Magnus: Part 6
The boombots hit before I did, turning everything on Magnus’ side of his shield into roiling red, orange, and white fire.
Ironically, I didn’t feel the explosions at all. He’d protected me from my own blasts.
While they didn’t hurt him, his eyes widened, and he turned around, shouting, the explosions adding to the surreal feel. Not seeing an attack from that side, he turned back to me.
His eyes widened as my sword hit the shield between us.
Knowing that I wasn’t quite up to where I’d been before, I’d put all the power I could into the strike. What’s more, I wasn’t depending on straight power.
Kee had taught me a little about how Artificers fought among themselves. Creatures that existed in more than one universe at a time, they’d extend their attacks beyond the universe they were in to cut into alternate selves of their opponent or to hit opponents that were out of phase.
In short, it was literally the kind of thing Rachel and my grandmother did naturally. I’d found those exercises hard and hadn’t been using the technique.
In this moment, I had to.
The sword hit the shield, sonics blasting away, boombots exploding inside it, and the blade extending past our reality into the nearest alternates.
Somewhere between all of that, the shield broke, and the sword cut through. Magnus shrank back, the glowing form contracting as he tried to avoid the sword.
Despite his speed, the sword caught him. It wasn’t a deep wound, grazing across what would have been his belly if he had a physical form. For a moment, the color around the graze turned deeper, a golden glow mixed with something else… Orange, maybe?
At the same time, because a sword sometimes isn’t just a sword, I sensed a host of competing stimuli.
First among them was Magnus’ own pain and fear. They warred with a sense of triumph and satisfaction and a greedy slurping of power from elsewhere. I didn’t hear it in so many words, but I could see him reaching out through the device into alternate universes where he’d connected with other versions of himself.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
He was draining them of life. I felt energy being pulled into Magnus and heard incomprehensible pleading. He was killing them to get the power to face me.
I pushed any thought of sympathy away. Whatever his alternate universe versions were like, he shouldn’t use them as food.
Twisting to strike at him again, I could see the lines to his other selves through my Artificer senses. I cut down toward one, severing it in two, and guiding the blade toward him.
This time I hit what would have been his thigh, and it wasn’t a graze. It sank into the glowing, alternative muscle, and he gasped.
My cut into his leg happened just in time for me to catch the last bit of feedback from when I disconnected him from his remote meal in combination with the pain from my sword in his thigh.
The feedback left him shuddering from the waves of pain, but the sword left him with deep pain. He couldn’t even concentrate enough to draw on other versions of himself to heal.
One of them closed the connection on his own, and then a second. That’s when I felt Magnus fear turn to terror. I also sensed his attention turn to the ground below us.
It didn’t take much to guess why. He’d dropped the small stone that gave him access to every part of the device when he’d turned immaterial. Now he’d lost access to the versions of himself he was draining of life, and he needed more power.
That stone was how he’d gotten it.
Trying to drive my blade deeper into him, I didn’t have time to figure out where it was, but the moment I wondered, my implant flashed a picture of Ray picking it up off the ground. It had lost the look of molten metal that I’d seen as it fell.
I almost felt sorry for Magnus. Facing transformation into an Artificer with no guidance, threatened by someone with the ability to kill you, and your least trustworthy ally had picked up the device you needed to survive.
I didn’t feel that sorry, though. His machinations had killed Travis, kidnapped and brainwashed my cousin, and caused misery across the world.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he were pleading for mercy. I could feel him drawing in power. It wasn’t a question of who the target would be.
As his power increased, I drew out my sword from his leg and stabbed him straight through the chest, tapping the device’s life support for what I could get. It wasn’t as much as normal, but I could see lightning-like energy expand through Magnus’ body.
Then he flew apart, burning sparks flying everywhere, reminding me of a campfire when a pile of logs collapsed.
There, however, you were left with gray, burning ashes. This left me facing nothing in the air and strongly aware of a splitting headache that hurt so much that I could barely think.
Still, I couldn’t leave Ray with the stone shard.