Chapter 28

Shady Business

The blade dissipated as Santa came down like an avenging angel and tore the shade’s head off, but it was too late. Kate collapsed, dead on the ground. Her Con stat was crap. Which was why she was supposed to always be a part of the back-line, not getting herself shanked by rogues at the front.

“Damnit, that one slipped past me. It wasn’t just an elite either. That thing was a low-level boss. Did the King try to split off a portion of himself or something?” Santa asked.

I just stood there, looking at Katenip’s crumpled form.

He continued, “I hope she manages to harness her mana when a Shadeling pops out of her system. You said she was quick, right? How long do those things take to get through again? You should probably log out and warn her.” He was rambling, he always rambled when we lost someone.

That last remark stirred me to action, she’s not dead yet.

“Santa, I know where she lives. It’s close. I’ll do better than a warning.” That shut him up for a second as he rebooted into savior mode.

“Right then.” He shoved his equipment into his bag and shoved it at me. “Hold my shit, I need to clear the Lounge of anything that might have slipped through.” With that, he promptly snapped his own neck and crumpled to the ground.

He had the right idea; I needed to get a move on. The others should be fine out here. No way was there another shade hanging around. Only something special like that boss-fragment would survive the death of the Shadow King, and he was dead. I got the kill notice. I put off dealing with it since my current state made experience gains, iffy. The notifications could wait till tomorrow, after saving Kate. I logged out.

Ripping my headset off, I lunged for my computer. I remembered she said Brookline when she was ordering the cab after the interview. The street was something with -nut at the end. A quick search brought up a Nipinski family on Walnut Street. Bingo. Less than 10 minutes away by cab, a cab I had called while performing the search. Right before the cab arrived, I sent Kate an urgent message. ‘Stay away from your RealTek unit. Monsters are real. Use mana.’ I didn’t have time to explain more.

Time wasn’t on my side. I would be cutting it perilously close as it was. Spectral monsters like those spawned by Shade kills didn’t have a set time that they took to cross over. The only constant was that it wasn’t instant. There were reports of anything from 5 minutes to 20. I was hoping for 20. I needed the time if I was going to be of any help.

I tossed myself in the cap and set an alert for when I was two-thirds of the way there. Time for the fastest mana training of both my lives.

I already suspected mana was already crossing over to Earth earlier than before. Now I just needed to use it consciously. Mana Sense was one thing that took the longest to awaken in a person on Earth, even if they had it on their AoA character. So I was working blind. Repeating the basic mana exercises as the cab drove was my source of comfort. Of hope. As I went through them without actually feeling my mana, I noticed something strange. I felt like a font of strength was pouring from my chest. Like I had untapped potential… Potential, like that the Sacrifice of Veruna messed with.

Holy Shit, the timer on it hadn’t expired when I logged out. That could be very good, very bad, or possibly even deadly. I’ve gone so far into uncharted waters with this shit I can’t even begin to work out the possible repercussions from something like that crossing over before the price is paid. It was never even theorized in the future, because we all knew that there was no logging out. You can’t ‘Log Out’ of the real world after all.

Might as well take advantage of it while I had it, though.

Right up until the World Merge mana and everything else would be dramatically weaker on this side. Hell, there wasn’t enough environmental mana on Earth to pull off basic earth manipulation. Only conjured elements were usable until about a week before the merge last time. Even then, low-cost elements like air and fire were the limit. This made whatever shreds of power that carried over nearly worthless. Then again, I wouldn’t be facing a true shade. Just a Shadeling that would be level 6 at best. Although that was a level 6 completely immune to attacks not laced with mana.

Nearly worthless wasn’t the same as completely worthless. It gave me a feeling not native to the human body, and that was something I could work with. Mana manipulation without being able to feel your mana was like moving a limb that was asleep while blind and trying to tie a knot with it. Only replace one limb with all of them, with no feedback on your success until you used that knot to keep yourself from falling down a hole. Okay, the metaphor breaks down a bit at the end. Still, an extra sense to work with, even the wrong one, was like removing the blindness a bit.

By the time my alarm went off, I had piggybacked off that feeling and created a crude and limited version of mana charging. I made my pinky glow with a faint blue light. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. I was trying for my entire hand but, oh well.

The last stretch of the ride was anxiously waiting and trying to keep that mana in my finger. It gave me time to think. Not Fun. The entire expedition had taken long enough that it was dark in the real world. Showing up at a young girl’s house after sundown, one that you don’t really know, as an adult male, isn’t the best look. Doing so and yelling ‘Get away from the game console, a monster is going to pop out’ is even worse.

As the cab approached the house, I heard a scream. I didn’t wait for it to stop; I had disabled the safety locks right after the thing started moving. I lunged out the door and rolled to my feet, then sprinted to the front door, hitting it with a shoulder charge that would make football players jealous. The lock held, the wood didn’t. I was in.

I absorbed the room’s layout in an instant. Open floor-plan, living room, kitchen combo, a couch and kitchen island forming a center aisle. In that aisle, a young man lay bleeding on the ground with Kate standing over him wielding a wet broom, waving it at a human sized blob of shadowy mist with claws. A Shadeling.

I leaped into the air and used the back of the couch as a stepping-stone to jump to the kitchen island; I used that to maneuver myself around Kate and lunge past the Shadeling. As I passed by, I let my hand drift through its side.

The moment the mana in my little finger touched the creature, its side split open as if I was wielding a sword. I landed in a roll and surged to my feet; with a quick turn, the monster was flanked. It let out a warbling cry that sent a chill down my spine. Like nails on a chalkboard mixed with the squelch of rotten fruit.

“Need a hand, kid?”

Kate just stared at me while the monster tried to understand how we hurt it, and what to do with enemies in two directions. Thankfully, the thing was stupid. “Laz, I mean Jacob? What are you doing here? How did you find my house? Never mind, what the hell is this thing? Actually, that can wait, how do we kill it?” She said in a rush.

“How were you defending yourself before?”

“Well, I tried throwing things at it and that didn’t work it can’t seem to phase through the broom after I grabbed it.”

Damn, the girl was a natural mage. A broom was close enough to the mop she normally used that she was unconsciously flowing what little mana she had through it. I bet the fact that it was wet helped. I could see the broken remains of a glass; someone must have been cleaning up after dropping a glass of water or something. My money was on the injured man on the ground.

Keeping a sharp eye on the Shadeling Kate continued, “My brother tried to fight it but everything he tried passed through it. After it got him, I grabbed his boom and kept it at bay. I can’t seem to do any damage though.”

“I’ll distract it, get some soap on that broom and fight like this was AoA.” I saw a salt shaker on the counter nearby, perfect. Salt was good against spirits, not enough to kill them, but it would annoy them like pepper spray.

I darted toward the spirit and jabbed at it with my glowing finger; it decided I was the threat and tried to rip my face off. Ah, nice and simple, man against monster. As terrified as I was on the ride here, I was rapidly calming down. I had a weapon, not much of one, but a weapon that could kill it all the same. This wasn’t really so different from things I’ve done a thousand times before. A quick step backwards and a spin let me swipe it from another angle and grab the salt. I smashed the glass shaker into the hard wood of the couch, ignoring the pain as I clenched my hand around the loose contents.

Another dodge to the side and I lightly tossed the remains of the shaker into the black mist trying to claw me to death. If I thought the last scream was bad, this one actually hurt. It did damage on a spiritual level or something. I could feel a trickle of blood run down my jaw. Taking advantage of the distraction, I used my hand as a spear, jabbing two shallow holes in the creature. Faint wisps of silver leaked from its wounds.

Suddenly I wasn’t fast enough, my speed and flowing movements born of years of fighting were gone, the muscle memory a fragment of a future that would never be. That strength that had crossed over from Ardos became a fading dream. The timer on the Ritual of Veruna ran out, and my control slipped. The faint glow of my pinky winked out. Shit.

As I backed away from the monster, I figured it was a good time to get something off my chest, before the shadeling clawed it open. “By the way Kate, sorry for not being entirely honest before, I didn’t just come back from the future knowing about a game. Truthfully, it’s not really a game. It’s training for what the world will be like in under a year. Didn’t really think you would believe me.”

“Well, I believe you now, asshole!” Kate screamed as she bashed the specter in what passed for its head. This time her broom did more than push the monster back. This time it hurt. I could see the soap bubbles on the bristles. Now it was much closer to a mop, and her mana flowed into the broom almost eagerly. Her swing sent it flying, passing through the counter and into the fridge, where it screamed again.

“You must have something really salty in there.”

“That would be Dad’s cooking.”

As it gathered itself, we repositioned to the more open space of the living room. At least we firmly had its attention. I took the spare seconds to get my finger lit up again. It guttered to life, kinda; it faded in and out, dimmer than before, and showed no signs of stabilizing. If I had a sword, this would probably be different, but finding spare swords lying around in modern America is tricky. I might not be a magical prodigy, but my experience would let me pull the same thing Kate was doing unconsciously if I had a real sword. Since I didn’t, I did my best to imagine my pinky was a tiny fencing foil. It didn’t work very well. Why the hell did it have to be my pinky that I imbued with mana? I was sure I looked like an idiot with the rest of my hand in a fist, pinky brandished before me, like I was about to duel for a lady’s honor or something.

As the creature charged at us again, we broke to either side, fighting like we had years of teamwork behind us. With my attacks less certain to do damage on a hit, I switched from knife-hand fighting to punches. If I could keep my mana inside the creature for long enough, it would naturally damage it. Like an infection.

It was an interesting reversal of roles. Kate was the one the Shadeling was dodging, and I was merely harrying it. I slipped a few punches through, but took some nasty gashes to my left arm in the process. Its momentary success distracted it enough for Kate to get a solid strike in, destroying what passed for a shoulder on the misty being. Enough mana really cut through it like a hot knife in butter. With its shoulder destroyed, its left claw dissipated into harmless silver wisps.

That was the turning point. Without two claws, it didn’t stand a chance against people that could harm it. A normal beast would have fled, but low rank spirits like shadelings weren’t bright enough for that. It fought to the end when Kate put her broom through its head while my mana-imbued hand was inside it, anchoring the bastard. The creature collapsed into silvery motes of dust, and most of them faded away.

I rushed over to examine Kate’s brother; Mark was his name, I think. It didn’t look like the creature got anything vital, just tore a decent chunk out of his side.

“Kate, call an ambulance. I’ll take care of the bleeding.” I tore my shirt off and pressed it to his side. Shifting him so that his weight would hold the shirt in place, I raced over to the silvery dust left behind by the Shadeling. There wasn’t much, but it should work well enough.

I might not be able to use my mana correctly, but the mana already present in monster remains was a different story.

I rushed back to Mark and ripped the remains of his shirt out of the way. Using his own blood, I drew a basic coalescence rune linked to a rune that represented the spoils of victory, with a line to each of his wounds. Sprinkling the dust over the mundane patterns of blood turned them from morbid fingerpainting into really shitty blood runes, ones not typically used for this, but it should keep him alive. I don’t actually know the runes for clotting or minor wound sealing. I know a healing rune that would work fine, if we had more than a thimbleful of mana to work with.

The blood runes flashed silver and sunk into his skin, his breathing becoming less haggard instantly. A bit of his color even came back. Kate was just getting off the phone, so I had her get first aid supplies while I reapplied the shirt as a makeshift bandage. With actual bandages I got him patched up to the point I was sure he would survive. Magically slowing the bleeding probably saved his life. Although, I’m not entirely sure what other effects it might have had. He might have a small affinity for the spiritual or immaterial now. It wouldn’t have worked like that in Ardos, but the rules here were different and unpredictable.

With Mark taken care of, we needed a story. “What did you tell the ambulance? Wild animal?”

Kate was visibly shaken, but holding herself together well. “Ye-yeah, I told them an animal broke in and mauled him.”

I quickly rearranged some furniture to better support that story, making the broken door the entry point. “Alright then, stick to that story. Can you get a dustpan and something to put the rest of this powder in?” It wasn’t much, but I could probably fashion a weapon out of the excess that would harm spirits. Something I’m sure her brother would appreciate when he woke up. She hugged me when I told her my idea.

“Damn kid, now you have blood all over you, too. On second thought that should help sell the story. I should get the hell out of here before someone questions why I am shirtless in the home of a kid while her brother is injured.” I had used some bandages to patch up my own wounds, so I wasn’t leaking, but if I were a cop, I wouldn’t exactly give me the benefit of the doubt.

Wordlessly, Kate handed me a hoodie. It was even close to my size. Must be her brother’s.

“Thanks, here’s my number. Call me when you get to the hospital. Call your folks the moment I’m gone first, though. They deserve to know what happened. Oh yeah, do you have a security system here?”

“Yeah, it records if there is a break in.”

“Perfect. Take the video off it and then break the camera. Need something to show your parents but telling the cops would cause… problems… they can’t do a damn thing about this, anyway.”

I threw the hoodie on and shoved the small Tupperware container of dust Kate gathered into its pocket.

“Thanks for saving me and my brother, Jacob, but how did you get here so fast? That thing appeared only a minute before you got here.”

“I took a cab… shit, there’s a record of me coming here. Right, new plan, I’m a friend of your brother’s. Get him to play along when he wakes up. I was coming by to drop off something he lent me… any ideas?”

She ran into another room and returned with a box; an old gaming system was in it, along with a few games. I took it from her to make sure my prints were on it before setting it on the counter. “Perfect. I arrived and helped drive the animal away. It was some sort of enormous dog, but the details were hard to make out since the lights weren’t on. It’s not good, but it should hold up as long as your brother plays along. With both of us being known… let’s see… ah we can say I met your brother after the interview and he realized I played AoA with his sister. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t a creep or something. Then we hit it off and became friends.”

Kate was giving me a strange look; I didn’t know if it was because I had practice coming up with alibis or if it was because of the one I made up. It didn’t really matter because the ambulance chose that moment to arrive. Alright, showtime.