my shield from around me to her.

  The lightning reached my shield as it formed around Biers and lit the Fed with a corona of fire. She fired twice more before she realized the bullets were falling to the ground, their energy absorbed by the interior of my shield. Biers stopped shooting and lowered her pistol. She turned toward me with a questioning gaze. I shrugged and turned back to face Rowle.

  He was smiling. Over the twin thunder blast of our lightning he yelled, “You Wanderers are so predictable. You know you have a mission to complete and still you feel you have to protect bystanders, even if it jeopardizes your mission. I’ve never figured out why Fate lets you do that.”

  “Maybe Fate has more conscience than you give her credit for,” I yelled back.

  “Not bloody likely. It’s probably just not these poor saps time to die and so she has to have you protect them too.”

  “Whatever, Rowle.”

  “Always the verbose one, Raphael. Last chance to join me, don’t make me kill you.”

  “You haven’t proven you have that power, Rowle,” I shouted and pulled the tornado towards him while moving sideways toward Biers. If I could get close enough to let my shield cover us both—

  “I don’t think so, Raphael,” Rowle said. Another tat glowed on his arm and an energy blast slammed into me. I flipped backward trying to maintain the focus on each of my four spells as I did. It was a losing battle. My lightning died. The shield around Biers went down and I had time to see her shudder under the onslaught of Rowle’s lightning before I slammed into a tree. Explosions of light shot across my vision followed by a wave of darkness.

  I came back to consciousness a couple of seconds later. My head felt like someone had been using it for a punching bag. I ached over most of my surface and far enough below the surface to wonder what I’d broken or ruptured this time.

  I looked across to Rowle. He had leapt over the molten earth at his feet and now walked toward Marian’s body and the grimoire. I marveled that the damn book hadn’t been thrown farther by the wind, but with grimoires, you just never know. Physics follows different rules around a powerful one.

  My tornado was still spinning toward Rowle; once you get that great a mass of air moving it’s just as hard to stop, as it is to start. Inside the vortex, a flickering of light told me my comet still circled. While magical energy was no longer flowing into what had been my ball bearing, it had absorbed enough for what I planned. I triggered my wind tat again. It glowed blue, but it had lost some of its brightness. I pulled the tornado toward Rowle and moved the comet slightly in its orbit. Now it spun at an angle to the ground, its perigee toward Rowle.

  Ignoring the wind, Rowle bent and picked up the grimoire. He held it up with one hand and turned to face me. “You’ve lost, Raphael. It’s mine and I’ll soon have the Gates open.”

  Through the fog that was my head, I felt his shield had weakened. He’d used up a lot of energy, more than I had, but he still had plenty left to fry my ass. He had let his shield weaken because he could tell what kind of shape I was in.

  Well, fuck him and the dragon he rode in on.

  I braced myself against the tree and stood on wet noodle legs.

  “You’re an asshole, Rowle. I’m not going to let you have that grimoire while I breathe.”

  Rowle chuckled, a tat flared, and his hand holding the grimoire burst into flame. In seconds, the book had been consumed save for a single page.

  Oh, crap, Ophelia had been right about the page and its indestructibility.

  Rowle held the sheet up to read it.

  I wondered briefly if there were any chance it was in some dead language that Rowle wouldn’t be able to read.

  I reached my right hand inside my jacket and closed my fingers on cold steel. At the same time, I released my comet from its orbit.

  My hand emerged from the pocket seemingly in slow motion as my little comet, long hidden by the tornado’s opaque vortex shot into view. The sudden change in lighting caught Rowle’s attention. He raised his gaze to the swirling maelstrom above him.

  I could feel his shield strengthening.

  My comet struck the point where his shield met the earth.

  Enormous energies blew out his shield and shattered the ground at Rowle’s feet. The explosion blasted earth in every direction including his. He flew backward, tumbling toward the courthouse.

  I leveled my father’s forty-five, snapped off the safety, and fired.

  My first two shots bounced off concrete and marble behind him, but the third connected and blood flew. Rowle howled in pain. My fourth round took him in the upper chest, but by the time my fifth round reached him his shield was back in place. I gave up after six rounds. There was no way I was going to penetrate his shield even with the iron bullets.

  I sagged back against the tree, my arms heavy at my side.

  Rowle bounced off the courthouse walls and landed upright on his feet. His clothing was ripped to shreds and what was left smoldered. Blood darkened his rags in a score of places where my comet’s shrapnel had struck, but still his only serious injury was from my bullets. Blood pulsed from a wound high on his thigh and seeped from the right side of his chest. He looked from his wounds to me.

  Well, that’s all folks.

  Rowle cast some spell I couldn’t hear for the roaring of the tornado. I hoped he’d make it quick.

  His leg glowed and the pulsing blood slowed to a dribble. He walked toward me, coughing weakly and spitting a mouthful of blood onto the pavement.

  As he neared, I saw he still held that damn sheet from the grimoire in his hand.

  In the middle of the street he stopped. For a moment, he stared at me, and then he turned to view the damage we’d done. It’d been an impressive battle and the city center showed it. The street was split open in one place down twenty feet to the power conduits I’d used. In other spots, there were holes blown in the ground from my comets. A slag of glass still glowed where Rowle’s circle had been. All the windows were blown out for blocks. Concrete and mortar lay strewn about the street and halfway down the block my tornado was losing coherency.

  Rowle looked back at me. “Well fought, Raphael. You are impressive for one so young.”

  I gave him a half grin that I couldn’t hold and masking the glow of my wind tat with my body, I summoned the tornado one last time. “Yeah, come back and see me in a couple of decades. I’ve got a sharp learning curve.”

  He laughed. “You know, Raphael, I think you may be worth saving after all. You can play Fate’s bitch for a while longer, but I’m going to make you see my side of this. Then we, you and me, Raphael, are going to walk this earth like gods.”

  “You know I’m not going to join you,” I said.

  Rowle pulled a whistle from his torn shirt and blew on it. A second later the edge of the tornado’s wall merged with Rowle and with a screech of surprise, he vanished into the maw of the vortex. Exhausted, I let my wind tat fade back into invisibility.

  I heard the beat of great wings and Rowle’s dragon thudded to the street fifty feet from me. It stare
d into the tornado, trying to spot its master, and then its massive head swiveled to gaze down at me. It took a step, shaking the earth beneath me.

  “Fuck you.” I raised my Colt and put its last two rounds in his neck. It was closer than Rowle had been and its neck was a hard target to miss. I got lucky and hit an artery. A geyser of blood pulsed from one of the wounds.

  It roared at me, snapped its jaws and stomped nearer.

  There was a blur as the tornado gave up its captive. Rowle flew between me and the dragon. He hit the pavement hard and skidded a dozen yards before slamming into the side of an overturned pickup.

  Rowle’s familiar hesitated. It snarled at me and then looked at its fallen master. Rowle struggled to sit up.

  Damn it. If I’d brought an extra magazine, I could have finished this here and now. I thought about trying a spell, but anything strong enough to kill would probably drain my life force past the point of my own survival. Maybe I could crawl to him and stab him to death.

  The dragon lowered its head to my level as though it read my thoughts. It roared; its fetid breath pushing me back against the tree trunk. For a moment, I thought it was going to finish me, but Rowle must not have given it advance orders to that effect and it turned to stomp toward Rowle.

  Rowle finally managed to sit up. His dragon reached him and opening its jaws wide, it gripped Rowle about the waist and lifted him to its back. Rowle collapsed against his dragon’s neck, caught his breath, and pushed himself erect.

  He looked at me and for a moment it was obvious that he wasn’t sure if he was looking at me or a stranger. Then his eyes focused on me. He coughed and blood darkened his lips. “Well played, Raphael, well played.”

  He stopped to cough blood onto the dragon’s neck. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and appeared to gather his strength. “You have two choices, Raphael. You can keep resisting me and continue to suffer defeat after defeat or you can learn new spells that Fate would not have you learn. Once you start down that road, you’ll see my side of things more and more. Five years, I give you five years before you’ll willing join me.”