by K Alexis
They observed her impassively while she continued to shove the monster-human-magic hybrid against the path. The administrator being pressed into the skyway said nothing despite its body twitching and kicking until, at last, its eyes rolled up into its head. Mea threw what was left of its corpse on the chamber's floor as Tath and Agra began fighting their primary target, Junko.
After looking down at the dismembered torso and then back at Mea, the three remaining administrators reached into their tunics and withdrew their scimitars.
* * *
AS AGRA STABBED downward to deliver the killing blow to Junko, she transformed into a pool of water. The lack of a solid target made Agra lose his balance and tumble onto the ground. "I'm fine," he said to Tath as he got back up. "I'm not humiliated at all."
"Uh huh," she replied, running over to where he was. "What the hell was that? I'd set her up perfectly for you as well."
"Well," Agra replied, "I'm no monster expert, but I think Junko should count for three kills in our competition. That has to be what an elemental mutant is worth."
"Bullshit," Tath responded, pressing her back against Agra's so they could cover the whole room. "I've never killed a water mutant before, but I doubt it's that difficult."
Agra pointed to the slowly expanding pool of liquid. "More challenging than a human, I'd wager."
"Jetta, how do we hurt water mutants?" Tath yelled.
"It was in the book I gave you," the pirate queen yelled back. "I'm busy here."
Agra glanced over at their best fighter and watched as Jetta brought her hands together, summoning a high-density ball of air. The spell wobbled awkwardly in front of her before rushing outwards in every direction. Agra braced himself for the gust of wind and kept his footing, but barely.
"Overpowered piece of junk," Jetta mumbled. She leapt up and brought her fist down on the golem's head; the monster staggered and the goo covering the ceiling wobbled.
"Did you read the apocrypha?" Tath asked Agra, pulling him out of the trance he always found himself in when he observed Jetta fight. Tath shot an arrow into the liquid. It did nothing.
"It's on my to-do list," he said, flinging a knife at the pool. It, also, seemed to have no effect on Jetta. The water continued to encircle them at a distance, limiting their escape options.
"Oddly enough, it's on mine as well." Tath said. "But we definitely need someone in our group who enjoys research more than sex."
"Are you saying we'd have been better prepared if I hadn't given into your charms on the zeppelin?" Agra asked. "In my darkest moment, all I'd wanted from you was some of that sweet moral support rugged adventurers like me need from their foxy team mates. It didn't have to involve taking my pants off."
"Hey, hey, sex is the best moral support one can give," Tath retorted. "Don't knock it. And, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we need a super nerd who loves building enchanted weap—"
The water surrounding them shot straight up like a geyser and then froze, trapping them from their friends. Junko, doubled in size and covered in permafrost armor, slid out of the ice. "You and I should have a talk, Tath," she said. "Agra is not worth your time."
Agra could feel Tath's joviality give way to her fury. "I don't have much to say to Beckys who fuck others for their own benefit," Tath said. "Tell me, how does your icy heart defend against fire?"
Agra searched his back armory for any two knives that he could use as ice picks and withdrew them. "I didn't pack the fire knives," he commented. "I thought they were a ceremonial present and not for actual use."
"When has Jetta ever given us something for the fun of it?" Tath asked. "Oh, this is fucking perfect." She notched three arrows onto her bow's string. "I guess we'll have to kill her with a single shot to the head, like we always do." She fired the arrows, but they harmlessly bounced off the visor Junko was wearing.
"I promise to pack what Jetta gives me next time," Agra said, dashing toward Junko with his knives readied.
* * *
JETTA NOTICED THE ice barrier go up but could do little to stop it. The golem had reacted to very few of her attacks. And even the ones that seemed to have worked, only had for a moment even though they had taken a significant toll on her. She was already tired and puffing.
The main problem was that the walking-monolith seemed immune to magic, which had ensured that her initial plan of teleporting the golem into the middle of a sun had failed spectacularly. When it had approached her portal, the silver sphere had been sucked into the golem's body and disappeared. She had never witnessed anything eat magic before, but as she had learned the hard way—if you lived long enough, you would see everything.
Jetta teleported herself onto Mea's pathway and watched the action unfolding below. Mea was in trouble. The Navigator's early successes had inspired the remaining administrators to work together as a unit. Now, they zipped around her at confusing angles and attacked her quickly with small furtive cuts that only scraped her Navigator skin. On the surface, it appeared they were scared, but Jetta knew better. The harmonizer specialists had realized what they were fighting and had adapted their strategy accordingly. They were not trying to strike a killing blow as they would have done with a human, but they were hoping to slice away at the magical reinforcement Mea's body possessed until it was in shreds. Jetta sighed and rubbed her forehead. Mea did not seem to have grasped the purpose behind their actions. She probably believed she was winning.
The golem spotted Jetta. It looked at her, the ice prison, Mea and back at her. "You should not be here," it said, stomping toward the staircase. "This fight has already been won."
Jetta snatched a glimpse of Tath and Agra. They were in a better position than Mea as they were not losing, but they were not winning either. They kept dodging Junko's attacks and chipping away at her armor. Yet their victories were short-lived because the Corsair would regrow it a moment later. If Agra or Tath, only one of them, had taken the time to read the books she had given them about metallurgy and wave theory, the fight would have been over. But, no, they had not. After Jetta had revealed Junko's duplicity to Agra, he had rediscovered his sexual interest in Tath and had retained very little interest in anything else, especially boring words on a page.
Jetta cursed herself for respecting selfless acts. The group had their hearts in the right place, but the skills and knowledge of a Wyoming mercenary. She had never met any adventuring band so perfectly undistinguished.
The ground beneath her vibrated, indicating the golem had finished climbing the stairs. "Fuck it," she said to him. "Let's see how you do against a universe."
Jetta drew a frustum, balbis and lemniscate in the air. Temporarily foregoing her hatred of rookie sorcerers who needed to cast their spells aloud, she muttered an incantation due to the trouble she was having controlling her new powers. Light shot out from her fingers, and she turned her hands inwards so they faced each other. Pushing them together, she compressed the beams into a sphere. The orb crackled and rays shot out of it. When they hit a pillar, they left deep scorch marks. Her muscles ached and her arms quivered as she held the energy together. Unexpectedly, a surge of power rippled across the ball and Jetta could no longer control the force. She tossed the celestial bomb in the direction of the golem and dived off the platform.
As she floated toward the ground, the sky above her became silver and she could feel the heat of the explosion wash across her face. After the bright light had faded, she could see the golem peer down at her.
"My graduating treatise 'The Weaknesses of Golem Structures' is going to be unpublished if I don't kill you," Jetta said.
* * *
TATH OBSERVED THE celestial explosion but also noted that the falling silver pieces burned whatever they made contact with. "We need those shards," she hollered at Agra, who was on the other side of the icy enclosure.
He forward-rolled, hooked his knife onto Junko's armor and slid across the wet tiles to where Tath was. "How much do you need?" he asked.
"I need enough for an arrowhead. Can you do that?"
Agra put the knives he had been holding away and pulled out a blade in the shape of a boomerang. "Let me try. Can you run diversion?"
To answer his question, Tath sprinted over to Junko. She shot four serrated-arrows into Junko's armor and bounced up them. Each one snapped under her weight, leaving no second chance for her plan. Flipping over Junko's helmet, she rammed an arrow into one of the small slits in the visor and heard a satisfying scream. After forward-rolling once she hit the ground, Tath pushed herself up and tried to put as much distance as she could between herself and the mutant. She counted her remaining arrows as she ran; there were only six left in her quiver. If Agra could deliver, she would have seven.
* * *
MEA'S MOVEMENTS FELT sluggish. Getting an arm into position to block an attack several minutes ago had been effortless, but now she struggled to stop a strike from reaching her face. Her whole body was covered in red, as was the floor, and her clothes were in tatters. She attempted to retreat to her walkway, but the administrators would not let her. They blocked her every movement toward it, dashing in front of her with their blades swinging. If she managed to grab one, another harmonizer's slash would nick her arm and she would have to let the hybrid go to save herself. When she tried to retaliate against a strike, her assailant would teleport to a safe distance and begin the cycle again.
Mea felt her resolve fail. She had run out of answers for their strategy. With unrelenting precision, they were dodging her punches, kicks, void spheres, void walls and the shockwaves from her ground smash. She could no longer see anything in the chamber other than their white faces and black eyes. A sharp pain in her right leg made it buckle underneath her, and she fell to the ground. The administrators plunged three knives into her back as she attempted to stand.
* * *
TATH SLID THROUGH Junko's legs and fired her last arrow toward the other eye-slit; it missed. "Agra," she hollered. "How much fucking time do you need? Are you harvesting those shards from a god's teat?"
"I've never forged an arrow before," he replied. "Maybe I have enough now. I don't know."
Tath flicked herself up onto her feet and tossed her bow to Agra. He caught it as Tath back-flipped across the ground to him. He handed her the shards he had collected. The amount was not as much as Tath had hoped for, but it would make a small arrowhead. "Do you have a knife hilt I can borrow?" she asked Agra.
He threw her a thin one and sprinted toward Junko. "My turn," he said.
"I took her right eye," Tath called out, pressing the silver together. "See if you can beat that."
"There are no bonus points for eyes," he replied. "Hell, we don't even know if water mutants have eyes." He parried Junko's attacks with his blades.
Tath started to form the arrow's serrated edges "We'll check the book and see who's right after this fight."
"You know it's going to be—" Agra's block was fraction too high and Junko's punch went under it, catching him square in the chest. He doubled over, breaking his fall with his left forearm. Both his blades sunk into the water beneath him.
"Agra!" Tath screamed, her fingers slipping as she tried to complete the last edge.
He laughed as Junko uppercut him, and he flew through the air, splatting onto the ground. His head bounced twice on the brick.
"Get up," Tath yelled. "You have to keep moving."
"No, you can be on top," he replied.
Tath watched as icicles started to form around the lower part of his body. "Get the fuck up," she hollered. She tried putting the arrowhead on the makeshift shaft, but her shaking fingers dropped the hilt into the water. It made a disheartening splash.
"Oh," Junko said, "guess who isn't getting that back." She ran at Tath, her footsteps kicking more water on Agra. When the droplets made contact with his skin, they froze.
Tath clenched the arrowhead and sprinted in the opposite direction.
* * *
JETTA COULD FEEL the mystical heart of the Milky Way press against her back and try to escape. She knew what would happen if she let it. The cumulative effect of her attacks had pushed her endurance to its limit, but she was no closer in understanding how to kill the golem.
"There must be something," she mumbled, looking at the lumbering monster coming toward her. Golems were made from elemental materials: wood, one of the tides of power, water, meteorite and so on. Except, in this one's case, she could not determine what substance had formed it. The element seemed impenetrable and able to consume everything in its path.
Jetta wondered how one could beat the invincible as she floated off the ground to avoid fighting the monstrosity. Because she was using more magic to fly, the beat of the universe pulsed louder inside of her and the scar on her back began to ache. There was something about the null and the murkiness hovering at the top of the chamber that ate away at her. She knew nulls were always an outgrowth of its caster's strongest magical connection. All null goops may have appeared the same to the untrained eye, but each of them was unique. This one was too, and it swirled like a vortex—pulling even the light in the room toward it.
"Oh, it's my turn to be the idiot," Jetta said to herself. She flew up to the sludge crawling over the ceiling. She touched it and the substance quivered. Ripping off a piece of her sleeve, she placed it on the ooze. Rather than falling, the material circled the spot Jetta had laid it on and then disappeared. "Anti-matter," she said. "Goddamn the devil and his need for balance." Jetta closed her eyes and recalled all the pre-Cataclysm textbooks she had read about black holes. "Alright Jacobson and Sotiriou, let's see how your theory holds up to reality." She sunk her fingertips into the null's protective layer and summoned a small portal. As it began to expand, she sped away from it as fast as she could.
* * *
"AGRA'S TOLD ME all about you," Junko said to Tath. "We should be allies. We have the same wish: to be in control of our destiny. Think about it. If you joined me, we could take control of the Leviathan clan and live as free as we wanted. I'd even let you keep Agra as a concubine until you wore him out."
Tath skidded to a stop and pivoted to face Junko. She stared at the ice-suit and leaned a little to the left. Holding the arrowhead between her finger and thumb, she responded, "You're pitching your fantasies to the wrong archer. Once you've been fucked by one tyrant, you don't go knocking on another's door for seconds." She flicked the arrow at one of the pillars in the room. It appeared to ricochet harmlessly off.
"Maybe I was too hasty with my offer," Junko said, seemingly unimpressed with Tath's final maneuver.
Tath stayed silent and glared at Junko, watching the arrowhead continue its trajectory with her peripheral vision. It spiked off the floor and deflected off Junko's arm before going straight into an eye slit. Junko screamed as silver light penetrated through her ice armor and then out and into the chamber.
Tath barged past Junko and ran over to Agra. She cradled his head. "Talk to me," she pleaded. "Tell me anything you want."
"Hair really does keep your head warm," he replied, his teeth chattering. "I might grow it out even after you start seeing other people."
* * *
MEA'S VISION BLURRED. All she could see was the red of her blood and the faint browns of the floor. Although she pushed with all her might, she could not find the strength to stand and remained on all fours. Her eyes felt heavy and her back damp. The Chill Serpent lay in stomach and was as cold as the snow in the Wastelands of Nerdith. "It went better the first time," she said. She hung her head as the three administrators raised their blades to deliver the finishing blow.
As they slashed, a shimmering orb surrounded her, and their weapons bounced off the shield. The barrier lifted off the ground and carried Mea into the air. She forced herself to look around and saw Agra, Tath and Danielle in a similar sphere like hers. Behind them all, Jetta was flying with her hands out to guide the orbs. Sweat streamed down her forehead and silver poured out of her back, propelling her forward. "
Steh," Mea said to her absent companion, "you really were a mediocre white man."
A large slab of brick whizzed past Mea's ball. "The golem's not dead?" she asked Jetta.
"You try killing a black hole," Jetta snapped. More rocks and boulders crashed into the wall in front of them. The transport spheres dodged left and right with Jetta's guidance. Mea felt a gurgle in her stomach.
"I get motion sickness," Mea said.
"Then throw up," Jetta replied. They dove down and back up before banking sharply left. Mea hurled, discovering how much beer she had drunk the night before. The door came into focus; its sheer immensity matched the relief Mea felt.
"Fuck!" Jetta screamed.
Mea spun to see why Jetta had cried out, but her bubble dissipated before she could. All of them fell toward the ground until, just before they hit it, a sudden gust of wind broke their free fall and allowed them to tumble, more or less, safely through the door.
Mea lay prone on the ground. Behind her she could hear the whoosh of administrators teleporting and the stomp of the golem as it ran toward the chamber's exit
Thirty-seven: The Lost
MEA THOUGHT OF Tath and every moment her friend had scarred her body to save another team member from death. Even Steh, as loathe as she was to admit it, could have pointed to cuts and wounds he had gotten from rescuing the others in their troop from fatal encounters. What had she done to show her worth? A single brand on her arm from a silly mistake in the Library? A few awkward conversations with people she did not like?
Mea refused to be the only who would quit when shoved to her limit. She jammed her arms against the ground and pushed. Blood leaked out of her open wounds and splashed onto the floor, tremors ran through her arms and feet while she howled to distract herself from the agony—but she managed to stand and limp toward the door. After a few steps, she yanked Tath and Agra off the ground. Danielle was already standing, although seemingly in a haze.