Ch 38. Sinister Kid

  “You ready for this?” Char asked as she watched Declan get used to the weight of the short sword in his right hand and the dagger in his left. She could hear the sound of wood scraping across the floor as the survivors pushed the heavy desk to block the office door behind them. The hallway was empty aside from them and the corpses of their former opponents. Char hated that the bodies didn’t vanish like the monsters did.

  Declan swung the sword in an overhand slash and mimed a parry with the dagger. “I used to pick rogues in all the games I played. Always dual-wield. It’s different in real life. I never realized how heavy a sword really is.” He thrust the sword forward the way Char had shown him, a short, brutal jab meant to pierce the gut of one’s foe. He inhaled deeply, squaring his shoulders, “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  “OK. Keep an eye out for a prize box. After I got my sword, the system gave me a skill crystal for it. It might do the same for you.” As Char spoke, Lulu bumped her hip gently and used her nose to flip up Char’s hand, begging for scritches. Char could feel her eagerness to get going. There was something about the atmosphere here, or the mana maybe, that was as disconcerting for Lulu as it was for her.

  He nodded, “Eyes peeled, boss.”

  They headed down the hall. Char kept her senses alert for any sign of more attackers, but the building was silent as a tomb. She paid attention to the feeling in the air as they went, trying to quantify what it was that had her so unsettled. The building smelled of unpleasant things: industrial disinfectant, blood, sewage, death, and body odor. In the unmoving air, the scents hung heavy and stale.

  Unmoving air.

  There was no air conditioning. In the desert heat, this building should have been stifling, but it wasn’t. The air wasn’t exactly cold, but it was cool. When she focused on it, there was something about that coolness that bothered her. It was more than the physical sensation against her skin. There was a subtle sensation within her that she’d overlooked before, amid the fear and rush of the fight. It was like the lightning mana within her reacted badly to the cold of the air, but it wasn’t the physical temperature. She hadn’t felt this out on the tundra, and that had been quite a bit colder.

  Then it hit her. It was the mana. There was a quality, a flavor almost, to the mana in the air that set some part of her on edge; that part of her that was drawn to thunderstorms, and that had rumbled through her chest with a desire to protect those people in the cooler. The Thunderbird. Her bloodline.

  There was some fundamental incompatibility between the storm inside her and the cold, malevolent mana that permeated this place. As they walked, carefully, quietly checking each unlocked room as they passed, Char searched her memories for all that she could dredge up about the Thunderbird legends.

  It was an Algonquin legend. The Thunderbird was a protector who fought creatures from the underworld. Char wished she’d paid more attention to that part of her heritage. Her mother had been a quarter Osage, and somewhere in the past—a great-grandmother, or maybe a great-great grandmother, she couldn’t remember—there was an Ojibwe ancestor. Char hadn’t thought it had been important. But now, her blood roiled with the reality behind those children’s tales that she’d ignored.

  How, though? How could stories that were hundreds, or even thousands of years old, be real when magic had only just shown up a week ago? How could she have traces of Native and Aztec stories, of Celtic and Norse gods in her DNA? How could they be so real that, even as a child before the aliens and mana had come, she’d been drawn to thunderstorms? Were there other parts of her that had been influenced by those bloodlines?

  She shook away the questions. Now wasn’t the time for them. Declan hissed to get her attention. “Found the stairs,” he whispered.

  There had been no sign of the other cannibals on the first floor. It was as though the place had been abandoned. Either they had all run off, or they’d gathered for the ritual the quest mentioned, and Char didn’t think the first option was very likely.

  Declan had been uncharacteristically quiet since that first fight in the hallway. He was usually quick to break the tension with a joke or rambling non sequitur, but this place had gotten to him; what they’d seen and done had wounded him inside. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it as she passed him, her heart aching.

  As she crept cautiously up the stairs, a line from Hotel California wound its way through her mind. She felt the weight of her sword and knew that even if her ‘steely knife’ wasn’t enough to kill this beast, she at least had her lightning to fall back on.

  The temperature dropped even farther as the three of them neared the next floor. The cooling air teased across her skin and nipped at it as though heralding winter’s bite. There was something about that thought, some half-buried memory that niggled at the back of her brain; another story that she hadn’t paid attention to. Winter and cannibalism. There was a connection there, but she didn’t have the time to go digging for it.

  They’d found the cult. Sounds were coming from a set of doors about halfway down the hallway. The doors were standing open; they were making no effort to hide and spring an ambush. Someone was chanting. Multiple voices lifted in a reply, then the first voice went on. That voice had an odd reverberation to it. It made the air shiver against Char’s skin, and prickles run up her spine.

  She could feel the power of the ritual charging the air. The feeling of rotten ice and hollow hunger pressed in on her as they moved down the hall. The lightning in her core rose, crackling against the inside of her skin. A low growl rumbled out of Lulu, more felt than heard, as flames rippled down her back. Her eyes began to glow like coals, and her heat pushed back against the encroaching cold.

  They stepped through the doors into what had once been a solarium, a vaulted cage of iron and glass stretching away overhead to let in the harsh desert sun. It should have been scorching hot, but it felt like they’d stepped into a freezer. The benches and plants where patients might once have sat to get sun on an English winter’s day had been shoved to the sides, and the tile floor had been painted with circles and sigils using what looked like blood.

  Four vacant-eyed patients swayed in time to the chanting. Shadows seemed to swirl around their feet, despite the harsh sun shining in from above. An altar made of piled bones and skulls sat in the center of the space, and the bodies of several inmates lay next to it, their throats slit, their blood running out to pool at its base.

  Before the altar stood Royce. He looked so young, but the contents of his file and the arrogant smirk on his face excised any sympathy Char might have felt for him. This was no victim in need of help. Royce Harrow was an active and joyful participant in this evil.

  The lightning in her Core surged, but it was another of her bloodlines that made her eyes and her brain itch, and the hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end. She had the feeling there was another being in the room, something immensely powerful, pressing against the membrane that divided nightmare from reality.

  Royce wore a hospital robe that had been dyed with blood in a grotesque mockery of a royal raiment, and he held a chef’s knife like a scepter of his office. As his chant reached its crescendo, one of the inmates stepped forward, offering her throat to him. The others lifted their voices in the ritual’s answering refrain as Royce slit the poor woman’s throat, letting her fall to the ground to bleed out as he moved on with his chant. Char cried out in outrage as Royce killed the woman, but was too far away to stop it.

  As the woman’s blood flowed out, the power in the air intensified, and a dark shape flickered into sight behind Royce, looming over his shoulder, mirroring his posture. It was tall and thin, almost skeletal. Its head was shaped like the skull of a stag, crowned with a massive rack of antlers like bare winter branches. It faded in and out, barely there, but gaining strength with each new word that flowed from Royce’s mouth.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Thunder rolled through Char at the sight; a lightning flash of recognition. A word floated up from her memory as the pieces snapped together.

  “Wendigo.” The word escaped her lips in a disgusted snarl.

  Char charged, intending to put a stop to the horror. Lulu roared, her flames leaping to life, and Declan followed a step behind, his face set in grim determination. Two figures moved to block them. A man and woman who had been flanking Royce like priestly attendants stepped forward at a gesture from their master. These two didn’t have the blank, enthralled stare of the other inmates. Their eyes were filled with madness and religious fervor. They pulled out knives, but they didn’t attack with them as Char expected. Instead, they each slit open their own flesh, cutting long gashes in their arms. They flung the blood onto the floor, and Char saw the icy blue-black mana that tinged it.

  She tried to pull together her thoughts and her mana to shape an Arc spell, but the nonsensical scene had stalled her just a beat too long as she’d tried to make sense of what was going on. Before she could complete the spell, chains of ice whipped up out of the blood to wrap around them, halting their dash toward the madman and binding all three of them tightly. The biting cold of the chains sank into Char, sapping her strength.

  She struggled against the chains, pulling against them with all of her might, but they wouldn’t budge. Lulu poured heat into her flames, but her fire was muted, the heat sucked away by the bone-chilling cold of the chains. Declan, lower level and without a Core, could barely move within the chains’ icy grip.

  Char berated herself as she struggled. She should have had her spell ready before they came through the doors. She’d been arrogant. Her blood had been trying to warn her that there was more going on here than just a bunch of lunatics with an eating disorder, but she hadn’t listened, hadn’t thought about what it meant. The fights downstairs had been so laughably easy, she’d expected this one to be the same.

  She assessed the two who controlled the icy chains, and they showed as Ice-Heart Supplicants, both at level 20. Royce showed something different:

  Vessel of Winter’s Maw

  Level 23

  This is the chosen host of a dark power, carefully shaped

  and cultivated over years as the missing mana of the world

  trickled back in, awaiting only the breaching of the

  threshold and the full return of power

  to be filled by the spirit of his master.

  The implications of that description were… mind numbing. Char filed it away to think about later. There was obviously something much bigger than an alien invasion going on, but the revelation meant nothing if she couldn’t survive to make sense of it.

  She strained against her bonds. Pulling with every ounce of strength and will she possessed, but it was no good. The freezing links pressed into her skin, burning with cold. Lulu yelped, biting at the chains and flaring her fire, but the chains only tightened. She watched with helpless dread as Royce slit another throat, and the shadowy form of the Wendigo grew more solid.

  Physical struggle wasn’t working, but her lightning had been warning her from the beginning. She turned inward, feeling for that part of her—not the Domain Affinity in her Core, but the lightning in her blood and bone. Wendigo was an Algonquin bogeyman; the spirit of winter’s hunger personified, the taboo breaker. Thunderbird was the protector of the tribes, the keeper of laws. She didn’t remember any stories where they fought, but they were diametrically opposed forces.

  There had to be an answer there, something she could use.

  She pulled the lightning mana from her Core. Instead of pushing it outward like she’d done when she’d imbued her weapon for the first time, she kept it inside, filling herself with it until it burned. Sparks ran across her skin, zipping along like a charge up a Jacob’s Ladder. Where the lightning touched the ice, it sizzled. When she was full, when she could hold no more and she had to clench her jaw against the pain of holding it, she shoved it outward, forcing it into the chains that held her. Even as she forced it outward to work against the chains that held her, she felt it pushing inward as well, into her flesh and bones, altering her, moving her just that little bit farther from human.

  The part of her that was the storm raged, and the other parts of her answered. One of her bloodlines bolstered her Will with the unbreakable fortitude of an Ash that supported worlds—if there was one thing the Vanir were good at, it was out-stubborning even bedrock. Another part of her felt the weaves of the magic in the chains, and let her guide the lightning to find the weak places, to attack where it would do the most good. Char was only barely aware of what she was doing. She let her instincts guide her. She didn’t think. She couldn’t. The furious storm that raged within her knew only that it needed to be free.

  The dark shape behind Royce lifted its skeletal head as though scenting the air. It placed a clawed hand on Royce’s shoulder, and the two of them spoke. Two distinct voices came from Royce’s mouth, one human, and the other the howl of a winter storm, “Animikii… I smell you, old foe. I see your scion, Binesi, but she is weak. She is filled with the cheating poisons of the Biiwide, the far ones. How strange, that it is I who keeps the old ways and grows strong.”

  As those words died, two things happened at once. Royce slit the throat of the final sacrifice, and the chains that held Char cracked.

  The Wendigo’s form solidified for a moment, all smoke and shadow and swirling frost over bone and the blackened flesh of a frostbitten corpse, and then it became gaseous once more, flowing into Royce, who stood with his arms wide, accepting the invasion of another into his body.

  Char strained against the chains again, her lightning fracturing and weakening them. They popped and groaned. Shards of breaking ice dug into her skin.

  “Char, look out!” Declan called, his voice weak as the ice sapped his strength.

  Her head snapped up. One of the Ice-heart Supplicants was almost on top of her, his knife out, a grin of hungry anticipation twisting his mouth. Her hand shot out, grabbing his wrist as he plunged the knife toward her heart, chunks of broken ice falling away, tinkling as they bounced on the tile floor. The lightning coursing over her skin grounded out through the Supplicant, making him seize and jerk. When his eyes started to smoke, she let go of him. His body dropped to the ground, knife falling from lifeless fingers.

  Royce screamed. His body twisted and writhed. His bones broke and reformed. Antlers sprouted from his head. His arms and legs lengthened and sprouted claws. His teeth grew, forcing his jaw apart in a grotesque parody of a predator’s muzzle. Blue-black mana and icy shadows swirled around him, lifting him as it reshaped him.

  Lulu flared her fire again, and this time, with only one Supplicant holding the spell that bound them, her flames won the fight, melting the ice away to steam. She blazed bright. The final Ice-Heart Supplicant tried to run when she realized that her spell had failed and her victims were no longer bound, but Lulu was on her in a flash, bearing her to the ground.

  Declan dropped to the ground as the spell failed. His skin was mottled red and black with frostbite where the chains had burned him with their cold touch, but he picked up his weapons and stood, wobbly, but determined.

  Char rushed forward. She cast Mend Flesh as she moved, healing the damage of frostbite and electrical burns. Her mana pool was nearly empty after that, but she still had her sword.

  Just as she reached him, Royce’s feet dropped to the ground, and he roared. Her Foresight warned her, and she swayed back just in time to avoid a swipe of his knife-blade claws. His eyes burned with a malevolent blue-black light. His body had been stretched, reminding her of the Bonepicker with its unnaturally long limbs. A crown of antlers jutted from Royce’s skull, slicked with blood and hair torn from his scalp by their passage.

  He swiped at her again with both hands, but she stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding the blow. She brought her sword around, aiming to bisect him, but he was fast, leaping backward out of her reach. She used Assess Foe:

  Error—Unknown Entity

  Words flickered past her sight, almost faster than she could read them. She caught a few, though: Awakened… querying database… assign designator… power estimate… some numbers and terms flickered past too fast to catch, but she understood the important part. This creature wasn’t something the System knew. It wasn’t from the Aldevari. It was a uniquely human evil, and a uniquely human magic.

  As evil and abhorrent as the Wendigo was, its very existence and the implications of its existence gave Char hope that there were lessons to be learned, and maybe weapons to be used that they didn’t have to take from the invaders.

  The system glitch settled, and new words appeared:

  Winter’s Maw

  Level 32

  But the System was wrong. It wasn’t Winter’s Maw. It was Wendigo. It was the foe of her ancestors, not some manufactured monster sent to test or train humanity. She pushed lightning into her blade and slashed, pushing the Royce-Wendigo monster back again. The beast snarled, its two voices still distinct but speaking as one, “Birth is draining. I’ll face you again, Binesi, once I have feasted and grown strong.”

  Its speed and long limbs put it too far ahead of Char, whose mind was spinning with the implications of what she’d learned. She couldn’t catch it before it crashed through the glass of the solarium, into the heat of the desert. Running to the window, she stared out, watching it flee across the sand, towards the next dividing line. A roiling wall of shadow hid the nature of the next biome over, but if that’s where the Wendigo was going, then Char knew she’d follow. Her bones and blood wouldn’t let her ignore the cannibal abomination. The storm inside her urged to to pursue, but she had people to tend to here, first.

  Declan stepped up beside her, quiet. He said nothing, only watched with her, and in his silence, she saw wounds that magic wasn’t going to heal.

  This was a hard chapter to write, and I'm still not sure I got it right. I'm trying to pull out Char's inner gifts, drop hints that things with the System aren't what they seem, and weave in Native mythology in a way that honors it. I've also been accused of being insensitive to people dealing with mental and emotional issues because I chose a psychiatric institution as the setting for the horror show of the last few chapters, but it's the logical place Royce would have ended up after being caught. I've tried to make it clear that there was something supernatural going on behind the scenes, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that people facing these issues would suddenly become cannibalistic mass murderers out of the blue. I'd love feedback if you have any to give.

  We're a little over halfway through this wild ride, and I've got a rough plan for eight more books after this one, so keep your seatbelts buckled and tray tables stowed--there's a long, turbulent ride ahead.

  --Dawnstrider

  If you want to read ahead or check out my other projects, come join my .