by Andrew Peed
Following his outstretched arm, Waylon eventually saw an older woman pinned to the wall. She was holding on to her neck, hovering a couple of feet off of the ground, gasping and coughing for air. Reaching out to try to do anything to make the torture stop.
“GRYMM!” Kaylie yelled, clenching both of her fists.
Slowly, the man turned his head to look at Kaylie. His expression never wavered in the slightest. Waylon ducked around behind Kaylie to run to the aid of the woman who was still pinned. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do, but he was not going to just stand around and do nothing.
“Well, if it isn’t my baby replacement,” Grymm spoke. His voice sounded exactly what Waylon thought an evil or possessed person’s voice would have sounded like. It was like he was chewing on gravel, and there were at least three different voices talking at once but each was just a hair off from the other, so you could tell.
“Let her go,” Kaylie yelled, flaring her fingers out wildly.
Waylon looked at her while he attempted to help the woman pinned to the wall, even though he knew there was no way that he could actually help. He wished that he had found some kind of combat magic instead of studying the stupid survival guide.
Grymm laughed. Waylon was surprised to see that that was not the right way to respond to Kaylie. She threw her arms out to her sides. Balls of energy formed in each hand. She threw the energy and herself at Grymm in a white-blue blur of energy.
If nothing else, this action caught Grymm off guard, and he used his hands to defend himself. The woman dropped from the wall. She half landed on Waylon, and he caught her as she fell. He carried her toward the door leading back into the main shop, trying to get her out of the fray so that Kaylie wouldn’t have to worry.
This simply was not in the cards. Waylon’s feet kept moving below him, but he didn’t get anywhere. There was a force that was pulling him backwards against his motion. He stopped and turned to look at the scene that was unfolding behind him.
Waylon had to do a double take. Kaylie had transformed before his eyes. Every inch of her body was covered in a dark smoke that seemed to be coming from her energy. In her right hand, she held a massive scythe. The blade was as long as she was tall, with intricate markings going down the top. The handle was so long that he didn’t know exactly how she was wielding it so easily.
Kaylie whipped the blade around, spinning it in her hand, and growled at Grymm. He wasn’t scared—he wasn’t affected at all. Instead, Grymm smiled and clenched his fists. The same kind of black smoke began to rise from Grymm’s skin, and in the same fashion, he transformed.
Grymm held a similar scythe, but his was larger. The smoking form that had been Grymm kicked off the ground and hovered a couple of feet in the air.
“You think that I don’t have that form as well?” Grymm asked. His voice sounded disconnected, like it was coming from all over the room.
“You won’t get away with this!” Kaylie yelled, her voice sounding much the same.
“Oh, I already have!” Grymm yelled.
In a flash, the two beings of smoke shot across the room at each other. When they slammed into each other, Waylon was knocked back by the concussive wave of energy that issued outward from the impact point. He and Clara smashed into the wall, where they fell to the ground. Waylon felt the force that was keeping him from moving slip, and he didn’t hesitate to jump into action.
Even with the pain in his head, he stood up from the ground and gathered up the woman. Turning away from the fight, he attempted to escape a second time through the door to the front area. Grymm stopped mid-fight and batted Kaylie with a backhand. She screamed furiously at him. Grymm threw up a hand, and the wave of energy came back with a vengeance that stopped Waylon in his tracks.
With a furious growl, Grymm turned back to Kaylie, who had recovered from the backhand attack. She swiped her blade down at an angle at Grymm, but he blocked the incoming attack with his own scythe. She dove at him, knocking him back into a wall, where she abandoned attempting to use the weapon and began to claw at his face.
Grymm threw up his arm and let her claws slice through his flesh. He reached out with his hand, letting go of his scythe, which disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, and grabbed her around the neck.
“Your time is up in that form, young lady,” Grymm said in a condescending tone.
Kaylie struggled to fight against the hand around her neck, but he was right. The smoke began to die down as she slowly returned to her normal form.
Kaylie gasped as his grip tightened around her neck and he lifted her off the ground. She was struggling to get magic to work, but nothing happened as she made many different actions. She couldn’t get words to come out of her mouth. Grymm’s other hand was held out, focused on Waylon.
“Stupid girl. You don’t think that I wouldn’t prepare for resistance?” Grymm laughed, his own form shifting back to normal.
Waylon watched helplessly. What do I do, Kaylie?
The air next to Grymm shimmered, and in a burst of light and clouds, the air opened up. Swirling energies and sparks outlined a pool of shimmering metal-looking liquid.
“Ah, it seems that it is time for me to be on my way,” Grymm said with a bow. Dark pulses of energy began to flow down his arm and entered Kaylie’s skin around her neck.
With a loud cackle that Waylon didn’t think he would soon forget, Grymm threw Kaylie very hard at the wall. She threw out her hands, and something happened that slowed her down, but it wasn’t nearly enough. She still crashed into the wall with a great deal of force before tumbling to the ground in a heap. From where he stood, Waylon didn’t have a view of Kaylie, so he couldn’t see whether or not she was moving.
Grymm pulled the hand that was outstretched toward Waylon, and Waylon slid across the floor toward Grymm. No matter how hard Waylon fought, it made no difference. Grymm made a motion with his free hand, which he then placed on Waylon’s arm. He could feel a warm sensation pass through Grymm’s hand and into his body, and his muscles locked even tighter.
The woman’s body floated from Waylon’s outstretched arms. She hovered into the pool of shimmering liquid that had appeared in the air. Grymm gave Waylon one last grin before he turned and stepped through the threshold as well.
The portal of liquid vanished.
Chapter 15: Morgeta a Pirate Demon
Kaylie coughed and moaned in pain as she came to after the impact against the wall. She found that she lay in a pile of debris and glass that appeared to have once been a wall and several pictures. Shaking her head, she blinked as her mind slowly replayed her flying across the room, and she mentally returned to the moment.
The memory of her leaving Clara and Waylon alone to deal with Grymm made her sick to her stomach as she pulled herself out of the pile of mess. She jumped up from the floor and frantically searched for them.
“Waylon! Clara!” she yelled as her vision adjusted from the blow to her head.
Waylon stood frozen in the middle of the room with an incredibly pained look painted on his face. His arms were outstretched in an awkward position, like he had been carrying something. Kaylie walked over to him and attempted to put her hand on his shoulder, but there was an invisible barrier surrounding him. Much like the one that they had used against the orc. The problem was that the energy powering the barrier was coming from within Waylon himself.
“I can’t help you if you lock me out,” Kaylie said.
Waylon couldn’t speak, but when she looked into his eyes, she could see the truth within them. He was not casting the barrier spell. He had no clue what was going on.
Hair in her eyes, Kaylie took a deep breath and cleared her vision. Awful pain coursed through her head as she tried to think. She had taken her fair share of hits over the years, but this one rattled her to her bones. No matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find a spell to help free poor Waylon.
Having been trapped in a similar spell when she was a young girl, she knew what kin
d of torture it was. Your muscles and bones were still supporting your whole weight, but you couldn’t move at all. Your whole body started to ache worse and worse, but you would never fall, your muscles could never give in, just causing more and more pain. Kaylie was stuck for six hours when she was a girl, and while she remembered the pain, she could not remember how they got her out. She didn’t want Waylon to suffer.
Dashing across the room, she searched for her bag. She found it hidden under a pile in the debris that she had woken up in. Her arm went armpit deep into the hole, looking for a small trinket that she kept for emergencies. It was something that would allow her to call for help.
A golden coin shot up out of the bag past her arm. She pulled her arm out and caught the coin as it flipped, falling down. The coin was older than she was, older even than the country was. If a historian had gotten ahold of the coin, they would claim that it was a fake, but that was because it was form of magical currency. It had been used for centuries before it was determined that it was just safer to use normal human money.
The object was one-time use and acted as something like a promissory note. Kaylie held it tightly in her fingers and called out to Morgeta in her mind.
Nothing happened immediately.
Expecting a bright flash of light or some kind of fancy wind work, she was disappointed when she didn’t appear. After nearly five silent minutes, the back door of the shop opened, and Morgeta walked into the room.
Morgeta was a lesser demon that owed Kaylie a favor. As a lesser demon and not a full demon, she looked mostly human, and they could all hide their appearance if they needed to. Lesser demons were nearly as common as regular humans, just not on earth. Morgeta, however, had short horns that she wore proudly, as she didn’t like to hide them. They curved from the back of her head to near her forehead, pointing in the same direction as where she was looking. She had a long thin red tail that swished around behind her as she walked. Forked at the end, the tail always seemed like it had a mind of its own. Her skin was peach red. She had dark night-blue eyes and long black hair that poured down her back like flowing water. She dressed like a pirate from the 1700s with flowing sleeves, a ridiculous amount of cleavage, and tight raw leather pants that tied at the small of her back.
“You rang?” Morgeta said with the smallest amount of interest that she could muster.
“It’s time,” Kaylie said, walking over to stand as close to Waylon as she could.
“Do you wish for me to kill him?” Morgeta asked, clenching a fist. Sparks began to spray out from her closed fingers like she was holding a sparkler in her hand.
“God, no! I want you to free him of this magic,” Kaylie said with a growl.
“He had nothing to do with this,” she said, pointing sharply at Kaylie. “Why don’t you ever let me kill anyone?” Morgeta asked, sidling across the floor, taking her sweet time. The moment death was taken out of the equation, she always lost interest.
“Because I said so,” Kaylie said, her splitting headache making it harder for her to come up with a better comeback. She held her head as the pain throbbed against her skull. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and take a nap.
Morgeta raised her hand toward Waylon, but when she came close, she stopped. She turned to Kaylie for a moment without saying a word and considered Kaylie for a moment.
“Well, come on, then,” Kaylie demanded and waved toward Waylon aggressively.
“This…” She hesitated for a moment, something Kaylie had never seen Morgeta do. “This is some vicious shit. The being that cast this, it wasn’t messing around.”
“I don’t care if he was messing around or not. Release him,” Kaylie said with an aggressive motion with her chin.
“I will try,” Morgeta said as she shook her head and turned back to Waylon’s frozen form.
The demon raised her arms and screwed up her face in concentration. Kaylie watched as lines of blue light slithered through the air, surrounding Waylon. The lines snaked their way around his entire body from head to toe. As they covered him, the light lines combined into one bright sheen that covered his entire body. Morgeta’s face reflected agony as she poured energy into the spell that she cast. She clapped her hands together, then rapidly pulled them apart. The room filled with blue and white light.
Waylon crumpled to the ground in a heap. He moaned in pain, which was a very good sign. His hands were moving, but he wasn’t making much progress toward getting off the ground.
Kaylie rushed to Waylon to check on him while Morgeta dropped to her knees. She breathed heavily, attempting to catch her breath. Her eyes locked on the ground as she attempted to recover from the spell that she’d cast.
“Waylon, hey,” Kaylie said, slapping the side of his face trying to bring him to. “Hey, roomie! Hey, buddy.” She continued to shake him.
“What the hell happened?” he asked in a moan as he tried to move.
“Some bad juju.” Kaylie fell onto her butt when she was sure that he was going to live. The pain in her head caught up, and she rolled over to puke on the concrete. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and cleared her throat.
“So that was the guy you replaced?” Waylon asked, lying perfectly still on his back with his eyes clenched shut. Kaylie could imagine the agony of his muscles. When she had been locked as a girl, it had taken her days to recover.
“Yeah, I guess he went a little sour,” Kaylie said, rubbing her head.
“I like you better,” Waylon said, trying his best to make light of the situation.
“Well, thanks,” Kaylie said with a slight chuckle.
“Why did he take her?” Waylon asked, remembering that he had been trying to get away with Clara before he had been locked up.
“I couldn’t pretend to know. I’ll have to look into it. We may need to visit the MA,” Kaylie said, shaking her head. She couldn’t say that she was excited about going back to the Mystical Authority, but it was a necessary evil. If she didn’t, there was a good chance that they would assume that she was in on what Grymm was up to.
“I think I’m going to—” Before Waylon could finish, he rolled over to his side and vomited on the floor.
“If that will be all, I believe that I will take my leave,” Morgeta said as she sauntered over. It seemed as if she had made a full recovery from the spell that she had cast to free Waylon.
“Thank you,” Kaylie said, looking up at her from where she sat on the ground.
“You mustn’t thank me. I owe you a debt, and when it is finally paid up, and I am set free, I shall not think of you again,” Morgeta declared as she turned from the two of them and walked out the back door.
“So… what exactly was that all about?” Waylon asked, managing to push himself up onto his elbows so that he could watch the demon lady leave.
“Short and sweet of it: she is a demon that owes me a debt,” Kaylie said with her head on the ground, looking up at the ceiling.
“How about an explanation with a little more meat?” Waylon asked, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Every single one of his muscles were screaming in agony, and he felt like he could sleep for about a month.
“A couple of years ago, Morgeta got into a touch of trouble,” Kaylie said. “She was being hunted. She took shelter in a friend of mine. I exorcised her from him and allowed her to inhabit my body for a while. The thing hunting her lost her trail when she entered the body of a reaper. After that, we have a contract that she owes me a debt. Every time she helps me, a little piece of the debt is broken away. Once the bargain keepers thinks that we are even, they will release her from the debt that she owes me, and she will be free.”
“You allowed a demon to possess you?” Waylon asked in astonishment.
“Yeah. It was actually nice to have a break. I was going through some stuff at the time, and I was actually kind of being reckless, so I thought, what the heck?” Kaylie said with a shrug. “Worst case, I don’t have to worry about things anymore, best case, I w
ould have a demon in my debt. Win, win.”
Waylon reached down and held out his hand to help her up. She took his hand and had to lean on him a little more than she would have liked to, but her head was swimming all over the place, and she was having trouble standing up on her own.
“What’s the next move?” Waylon asked.
“Let’s head over to the MA. I really don’t want to get on their bad side.” Kaylie sighed. She closed her eyes, grabbing Waylon’s hand. Waylon watched her while she concentrated.
Nothing happened. They did not port like usual. Instead Waylon watched as her knees collapsed. Had he not reached out and caught her, she would have dropped right back to the ground.
“I can’t get my mind right,” Kaylie said as she shook her head. She grabbed her face with her free hand and clenched her teeth in pain.
“We’ll walk, then. I got you,” Waylon said, putting his arm around her to help her walk. He moved over and collected Kaylie’s bag, and once they had taken a moment to collect themselves and take stock of the situation, they left Clara’s shop for the Mystical Authority.
Chapter 16: Agent McKury
Out on the street, it wasn’t readily clear where in the city that they were. It took Waylon some time to get his bearings. They had come in through porting the last time, so they could have been on the other side of the planet for all he knew. He hoped that after some time, the feeling of being lost and left behind in everything magic related would go away. After a few blocks, he recognized a building and was able to put them on a path to get to the police station and the Mystical Authority.
The walk took nearly an hour before they finally stood in front of the stairs that they had to walk through, which Waylon wasn’t sure he was ready for again. He had to help keep Kaylie on her feet. Something was really not right with her. She’d tried to do magic a couple of times, and she just couldn’t make it work.
Waylon had no idea how they were going to get in—the last time, Kaylie had cast a spell to open the path for them. If she couldn’t do magic, it was all on him, and he was just as lost as ever.