Rogue Ragtime

by K Alexis

  "As if I haven't heard enough about rare wizards for a lifetime," Agra replied. He removed a semi-circular knife from his sheath and threw it. It curved around the pillar and then speed toward Giselle. She strengthened her shield with chunks of stone from the damaged floor, and the knife bounced harmlessly off her barrier.

  "What's your guess now?" Agra asked both his ex and Steh.

  "Nature mage," Junko replied. "Probably a rock or metal specialist using the impurities in the metal to levitate it."

  "You getting this Tath and Mea? She's a nature mage."

  "Okay," Tath yelled back. "If she can't manipulate magnetic fields, let's go wide and take her from the sides. Agra, Steh and Junko—you search for Nal. Mea and I will focus on Giselle." Tath pulled her arrow back and snuck one more look. "You ready, Me—"

  Mea walked past her and straight into the middle of the chamber. She snapped her book closed and made the devil's horns with one of her hands. Her library bag appeared and she placed the tome inside of it.

  Giselle levitated the throne she had been sitting on before. She hurled it at Mea while Nal took a headshot with a fire arrow.

  Mea made no motions, but a purple wall rocketed up in front of her. When the projectiles hit the barrier, they seemed to dissolve into it.

  "I'm tired of puny magicians and smug men," Mea said. She motioned as if she was tearing the wall in the middle; it separated into two distinct sections. "Your lives are meaningless." She closed her eyes and pushed out. The barriers followed her command and extended forward, making a wall on either side of the Neomers. "For the first time in your existence, hear how the celestial laughs at your struggles." Mea clapped, and the shields sizzled as they joined together, becoming one. Everything that had been between them had disappeared. The rest of the group fell quiet, leaving only the spluttering of the lights as ambient noise.

  Agra poked his head around the pillar and then commenced limping, as fast as one could with his injuries, toward the middle of the chamber. "So, which of you is the mage?" He pointed to Mea and Steh. "We can't have two mages. There are rules about this." He paused about three-quarters of the way to Mea. "Shouldn't there be more light after killing a null's caster?" he asked.

  "Steh," Tath called out, tenderly moving toward where the thrones had been. "Are you going to let Junko do all the hard work, or are you going to spin up some flames and let us see the rest of this chamber?"

  "Competition is the plutocrat's way to drive down the value of labor," Steh responded. "We are exploring our options."

  Junko reached out and touched the blackness. "It's not fading," she said.

  Steh joined her and pressed his whole body against the substance. "In hindsight," he asked Junko, "would a nature mage of Giselle's skill been able to cast a null?"

  "If they'd had the right technology, I assume they could've done it," she answered.

  "I think it's clear from this exchange you'll need to leave machines up to me. The amplifier you're thinking of would need to be the size of a planet."

  "Then there's someone else here," Junko whispered. "Someone powerful."

  "Speak the fuck up," Tath said. "Why shouldn't we have an orgy right now?"

  Junko sprinted away from the four adventurers. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! They've murdered the rectors!"

  Tath and Agra had reached Mea. Tath looked at Agra. "She was your girlfriend? You turned down everything I had in my early twenties for a few thrusts of her?"

  "More … more than a few," Agra replied. "And 'was,' I believe, is the most important word in your sentence."

  The darkness began to lift.

  Thirty: The Request

  TATH RE-NOTCHED HER arrow and watched as the gloom in front of them gave way. The room was immense but not infinite. It had taken the group so long to reach the throne because they had been walking in a spiral toward the symbolic heart of the chamber. And despite their effort, they were still a way from its geographical middle, a mesa-like altar with a chained Navigator crouching in pain on the structure's apex.

  The woman the group were attempting to rescue seemed to have every last inch of fight beaten out of her. From the Navigator's chestnut skin pocked with burn marks to the collar around her neck, she looked pitiful, humiliated and cursed. The most degrading aspect, at least for Tath, was the cord screwed into the woman's skull. It had not been cleaned since it had been inserted, and the Navigator's dried blood contrasted with the bolts' shiny, stainless-steel texture. A yellow and green cable ran down into an imagination recorder. In witnessing the sheer horror of a forced dream extraction, Tath finally understood why ethical imagination harvesting was important for a lot of viewers, including Agra.

  She felt sick.

  Seven people stood in opposition to the Navigator's extraction: Junko, a golem wearing a tattered harmony commander's uniform and five administrators. Pointing her arrow at their antagonists, Tath readied her shot. It was one of Steh's energy cage inventions, and if she got it right, she could trap them all in one go.

  Junko was bent over and wheezing. "They want to take Danielle back to the Isles," she said. "They're Corsairs."

  The watcher had barely finished her explanation before the administrators peeled off and headed in different directions toward Tath and the other members of her motley crew. They did not run but teleported in zig-zag motions around the chamber. Each of their movements happened in a flash and left behind a faint afterimage. By the time Tath fired her arrow, the administrators had already escaped its impact radius. She hoped it would trap Junko and the "commander." They had fought the occasional administrator before but never a golem. Not that their experiences with the elite harmonizer units had been without tragedy. Lara had been killed by one. However, Tath was hoping that if they dispatched the devils they knew, then they could regroup and pool their resources against the more challenging threat.

  Suddenly, an administrator's face blinked in front of her. She jumped back and raised her bow, stopping its overhead attack. "I'm not laying down for you fuckless whiteys," she said, before spitting in its face. The administrator retreated and tilted its head to the side as if it was admiring a peculiar curio.

  Tath unsummoned her bow and drew a red arrow from her quiver. She cracked its tip on the ground, releasing a hedge-high wall of flame that went in all directions. "We owe you shits for Lara," she said to the administrator. "And Hell better fuck me now, or I'll take my vengeance out on all your asses."

  * * *

  AGRA WATCHED THE golem stride through Tath's barricade as if it did not exist. He estimated the monster was twelve-to-thirteen-feet tall and had the body of a cage fighter. It may have looked humanoid, but there was something abnormal about its gaze. It seemed barren and mournful like it no longer wished to act but was being compelled to continue by an invisible puppeteer.

  Agra searched the room for support. Tath was jabbing at an administrator with an exploding arrow while Mea sprinted at the golem, purple rays shooting out from her hair. Another administrator attempted to intercept her, but Mea grabbed the augmented fighter and slammed it onto the ground. The action did not kill the Grinner, but after it had teleported away, it limped off toward its allies.

  Agra continued strafing the golem while heading for the altar. The process was tedious thanks to his injuries and limp. Steh flashed twenty paces ahead of him. The inventor's cards spun around his chest and provided some protection from the two attackers he had picked up. Sweat poured down Steh's face and dripped onto the ground as he clumsily dodged and weaved through the barrage of swipes from the pair of enhanced harmonizers. Each spell Steh attempted came out half cast, so what should have been a towering pillar of rock emerged as a few pieces of rubble hovering in mid-air. A shield spell morphed into a discus that dissipated after two hits. An administrator slipped through Steh's defenses and nicked him in the shoulder, forcing the inventor to try and fight them off with one hand.

  Agra thought about adjusting his plan and assisting Steh, but he doubted t
here was much he could do to stop the inevitable. Their only chance, as much as he wished for there to be another way, was to ask Junko for help. He hoped her constant hints she had found a way to beat the golem were not more false promises to hide her true intentions.

  He hobbled over to the barrier and gingerly touched a blade to its surface to determine what type of shield Tath had used, a one- or two- way. The tip went straight through. He walked in and narrowly dodged a throwing knife. It sizzled to a crisp on the back of the barrier.

  "Well, look who it is," Junko said. "The man who wants to talk." She rolled up her long, cotton sleeves and revealed a rainbow-colored collection of tattooed skulls. Agra knew they went all the way up past her shoulders and merged into a full back-illustration of a leviathan eating an androgynous librarian. She withdrew a hidden scimitar from the back of her jumpsuit. "So, why aren't you talking, Azra?"

  "We need your help."

  "Too bad I'm not in the helping mood."

  Agra drew the longest dagger he had—a six-inch one. Its edge was serrated and narrowed into a straight-back tip. Although Steh had imbued it with an anti-shock charm, Agra doubted it would do much against a fully swung scimitar. "I'm not sure you have a choice," he stated, hoping he appeared more confident than he was. "You owe me. Twice over."

  Junko squinted at him. "A bold strategy coming from a dead man, but I'll play. For what?"

  "For saving Steh and then meeting you. You asked for both of those things, and I have fulfilled my duties. Without the sex, there's no payment for services rendered."

  Junko stabbed her blade into the ground as the shockwave from one of Mea's punches blew past them. It swept his ex's hair across her face and pressed her jumpsuit against all the parts of her frame Agra liked. "Finally, you're thinking like a Corsair," she said. "If you agree to take a potential alliance off the negotiation table, I'll answer your questions."

  Agra eyed her suspiciously and kept moving. "What was your original plan?"

  "How do you know this wasn't it?"

  "Love doesn't make anyone that stupid."

  "I was going to blow up Steh. Yeah, what about it, tender heart?" she responded to Agra's disgust. "I took Sacramento as a base and calculated his explosive power. He would've cleaned out an average null without too much leakage. And while everyone was panicking, I would've escaped with Danielle."

  "Who?" Agra asked, knowing the name rung some distant memory in his head.

  "The Navigator. This worked out better for me though. I can now be the new rector of Ras Al Khaimah and extract all of its insights for the commune. I'm going to be studied and taught about for the next hundred years." She reached for her scimitar.

  "I still have one more question."

  "No, I never 'loved' you." She grabbed the hilt of her weapon.

  "That wasn't what I wanted to ask," Agra countered. "My parents, who were they?"

  For the first time since he had met Jetta, she seemed surprised and uncertain how to answer. She pulled her weapon out of the ground and flicked it. "I don't know. There are lots of rumors about your folks. No one knows if they were spies, traders, couriers, emissaries or unlucky souls.

  "My father was ordered to wipe out your family without arousing suspicion. All of you. And, you just wouldn't die." She chuckled and pointed her sword at him. "Every scheme and plot we tried didn't work. You are the bane of my existence. The mediocre stain on my near flawless record. So, boiling seas and falling heavens, I'm pretty happy to be the one putting you down."

  Before Agra could reply, Junko lunged at him. He parried her attack with his dagger, but the force of the hit reverberated up his arm. It took all of his strength to hold onto his weapon.

  "Faster than I expected," she said. "You must have been going easy on me when we last fought to create a distraction."

  "I don't remember," Agra answered.

  "It doesn't matter anyway." Junko charged. Her first cut went straight for Agra's neck. He leaned away from the incoming blade and deflected the strike so it went wide of its mark. His ribcage screamed, and he had to prevent himself from reflexively grasping his aching chest. With two awkward hops, he put a safe between him and Junko.

  "Look at you," she said, "wounded and dying already." She lowered herself into an attack position and stalked forwards. "Why keep this up? Give in and let me hand you a quick death."

  "I feel like that would be playing against character," Agra taunted.

  "Oh, mermaids on the tide, an imagination reference. I'm not going to miss those."

  She feigned a horizontal slash, but then adjusted her stance and swiped vertically. Agra dropped his knife and stepped into Junko's assault, using his reach to grab her attacking wrist before the slash could gain momentum. The action brought them within a hand-span of each other. He could see her cedar-colored eyes and make out her flat, angular nose. Junko grunted as she tried to force her blade out of his grip.

  He let her hand go and stepped around Junko while she was caught off guard. With his left hand, he drew one of his throwing knives. He blindly stabbed backward, catching a part of his ex in the process.

  "You and your sea-devil luck," Junko thundered, moving four paces away from him. She gingerly touched where he had cut her. "That better not have nicked my tat. Skin artists are expensive."

  "Why are we fighting?" Agra asked. "You could help us win, and we could pretend you killed me. Everyone walks away with a victory in their pocket."

  "Az, you don't half-ass a mission if you want to be someone. And you are the mission." She dropped her scimitar on the ground. "That's why I always hate-fucked you. Your friend-first attitude irked the blue skies out of me." Junko drew a squiggly line on her hand and transformed herself into water. "Is that how you want to be remembered?" she gurgled. "As a man who gave up on his potential to be buried with societal rejects?"

  * * *

  MEA PUNCHED THE golem, but it—he—laughed when her attack made contact. The creature picked her up by the hair. She summoned a void ball and exploded it. The blast threw them apart, and Mea screamed as the monster took clumps of her hair with him. She smacked into a pillar and thudded onto the floor.

  Shaking off the grogginess she felt, Mea pushed herself up. He was unlike any golem she had seen or read about in the Navigator archives. The species was supposed to be made from an elemental force and just as vulnerable to the substance's weaknesses. Wooden golems could be defeated by fire, wind ones with containment, water types with heat or poison and on and on, but nothing had damaged the hulking brute. Even her void magic dissolved the moment it neared his body. Without a clear strategy for winning, Mea began to retreat to the other side of the chamber. The golem seemed almost indestructible.

  She heard an administrator's blade scrape the ground, giving her the fraction of a second she needed to successfully dodge its attack. A pair of the white Neomer abominations lingered opposite her, one with its sword out and another with a short dagger gripped tightly in its left hand. She tried to think of the right spell for a void barrier but her mind was still scrambled. They attacked before she could remember it.

  Using their shoulders as a guide, she attempted to predict their movements. She dodged to the left, parried with her right hand, hopped over a sweep kick, and, finally, grabbed one of the knife-administrator's wrists. As she went to crush its hand, the other administrator sliced downward at her. She kicked off the ground and bounced backward. With a second or so to spare before another onslaught, Mea pounded the earth and sent a shockwave through it. Both of the administrators lost their footing.

  "Mea," Tath yelled. "Get over to Steh."

  "I'll get there when I can," Mea said, performing an awkward bounce-lunge toward her attackers. The sword-administrator was not expecting the move and failed to teleport in time. Mea brought her fist down on the harmonizer's head; its skull and brain splattered all over her.

  She clenched her fists. "Four to go," she said.

  * * *

  AGRA WATCHED AS Jun
ko, now a fast-moving puddle of water, spread liquid all over the brick pavers. When he stamped on the fluid to determine if he could hurt her, she chuckled and icicles started inching up his boots. After he tossed a knife into the liquid and it was frozen solid, he guessed Junko's plan: she was going to solidify him so he could not move anymore.

  He tried to think of how ice magic worked as he staggered and hobbled between the growing number of pools. Despite Junko's obvious magical ability, he doubted she was powerful enough to override Earth's laws—which meant it would take time for her to completely bind him to the ground even if he stayed still. It also implied she was susceptible to fire.

  He tapped the top weapon in his knife sheath, counted six down and drew a four-inch dagger. As soon as its blade made contact with the air, it burst into flame. He crouched down and held it against one of the puddles until the liquid evaporated.

  Twenty paces away from Agra, a section of the ever-expanding film of water bubbled excitedly … before transitioning into a human scream. "You are nothing without me," Junko shouted as she morphed back into her human form. "Nothing." She reverted to liquid and disappeared into the almost pool-sized puddle. As she zipped from place to place, a small wake trailed behind her. Agra stood on one of the last few dry spots with his dagger in hand and waited for his chance.

  She came at him fast, water-tendrils lashing at him from all sides. He repelled them as quickly as he could while keeping his eye on the small wave representing her cerebral form. It indicated that Junko was heading away from him. When the wake of water reached the far edge of the wet area, Junko summoned a number of icicles around her. Using another tendril, she launched her ice-spears at Agra.

  His blade's heat and size were not enough to stop the barrage; he had to dodge as well. At first, Agra thought he would be able to survive the deluge; however, as they kept coming—he realized he was on borrowed time and took his mind off the inevitable by reimagining the battle as a game. The main objective was to achieve as high a score as possible before the inevitable "Game Over." For a while, he was successful, and he escaped forty-seven attacks before one went straight into his stomach and another penetrated his shoulder. Falling to his knees, he lost sight of Junko but kept trying to rack up "points."