Shrapnel of a Cage

I moved quickly, wrapping my bound arms around one of the small barrels of grain spirit and dragging it to the centre of the room. Leaving the container lidded, I heaved it over, grunting beneath my gag. A thin trickle of fluid sprang from the imperfect lid, and a little stream of alcohol flowed along the floor. I crouched over it and rubbed the ropes that bound my hands in it; avoiding, such as I could, the touch of the spirit on my skin.

Next, I moved across the room and grabbed the bucket I had used to relieve myself. Grabbing it awkwardly by the handle, I brought it back towards the untouched barrels in the corner of the room. There was a satisfied grin on my face as I tossed the contents into a store of salted fish. Returning to the centre of the room, I hurled the bucket at the lantern.

The glass of the light source shattered loudly, and I winced. After waiting for a few moments, I moved to fetch the bucket and hurled it once more. This time, the rotted rope holding the lantern to the ceiling tore, and the lantern crashed down upon the grain spirit.

WHOMP. 

The little candle flame travelled along the stream of alcohol until it reached the barrel still half-full of spirit. With an explosive detonation, the lid was torn from the container and hurled away. The room, for a moment, was lit with an eerie blue radiance as the grain spirit burned. A fraction of a second later, the light died, and only a ruddy red remained from the flames on the barrel itself.

I shuffled towards the burning debris. Exhaling, I moved the ropes that bound my hands over the heat. Soaked in spirit as they were, the ropes began to burn. So too did my skin.

I screamed and yowled and cried as I held my hands over that furnace. The heat of the sun was upon my wrists, the heat of Sheol below. Every time I went to snatch them back, however, I thought of Marjorie, lying upon the cold hilltop. 

This was my baptism. I bit through my tongue and the taste of blood filled my mouth.

Finally, I heaved my hands away from the hellish barrel and plunged them into the water bucket. The heat seemed to cling to the burns for a moment, before sloughing away. I shivered.

I pulled my hands out of the water. The ropes, their cores burnt right through, fell away easily enough beneath the strength of my arms. Feeling my wrists with my fingers, I realised that the burnt areas were incapable of sensation " I had burnt the very feeling out of my skin. I grimaced. My wrists were red, welted and raised, the affected area slightly reflective. White blisters were already beginning to form. This was going to be a problem, no doubt. Severed skin or shattered bone I could repair, patterning together until the two sides acted as a whole. But burns were a different matter. I could not rejoin and repair, but not force new skin to grow - I needed something intact to work with. Even today, I am far from understanding the complex runes required for true regrowth of the body.

The injury, severe though it was, fell from my mind’s focus but a moment later, as I coaxed a little magelight into the air with my fingertips. Sol flickered and streamed around my reddened hands. The joy of utilising my art was overwhelming, and I felt a boyish grin alight on my face. The expression reminded me of the gag covering the lower half of my head, and I tore it off hurriedly.

The door crashed open, and a dark silhouette slowly stepped onto the rickety staircase. "Why all the noise, Verich rat?" My tormentor from an hour before. As he stepped forward, his face was illuminated by the green-blue of my magelight, and I had the pleasure to observe the withering of his grin and widening of his eyes.

His hand moved to his hip, grasping for his firearm. I was faster. I spliced Force into Direction and blasted the contraption from the man's hand. It hit the doorframe and fell through the emptiness between two of the plank stairs, landing in the space beneath the staircase. The bolt of force spun the man, and he fell prone. He took a breath to cry out, but I spliced Sound into Regression and threw the spell over him like an intangible sheet of silk, silencing him. Quickly, I used Force and the second harmonic of Direction to telekinetically slam the door.

I slowly stalked up the staircase, gathering power in the pit of my stomach as I walked, extinguishing my magelight as I went. The thrum of rage and magic drifted out behind me like a black cloak. I was not a man, but death's whisper. Doom's portent. I was the breath of Sheol below; I was the vengeance of Wind and Wave, and of gods above. Not a man, no! Not man, but judgment. I reached the top of the staircase, towering above the prone figure. I was an arbiter, ready to deliver sentience. I raised a hand, runes and fury rising from it in a roiling blur.

He rolled, pointing the arm that had lain beneath his body toward me. He held a second firearm, smaller than the first.

If I had not still been that little bit scattered by the head trauma, I may have reacted fast enough to avoid the shot entirely. As it was, I dived to the left, falling off the staircase entirely. The weapon barked, and I felt a spear of pain lodge in my left shoulder. I must have fallen no more than six feet, but it felt like twenty. I rolled to reduce the impact and then came up into an undisciplined crouch.

I would like to say I paid the injury no mind, but in reality I was terrified over the state of my shoulder. Nevertheless, the fear served to only heighten the acuity of my thoughts. I knew that, if my opponent laid eyes on me, I was done. I needed to stop him laying eyes on me. I needed to stop his eyes.

Clenching my eyelids shut, I spliced Progression into Sol and pushed the runes out into the room.

So bright was the flare of light that, even behind the curtain of my eyelids, I saw the flash as white-blue, not the ruddy red that is normally seen by a closed eye. I suspect my opponent would have cried out, had he not been silenced by my earlier spell.

I let the brightness die and opened my eyes, blinking rapidly. Seeing one of the barrels in the corner, I ran and ducked behind it, clutching at my shoulder. I had a momentary respite as the man's eyes adjusted. I drew a few breaths and forced my mind through the haze of pain. I moved my head around the barrel, my eyes searching for my opponent. A shot cracked against the barrel and I pulled myself back behind it, splinters flying around my ears. I sent a quick force rune streaming in the general direction of the staircase, where I knew the man to be, but I had rushed the rune, and my power barely held together for a half of the distance to the stair. I started to form a complicated spell with my fingertips.

Progression was spliced into Location, with a soaring arc of runes built atop of that base - a tonic of Ice, a second harmonic of Force, a third harmonic of Sound, all tied off with a neat flick of the fingers. I held the spell in my left hand, its power hovering above my palm, a heat-haze of slight colour signifying its meta-presence. Twice during the spellcraft, lead shots from the firearm impacted against the barrel. My silence spell still prevented the shots from being audible, muffling any sound my opponent made. I doubted the barrel would maintain any level of structural integrity for long.

I stepped out of the barrel's protection and sent my spell streaming at the base of the staircase. A shot ricocheted off the edge of the container, sending a cascade of tiny wooden arrows through the air.

My spell caught. The wood of the staircase froze, mist and condensation forming for a fraction of a second. Then the rest of the spell triggered, and a shockwave shattered the frozen wood into dagger-like shards.

The staircase collapsed upon itself, the man crying out in surprise as he fell towards the floor. It appeared my silence-imposing spell had faded. I threw out a hand and, splicing Regression and mind, rendered the man unconscious.

I didn't end his life. There had been enough death that day.

Instead, I dragged the man into a corner, bound him and gagged him with the bonds that had held me but a few minutes ago (the ropes were singed, but hardly useless). I smiled at my ropecraft. As the saying goes, "A sailor's son, a sailor's hands."

The lead shot appeared to have passed right though my shoulder. I repaired the skin with runes of Patterning, which stopped the bleeding, but I lacked the luxury of time with which to repair the muscle and flesh.

Having destroyed the stair, I was forced to open the door telekinetically, with a Force rune and a first harmonic Direction rune, and then to pull myself up - a experience made undignified and highly painful by the burns on my wrists and my shoulder wound.

Finally, after more than two minutes of struggle, I emerged into a plain corridor. The smell of mold remained in the air, and the paint was peeling from the walls. The ceiling looked ready to collapse, and was splattered with wet spots.

There was a door ahead of me, and the length of the corridor extended out to my left. To my right was a dead end, the wall adorned with a tapestry depicting nothing but simple geometric patterns, a bad piece of handiwork through and through. Cheap as it was, it still represented more wealth than  anything else I'd seen so far in this establishment.

I snuck to the door and slowly opened it. I gazed into the chamber beyond, and saw a young girl tied to a chair.

The girl could not have been older than twelve years. Her face was scuffed with dirt and one of her temples was marked with red. Blood dripped from a nostril, soaking into a cloth gag similar to the one I'd been bound with. Her eyes widened when she saw me. They were dark eyes - the irises almost unnaturally so. Her sclera seemed to shine in comparison.  The strangeness was further accentuated by her skin. It wasn't the coffee colour of the people from Empirical Candor proper, nor the olive of the my people, but rather a pallid white. Dirty hair of the dark blonde variety hung down over her face. She was deathly thin. Her eerie eyes widened when she saw me.

I was about to step into the room when a man's voice emanated from the left of the door.

"Yes?" The voice carried the heavy accent of Empirical Candor - a posh, polished and curt sound that seemed out of place in the rotting surrounds.

I froze, hardly daring to breathe.

"This is not a good time to interrupt me. I believe I may have devised a way to force the Hollow to talk."

Hollow? I pushed the word away to be dealt with later.

"Leave me now. I will see if the next technique will make her divulge her knowledge."

Her. He was talking about the girl. He was going to hurt her. If one judged by her appearance, he had already done so, perhaps several times.

I heard a roaring in my ears as I crashed through the door.

The man was young - perhaps five years my senior - and light, with dark brown skin and a silvery breastplate. He looked over at me, shock in his eyes, before I slammed into him. His hand went to a sword hilt on his hip as he fell. An experienced fighter, then. I knocked his hand away from the weapon, and then we both hit the floor. A spear of pain flared through my shoulder, and I grunted loudly.

I kicked out at him as we both lay prone, catching him on the knee. Quick as a snake, he wrapped a forearm around my neck. I sent an elbow into his sternum, and he lost the hold.

We both rolled, putting distance between us. I suppose the man wanted to draw his sword, but it was the wrong move. With a little space and a clearer head, I simply built a Mind base and extended it into a Force tonic, before sending the spell streaming towards the swordsman.

He fell to the ground, saliva dripping from his mouth.

I stood slowly, gripping my shoulder. The girl seemed oddly calm. I walked over to her and began to untie her, wincing further whenever my burnt wrists grated against the rope.

Once the gag fell from her face, the girl sighed in fulfilment and cracked her neck, before turing towards me and murmuring, "Ah, much better."

I opened my mouth to say some small encouragement or voice some query, but she cut across me: "My name is Harbinger, if you must know - and you, Carl Markos, are twenty-seven and one-half seconds late."

Reviews

[GC]

about halfway through I started seeing a computer game being played out, with my mouse arrow clicking on "SPLICE" or "FORCE"" which really put me off reading. Although the detail is graphic I just lost interest with all the abilities Carl Markos had.

then I saw kitty soft paws at the end? WTF. nice piece of writing though, The detail revealed everything but Im not much into magic.

[Taal Vastal]

Kitty soft paws? Could you please clarify what you mean?

I understand that the detail of the magic system has become wearying, but personally when I read, I love 'hard' magic systems - ones where the rules of magic are laid out, and it becomes no more arcane than mathematics or swords. That was my motivation for all of the rune stuff.

When you say you're not much into magic, do you mean MY magic system, the way I write about magic, or just magic in general literature?

[GC]

Yeh, hi taal - personally, i have a bit of a problem with unexplained powers. Carl has a lot of them.
Maybe you explain in the second part about the magic, but for me , it was a bit convenient for him each problem he encountered . Problem/ magic....problem/ magic....problem/magic... Sorta takes the thrill out of a situation when all you have to do is whammo and the issue is gone. No key for door - whammo splice spell unlock power. Fat guy guarding door- whammo force spell give him a bout of - diarrhoea . Your writing is great BTW, just the genre i dislike.

Kitty soft paws- ha - puss in boots female Mexican/spanish hit man, i just got a sense of zorro/ puss in boots with the introduction at the end - sorry i have an acquired taste in humour. Will read on though.