The Wounded Ones

by G. D. Penman

  Spellfire boiled the water around her hands away and lit the bottom of the swamp. She couldn’t breathe to cast but this was low magic. The sort of thing kids did by accident and gave themselves headaches. She pointed her hands down and pushed.

  She burst out of the water and Tartalo caught her in one massive hand, rumbling with laughter. The gryphon and the Fury circled above them. Sully hadn’t seen the Hydra yet, but she had no doubt that it was on its way. She spat out a mouthful of water, dragged in an agonizing breath and then went to work. She cast her concussion spell by the giant’s ear and he roared in agony and let her drop. The flying spell caught her before she returned to the swamp. She whipped herself back up and launched herself at the gryphon like a cannonball.

  There was no way that she could outrun them and no point in escaping even if she could. They had forever to hunt her and nothing to lose. She cast a torrent of spells as she rose, one after the other. She hit its wings with a bolt of moonlight, freezing them solid. She hit its dangling head with a fireball that stripped it of feathers all over again.

  Darts of force and flame. Coils of lightning. Anything and everything that she could conjure she flung at the falling beast as gravity and velocity brought them closer and closer together. Sully couldn’t see Alecto in the night sky, didn’t know how she would fight a Fury even if she did spot her. From what she could remember, the Erinyes were closer to gods than animals, but the gryphon was just a monster. She knew exactly what to do with monsters.

  Her last spells before she collided with the gryphon infused her with strength and surrounded her with layers of protection. She punched her fist into the blackened hole that she had already cursed into its side and dug around inside for its heart. The gryphon was screeching and Sully screamed right back as they tumbled through the air. Her arm was slick with blood. Its feathers were painted red.

  Sully readied an overpowered concussion spell to tear them apart before they hit the ground, whispering the words and readying the spellforms. But the gryphon had no intention of letting go. It jerked forward and locked her free hand in its beak, screeching and grinding the edges together. Sawing through the bones of her wrist.

  Sully felt the grinding more than she felt the pain. Everything hurt too much for any one wound to distract her, but the vibration as tendons and meat were shredded was enough to make her retch. Still spinning. Still burning. Fighting back the urge to puke herself inside out. She cast the concussion spell with the wrong hand. It went off inside the gryphon.

  The resulting explosion was too confusing for Sully to take it all in, but the next thing that she remembered, she was lying on her back in a stagnant pond, surrounded by twitching nodules of meat and drifting feathers. The burning had stopped—which was extremely concerning. She tried to push herself up out of the water but a stab of pain ran up the length of her arm even through the numbness. Sully looked down to see how bad it was. Her left hand was gone. Blood was gushing out of the stump like an open faucet. “Oh.”

  She could hear Tartalo’s stomping footsteps approaching. For one stupid moment she splashed around in the water, trying to find her hand. She could feel the eyes of Alecto burrowing into the top of her head. She didn’t have time for weakness. “Eyes forward.”

  She tried very hard not to think about how badly it was going to hurt as she prepared her spell, panting to stave off the encroaching darkness at the edges of her vision. If she passed out, she was dead. She hissed out the last words and clenched her teeth so she didn’t bite through her own tongue.

  The blue-hot artillery spell could melt steel. In a flash, it blackened the raw flesh and killed the nerves. The darkness swept in again, and it was only the sound of her own screaming that kept Sully awake. When the darkness eased back to the edges of her vision she was drenched in a cold sweat. She didn’t think that she could stand. She was shaking too hard. She set off a chain of concussions overhead. If she was lucky, the giant would toddle close enough to one to go deaf as well as blind, but judging by her night so far, she wasn’t going to be lucky.

  By the time she found her feet Tartalo was almost on top of her. The pain was coming back, inch by inch. Her anger was coming back, too. She launched artillery fire at the giant as it rushed her, and while the first shot missed, the rest met their mark. Fireball after fireball pummeled Tartalo as Sully roared defiance. Within the cage of his blackened ribs she could still see the flames burning. “Die! Die!”

  There was no sound but the roaring fire. She filled him up with fire and then poured in some more. He still had the shape of a man and flames licked up out of his empty eye-socket, yet he kept coming.

  Blind, deaf, and scorched beyond recognition, the giant lumbered on toward her, so Sully took flight. The moment she left the ground it felt like the world was spinning around her. In a dizzy spiral she slipped out of his reach. As her vision began to clear and her gut stopped churning, Sully caught sight of the mountainous Hydra on the horizon, churning through the treacherous swamp as if it were nothing. Tears streamed down her face in the chill night air. Then Alecto slapped her out of the sky.

  There was no water or mud to break her fall this time. Sully cracked off a standing stone and collapsed onto the ground. That was another bad one. She could still wiggle her toes, so the damage wasn’t catastrophic, but wiggling her toes was all that she had the energy left to do. The cracked ribs were almost certainly broken now. She needed to breathe. The Fury swept down out of the sky toward her and all she could do was lie there as her death descended like the blade of the guillotine.

  Mol Kalath drove into Alecto from above. For a moment they hung above Sully, talons and wickedly hooked claws sending a shower of feathers, blood, and pus down around her. Then they fell, tumbling and rending one another, until they were out of Sully’s line of sight. A crash sounded as they landed in the swamp. With some effort Sully managed to drag in a wheeze of breath but it came back out again as a tiny scream. The ribs were definitely broken. It didn’t matter. Mol Kalath was buying her time and she needed to use it. She threw herself forward away from the water and made it onto her feet.

  A few steps around the outside of the circle, and she had just enough air to cast. She flicked a dart of pure spellfire at one of the standing stones and the whole thing sprang to life. With only that tiny spark of power, the circle was primed for use once more. The flames in Tartalo were dying down and his flesh was starting to coalesce into a dry, sticky mess. Hunks of charred flesh flaked off as he charged across the swamp toward her. As he burst into the circle, Sully snapped it shut. It did nothing to slow the giant, but it had cost Sully nothing and if she had died without trying it, she would have kicked herself.

  With all the time in the world she readied another overpowered concussion spell and snapped it off as Tartalo got too close. It didn’t launch him straight upward like it had with the Hydra—the human shape just didn’t have enough of a flat surface—but he still flew a fair distance. She was buying time.

  Sully felt a tug in her guts that had nothing to do with the strips of flesh that were missing. Alecto howled in triumph as she hoisted Mol Kalath’s limp body above her head. The demon had never been still before. Even when it had tried, feathers would flutter and reach out toward her and its eyes would always seek her out. Now they were glazed over and the light deep within them was out. “No.”

  The Fury launched the demon at Sully with a squeal of delight. Woman and demon tumbled across the ground together, Sully clinging to her shadow-twin as tightly as she could. Mol Kalath rebounded off the invisible wall surrounding the circle and they came to a halt. For all the time it took Alecto to stroll over, Sully just lay there with her arms wrapped around the demon. The fingers that she had left were clenched in the soft feathers on Mol Kalath’s underside. She couldn’t feel the demon breathing, but she didn’t know if demons needed to. She couldn’t feel a heartbeat, but who even knew if it had a heart. Sully let all her se
nses roll out of her body and then plunged them into the demon, searching for any hint that it was still alive. Deep down in the darkness, she found a spark and she poured the last remnants of her own depleted magic into that spark without a thought. The demon shuddered beneath her touch, and that tiny spark, doused in fuel, caught alight.

  There was no barrier between them now, not even the hesitation to do harm. This wasn’t the cruel stripping of power that Sully had forced on other demons, nor was it the clumsy sharing of power that humans could achieve through ritual. She and the demon shared their power because it belonged to both of them. Mol Kalath sprang back to life, and the power flooded into Sully just as readily as it filled the demon.

  Alecto strolled contemptuously through the barrier around the circle, as if it wasn’t even there. It had started to rain. A fine mist washed the worst of the ichor and blood from the creature’s skin. “You need not be whole when we take you. You can be made to suffer as we suffer. If you surrender now, only the wildling must die.”

  Sully staggered to her feet and stared the Fury down. She was a beautiful creature. The last of her kind. Everything about her was tragic. Mol Kalath rested its weight against her back. Demons were hideous, they were legion, and they had been waging war on mankind for so long that Sully still couldn’t believe that the touch of a demon could be anything but repulsive. Yet here she was leaning into it like it was a loving embrace. She raised her hand and began tracing out a spell.

  “Are you blind to the futility? We cannot die. All that you can do is delay the inevitable.”

  Mol Kalath croaked, “THAT IS ALL THAT HUMANS EVER DO.”

  Sully had never cast this spell before, but she had written and rewritten it so many times that it was as familiar to her as Marie’s face. She traced each spellform with a flourish. Anticipation built in her stomach despite the pain gnawing at the edges of her concentration. She poured the pain into her spell with the power. It only seemed right.

  Alecto stopped a foot away from Sully’s outstretched hand and spread her arms and wings wide, laughter echoing up into the silent night. Sully traced the last line, whispered the last word, and all the magic that she had was ripped out of her.

  Dante’s Inferno only lasted for an instant before Sully’s protections cut it off, but it burned as bright and as hot as the sun for that instant. The circle bound it, and with nowhere for all the fire and fury to go it doubled back in on itself. Heat and light and searing death looped infinitely within the circle in that one moment. A roaring blinding pillar of light that burned away the clouds and made even Sully flinch away. Then it was over.

  When the smoke cleared and Sully could see again, there was nothing left in the circle but a crater of molten rock. Sully collapsed onto Mol Kalath, who had dropped to the ground the moment the spell was cast. It let out a grunt but otherwise didn’t complain. Both of them were drained to the point of unconsciousness, but neither of them had forgotten that there were enemies all around them, and both of them were too stubborn to pass out while the other one was still going. Eventually Sully mustered enough energy to speak. “Immortal, my ass.”

  Mol Kalath crackled and rumbled beneath her with amusement.

  Tartalo got to them first but the gryphon wasn’t far behind, dragging its trailing entrails. All of the haste had sapped out of them and the moment that they met, the scabrous giant crouched to scoop the mutilated bird-cat into his arms. He cradled the gryphon as he plodded out into the crater, groaning softly as the soft stone seared his flesh but pressing on anyway until he reached the epicenter of the blast. He had not spoken before, and though half of his skull was collapsed and smoldering, he managed to groan out a single word in a voice so deep that it made the ragged remains of Sully’s dress quiver with the impact. “End?”

  Heart aching, Sully forced herself back up onto her feet. “I can’t. I need time. My reserves are . . . They’re just gone. I need—”

  “End?”

  Mol Kalath stirred. Already the wounds on its flank were closing. The power within it was starting to swell and even across the empty space between them, Sully could feel it trickling across to her, too. “IT IS ONLY FAIR.”

  Sully scoffed. “You’re a humanitarian now?”

  “YOUR WORLD IS FULL OF OLD THINGS THAT NEED TO DIE SO THAT NEW THINGS CAN LIVE. WE CAN SET THEM FREE. WE CAN. SO WE MUST. THERE IS NOBODY ELSE.”

  “They just spent all night beating the shit out of me and one of them bit my fucking hand off. I’m not really in the mood to do them any favors.”

  Mol Kalath lumbered closer and nuzzled at her shoulder. Which she was pretty sure was dislocated. Again. “WILL YOU DO IT OUT OF FAVOR FOR ME?”

  Sully sighed and let her head fall to rest on the fine feathers between the demon’s six eyes. “How did my life turn into this?”

  Sully took her time preparing the spell. In part to give herself time to regain her energy, but mostly to tweak it again so that it was less like the original, and less likely to leave her a hollowed-out husk. It was strange that in the midst of all the other pain her headache seemed the worst, but the first casting had taken more out of her than she would like to admit, and repetition always made the patterns that a spell burned into your brain more pronounced. She didn’t think that she had lost any memories the first time, but would she remember if she had? She shook the thought away and continued her preparations.

  The sun never rose over the swamp, not really, but hints of grayness were now spreading above them, blocked in part by the mountainous heap of the Hydra. Sully hadn’t been able to fathom the logistical problem that killing the Hydra represented, but the moment it arrived it had lowered all its heads into the circle and now lay still. Sully cast a glance at the burned stubs of necks over by the shell and shrugged. She supposed that if anyone knew how to kill the Hydra it was probably the Hydra.

  The demons began to arrive while she was still in the midst of casting, but with only a few soft words from Mol Kalath in their chittering tongue, they gathered silently around the outside of the circle to watch. Spreading its wings still seemed to pain Mol Kalath, but it stretched them out as wide as it could and pressed itself against Sully’s back as she worked. At once power started to flow into her, far more than she would have guessed that her demon could have gathered from the drained space around them. It was only when she glanced back that she realized that Mol Kalath’s wings were being held up by a half-dozen more demons. Through it, she could sense them. Through them she could feel the cumulative strength of every other demon that they touched.

  When she had first studied demons, she had wondered how wishes were granted. The standard arguments were that another plane provided a better position to make changes, that probability was so skewed in the hells that great acts of magic were easier and that a demon was simply possessed of greater magical power than any mere mortal. No single demon could accomplish the changes that they made, but all of them could when their powers were combined. How such wild and chaotic creatures were capable of strategy and planning had always confused their human enemies, but now it seemed obvious. If they didn’t work together, they couldn’t work at all.

  She took all the power that they offered until her reserves were swollen to bursting and spellfire was flooding out of her stump, her hand and her eyes in a torrent. She paused before she recited the final words of the spell. Looking one last time at the three endlings in the circle, she didn’t know what to say, but her demon did. “GOODBYE.”

  The Inferno was no less impressive on its second casting, and it was completely fresh to the audience of demons that had gathered so there was a rush of gasps and wails from all around her as the pillar of light shot up once more. The fire burned brighter and longer than before thanks to the changes she had made, but they probably hadn’t been necessary. When they had blinked away the dark strip in their vision, Sully and her allies peered past the smoke. At the edge of the circle, t
he many necks of the Hydra lay cauterized. Within the circle there was nothing but lava and a lingering smell of plasma.

  This time, when she collapsed, arms and tentacles reached out to catch her and bear her back into Mol Kalath’s warm embrace. She didn’t know if demons slept, but Mol Kalath lay inert amidst its kin and once she was wrapped in those oily black wings and breathing in the smoky smells of its fine feathers Sully let shock and exhaustion carry her down into a brief respite from the pain.

  November 14, 2015

  Gormlaith had a lot of opinions. Since the moment that Sully regained consciousness by the hearthside, wrapped up in furs and painstakingly coated in thick sticky bog mud, there had been a constant barrage of opinions on every aspect of her life. A vampire wasn’t good enough for her. Was she sure men held no appeal whatsoever? She needed to take better care of herself, she wouldn’t have half the scars she was carrying if she had just used the herbs she had been taught. Did she really have to call that nun a bitch when she was twelve? The fancy spells that she had learned at the Imperial College needed two hands to cast. What had she done to her beautiful hair? If she had just left her wrist unburned, they could have grown her a new hand. Sully let the old woman ramble as she stared into the fire and tried her best to let every one of the barbed words slide over her instead of taking hold. The poultice that her mother had wrapped around her left wrist stank of vinegar and cardamom, but she tolerated it because she was quite attached to the idea of not dying from a secondary infection after all that she had been through. Usually in the aftermath of a fight, Sully wanted a drink, or sex, or both simultaneously, but today cold seemed to have seeped into her. Like the Inferno had been inside her all these years, and now that she had let it loose, she had nothing to keep herself alight. She didn’t know if she could face the army waiting for her outside, feeling as reduced as she did.