“You’re Owen, right?” I called across the room. “Remember me? Samantha King? The girl you hired to do your dirty work for you? You ruined my life!” My voice had gotten progressively louder and I’d started walking towards the center of the room without realizing it.
“Not my fault you took a bad job. You should have saved a bullet for yourself, so I’d say that was your fault.” He took several slow steps forward, somehow he looked bigger with every step. “But I’m a nice guy, so I’ll give you a second chance with that bullet.” He pulled a revolver from behind his back and quickly aimed it at me before firing three shots.
Hope’s silver mist whipped out in tendrils, stopping the first two shots dead in the air but the third made it through. I felt the impact in my right shoulder and I knew immediately it wasn’t a normal bullet. My knee hit the ground at the same time as the two bullets Hope had caught. I could feel the chaos of my body trying to heal itself only to leave behind more traces of silver. My body pushed the bullet out quickly but there was still plenty of it left in my blood to keep me frozen in pain. All I could do was grip the handle of the sword in one hand and my shoulder with the other.
“You know, that silver those bullets are made out of isn’t normal silver. To get it soft enough to leave traces in your blood would make it impossible to fire from a gun. It’d melt the second it left the barrel. That’s why I made a hundred special, just for collectors. They’re soft enough to pollute the bloodstream and make your body fight itself, but they’re held together with bits of souls. I don’t need to explain that the soul is so powerful it can take on nearly any desired property, but I guess I just did. It just makes me feel so much better knowing that not only will you suffer as your body tries to kill itself but you’ll slowly turn into a mindless and confused monster.” He exhaled, smiling. “You know what a wraith is right? Horrible monster made out of bits of souls and an unlucky collector? I’m not exactly sure why it happens but it is fun to watch.”
“Already been there, won’t work on me.” I smiled back. “Nice try though, might have even made it easier for me to kill you like that. Last wraith I saw did some pretty nasty stuff to their old contractor.” My hand went instinctively to the chain around my neck. I could feel the pain from the silver fading slowly.
“Well, you’re fine, but I’m pretty sure I heard tell of another collector taking one of my bullets recently. Doesn’t matter that much right now, but I still take pride knowing I ruined at least one life with my silver bullets.” Owen stopped about ten feet in front of Hope. The silver mist stopped exactly halfway between them, like there was an invisible wall there. “I’ll give you one last chance, you can always just give up now girls. I don’t like hurting women but that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“Yeah no, not happening.” I grunted as I got back on my feet. “We’re taking you out, right now, and we don’t need Dante to do it.”
“No we don’t.” Hope took a step forward. The full body of the mist pushed forward towards Owen but stopped just in front of him.
“You know most contractors never even bother to figure out what this mist is, especially the younger ones. I know no one else in my family really bothered to figure out more than that it was a manifestation of their will. I’m not entirely sure what it is myself, but best I can figure it’s like steam from a dynamo. A waste product. We burn souls just to use a waste product. Seems awfully inefficient doesn’t it? Why not use the raw power we generate instead?” An invisible force cut through Hope’s mist like a knife, barely missing her as she ducked out of the way.
I sprinted forward, holding the sword ready to lunge. As I passed Hope I felt a chill run through me, not a physical chill but almost like a mental chill somehow. The opposite happened as I closed in on Owen, an intense heat overcame me and while I couldn’t feel any direct effects I could tell it wasn’t safe. I made one quick lunge at him with the sword, and I was surprisingly close, but the blade was pushed to the side at the last second.
“I don’t think it’s really safe to be in his little hot air bubble, Sam.” Hope called from farther away than I remembered her being. “He’ll be more effective within a closer range.”
“My range is whatever I want it to be.” Owen said calmly, still just standing in place. The confident smirk on his face was infuriating.
Without knowing why I held up the sword so the blade was in front of my heart. Just as I did an invisible force pushed back against the blade and I slid a good inch back before I found the proper balance to hold my ground. I still couldn’t see anything but some part of my mind could sense it. I was acting on pure instinct as I tilted the blade to the side and ran back at Owen. A metallic grating noise followed me as the blade of the sword scrapped along the invisible surface of whatever it was that had struck out at me. I made a swing at Owen, forcing him to take a step out of the way. Before the momentum faded I could feel myself being pushed away from him and out of the bubble of heat.
“Get over here before he cuts you in half.” Hope sounded aggravated. It probably wasn’t the optimal situation for her, she couldn’t order me like she could Amy and that was a disadvantage.
I wasn’t moving fast enough for Hope's taste, I could tell by her expression. Two silver tendrils of mist, although closer up they were more like thick fog, wrapped around me and yanked me to her side. Just being near them sucked out all of the warmth from whatever it was Owen was doing. Actually touching them was painful, physically painful, like I was being jabbed with thousands of tiny needles injecting ice water into my veins. It seemed like the longer I was exposed to both hot and cold forces the more physical the sensations became and the less abstract they were. The mist was more defined and I could see little ripples of hot air around Owen.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I need you to distract him for me.” Hope whispered as soon as I got close. “If you can make him focus on you, even just evading him, then I can land a hit.”
“How many hits do you need?” I wasn’t sure how long I could keep him busy, let alone keep him distracted once he realized that that was what I was doing.
“Not sure, we came here not knowing exactly how powerful he was. He’s obviously a lot stronger than we had anticipated, but we still have a chance. He doesn’t look too familiar with whatever it is he’s using. He might have actually attacked us while talking if he was more confident in his abilities.”
“What if I actually land a hit?” It was unlikely to happen, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
“You probably won’t do much.” I frowned. I’d figured that would be the case but it would have been nice to know that I was more than just a distraction. “I can give you a little help though.” Hope lifted the sword still in my hand and ran her finger along the blade leaving behind a dark reddish-purple trail that definitely wasn’t blood. A small blue flame that almost looked more fluid than burning erupted along the edge of the blade where she’d left the blood trail. “Now go.”
I turned and ran at Owen without needing any more explanation. It was a simple plan, I had a simple weapon, and there wasn’t much that I needed to know. I was curious, but it wasn’t really the best time for curiosity. As soon as I got close to the hot spot around him I skirted the edge to try and get behind him. I couldn’t help but smile as he turned to keep an eye on me. His head spun to the side towards Hope quickly giving me the opportunity to make a run at him. The blade of the sword cut through the opposing force that had pushed me back before and I landed a hit under his arm. It only looked like it cut at his shirt, but his attention was immediately back on me.
“You hit me.” His rage was calm, quiet, almost serene. It was kind of freaky, like he was just shut off emotionally. “You hit me!” Then the dam burst and I felt a surge of heat cloud my mind. If it was possible to boil brains, that was what he was doing and it hurt like nothing else ever had. Which was saying something considering the amount of times I’d died in my second life.
Somewhere in the middle of my screaming I realized Owen had moved. It was a very slight movement, but very satisfying. It almost made me forget the pain and laugh in triumph. Hope had made her move and now Owen was missing the better part of his left arm. I didn’t really have the energy to celebrate the small victory though, he hadn’t stopped trying to kill me. If anything he was trying harder now, and somehow I was still conscious, flat on my back but still conscious. Screaming and writhing in pain, but my sword was still gripped in my hand and I was still conscious. I couldn’t think about much else, possibly because I didn’t have the brain cells to do so. At that precise moment burning alive sounded like a picnic.
“Can you move?” Hope called, her voice was slightly worried. At least I thought she sounded worried, I wasn’t entirely sure. I had run out of air to scream in pain with or answer her question so I just stared at her. “Well if you can’t move and save yourself, and I can’t order you to move, I’ll just have to do things the hard way.”
A string of silver mist wrapped around each of my limbs and pulled me off the ground. For a second I was weightless in the air before being tilted upright and my feet hit the ground. It took me a second to feel the chill that came with the assistance, but it was almost nice. The numbing sensation was welcoming and if I wasn’t busy I would have gladly succumbed to complete numbness. Additional strings found their way to my neck, back, and the tip of my sword. I felt like a puppet as my arm swung wildly about, cutting away at the air with the sword. Somehow with each cut I felt less and less pain from Owen’s attack and more of the chilling sensation which felt increasingly more comfortable. Eventually I felt strong enough to move on my own, but the strings remained, adding additional strength to my movements.
Hope hadn’t been still the entire time she had been orchestrating her puppeteering strings. Owen was still putting effort into killing me, but his main focus was on Hope as she darted around the room avoiding invisible attacks. The only indicators of which were the impact they made on her visible defensive cloud or the room itself as they flew by her entirely. Even as I was hoisted around and making my own skirmishing attacks she continued to successfully evade and attack on her own, the whole time I could still feel the strings tugging with my movements giving me an extra push.
“You girls are annoying.” Owen grunted, dodging a lunge from my sword and several spear like cones or silver mist. “But despite your extraordinary display, you’ve neglected to ask why my multitasking capacity was diminished. Don’t you think it’s odd that my focus is so limited?”
“I think you’re just limiting yourself more by talking.” I grunted as I stepped into a second lunge. The tip of the sword stopped dead just short of his neck, like it had hit a solid wall. His smile told me something was up, but too late.
“And you still don’t realize what I was doing this whole time.” I was starting to see the wavering heat in the air all around me, boxing me in. “You were focusing on me, while I was focusing on surrounding you. I had to move slowly though, too fast and you might have noticed.”
“What does surrounding us accomplish?” Hope was trapped close by, her shroud of silver mist defining the dome shape of her invisible prison. “I’ll break through eventually.”
“But not before I crush you both into such compressed and dense forms that you won’t be able to heal.” I scraped the invisible walls of my dome with the sword. Even with the powered up flames it couldn’t cut through. Owen smirked at my failed escape attempts, and with every failed attempt the dome grew slightly more cramped. “I think I’ll enjoy this.”
As I was forced into a fetal position I looked over to Hope who was struggling against the shrinking space, but she only had a bit more room than I did. I could feel the surface pressing against my skin, gentle at first but the feeling grew more painful with every second. Just as I was about to close my eyes and accept my imminent death by invisible trash compactor the floor shook. The compression stopped and Owen looked away, he almost looked concerned. A second quake, more powerful this time, shook the room and a sound like thunder rumbled through the air. I had never heard a legitimate explosion before, but I knew that was what it was, and I had a pretty good idea of who was causing it.
“I don’t think my boss would approve of the way you’re treating his girlfriend.” Owen turned back to me and I smiled against the invisible surface of my prison.