James Baldwin - Stained Glass

“But you’re too proud . That’s the problem with self-taught mages. You evolve in solitude, and know that you’re better than everyone else.” The Deacon’s voice was warm, even friendly, and I was sure he was smiling behind the mask. “But even so, I admire the will to power, Alexi. You tried for a high score before you lost the game, even took out a few other players. Better luck next time.”

As I fought to react, The Deacon leveled the Wardbreaker in a steady one-handed grip, and shot me in the stomach.

Getting shot in the torso doesn’t really hurt – not at first. It’s like a punch that goes right through you, a wave of pressure that tears out your back and ripples outward. And THEN it hurts.

There was no exit wound. This gut-shot tore out the front of my body: I saw the magical pattern of energy flare brightly around the Wardbreaker as the round left the chamber and flew, spinning before impact. Blood erupted from my shirt front in a slow-motion arc, lit by the Red energy of dissolution that I had crafted with my mind and hands and skill. The bullet shattered the binding that Sergei had laid on me, as well as The Deacon’s temporal field. Time snapped like an elastic band, and I screamed in real-time as the parasite’s sigil-form collapsed, legs whipping around and gathering under my skin. It pushed, squeezed itself out the entry wound like an octopus, and launched itself at The Deacon’s face.

John screamed, garbling and then retching onto the ground as The Deacon backed away, battling the freed Wrath’ree. It had lost its black color – it was now a brilliant orange mass of energy, half sea anemone, half lightning bolt. I rolled over, clutching the soil, and felt the energy of my Neshamah mesh through me. Power, sensual and thick, rolled up my spine and turned the throbbing wound into an icy void.

“Kut… kha…” I gasped aloud. Writhing, clutching at my gut as it oozed between my fingers, I looked up and saw a corona of descending black wings and burning white eyes, shimmering as if through water.

“Oh, my Ruach ,” Kutkha whispered, a psychic voice like leaves whispering along the pavement at night. His voice was eager and bittersweet, heavy with sorrow. “We are reunited, but too late.”

The Deacon was fighting for his life against the Wrath’ree, pushed back towards the line of cars, and John… John was transforming. He twisted in agony, clawing at his face and mouth, and then retched a gout of blood and torn flesh onto the road as his back split like a cicada’s shell.

“You were right,” I said.

“I am not always right.” Kutkha fell around me like a blanket. “But perhaps I was, this time. Take comfort, my Ruach… dying is difficult, but death is easy. This, now, is the hardest part.”

John Spotted Elk didn’t explode so much as unfold into something that was half assassin bug, half coyote – an insectoid DOG the size of a schoolbus that drove its legs into the tarmac as it split and bubbled and divided and reformed. I stared at it, huffing through my teeth. “Will I see Vassily again?”

“It is inevitable, without intervention,” Kutkha replied, sweet and sad. “Only the NO destroys.”

The thing in front of me, shaking ichor from its body, was the NO. I’d kill myself before I let it take us. “I don’t Will to stay here. Help me cut the pain… I’ll fight to the end.”

“Yes.” He breathed the word like an incantation, the same gravity I had heard in Zarya’s voice. Kutkha’s presence swelled, and then the pain of my wounds receded into the far distance, sucked back by gravity. I reached out, and wrapped my hand around the knife. Slowly, I got to my feet, swaying, bleeding, but numb.

A cougar charged past me, and then a lion – an African lion, fully maned and golden furred. Right behind him was Talya’s American Lion, injured and bloody, but still moving fast. As the insect reared up, legs raised over me like an attacking spider, the three cats leapt onto it in different places: thorax, abdomen and head. The first two slid off, unable to get a grip on its slippery armor. Big Ron’s lion bit down on the bug’s armor with a crunch, only to be shaken off. The thing flung him into the door of the semi; he hit with a snarl as he bounced to the road in a sprawl, the metal dented. The bug was stupidly fast. Ron barely scrambled out of the way before its proboscis punctured the door like a sheet of paper and tore it free. Then it came after me, slamming the door down on the tarmac like a hammer.

The pain was gone. Deliriously focused, I swayed to the side and ran underneath it. I jammed the knife into the joint of its leg, and the bug screeched as it dipped down on that side. Talya leaped again, flexing her claws under the edge of an armored plate. The insect whirled, knocking me down, and I saw the lion swing as she clung on and began to rake with her back legs.

I was stumbling up again when a huge orange shape hit me like a cannon ball, bowling me out from under the insect’s body just before it dropped its bulk to crush whatever was underneath. We rolled together, and then the tiger – Jenner – sprung back up to her feet. She was heaving, her flanks soaked in blood, her chest, neck, and hind legs ripped like canvas cloth. One of her eyes was missing: the right side of her face looked like raw hamburger. She roared in defiance, and charged the bug as it rolled and twisted, stabbing at the cats and the road, tearing up asphalt and the soil beneath.

“Magic.” I growled the word out through gritted teeth and got up to my knees. “Fire.”

The ground was a blank canvas. I sketched out a circle in my own blood, reaching into the well of power that I had been without for so long. I was brimming with it, spilling over with cold heat. Dirt swirled around my hand as I focused on it, and then looked up in sudden wonder as I felt – and somehow, saw – the matrix of the air and earth resolve in space. I wasn’t just looking at the Weeders as they fought, leaping and clawing, striking and falling. I could see everything , the field of atoms and energy vibrating, exchanging, decaying, flaring. It passed in a moment as I grasped the components given to me by will, and in a moment of Promethean awe, smashed them together. It was kavannah . The intention of my heart was to stop this thing. “ Aysh!”

The bug reared, about to stab through Jenner’s back as she scrabbled to run, and then it blew back in a sudden explosion of fire and friction. It slammed into the semi, sending the vehicle tumbling to the side. The cargo tray followed more slowly, toppling as the insect, burning and thrashing on its hard back, kicked its legs out and screeched. The big cats were on it in an instant, raking and snarling, ignoring the flames as they tore ichor from its belly and pulled it to the ground.

The Deacon. Where was The Deacon? I snarled with effort as I got back up and began to lurch towards the line of black cars. I could see the Wrath’ree – it was three times the size it had been after it had pulled itself from my body, and it was decimating the ranks of The Deacon’s men. Two of them saw me weaving towards them. They turned their guns on me and emptied their clips against the shield I spun with a slash of my hand. Bullets sparked away off the blue matrix, then red as I focused on the word I’d used to flip the bug. The blue turned to red. The men screamed as they burned.

I heard a cougar’s scream of warning from behind and turned to see Mason’s bulk soaring towards me, paws outstretched. He was more glass than flesh, his head pushed to the side by spears of crystal, every wound bristling with bloody glass. With a shout, I slammed the knife up into his breastbone as he took me to ground. He reared up over my body, claws extended.