Larry Correia - Warbound

Yet, the god of demons had been strong enough to crawl out of it. Even though it didn’t have a body, the Enemy was infinitely stronger, which told Faye she needed to make this spell that much bigger . That last hole had been big enough to suck in Mason Island. This one would be big enough to swallow Montana. But if she set that off here at the surface, it would kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions if the calculations in her head map were even the tiniest bit off…

Did that matter? Kill a million, save billions. That was easy math. Plus she’d just absorb all those millions’ Power. It wasn’t like it would go to waste, and she’d still save everybody else in the world from the Enemy. She’d be a hero. The whole world would love her.

Faye shook her head. Those thoughts were dangerous. She needed to get up there where the world could be safe from the dangerous spell. She had to get up in the Enemy’s face . And that meant she probably wasn’t coming back.

So be it. Sometimes heroes didn’t get to come back.

Her head map helped her with the calculations. She was going to have to channel multiple forms of Power at the same time, something not even the Chairman had done before. She could switch between them really quick, but that wouldn’t be good enough. It needed to be several at once or nothing. Failure meant instantaneous death.

She concentrated on the magic of a Fade, imagining herself to be as insubstantial as Heinrich. That would help keep her from being pulled in by the hole’s gravity. Then she channeled the opposite type of magic, that of the Heavy, and imagined that she had as much control over those forces as Mr. Sullivan. Between those two types of magic, she might have a chance to get out. Then she gathered up the vitality of a Brute like Delilah, and knowing that her body would begin taking damage immediately, she asked for the Healing Power of a mighty Healer like Jane. She’d need to keep her body from freezing instantly, so she thought of the energetic magic of the Torch, like Whisper or Lady Origami, and the Crackler magic of Mr. Bolander. And for one last touch, she thought of Barns’ magic, because a little Luck never hurt.

Faye was so scared she couldn’t hardly breathe. So first she folded her connection to be like the Mouth’s Power, imagined she was clever like Mr. Garrett, and said out loud. “I’m gonna be fine. I’m really good at this. The Power picked me for a reason.” And then she immediately felt better.

She said a little prayer in her head, looked up at the monster eating the sky, and Traveled like she never had before.

Nothingness.

And then a billion stars.

It was terrifying. The world was thousands of miles below. The Enemy was before her.

Faye’s head map was screaming in confusion, so she shoved it aside. Her physical magic flared, stronger than any Brute. Her tissues hardened into an impenetrable shield, but even then her skin began to die and the fluids in her body wanted to boil into nothing. She became denser than any Massive. The Healer’s magic went to work. The molecules of her own body which were burning off were energized by the magic of the Torch to form a sort of barrier between her and the nothing.

The Enemy was coming closer, incomprehensible and hungry. It knew the Power had been found, and it had been waiting a very long time for this moment. It wasn’t clever at all, at least not in any way Faye could ever understand. The Pathfinder had been clever because it had been living with humans for so long that it had grown smart. All the Enemy understood was the cycle of eating and chasing. It had been anchored to a point in Montana and nothing would turn it away. The cycle was everything.

Faye was about to break it.

She folded her connection to the Power, over and over, in all manner of convoluted designs. Her mind was working faster than any other living being was capable of, and she knew that was why the Power had picked this poor Okie girl from a dirt-floored shack to be its champion. It was all for this one perfect moment.

Faye created the spell. A hole appeared in space. The other side of the hole was the real nothing. This side was paradise in comparison. The rift grew.

Not fast enough. The Enemy was too big. She needed to block it off entirely. She needed to make a new door, just as big as the hole the Enemy had made, big enough to completely shield the world. She needed the Enemy to be absolutely consumed by the nothing place, and it could never be allowed to escape. Faye gathered up all of her stolen magic, the composite Power of tens of thousands of dead souls, and she shoved it hard against the new spell.

It tore a mighty rift in the universe.

The tear opened with a flash that could be seen from Earth. It expanded fast. Too fast. It tried to pull her in, so hard that she couldn’t even Travel out of it. Faye called upon the gravitational mastery of the Heavy to pull herself away and when that didn’t work, the Fade ability to make herself insubstantial. But this rift was so terrible that it was sucking in light .

The Enemy continued onward, oblivious, toward its feast.

Only the trail it was following went through Faye’s rift. The black hole which had consumed Mason Island had been tiny in comparison. This one was hundreds of miles across.

Too late, the Enemy realized it was a trap. The portal from its reality fed directly into the infinite nothing. Faye understood where the black hole went now. This was where the Power would go if it died.

It was Hell.

Faye knew she was about to die too, but it was all worth it to feel the great Enemy’s surprise before it was sucked into the eternal void.

So long, sucker.

She managed to stay just ahead of the rift. It reached its maximum size, which was good, because if it had gotten any bigger it probably would’ve eaten the whole world, and then she would’ve felt really stupid, and then it went snapping back.

It dragged her along on the ragged edge of nothing, and the smaller it got, the harsher the pull became. Faye was burning every form of magic she could think of, but her Power was spent, all of the Spellbound curse’s stolen magic had been used. She would not be able to Travel out of this one.

It sure had been an adventure.

And then the Power spoke to her. Not with words, but it was there, watching, feeling her pain and her anguish and her sadness and her hope and it truly marveled at this bizarre species it had bonded itself to.

It was thankful, for the great cycle had been broken. Mankind had accomplished what no other species had ever done before.

So the Power offered her a choice.

It was an easy decision.

Francis was prone on top of the water tank as he took careful aim. The skinless men were incredibly fast when they were sprinting, so he led this one like he was shooting a jack rabbit. Francis pulled the trigger, and the Enfield barked. The skinless man spilled forward and crashed into the hole that had been dug for a foundation. “Got it!” He worked the bolt and watched for more targets, but that seemed to be all of them. Since these things seemed so damned hard to kill, Francis noticed that there was a cement mixer still running next to the hole, so he focused his Power, pulled the lever, and caused the liquid cement to run down and bury the creature. That ought to do it.

“We okay?” Pemberly Hammer called out.

Jane came out from behind the car she’d been using for cover, still holding her favorite Tommy gun. “I think so.”

Dan joined his wife. “I believe that’s the last of them.”

They’d been fighting for an hour. The town had come alive. Most had run. Many had fought. A whole lot had died. And then the dead had gotten back up, shed their skin, and joined in. He’d burned through most of his ammo and nearly all his Power, but for now, it was quiet.