Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  Then it hit me. I was looking at this all wrong. The black felt empty because it was. It wasn’t black magic, it was cracks in the red magic. That meant it was the red magic that was spinning, not some sort of black magic line.

  It was the spin that was giving the red magic its power. It was sort of like throwing something at a ceiling fan. There was a lot of space between the blades, but because the ceiling fan was rotating, it would usually hit anything trying to get through it. I needed to find a way to disrupt the spin.

  It would take something small to get through the cracks, yet dense enough it wouldn’t break when the red magic came around. Fortunately I was good at small dense magics.

  What popped into my head was a dam. A beaver dam. Beavers were good at building homes in rushing water. I needed a beaver colony to dam up this circle.

  I made my first beaver on my palm. He had a round body, cute face, and wide flat tail. I gave him some nice powerful front teeth for chewing through magic. He was only about a half inch long, but my ‘logs’ were going to have to be pretty small to get into the cracks. I gave him a duplicator ring. If he could pull extra magic from the circle then he could duplicate himself and that would speed up the process a lot.

  I put him on the floor and started making a few logs. I made them long and skinny with branches so the logs would lock together once they were in place. I stuffed them full of magic as they needed to be strong. The beaver chewed the first log into smaller pieces, then pushed the first piece into the shield. It went in easily. So far so good.

  I zoomed in for a closer view. I could see that even one log had already caused a small disruption to the dome. The force of the spinning magic was pushing on the log, though, so the beaver was having to hold it in place. I was going to need more beavers.

  I guess my flat tailed friend thought the same thing, because he sucked in some of the circle’s magic for his duplicator ring. I guess the circle was powered by Isobel’s magic, because putrid power hit his system.

  He squealed and tried to run but it was too late. The magic ate into him. He fell to the ground, convulsing. I slapped my hand over him and poured on the magic. Isobel was not going to hurt one of my guys!

  My magic was dense, thick, and it quickly pushed out the rotten invader. Her influence went up in smoke. We were both still shaken, though. This is the first time something like this had happened. I wasn’t aware you could booby trap spells.

  He recovered before I did, squeaking at me to let him go. I did, but first I told him that I’d provide all the magic he needed for duplication. He took me at my word and popped out three more beavers. They went to work right away and soon the dam was under construction again. I gave him as much power as he wanted and he made ten more copies before heading off to help in the construction himself.

  The force of the spinning magic had knocked the first log a few feet across the floor. I recovered it and added it to the pile. The beavers worked quickly and soon they had used up their supply of logs. There was a pronounced ripple in the dome now. It wasn’t enough to bring it down yet, but the idea was working. I started making more logs.

  For the next few minutes I made the logs and they worked on the dam. As it got higher and higher the distortion in the dome got more pronounced. What started out as a ripple turned into overlapping waves of turbulence. The whole dome started wavering like it was made of jello.

  Finally, it gave a loud pop and fell apart.

  I didn’t waste any time. I grabbed Sandy and pulled her out of there. I wasn’t sure if the spell could regenerate, but I wasn’t going to take that chance.

  I didn’t want to lose any of my power so I took a moment to pull the logs back into Penny. Then the beavers waddled up onto my hand, wiggled their whiskers at me and merged with her too. I thanked each one of them personally. I don’t know if it really matters to them, but they were real to me, and I was grateful for their help. My unique style of magic let me do some pretty amazing things. I wasn’t going to take it for granted.

  I checked on Sandy. She was breathing but unconscious. She had also lost a lot of magic. She always had a feeling of power about her and now that was missing. I couldn’t see any of her orange light at all, although her aura was still working and keeping me from looking too closely.

  She was alive, though. That’s what really mattered. Everything else could be fixed. I dragged her over to the edge of the warehouse behind a beam. It wasn’t a lot of protection but hopefully she wouldn’t need it. As far as I knew, all the mages had been taken care of except for Isobel, and I could still hear that battle going on.

  I felt bad leaving her there, but I needed to help John and Annabeth. I didn’t want Sandy any closer to the fight in case she got hit with a stray rock or spell.

  John’s fight wasn’t in my radius so I didn’t know how he was doing. I dodged from support beam to support beam until I was close. I wasn’t going to run into battle without knowing what was going on.

  What I saw shocked me.

  John was transformed. He was already a big guy. Now he had grown even more. He looked like he was changing into an earth elemental. He was eight feet tall and looked like he was made of stone.

  If John had changed, so had Isobel. She had brought her A game this time. She had on what looked like magical armor. It was made of leather and every piece glowed with magic. She was also using two wands in addition to two charm bracelets.

  John was huge and powerful, but he was a lot slower than his regular form. Isobel, in contrast, was even faster than before. Maybe she had a charm to speed her up?

  John was attempting to pin her down and crush her. She was dodging like a pro and her blasts were knocking chunks out of his stone. They weren’t big chunks, though. It was enough to tick him off but it wasn’t enough to really hurt him.

  She was also using force blasts, but it was more to move herself around quickly. John rushed her and almost got her. She jumped to the side and shot a blast of force in the opposite direction. Together it propelled her about ten feet away, out of John’s reach. He turned and started stalking her again.

  Annabeth was on my side of the fight and doing what she could too. Every time Isobel stopped, Annabeth sent a spell at her. She was using heat and sending out very slow waves of power. They were slow enough to get through her shield but not fast enough to catch her. They were going so slow, it was actually harder to dodge, and one time she almost stepped into one. It was clearly frustrating the hell out of her, but she didn’t have time to target Annabeth. John was slow but he wasn’t that slow.

  I was just starting to figure out how I could help when the House siren went off. What the heck? The House was under attack?

  I cussed out loud. Of course it was. This was the perfect time to hit the House shields. All the defenders were away from home.

  This whole thing had been more than just getting revenge on Sandy. This had been a coordinated diversion to get the House undefended.

  Annabeth ran up to me. “Can you hear that?” She looked worried.

  “Of course I can,” I said. “This whole thing was designed to get John and Sandy out of the House and keep them away long enough to break the shields.”

  I was so angry. We were getting out maneuvered.

  “You’re going to have to save the House,” I said. “With Sandy down, you are the only one that can work the defensive crystal.”

  “I only worked it once,” Annabeth stammered. “And Sandy was there to help. I don’t know if I can do this on my own.”

  “You’re going to have to try,” I said. “You are all we have left. Hopefully Tyler shows up soon. He’s a powerful super too.”

  I pulled her in for a quick hug. “You can do this, Annabeth. You’re smart and you’re tough. You can make this happen. I’ll help John and we’ll be along as soon as we can.” I pushed her toward the exit. “Now go!”

  She didn’t look convinced, but she ran out anyway. I had no idea what she was going to defend against. If it was
hundreds of mages again, then we were toast. If it was something else, then maybe we had a chance.

  I turned back to John’s battle. We had to end this, and we had to do it quickly.

  I made another flasher and turned it loose in stealth mode. It flew toward Isobel but it was moving too slowly. As soon as it got close, she would jump to a different part of the room to avoid an attack from John. What I needed was a bunch of them scattered throughout the space. Then, she might dodge into one of them and we’d get a hit.

  I didn’t have any other ideas so I started making flashers and sending them around the room. It took a few moments, but it worked. Sort of. Isobel backed into a flasher and suddenly it was right over her head and inside her shield. It started to fly to her eye and it almost made it before it started falling apart. I watched helpless as the wings came off my little flasher. He fell into a river of aura that looked like vomit and vanished with a little flash of my magic.

  Isobel’s aura was large and powerful. The flasher couldn’t exist in that environment long enough to get off a shot. I called all the flashers back to me and absorbed them. I didn’t want to lose any more of my creations.

  Then the worst thing happened. Isobel changed tactics. She had been using force up to this point, both for offense and defense. Now she switched to cold.

  This made sense for her. She wasn’t injuring John much and her aura had diminished a lot from the level I’d seen in the park. This fight was using up a lot of her reserves and she couldn’t use Sandy to recharge any more. She needed to try something else, and it looked like she had come up with a winner.

  The cold was slowing John down. He couldn’t rush as fast as before and his swings looked sluggish. Not having to dodge as much gave Isobel more time to cast freeze. This was bad. Really bad.

  John knew this too. He reached into a pouch at his side and pulled out what looked like a couple of stones. He popped them into his mouth and started crunching them in his massive jaws.

  He swallowed, and started growing. Stones popped up out of the floor, and then slid over to him, only to be absorbed into his body.

  He gained another foot in height and I don’t know how much more mass. He was a nine-foot tall walking stone instrument of death. Except that he couldn’t catch the object of his rage.

  He roared and smashed the ground, but Isobel was too fast. She kept pouring on the cold, and gradually John started slowing down again.

  I had to do something. But what? If she couldn’t see, she couldn’t dodge. I felt like that was the right idea but how to make it work?

  If I made something fast enough to get to her eyes before her aura tore it apart, then it would be too fast and her shield would stop it. If I made it slow enough to get through her shield, then it was too slow to catch her. Even if it did catch her, it would spend too long in her aura and fall apart.

  What I needed was something that moved fast, then slow, then fast again. That gave me an idea.

  I started hunting on the ground for two tiny stone chips. There was rock everywhere so they were easy to find. I needed them about the size of a grain of rice.

  Once I had them, I sharpened one side to a point, and left fins on the other. Working with rock was not easy. The changes I needed, though, were small and the rock chips were sitting in my hand. I zoomed in close, made a little door and hollowed out a tiny section inside the rock. I made a little light bulb creation, no bigger than a period at the end of a sentence, and filled it with the light rune. I put the light rune inside it, and all over the surface. I needed this thing to shine. Then I packed it full of power. I put so much in there the little bulb started to vibrate. I made a second one and put one inside each little rock missile.

  Then I took the rock missiles and built a magic rocket around them. I poured my magic into this too. I need it to be as real as possible. I pushed as much soul and magic into them as I could. They had to be the first line of defense against her aura.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is a one-way mission. You are going up against someone powerful and very strong. I have to save my friends. I have to help the House. This is the only way I know to do that.”

  I whispered my directions to them, then added “Once you do your mission, just vanish. Don’t stick around or you will get absorbed. Thank you and good luck.”

  The rockets flared and the light flashed. They were ready to go. Just in time too. John had slowed down even more and now parts of him were covered in ice. This had to work.

  “Go,” I whispered, and they were off.

  The rockets were full of magic fuel and they were fast. Almost faster than I could follow. They shot across the room and slammed into the shield right in front of her eyes.

  They didn’t bounce, though, they hovered in place. Her aura was eating at them but not fast enough. Now there wasn’t anything fast in range, her shield fell, and the next stage launched.

  The rocket moved forward slowly so it was inside the shield, then the top opened up and it shot the little rock missiles right into her eyes.

  It’s very hard for magic to exist in an aura, or for hostile magic to pierce the skin, but rock can do both of those just fine.

  I thought the rock would just get stuck in her eyes or maybe she would blink at the last minute. Instead, the rock was going so quick that it went through the cornea, through the pupil and into the lens of her eyes. It was two perfect bullseye shots.

  That’s when stage three happened. The light bulbs shed their rocky housing and exploded in light.

  The best I was hoping for was a really bright flash. It ended up being so much more than that.

  The light was bright, like back in the workshop see through your hand bright. It was so magically bright I could see her skull.

  She opened her mouth to scream and I could see the back of her throat glowing.

  This was all in the magic spectrum. As we found out in the workshop, the natural spectrum was even more powerful. I couldn’t imagine how bright it must have been in real life.

  It was so intense I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. My magic sight saw everything.

  The rockets winked out of existence. They had escaped in time. The little bulbs disappeared too. The rock stayed there, still embedded in her lens. It wasn’t a lot of rock, but healing from that was going to be a bitch.

  Isobel screamed. She staggered, then screamed again. It was a scream of fear. It was a scream of anger. She was disoriented, unable to see. And John was coming.

  He roared with the fury of the earth. With the fear his love almost lost. And hit her like a freight train.

  He body slammed her.

  All nine feet of his rock and power smashed her into the ground.

  Somehow, her shield held up. It didn’t matter to him. He used one hand to hold her there and the other to pound her. His fury was biblical and even her shield wasn’t meant to stop that.

  After the fifth hit her shield went out. Now it was just down to her armor.

  It flared with magic, then overloaded too.

  He smashed her again. And again.

  He was going to kill her. Even though she was immortal, there was no way she was coming back from this. I didn’t know how to stop him.

  Or even if I should stop him.

  Suddenly there was wave of force powerful enough to knock John back. Isobel was encased in a blue ball of force. Her crushed body was bloody and limp on the bottom. It rose in the air, then smashed through the roof and shot away.

  It happened so fast I didn’t get a good look at it. The magic had a familiar feel though. It was sort of like the golem magic.

  John got to his feet and roared at the sky. I was just glad the battle was over. Isobel scared me. I felt relief she was gone.

  I was scared for John. He didn’t seem human any more. I don’t think he could even talk.

  I knew he cared about one thing, though, and that was Sandy.

  I yelled to get his attention and kept saying her name over and over again. I
t finally got through and he followed me over to Sandy’s limp form. He curled up over her and shielded her with his body. After that he didn’t move. I got the feeling he was going to stay like that for a long time.

  The House alarm kicked up to a whole new level of urgent. Whatever was happening, it needed defenders and I was the only one that could help.

  I didn’t want to leave them here like this but I had to go help the House. I had to help Annabeth.

  I turned and left.

  24 Fairy Godmothers

  I followed the same path back to the store. I knew there was an easier way to get home but I didn’t want to chance getting turned around. I couldn’t read street signs with my magic sight and the last thing I wanted to do right now was get lost. From the store it was a straight shot back to the House.

  Fifteen minutes later I was almost there, the House alarm urging me along the whole time. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. Hopefully it wasn’t catapults, wands and battering rams again. I couldn’t defend like John and he wasn’t going to show up to save the day again.

  It was unnerving walking into a battle situation and not being able to see what was going on. I slowed down to a cautious walk. I’m not a ‘jump in head first’ type of guy. I like to plan, to have a moment to figure out what I want to do. Plus, slowing down gave me a chance to catch my breath. I couldn’t see that far, but I could hear and as I got closer, I could hear a fluttering sound, like a flock of birds.

  Nothing showed up on my sight until I was almost to the front yard, then I saw a steady stream of what looked like dusty ghosts slamming into the House shield. They were all sizes, from tiny mouse sized ones all the way up to big people size. They had solid looking heads with their bodies trailing behind like sheets in the wind. That was the source of the fluttering sound I was hearing.