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Alarms blared throughout the manor, sensing the assassin dashing through its labyrinthine and off-limit halls. Rosa tensed. A grin split Lane’s face. Nekera’s head twitched. They had been talking cordially for the past few minutes. Small talk about the city, the eccentricities of Lowharf, and the chaos at the Cage.
In one swift moment, the facade of civility crumbled.
Nekera reacted faster than they could see. Her legs kicked up the coffee table between her and the mages before the teacup she had been holding hit the floor, and her wings blurred with movement. The wind cracked with a supersonic burst, and the table shattered into a shotgun of splinters and glass.
Both mages cried out brief, alien words of protection. Around Lane, the shrapnel hit her skin and stopped dead, its inertia sapped into vibrating heat around her fingers. Rosa rolled away from the blast, focusing her magic on her back. Her skin hardened like stone, deflecting the shards as they tore through her jacket.
Nekera herself lifted up into the air, slamming onto the wall behind her. Her shoes tore open, revealing birdlike talons covered in blue makeup. They dug into the steel wall, supporting her weight. “You survived?” Her honest surprise bled through. “You really shouldn’t have. This will hurt a lot more if you’re struggling.”
Rosa tried to think of a retort, but her mind struggled over Lane’s maniacal laughter. It had been too long since her last fight.
The inertial mage crouched and slammed her foot into the ground, transferring the energy she held into her jump as she leaped easily twice her height. Nekera rolled down to avoid her, towards the ground, but Lane slammed her fist into the ceiling, her magic redirecting herself directly down. The bird-woman squawked as the mage drove her into the ground, tumbling through a glass cabinet.
A beat, and then a wing swung back up towards Lane, faster than she could see. It slammed her in her stomach, knocking her cleanly across the room and through the curtain door. Yet, Lane’s magic showed through- a portion of the swing had slammed back against Nekera’s wing, wrenching it back with a sickening crack. The bird woman shrieked again, rolling away from the rubble and onto her feet.
It was only by now that Rosa was able to shift her magic from protecting her back to bolstering her muscles. Her slow transition was an embarrassment for empowering mages like her, but not everyone could be as skilled at their magical field as Lane. She was a freak of talent.
Lane launched herself through the curtain, her eyes wild. “Yes! Fight back!” She yelled. Somewhere in Rosa’s mind, she knew she shouldn’t be indulging Lane’s bloodlust, but also knew she was powerless to stop it.
Nekera feigned a dodge, then pulled back as Lane redirected herself towards it. The mage tumbled for a few feet. “Please.” Nekera chirped. “Stop this! I can make it quick.”
“Like hell it will!” The inertial mage slammed her foot, redirecting a shard of glass from her palm at the bird’s chest. It split her suit and stuck, revealing pale green body armor beneath. “Come on!”
Nekera lunged forward, the shard still on her chest, and Rosa saw what she needed to do. Her words reverberated as she incanted, and felt a surge of plodding supernatural strength pulse through her muscles, like her bones had been replaced with lead. The bird woman and Lane sparred- dodging and striking and redirecting themselves in a chaotic dance of fists and feathers. Rosa walked forward all the while, waiting for her chance to lift the weight of her strength enchantment- after the weight of the magic is lifted, the strength it gives only remains for a moment longer. She needed to time it just right.
Lane landed a blow on the woman’s shoulder, causing it to punch into her good wing. She cried out in pain, falling to a knee. The mage smiled, panting from the exertion. She stepped forward to glower over the bird-headed woman. “A good warm-up.” She smiled, raising her fist. “We’ll see how the Wolf does-”
Lane froze in her tracks, her breath fleeing from her. The talon of the bird woman’s foremost foot had pierced through her shoe. Poison. Both mages realized too late.
Rosa had hoped to punch the metal shard through Nekera’s armor with her burst of strength, but quickly shifted plans. She released the leaden weight of her magic, and sprung behind the sputtering Lane. A risky kick as she pulled Lane away led to Nekera’s knee bending painfully backwards, and Rosa’s strength immediately faded. The mages hobbled out of the room, the crippled Nekera no longer able to pursue.
Four skidded to a halt in front of the guest room door, where Rosa was kneeling. Both of her hands were laid over a pale, rigid Lane’s collarbone. Only Four’s hearing could pick out the thinnest of breaths escaping the near-dead mage. “Rosa! What happened?” When did ‘Sanchez’ become ‘Rosa’ to me?
“Poison… Bird…” Rosa gasped out the words breathlessly between her alien incantations.
Nekera. Her friend. Four winced. “Where is she?”
Rosa jutted her head towards the crinkling door of plastic shutters.
Four cocked her pistol’s hammer, moving slowly towards the door. She stopped at its swinging entrance, listening beyond.
Labored breathing. A nervous fiddle of a talon on hollow metal. A presence pressing on the wall to the right of the door.
Four acted as fast as she could. Pushing through the door, she immediately spun and slammed her prosthetic onto Nekara’s talon- one precariously holding one of the long pipe bombs the bird-woman was so fond of. It scattered from her hand- pin still in, thankfully- and Four pressed the revolver to Nekera’s forehead. Her arm and wing were broken. Nekera was never a brawler.
Four smiled sadly. “Hey, budgie.”
“Hey, bun.” Nekera coughed, flexing her talon. They both knew she’d never catch Four with her poison. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Yeah. Fancy that.” Four’s voice cracked. “Listen, Nekera, I have someone who can help-”
A flash of blue talon, and Four had to leap back- too slow, but the claw scraped off of her prosthetic. The medicine for her back had slowed her reactions too much. Nekera pushed herself shakily onto her feet, leaning against the wall. She eyed the bomb a few yards away.
“Please, budgie, you’re being controlled.” Even with emotions flooding through her voice, her hands didn’t shake. Four’s aim had only ever wavered once. “I can help you.”
“That’s the mushroom talking! It’s controlling you!” Nekera bit back. Her voice quavered. She was always so composed- now, her suit jacket was bloody and torn, and her limbs twisted and side bloody. “We were looking for a cure. To save you.” Her eyes flicked towards the ground. “But clearly you’re too far gone. The Vigil, these foreign mages. They’re using you, Four!” She moved a staggered step to the side. Towards the bomb.
Four’s finger nearly twitched. “Stop it! You know I’ve killed better for less.” She heard footsteps far down the corridors. The Mohns’ security, finally catching up to the alarm. They were out of time. “Please, just get out of here with me! We can’t talk here.”
Nekera’s sigh was something between a whistle and a coo. “I can’t let myself be taken, bun. We all knew the risks.”
She leapt for the bomb. Four shot. Nekera’s head jerked to the side, and only a body hit the floor.
Only then, for the briefest moment, did Four’s hands shake.
The two security guards- bulky mercenary-types in the same armor as Apocrypha- stepped into the room. “What happened here-?” Two more shots pierced the thin mesh around their necks, and they collapsed back onto the ground. They didn’t know what was happening. Four realized. Nekera must have disabled the cameras in this room- a long-planned ambush on the mages. She coldly realized what she had to do.
Four reached the blade to the right side of her head, and sliced off her ear.
She swore and stomped her feet. The pain was sharp, neurons firing to reach for something that was no longer there. She ground her teeth as she wrapped the wound, her face and neck now warm and matted. She gingerly placed the bloody ear next to Nekera’s body. “He wouldn’t believe without some kind of proof, huh? The Wolf would always want a body.” Four grasped the pipe bomb. "You knew I’d need this, if he was going to believe you’d killed me. Idiot.”
Four rolled the corpse of the nearest guard out of the room with a kick, pulled the pin, and laid it over her friend’s body.
She was quickly out of the room. “Clear the door, Rosa! Move!”
Rosa was soon carrying Lane in a bridal carry away from the door, and both were halfway down the corridor when the bomb exploded in a flash of white light and crippling noise. The lights flickered and the crinkle of glass and shattered stone collapsed down into the moat below. It echoed loudly.
Four had dragged the guard with her. This wasn’t the first time she’d stripped a corpse, and quickly put on the ill-fitting armor over her body. The boot wobbled with her prosthetic, but its foot was designed to squish into a shoe for cases like this.
When Four was finished changing, she was more or less identical to the other armored guards. “We need to get out.” Four said to Rosa- even through all this, she was still chanting the magical words to keep Lane alive. “Nod if you can understand me.” She did. “Alright. We can escape through the moat the butler uses.” Nightfolk breathe air, but can’t survive out of water for very long- which means that the moat beneath the estate probably connects to the other parts of the wider house. “Can you make Lane hold her breath?” She’d heard of similar things from enhancers before.
“Holding… poison…” Rosa shook her head. She internally swore at her lack of talent- her mentors could easily have handled that request.
“Alright.” Four wondered aloud. She also needed a place to go after this. Perhaps Thuku would take them in for a time- Thuku! “The rebreather! Thuku said Lucretia had one in the house. We can get it for Lane. Would that work?”
From what Rosa recalled from her studies on biomantic suspension, it should. She nodded.
“Alright. It was this way.” She recalled the map she’d seen on Apocrypha’s watch. It wasn’t the whole floor, but it showed at least one way to Lucretia’s room.
Four was grateful for the puzzle in front of her- the task of navigation and escape. It distracted her from the bloody stump on her head and the hole bored through her heart.
I've caught up after reaching the backlog. I'm excited to see where the story goes next!