John sidled over to Jen, “Anything you can do?”
She frowned, “I can just barely feel the plants they’re running across, but I can’t effect them with my mana from here. Once they’re on the asphalt I’ll be down to just my vines.”
“Gotcha, stay here a minute.”
“The hell else would I do?”
John ducked and ran towards Sergeant Cortez’s position. The sense mage’s barrier was actually blocking that scary gaseous mana and the majority of the incoming fire was way off the mark. The guardsmen here looked almost bored – there was no way they could shoot through the kaleidoscopic screen, it hurt to even look at!
John skidded to a halt next to Cortez. The copper mage sat nearby, running a russet line of mana through his fingers. John wondered what the copper mage was up to, but focused on Cortez.
“What do you want, kid?”
“Well, I’m feeling stuck. What’s the plan to get us out from under these guys so we can help the other half of the convoy?”
“I’ll show you,” Cortez waved the sense mage over, “Samantha, what’s out past your barrier?”
“That guy with the desiccant mana is still advancing. He’s got two friends, haven’t shown any mages yet. 10 o’clock from my vantage,” she gestured at where she’d peeked around the hood of the APC.
John assumed she could see through her own nauseating mana.
Cortez nodded, “Got it, thank you. Yan, Todd, on me. Squad, run overwatch behind us.”
John noticed that Yan, the shadow mage, had a handgun strapped on her hip. Was it her own? Grumbling about going unarmed wouldn’t help, so he kept back and paid attention.
The impromptu fireteam circled around to the front of the APC, keeping low. The gunfire had slowly stopped as ambushers either ran out of ammo or realized they needed to conserve it. Todd’s eyes lit up with the same copper glow as his mana, and several meters of wire pulled out from the spool on his shoulder. Cloying shadows boiled up around Yan’s hands. John’s heart quickened and his mana churned in sympathetic reflex.
Cortez talked to Yan and Todd before shouldering his rifle. Cortez waved Samantha foreward, “Point at them.”
She did so.
“Thanks. On three, drop your curtain,” Cortez spoke clearly as he hooked a finger through the trigger guard.”
“One. Two. Three.”
Samantha’s mana fell away to reveal the three combatants advancing. They stumbled to a stop, surprised to see the barrier vanish. Their hesitation gave Yan the chance to sling three gobbets of her oily shadow mana at their heads. Her mana didn’t impart any momentum, but John could see it plug their ears and nose as well as blind them. The copper mage’s wire whipped forward and bound the desiccant mage’s arms. Cortez took aim and fired three bursts. The mage’s head simply exploded, while his escorts jerked and fell. John’s sense for blood lit up as crimson stains blossomed around three falling bodies. The ambushers thudded to the ground as Yan’s mana boiled away in the fading daylight. The maneuver took less than ten seconds in total, but three of their assailants laid dead on the pavement.
John swallowed heavily, “Ni-nice job, you guys.”
Cortez looked over his shoulder at John, “You squeamish?”
“It’s less the gore, more the killing, you know?”
Cortez’s expression softened, “Oh, hell. Never kill a person before?”
“Nope. We were able to capture everyone we fought before we got to the redoubt.”
Cortez nodded, “Well, I guess it’s good that you haven’t had to yet. But right now we might not have the option, y’know?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Cortez grunted, “Go back with the unit, we’re gonna wheel the APC around to turn the guns on that ice guy, start to sweep down the line.”
John eyeballed the APCs he could see. Some of them looked rough, with melted tires or with rebar rods sticking out, but all the friendlies he could see were in cover and lightly injured at worst. He nodded.
“Got it. There’s a heat mage out there, fucked up the barrel on our fifty cal pretty badly.”
“Any idea who?”
“None. It must’ve been their mana, it stopped after Case got the barrier up. I can go tussle with Icicles over there if you want to regroup and figure out who we need to shoot.”
“Yeah, that sounds ideal. Samantha! Barrier over our fifty, please…” Cortez started barking orders.
Cortez’s APC wheeled around to block the road and hem in the engagement. John understood they were bogged down, they couldn’t run the risk of an ambulance or cop car getting hit if the convoy tried to make a break for it, and God alone knew what was happening on the ramp.
John jogged behind APC cover and joined Debbie and the stone mage behind their rime-crusted barrier. The national guardsmen they’d ridden with were taking potshots at the ice mage, but John saw enough frostbitten cheeks to determine the engagement wasn’t going great. He watched the mage throw a prepared chunk of mana at a muzzle flash, even as he dove to the side.
“Debbie, how’s it going? And what’s your name, bro?”
The stone mage introduced himself, “Name’s Dane, you?”
“John, a pleasure,” John shook Dane’s hand.
Debbie coughed, “Short version, we’re having a real time of it. His clothes are basically frozen solid, so I can’t manipulate the plastic threads to strangle him. Dane’s mana is no better than throwing rocks – no offense – and he’s somehow anticipating the guardsmen’s attempts to nail him.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
John had an insight, “Assume he can sense the heat gradients in them and their equipment. I can track people’s rough position by the blood in their bodies, he probably can do something similar.”
“Oh. Huh, yeah. Alright.”
“I’m gonna go beat him up, sound good?
“Are you crazy?!” Debbie and Dane cried out in unison.
“No, we’re just on a timer and have to take risks. I’ll heal, it’ll be fine.”
The fireteam leader had been eavesdropping and chimed in, “We’ll give you some covering fire to vault the berm.”
John nodded, “Thanks! Give me a signal?”
The helmeted man nodded and turned to the rest of the guardsmen. They had a hurried conversation, then turned to John and nodded.
“Go when we stand, got it?”
John gave a thumbs up and started flooding his system with mana. His veins bulged and muscles swelled. An intoxicating sense of power filled his system. When the guardsmen stood up and fired at the ice mage, John scrambled over the four foot high wall as easily as jumping the back of a couch. He prepared a mana whip and sprinted towards the ice mage. John ducked a blast of frigid mana that drove his fire support back into cover and closed in on the ice mage. His whip impacted the spike of ice over the mage’s left arm. Some of John’s mana froze to the surface of the makeshift gauntlet, but riddled the ice with cracks nonetheless. A moderate amount of mana made it back to John.
The ice mage stumbled back, but recovered his stance and raised his right hand towards John. A gust of cryogenic mana flooded towards John. Unlike his own, it was almost invisible. He tracked it by the slight blue glow and snowflakes condensing spontaneously from the autumnal moisture. He’d have to dodge. John’s mana reserves were much too low to bank on healing an entirely frostbitten arm. This is gonna hurt.
With a tuck and a roll, John came to his feet clear of the miniaturized cold front. Goosebumps ran up and down the side of his body. John had to clear the ten feet between him and the ice mage without getting flash-frozen. John felt another mage draw closer and spared a glance. It was Sergeant Cortez!
John grinned. A two-on-one made him a lot more comfortable with the odds. Cortez had his handgun out and advanced steadily from the ice mage’s blindspot. John could see the other mages from the lead APC watching nervously. John feinted towards the ice mage, hoping to keep his attention. Bloody mana welled up in John’s cupped hand. The ice mage’s eyes fixed on the John’s hand before he raised his own. John charged, ready to hurl his payload and dodge the ice mage’s.
Instead of a mana blast, the ice mage only pointed his fingers at John. John was puzzled, but reabsorbed his mana and got low to make a tackle. John figured Cortez would shoot the motherfucker after he got him to the ground. John heard a gunshot, then searing pain shot through his leg.
John went down hard, swearing as his chin bounced off the pavement, “Fuck!”
The ice mage advanced, full of malice. John was grateful he still hadn’t noticed Cortez, but surely the gunman could see him? John groaned. This fucking hurts!
Mana raced through John’s system, pulling blood up off the pavement and trying to straighten out the bones and ligaments in his right leg. He couldn’t tell where the shot landed exactly, but he was stuck on the ground. He felt the ice mage’s aura surge, and rolled hard to the side. Frost bloomed where he’d been on the ground, and a few crystals speared into his side. John grunted again, and wondered where Cortez was. John tried to flex his shot leg and winced. He wasn’t gonna be running anytime soon.
A glob of tarry mana arced over John’s head and whacked the ice mage. John his torso up and looked back towards Debbie. She and the stone mage were up over the lip of their embankment. John’s eyes widened. The hell were they doing? Did they not see his leg get blown half off? As if on cue, a bullet cracked against the berm and the two morons ducked down. One less thing to worry about, John thought. Now, where the fuck is Cortez??
John could only watch and tense to dive out of the way again as the ice mage scraped Debbie’s mana off his arm and balaclava. The notion of different varieties of mana having wildly varied physical properties registered somewhere in the back of John’s mind. The mage held up the arm with the wicked spike of ice, primed to skewer John like a kebab. John scanned all around himself, seeing if there was anybody who could help him.
The mages from the vanguard APC were engaged with some other threat, a hideous clash between Samantha’s hallucinogenic magic and mana that looked like gangrenous pus. Case and Jen were bogged down still. Jen couldn’t leave the safety of Case’s shield without getting skewered. John saw tattered shreds of her mana around lengths of rebar, clear indications that she couldn’t contest whichever mage threw them. He couldn’t see Cortez, which was weird. Had he been shot too? John grit his teeth against the pain, trying to recall how many gunshots he’d heard. There’d been too many happening all around them for John to track.
John rolled once again and fished for his knife. It was a longshot, but he hoped he could get the ice mage’s Achilles and finish him on the ground. His leg only needed a few minutes longer to be functional, but it hardly mattered if he got skewered before then. He clutched the knife in his right hand. The ice mage loomed over John.
“Any last words, boy?” the mage spat the question.
John snarled, “Go fuck yourself. We were just trying to help these people.”
“Sucks. We wanted your guns.”
John saw the mage’s shoulder tense. His heart beat faster and the drain on his mana picked up. His vision tunneled. The spike would go for his torso, he was sure of it. John shoved off with his left hand and knee. He flicked his knife open with a thumb, and shoved mana into his right arm. The muscles bulged as he tried to put the knife through the back of the mage’s boot. To John’s dismay, the point deflected off. The spike staked into the pavement inches from John’s torso.
“Good try,” the mage sneered, then reared the spike again. Mana pulsed through the weapon and moisture condensed and froze to restore the damage at the tip.
John appreciated that his killer had figured out something that cool. He dropped his knife and tried to grab a leg. The ice mage danced back and hefted his weapon. John braced.
When the weapon came down, a gigantic brown claw ripped through the arm at the shoulder joint. John gasped. For the second time, his sense for blood lit up like Christmas. Even worse, the blood was spraying all over him.
The ice mage screamed and collapsed. Two shots rang out point-blank. Sergeant Cortez had snuck up behind the ice mage. John heaved a sigh of relief.
“Took you long enough.” John thanked him.
“Flip over onto your back.” Cortez voice was clipped.
“Knife first.” John replied.
Cortez kicked it over to John. He folded the knife and slipped it back into his pocket. He regretted not getting his deer knife that morning.
John rolled over. Cortez executed a slick little maneuver that ended with John over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He ran back behind the pavement berm and put John down with Debbie and company.
John waved weakly and smiled, “Hi y’all!”
Cortez looked at John, “Thank you for distracting that guy. I had to get his overwatch, fucker was further up the hill than I thought. Sorry that you got popped.”
John shrugged with his back against the berm, “It’s not fine exactly, but… you know.”
Cortez grunted, “Yeah. You gonna be ok?”
“My leg’ll be fixed in a minute. I’ll reorient then. How’re we doing?”
“Not great. We keep getting pinned by their mages. Too much novel shit happening and plate carriers only kinda cut it.”
“Fuck.” John sighed.
“Debbie, was it?” Cortez glanced at Debbie.
“That’s me!” Debbie looked nervous.
“Keep half an eye on him, ok?”
Debbie nodded, “I can make half-decent armor out of the asphalt, should I try and do what John did?”
Cortez shook his head, “No, we’ll figure something out. I can’t keep staking you kids out as bait.”
