Behind the Bitmask

by Jessica Kagan

  I noticed with some consternation that Azure had just dismissed her shielding. She looked at me and shook her head. To be fair, it wasn’t going to be enough to stand up to a concentrated barrage from Sigmar, and an inadequate shield is as good as none.

  “Well, come on! Get up and show me your moves. I’ll go easy on you, I promise!” Sigmar told Noah. I pitied Azure for very possibly being privy to whatever nonsense went through their heads.

  Haxabalatnar walked past me. He’d apparently decided that the now unprotected inside of the cave no longer offered any security. He was keeping his sidearm trained on Sigmar at all times, but the titan didn’t seem at all fazed by this. In fact, he seemed to be letting Noah prepare a wide variety of combat spellscripts. Now was not the time to read into the subtext of this – just follow Haxabalatnar’s lead, make sure Azure follows – and we were soon at the base of the skullscape. The weather had changed at some point during the siege. The gray skies had turned bright red with circular bands of what I hoped were clouds. Everything else was the same desolate landscape that we’d taken cover from some hours ago.

  *Can you ping Haxabalatnar and ask him what he intends to do?* I transmitted to Azure. *I just don’t want to be surprised in case he decides to take a shot at Sigmar.*

  *I can do you one better nowadays. I’m going to start a conference call!* she responded. Then she went to the trouble of telepathically transmitting harsh modem noise into my brain (and presumably Haxabalatnar’s, as well). Sigmar is definitely making her angry.

  *What the hell? You can do this now?* Hax thought. I had a vague sense of Noah ramping up his own spells as we spoke. He was certain to strike soon.

  *Well, since Azure asked, I’m planning to fire at Sigmar once Noah has distracted him enough. You guys got any way to enhance my bullets?* Hax continued. I pulled up my phone again and thumbed through my scripts. Noah had surrounded himself with a hazy blue aura that was almost certainly his own personal shielding.

  *All I’ve got are exploding shrapnel bullets. You willing to take that risk?* I responded.

  *Those will do. Azure, what’ve you got in mind?*

  *I was thinking I’d feed some magical power into Noah’s spellwork and see if we can make him more of a threat to Sigmar,* she told us. I wasn’t sure it was worth investing in Noah, but it would at least give us more breathing room, so long as Sigmar just kept playing with us. I noticed that Noah was running his phonesabers again and realized that I probably needed some sort of melee weapon. For some reason, my mind went back to that glorious night before we first set out for Mount Amdahl. My failure to pack a contingency baton was beginning to seriously weigh upon my mind-

  “Have at you, fiend cur!” Noah shouted, in what was almost certainly the lamest war cry in the history of humanity. But for once, he exceeded expectations by lunging at Sigmar with astonishing speed...and poor accuracy, as soon became apparent when Sigmar quietly stepped to the side.

  “Heh. Maybe you so-called magic cops aren’t as big of a threat to hell as I thought. Try again!” Sigmar said to Noah, who scowled at him. I looked over at Azure to see if she’d started trying to augment Noah yet, but her overall relaxed posture suggested the answer was no.

  *Let Noah warm up first. He thinks he’s just getting started,* she explained.

  Noah charged at Sigmar again, even faster than the last time. This time, Sigmar couldn’t just casually step away – in fact, he had to scurry. He almost lost his hat, but for a paw holding it down. But Noah kept on chasing Sigmar.

  It seemed highly unlikely now that Hax was going to be able to get in a clean shot – and then, something small and brown flew through the air! It was Sigmar. Unfortunately, he seemed to be in control of his trajectory. It didn’t sound like Noah had landed any blows, but arguably the more Sigmar had to move around to dodge his attacks, the better.

  “Are you frightened yet?” asked Noah. Sounded to me like his initial bravado and bluster was coming back. He and Sigmar flailed and leapt at each other for a while longer. If it weren’t for the fact I had to sabotage Sigmar’s defenses, I’d have changed the channel by now.

  The other problem, as I saw it, was that Noah was excessively concerned with how he looked in battle. He kept trying to land huge blows that left him open to clever counter attacks. Sigmar wasn’t taking advantage of this at the moment, but if he did, Noah would get ugly very quickly...or dismembered.

  Suddenly, Noah’s eyes glowed bright red, and his relentless assault accelerated. Azure almost certainly was infusing his muscles with magic energy. Apparently, she was boosting the rest of his physical capabilities, as well; even after a few lightning fast strikes that would’ve felled a normal human, Noah’s flesh remained attached to his bones.

  A flashy chevron animation on my phone told me that Haxabalatnar’s gun was ready to fire enchanted bullets, and I sent an update to Azure’s telepathic conference call. We still didn’t have a good opening, but if one arose, I was sure Hax would gladly pump Sigmar full of lead. In the meantime, I had to figure out my own weaponry. While I needed to maintain a significant portion of my phone’s batteries to keep Hax’s firearms enchanted, I still had room for some spellwork of my own. I suspected that Sigmar would start regenerating any wounds Noah inflicted, so I started thumbing through the list of spellscripts again to see if I had anything to counter that. I looked up for a second somewhere between “Blade” and “Buster Gun” (who named these? Me?). Noah just kept getting faster and faster; if it kept up, Sigmar wouldn’t even be able to pay attention to the rest of us! Didn’t solve the regeneration problem, though.

  Noah then forced Sigmar to demonstrate that he was still relying on the bodily regeneration trick by slicing off Sigmar’s tail with his phonesabers. I heard a screech of rage and saw a spurt of dark red blood, but Sigmar had a replacement tail out in a matter of seconds, complete with a strange popping sound as it extruded from his butt. Regardless of its efficacy, it put Noah in an exclusive club of people who could actually hurt Sigmar.

  “I have had just about enough of your combat prowess!” Sigmar snarled. This sounded less like the snarky, jokey Sigmar that handled most of the platypus’s encounters and more like the murderous, vengeful Sigmar that I’d managed to summon when I’d turned Terminal against him. “No human can possibly hope to best me alone! What is your secret?”

  Noah, to his credit, didn’t respond. He simply slashed wildly at Sigmar again.

  “This is bullshit. I’m just going to devour you,” Sigmar continued. Talk about the past coming back to haunt me. But it occurred to me that with the amount of caustic chemicals Noah had strapped to his body (admittedly in relatively inert battery form), that was probably not going to be a great idea, unless...

  “Watch out, Noah! If he swallows you, he’ll crush you in an instant!” I shouted, with a voice that seemed suddenly beyond my control. Sigmar distended his jaw, as I expected, but luckily his attention remained on Noah, who was taking the threat of being devoured better than poor old Bruce. He still had his phonesabers out, and I can’t imagine those being good for Sigmar’s innards in any universe. And then...Sigmar missed? Apparently, Noah had accelerated to such velocities that Sigmar couldn’t force him down his throat. I briefly entertained the hope that Noah could defeat Sigmar all by himself, but unless he figured out how to circumvent Sigmar’s regeneration, it wasn’t happening.

  Suddenly, despite everything, Noah cried out in inexplicable pain. Sigmar had yet to land a blow. I saw Noah fall to the ground and clasp his hands to his right leg. If I had to guess, he’d sprained it. Azure raised a hand to her mouth in apparent shock. But I didn’t have long to take this in – Sigmar hadn’t rehinged his jaw, and he obviously took this opportunity to swallow Noah whole.

  “Finally! So much good time wasted,” Sigmar said, once he’d managed to reshape his mouth into something resembling its old self. “Guess I’d better crush him just like the
rest-”

  Something detonated inside of Sigmar, leaving a huge, gaping, bloody hole in his stomach. The opening immediately sealed itself up yet again.

  “I said, I’d better crush him just like the-”

  Another explosion reopened the hole. I saw the blade of a phonesaber shine through this time before Sigmar inevitably regenerated the damage.

  “Why don’t you listen?” Sigmar shouted at the apparently still alive and kicking Noah, whom for all we know may have literally been kicking back with his good leg. This time, the ensuing explosions tore two holes in Sigmar – the second closer to his torso. It seemed to me that it took a fraction of a second longer for these holes to be repaired.

  “Okay, fuck it. I’ll deal with him later,” Sigmar said with a burp. “He’s no use to you anyways after he blew out his leg.”

  And with that, Sigmar opened up his mouth and gently deposited Noah on the ground. He was covered in disgusting fluids (blood and mucus were probably, but not necessarily the most prominent ingredients in this nightmare cocktail), and he was missing a couple batteries, but he seemed to be alive, at least for the moment.

  “I did what I could,” croaked Noah. These words didn’t strike me as the sort of thing a dead man would say.

  Sigmar took a moment to breathe deeply and spin his previously neglected trident.

  “Which one of you wants to die next?” he snarled. I didn’t really want to give him the satisfaction of an answer, so I brought out my gun.

  A sudden report from something that clearly wasn’t my trusty Walther brought me out of my contemplation. If the new set of pinprick holes all over Sigmar’s body were to be believed, Haxabalatnar had taken his shot, and my shrapnel bullet script had probably drained about 2% of my phone’s battery. I sprung into action – with the pistol in one hand, and an improvised magic knife coming out of my phone (I type fast under pressure), I charged at Sigmar.

  “No more fun and games. This ends now!” I shouted.

  Azure transmitted a vague sense of confusion and panic to me, but she quickly overcame it and dashed to my side in an instant. I saw a bolt of lightning in the distance and dark clouds gathering in the skies above – if Azure was sticking with her trusty lightning, I wouldn’t complain.

  “No more fun and games?” responded Sigmar. “If that’s how you want it...” He trailed off, and then threw his trident at me. If he’d looked where he was throwing, it would’ve pierced my heart, but instead it flew over my shoulder and into realms unknown. No matter to him, though – he snapped his fingers and immediately replaced it with a glowing red one. If Sigmar had any brain cells, this would be more dangerous than the black one...which, if I remember correctly, was more of a torture implement.

  The lines of battle were drawn. I was stronger, faster, smarter, and supported by allies I cared about (especially now that Noah was out of the picture). On the other hand, Sigmar was taking things seriously now, to the point that I already had to dodge and weave to avoid a barrage of shockwaves and trident pricks that would’ve already killed a mundane human. I still had to find a way to make any damage I could deal to him stick, which wasn’t going to be easy.

  Another problem I soon realized was that Sigmar and Azure were trying to initiate some sort of magical titan duel. Sigmar lobbed a ball of fire to the left of me, and got a cloud of ice shards on my right as a retort. It’d be poetic if it wasn’t lethal.

  *Azure, be careful!* I transmitted. I didn’t want Sigmar thinking he could use me as a shield for whatever spellwork Azure was preparing. When a few more evocations from Sigmar’s red trident slipped harmlessly past me, I began to wonder if he had decided to focus on eliminating Azure, instead. The magic spells swirling around me were too chaotic and haphazard for me to give this possibility the attention it deserved. I realized, as I rolled out of the way of yet another projectile, that I was running on autopilot again and began trying to rouse my limbs from their terpsichorean slumber. I reached out to Azure – I needed to know how I could help.

  *Flank him,* chimed Azure’s distant, strained voice. It was exceedingly generic advice, but it seemed like a good strategy. I rolled as far as I could, got to my feet, and noticed with some minor satisfaction that Sigmar’s spellwork hadn’t followed me. That did, however, mean that Azure had her plate full, so I had to re-engage as soon as I could.

  Circling Sigmar, I looked around to see what Haxabalatnar was doing. He was trying to line up another shot against Sigmar and getting increasingly frustrated at how the titans were moving ever quicker and more erratically. You can’t really snipe with a pistol, and outside of rare moments of folly from Sigmar, you’re not going to get many opportunities to take your shot. When he saw me running haphazardly across the battlefield, he put down his (loaded) gun and shrugged.

  “It’s no use. Sigmar’s too fast!” Hax shouted. I shrugged back at him, but kept moving.

  “I’m going to check on Noah. See if you can help Azure,” he added after a bit. Luckily for both of them, Azure and Sigmar’s duel (mental note: I still needed to stop it from being a mere duel) had drifted some distance from where Noah had fallen. I left Hax to check on Noah, and thought about what I could do to help Azure without getting in her way. Almost immediately, I felt a jolt as if I’d gotten a static shock in the middle of the winter. The background magic levels were getting so high that even I, a human, could feel them. My phone’s operating system appeared to be stable (no obvious glitches)...

  Was it possible to turn this residual spent magic on Sigmar somehow?

  I decided it didn’t matter. In recent months, I’d gotten my best results from clever tactics, and I figured the best thing I could do to help Azure, who had raw power on her side, was to use my own limited resources to break Sigmar’s concentration.

  The fact that he had to concentrate at all in order to fight us (“Insolent titan whore!” he screeched, momentarily breaking my own focus) was a good first step. I figured a few magic missiles would do the trick. They didn’t even have to hit to be helpful. I tried to telepathically warn Azure so she didn’t get caught in them if I missed, but I had the vague sense that her distraction and the ever-growing magical background radiation would block the message. But no matter – I fired my first missile at Sigmar. It missed by a mile because Sigmar had apparently decided a giant flying leap was a good strategy. Now, I knew how Haxabalatnar felt!

  As far as I know, Sigmar hadn’t noticed my attack, but Azure definitely had. She picked up on what I was attempting, as the torrent of arbitrary magical attacks she’d been throwing at Sigmar froze into missiles of snow and ice. Would frostbite do the trick? I didn’t know, but I could swear the bastard was beginning to shiver. Suddenly, an impaling spike of ice hit its mark – Sigmar’s right hand was momentarily trapped!

  Now, was my opportunity to strike again. I let fly another magic missile (crossing the 70% battery threshold on my phone) and hoped it would hit before Sigmar could free himself or otherwise do something terrible.

  I quickly got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that Sigmar was able to dispel the spike trapping his right hand by using his left to give it the finger. I know, really reductive way of looking at titanic spellcraft, but as a general rule, Sigmar did a lot of disgusting things with his hands. The good news was that by the time he’d freed himself (and to be fair, Azure didn’t stop blasting him), my magic missile slammed into his skull. Now, my take on a “magic missile” hits like a bullet from a bolt action rifle. You don’t want to get shot in the head with one of those, and you don’t want to get shot in the head with one of my missiles. Even from a distance, I could see blood spew out of both the back and front of Sigmar’s head. He stood still for a moment, and then fell to the ground without even so much as one “That’s all, folks!”...

  It couldn’t be over. Nicholas had continued on for at least a minute with a sword in his brain, and stripped of Sigmar’s encha
ntments, he was just an ordinary human. Sigmar was a titan. Titans aren’t supposed to just die like that.

  Another gunshot. Haxabalatnar had taken advantage of Sigmar’s incapacitation (I refused to believe he was dead) to fire another shrapnel shot, which landed somewhere in Sigmar’s body without a hitch. A cloud of fur and blood filled the air without any signs of regeneration yet, but I still thought it couldn’t be over.

  *I’ve got a very bad feeling about this,* Azure transmitted. Was that how she felt, or was my fear leaking into her? Either way, she was backing away from Sigmar, Arbalest still at the ready, and if the glowing orb at its tip suggested anything, she was preparing the mother of all explosive blasts in an attempt to dispose of Sigmar’s body once and for all. It wasn’t long before she launched it.

  “NO. THIS ISN’T FUNNY.”

  Azure’s blast came to an abrupt halt just inches short of Sigmar as he pushed himself to his feet (at least we’d hurt him enough that he couldn’t just jump around like a lunatic). He was holding it the blast in his hands as if it were an oversized exercise ball! I heard Haxabalatnar fire another round, but as far as I can tell, Sigmar grabbed it out of the air. Why didn’t he do that before? I had the vague sense that Terminal would get a kick out of this. My mind’s wandering again, and this is the absolute worst time for that!

  Sigmar then screamed like some unknown hellbeast, and the blast of energy Azure had shot at him began to shrink. I’m certain he was absorbing its energy. If so, it begged the question of why hadn’t he pulled out the big guns before? Why put yourself through the trouble of stylish duels with desperate warriors who hate your very being? I could make a killing as a research psychologist if there were any opportunities to become one in hell. But first, I had to also figure out what Sigmar hoped to gain from devouring Azure’s magical attack.

  It turned out Sigmar was gaming the laws of physics. Once he had incorporated the last bits of magical destructive energy into his body, he cackled like a maniac, and his body began to stretch and distend at an alarming rate. Azure wisely panicked and made a mad dash for Haxabalatnar, who had somehow stabilized Noah to the point that he could limp slowly and painfully to a hospital if, by insane coincidence, there happened to be one within a few miles of here.