12 Days of Fiction 2017: Day 12.
Showdown
Back in the old days, magic wielders used to write down their spells in large, heavy books. They took their grimoires with them wherever they went, or kept they safe instead. Of course, there are spells all of us have learned by heart; but such is the nature of magic, that even the storage of knowledge drains you.
But in this day that’s no longer a problem; nobody has any difficulty to access a modern tome of lore. In essence, current grimoires are heavily updated smartwatches. They’re given the maximum storage capacity available and an interface, and there you go. They’ve made life easier for us. In fact, sometimes too easy: there are some wielders who rely almost exclusively on their grimoires, to their disadvantage.
But you see, my grimoire, an unassuming rubber band as it looks like, is more than a simple repository of spells.
It’s a restrain.
As soon as Brooks ripped it off my wrist, its permanent holoprojection stopped. My skin started reversing to its normal state: covered, almost all of it, in intricate tattoos: designs that interlace, dance and weave around each other. Curlicues revolving around my body, flowers and runes and animals and arcane symbols splattered over me.
Brooks took a step back.
“What’s this?”
I saw the look in Mirilla’s face. The terror. She did know the meaning of the tattoos, and that was with only the ones she could see. That was the first time she surprised me that night.
I am no normal magic wielder. I pay the heaviest price for my powers, and these tattoos are but the tip of the iceberg.
“No…” she said, “no… It cannot be. Not you!”
“Oh yes,” I said, feeling the power surge within me, now unbound and boiling. A band of ancient runes that I knew started in my navel and corkscrewed around my abdomen, then split into two strips that ended in the palms of my hands, shone bright purple, then projected beyond my hands in the form of snakes.
The purple snakes coiled around each of the straps bonding me and pressed on them.
Hard.
To her credit, Mirilla stood her ground. Immediately, she invoked the Svalinn, the most powerful shielding spell known. And she surprised me a second time by doubling it, so that she held one in each hand, and then reinforcing it. I didn’t know she had it in her. But then, I didn’t know her so well.
I smiled. I’ve been shown what I look like smiling like that, and pretty is not a word that comes to mind. I knew my eyes were burning red, and it was more than a simple play of words: I started producing fiery bolts from them, one after another in rapid succession.
Mirilla moved fast blocking each attack, then changed gears and cast a speeding spell on herself. I laughed in joy as she started stopping them faster and faster.
She almost didn’t see the blades I had invoked, but at the last moment she parried my double attack with her shields. We stood, magical weapon measured against magical weapon.
Spells have an inherent force, but they are also boosted by the strength of the wielder: that’s why the outcome of any truly balanced magic contest is always uncertain.
Ours wasn’t balanced.
I screamed a Banshee Wail, a solid wall of magical sound that collided against her shields and shattered them, the pod and most of the machinery in the lab. And then my blades finished the job.
Still one thing to do.
In my state, technomancy was the most difficult discipline to use, yet I called upon my reserves to calm down, calm down, breathe in, breathe out… Geen tendrils shaped like circuits covered all my body, and their heads appeared over my hands and feet and head, and then I lashed out screaming again, but now it was my own voice.
“Maaareeeeeen….!”
I stood on an endless white space, my virtual body covered in sparkling green stars. “Thaumic cyberspace” doesn’t roll off the tongue like “Realm”, but that’s what it was, though this was detached, where the Realm had a myriad number of connections that grew daily… It was an isolation cell for AIs.
I extended my senses.
There. A conscience.
I wished myself to appear at that point, and there I was. At my feet, curled up into a ball, was Maren.
Maren, in the shape of a teenager girl of fifteen. Fifteen years, seven months and twelve days, to be precise. Naked and unmoving. I sat down and embraced her. She felt fragile and broken. I took her head in my arms, then I touched her forehead.
“Maren.”
“Maren.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Hello, you,” I said.
“I… I knew you’d come for me,” she said.
“Of course.”
“What… took you so long?”
“Oh, what have they done to you?” I said. “It must have been only hours.” I stared into the infinite. For a fleeting moment I thought I had felt something, like two sparks merging.
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said.
And it was done. I was standing on the wreckage of a clandestine lab. The liquid from the pod had spilled and it was sublimating into a fine mist. All that was left of Mirilla was a heap of ashes. Brooks was nowhere to be seen. The coward bastard.
“How do you feel, Maren?” I asked.
“So this is how a hangover feels,” Maren said faintly. I almost smiled. I swear I felt my lip twitch. “I can live without it.”
I saw a maroon rubber band on the floor. My grimoire. I picked it up and pocketed it. I suddenly realized I wasn’t wearing my goggles.
“I guess we’ve solved the interface matter now,” I said.
“Yes,” Maren said. “How… weird.”
“Indeed.”
I heard a noise and spun upon it. In my heightened state, I immediately invoked a Tiger Paw. A scratch came from within the pod, then another and another.
And out walked Elianora’s cloned body, who blinked at me in confusion.
“Oh,” Maren said. “She’s got Elianora’s AI embedded now. But she’s a newborn… cyborg magic wielder?”
I put off the Tiger Paw and extended my hand. She took it. I smiled at her and I saw her struggle trying to mimic my gesture.
“What are we going to do with you now?” I said.
