Tom Dowd - Burning Bright

Woodhouse's magic flashed again as a spinning disk of energy that sliced the legs clean off a leaping roach. It twisted in the air, and landed hard against one of its brethren, knocking them both down.

The insects and troopers were still too tightly packed for Kyle to risk a powerful area spell. He was thinking fast, trying to come up with something that might lure the insects into clusters that could be blasted. Perhaps an attack against whatever the large roaches were guarding? It was probably suicide, and he didn't know if Woodhouse had a spell powerful enough to deal with the spirits en masse. He also didn't know if the roach spirits, considering the size of the two guardians, would consider him a threat.

Linda Hayward's words suddenly filled his head. A threat. Kyle thought he knew one that might be enough to distract the roaches.

He pictured Hay ward in his mind, not clad in her green and black biker learner, but as she claimed she truly was. Two meters of deadly, insect-devouring mantid spirit.

He wove his spell, imprinting the energy of the magic with the image from his mind. He shaped it into her form, detailed it as best he could remember her, and then colored it in the same glistening greens, browns, and blacks.

Without warning, a giant screeching mantid came into existence halfway between the troopers and the huge guardian roaches. It screeched again, and the two guard spirits answered, immediately moving to protect their charges.

The remaining roach spirits wheeled, summoned by the battle call of the larger spirits. They surged forward, a mad, blind rush against the towering mantid. Clawed legs flashed and snapped as they smashed into each other where the mantid stood braced for the attack, but insubstantial. A few of the roaches passed straight through her to bounce and skitter near the larger bugs.

Kyle released his illusion of the mantid, which instantly began to fade. The mass of roach spirits tore into itself as Woodhouse's first spell struck, erupting in a huge fireball. Roaches squealed and began to scuttle away, some attempting to flee into astral space, but Kyle hit them again. The ruby ring on his finger and the amulet around his neck flashed as he released the spell, wincing in pain as the energy flowed through him. It exploded in a near-silent spray of white and green shards of energy that tore into the spirits, cutting them to pieces.

Troopers opened up on the bugs that remained, most of them maimed or burning. Still gasping from the strain the powerful spell had put on his body, Kyle slipped his perceptions into astral space, quickly bringing up his mystical knife to ward off any attacks now that he was present and vulnerable in that realm.

The astral echoed with the resonations of the power released in the room and the disruption of the insect spirits that had succumbed to that power. Kyle immediately saw that most of them had fled, escaped up and away through a patch of ceding mat looked different in the astral. The floors of most of the buildings were probably impassable wood, except for some space cleared for just such passage.

A handful of injured spirits lingered in astral space, darting around the still physically manifest and barely touched larger guardian roaches. Wincing again, Kyle tossed a low-powered ball of energy across the room. He centered it on one of the bug things present only in astral space. The spell struck it and exploded, sending searing energy into the group in astral space and cutting into the two larger bugs present in both realms. Three of the creatures dispersed, unable to maintain their existence.

A tremendous flash of magic filled that end of the room as another of Woodhouse's fireballs ignited. Waves of fire lashed out from its center over one of the huge guardians, and washed over the rows of now quivering bundles on the ground. The large bugs shrieked both in pain and apparent fear for their charges.

The bug on which the spell had been centered was badly injured and engulfed in flame. It leaped forward toward the nearest trooper, catching his arm and tearing it clean off in passing. The trooper spun, his assault rifle still tracking and firing at the burning spirit as he fell. The bug collided with the far brick wall and flipped onto its back, its huge, spiny legs flailing in the air.

Kyle turned as the second bug, its carapace smoking, leaped at Woodhouse. Its legs scraped against the magical barrier that surrounded him, sending sparks of black energy across the room. But it was getting through and into him; Kyle could see a tear deep into the armor on Woodhouse's side.

Kyle ran forward and leaped, his perceptions still in astral space, striking with his enchanted weapon. He drove it at the creature's middle back, the place on its body that seemed the most damaged. The knife dug in deep, flashing gold as it did, burying Kyle's hands up to his wrists inside the thing. The mystical shield around his body flashed azure against the bug as it screeched and reared back off Woodhouse, who instantly stepped away, and fell backward, all the while spraying the thing with a burst from his submachine gun. Jerked into the air by the bug's thrashing, Kyle felt a sharp pain across his right arm as one of the bullets sliced into him. That hand spasmed, and he let go of the blade and felt himself twist again, hanging on only by his left hand. His weight, now suspended off one side of the roach's back, dragged the knife down, pulling and cutting deep across the thing's back.

It turned in the direction of the pain as more bullets tore into it, then landed on its back across Kyle. He pushed upward with the knife as hard as he could, felt something give, and then his hand and knife cut into the air, bursting out of the roach's underside. The creature thrashed and immediately began to dissipate, its weight vanishing with its dissolving form.

Kyle wrenched his arm free and quickly rolled to his feet striking a leaping smaller roach as it passed. Its legs spark against the shield surrounding his head as it spun madly 0ff to one side, catching a hail of flechettes as it did.

Kyle turned to survey the room, and saw that the bug spirit he'd just inadvertently diverted was among the last left in the room. With the deaths of the big guardian roaches, the rest seemed to have fled. None remained solely in astral space, and the few that fought on manifest were being quickly dispatched by the remaining troopers. Within moments, it was over.

The terrible sounds of gunfire, magic, and the screams of dying men and spirits still ringing in his ears, Kyle walked slowly across the basement to the clusters of swollen shapes the larger roach spirits had been guarding. He approached cautiously, his senses still existing primarily in astral space. They were alive, somewhat, pulsing with energy and existence, but there was an alienness about them. Some of the auras leaking from the meter-and-a-half-long objects were cool and constant, others flickered as if fighting something unseen, and the remainder showed echoes of duality, of two spirits overlapped. All, it seemed, were very slowly fading. Kyle reached the first cluster, six of the objects piled almost haphazardly on top of each other, the bottom one all but buried. He touched it, and felt coolness, a rough skin, and the faint wisps of fear, longing, and despair echoing from inside it. And something was inside it-it lurched at his presence, thrashing, the sensation of fear growing from it. The clear outline of a hand, a child's, pushed against the outer covering.

Kyle stood, bile and horror catching in his throat. Woodhouse came up silently alongside him.

"Are these… cocoons?" he asked quietly.

Kyle nodded, looking slowly around the basement at the dozens of piles. There were over a hundred cocoons. Did each one hold a human being?

“Jesus Christ," someone muttered softy.