The hallway beyond the door was wide enough for a two cars abreast to fit through. Several doors lead off into other rooms. Empty four-foot diameter cages lay discarded against the wall on the right as we moved cautiously along.

The thick iron doors with barred windows viewed into empty holding cell. Some even being used as storage. Another had a steel frame bed, with a filthy mattress on it. Handcuffs and blood stains decorated the scene beyond that.

I could only imagine at what that room had been used for and shivered. Something told me it wasn’t an exorcism. The end of the hallway branched off into diverging paths. Leading left and right.

The left ended in a door that once opened lead downwards into a dark staircase.

“I doubt the cage we saw early came through here,” I murmured thoughtfully.

“I highly doubt they would try opening the cage up and dragging the prisoner down either. Right, then?” Patricia nodded to the right. I let go of the door about to nod agreeably with her when a shrill distant scream drifted up out of nowhere.

We all froze in place as the scream tapered off. Hot air licked at my back, making me shiver.

“Oh-kay, that was freaky!” Karen fidgeted nervously and glanced about our group. “I really fucking-hate haunted stuff.”

I ignored the Stormcaster’s mumbling and focused, turning back to the door I’d left partially open.

“I think it came from down this way,” I gestured, moving the door open wider.

“I’m not sure,” Ophelia said softly. She closed her eyes and tilted her head, listening. I shot a questioning glance at Patricia.

“Ophelia has the best hearing. It’s… Uhhh… a side-affect of her powers,” the Technomancer stumbled through an explanation.

I didn’t buy it but nodded along anyway.

“Shush!” the angelic-woman hissed, and we all shut up. Her eyes snapped open and she starred at me. “Someone’s down there. It’s sounds as if they’re being tortured.”

As soon as the words left her lips I slammed the door open and raced down the stairs. Not at all caring if the metallic clang of the iron door against the stone echoed loudly.

My friends rushing after me, keeping hot on my heels as the stairs twisted right, and then left, and the right again. The flare of torch fire-light made me squint as I came out onto a pathway and gasped.

A chain-link fence over looked a holding room. Chains dangled down from the centre of the ceiling. Spot lights lit the four corners of the room, shining inwards towards the center.

On a small dais in the center was a hooded woman. Her stain and torn white blouse and light blue jeans, were eerily reminisce of clothing I’d seen my mom wear.

Standing before her silently was a praying figure in a robe. The hood of his robes covered his face from view. The woman screamed and it sounded just like my mom’s voice. She thrashed against the chains binding her wrist’s. The tips of light blonde hair peeked out from beneath where the hood was tied.

“Someone! Anyone! help…” she divulged into sobs. Her arms sagging as she struggle fruitlessly against the chains. Her torn jeans were soaked down her inner thigh’s by urine. Her blouse and the hood had bloody stains about them.

Rage boiled up inside me, the more I saw the woman.

“Ophelia, cut the fence,” I commanded. The angelic-woman nodded tersely as she manifested the golden blades from above her wrists.

She moved her arms forward, the links in the fence popped almost immediately on contact with her blades. The captive woman stopped her thrashing. Her hooded head whipped about as she tried to discern the origin of the noise.

“Once the fence is down. Karen, Spear that guy. Patricia, shoot the chain, and Ophelia you tend to the woman,” they all headed firmly at my words. I so wanted this woman to be my mom. Wished for it to be. The signs were all there. The woman’s short height was remarkably similar to my mom.

Yet I wouldn’t jump the gun. Whether it was or not, we would still save her. Ophelia’s hands finally came full circle.

The flimsy metal fence fell into the room, and Karen wasted no time in leaping through the hole. She whipped her spear back and flung it at the kneeling figure.

It shot straight and true. Punched right through the praying figure’s back and penetrated the floor. The woman screamed and flinched at the sound.

Karen tucked into a roll as she hit the ground and sprung up making for the platform. The rest of us followed after. I levitated jerkily down. My head flaring with pain. Patricia using her thrusters drifted straight towards the dais. Ophelia landed gently beside me, her healing hands already alight and glowing as she placed them across my brow.

“Thank you,” I told her, cupped her hand in mine, and kissed her palm. Her powers worked like a salve on my exhausted brain.

We moved to the dais. The praying figure was unmoving, Karen’s spear pinning it to the ground.

“Oh god,” the woman gasped. “Oh, thank god.”

“It’s okay, we’re here to help,” Ophelia said, as she and Karen worked on the hood. Patricia shot the chain causing the bound woman’s entire body to sag completely.

“Just relax,” Karen told her gently and began unwinding the chain from the woman’s wrist.

“Karen!” the woman exclaimed in shock. I blinked as everyone shared a look. Karen’s own eyes were wide as they tore the hood off.

Murky silver eyes and a sharp featured face blinked up at the blonde Stormcaster. A smile cracked to her dried bloody lips.

“Natalia?” Karen gasped and lunged forward to hug her friend. Disappointment washed through me. A part of had known it wasn’t my mom the second I’d heard her voice. Yet I had hoped.

Natalia’s murky silver eyes teared up as she looked from Karen, up to Ophelia, then over to Patricia. I took a step back and turned. Letting them all have their moment as I went to look at the praying figure.

“Eli?” Ophelia asked me as I moved away. My heart sank as I realised my mom wasn’t here. Yet she still could be down here somewhere. I had to hold out hope for that. Otherwise I didn’t know…

“How did you guys get here?” Natalia asked them as they began to help her sit up. “Where even is here for that matter?”

“You don’t know?” Patricia asked the woman sceptically. I detected a modicum of annoyance in her tone.

“Oh, I figure they were ASP members pretty quickly. But they had Necro’s filling their ranks when they grabbed me.

“How did they get you?” Karen asked her friend, as she finished unwinding the chains from around Natalia’s sore wrists.

“I was left a message about a lead and decided to follow it up. Then the ASP stormed the house and snag me,” she sighed.

“And you didn’t even think to use your powers?” Patricia asked her the annoyance now obvious in her tone.

“No. You know how it changes me. How I act… I didn’t want to wake up and realised I’d decimated some poor neighbourhood. It seemed like a nice place.

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Alarms went off in my mind. Her name… Natalia. A message… Following a lead…

“Your Natalia Cross?” I quizzed, turning back to the group of women.

“Y-yes. Uh, who’re you?” she asked me hesitantly.

“Natalia Cross, journalist?” I added cocking an eyebrow as several things began to connect.

“Y-yes,” she blinked her murky silver eyes at me in confusion.

“What’re you getting at, Elias?” Karen asked tersely, planting a hand on her hip.

“You didn’t happen to be following a message left about the Byson article were you?”

“I was,” she blinked and starred at me.

“Eli, explain,” Ophelia said as she came over to hug me. I nodded and took a deep breath.

“You received a message from one: Elias Thompson. About information on the Byson article. You then went to my home, broke in, and ended up being captured mistaken for my mom.”

“Your house? it was your fault I got kidnapped?” her voice got louder as she finished.

“Why did you break into my house?” I asked her in return. She cleared her throat and looked away in embarrassment.

“Wait, if you were at Eli’s home. Then who the hell trashed your apartment?” Karen frowned.

“Ugh, my apartments been trashed?” Natalia groaned pitifully.

“Yeah … sorry,” Karen smiled sheepishly.

“Where could your mother be then?” Patricia asked me directly, bringing us back on topic.

I shrugged and looked around. “Down here maybe. Or somewhere else.” I sighed sadly and felt Ophelia squeeze me.

“So… is he like the new guy of your little team?” Natalia said quietly to Karen, yet her voice travelled to me anyway. The blonde Stormcaster smirked and nodded her head.

“Yeah. He’s pretty fucking awesome. Even if he did wreck my car.”

“Oh?” the lighter blonde said lamely. Though I saw that she wasn’t at all sad about Karen’s ugly ass pink car. “Can we leave this place now?”

“Yeah. But they’re more people to free before we do,” I replied. My eyebrows pinched together as a noise rustled up from behind me. I turned around and pushed Ophelia behind my back when I saw the praying figure begin to move.

He jerked upright tearing the spear punctured through his chest out of the ground. Then his hood ignited with blue ghostly fire and burned away to reveal a menacing black horned skull. One of his hands withdrew a chain from his sleeve. It sprawled at his feet. The small weighted ball hit the ground, and ignited with blue fire.

I jerked back as the menacing black skull opened its jaws and cackled loudly. Only to jerk forward as Karen’s spear was ripped out of his chest.

Braken spun through the air to smack into the Stormcaster’s twirling hand.

“Uh, what the fuck is that?” Natalia said in a small panicky voice.

“How many of these Flame-skull fuckers are there?” I asked nobody in particular.

“I don’t know. But my guess is that they’re creations of the Lich,” Ophelia supplied thoughtfully. Blue flame-skull straightened up, seemingly unconcerned with the fist size hole in his chest.

Then another weighted chain fell out of his other sleeve.

“The head is its weak spot—oh, shit! disperse!” I wrapped my arms around Ophelia and flung us aside as both chain whipped straight towards us. We tumbled to the ground, and I made sure to protect Ophelia’s wings as we fell.

Karen batted away one chain’s aimed at Natalia. As Patricia used that moment to start shooting blasts of plasma at the skull. In one swift motion, flame-skull rattled one his chains up into the air and blocked each blast perfectly. His reaction-time completely supernatural.

He stepped aside one hand managing the chain that blocked Patricia’s shots. As the other seemed intent on striking at Natalia.

Ophelia rolled off me and onto her knee’s, her power flaring out of her as she manifested her golden wrist-blades.

I climbed onto my hands and knees, focusing inwards and forcing my powers to swell to the surface. My human-guise receded as my otherworldly appearance rushed over me. The aura of my Telekinetic powers swam around my body. Moving in a lazy mercurial flow. The stars in my aura seemed dimmer that those on my skin. I wondered if it had some sort of significant meaning. But had no time to ponder.

I shook the thought away and breathed in, my powers seeping into my flesh in a way that was remarkably different to dismissing it.

A tingling sensation spread entirely across my body as I stood onto my feet, feeling lighter than ever. Ophelia was already one step ahead of me, though, charging flame-skulls flank.

I flung out both hands and focused my power. The flaming chains halted in mid-air, caught in my unseen grip. the angelic-woman used the opportunity to fling herself into the air. Her wings powered her forward, and she struck. Aiming for the flaming skull with both blades extended.

The skull twisted atop it’s body, going a complete one hundred eighty degree’s. By the time I even opened my mouth to cry out for Ophelia to move. The skulls jaw’s cracked wide open, and in a flash of intense heat. Blue flame erupted, enveloping Ophelia.

She screamed in agony as her wings ignited. I stared in horror as she beat her wings. The blue flame creeping across them. Everything else seemed to be forgotten as the fire then jumped from her wings and into her hair.

“No!” I shouted as she spun about the room and crashed into a wall head first, screaming all the while. She fell limp to the ground. The blue fire still eating across her body.

This couldn’t be happening…

I didn’t even notice it when the ground beneath our feet began to quake. Or when my own feet lifted off the floor. I saw Natalia trying to scramble over to the burning angelic woman. But the constant shaking kept her away. A third chain erupted from the back of the flame-skull, but I paid it no mind. I drifted over to the woman I had in some small way, began to love.

The flaming chains struck out at me, but a twitch of my thoughts spun twins rounds of telekinetic force into existence and blasted straight through them.

I heard Karen and Patricia calling for me to stop. But stop what…?

I chose to ignore them.

Cracks splintered through the concrete of the room. Dust fell from ceiling as everything began to grind and shift. I hovered three feet away from Ophelia’s body as she drifted off the ground towards my welcoming arms. A gentle wave of force dismissed the flames entirely, and reality smacked right back into me.

Other than the gash across her head, a swelling bruise, and possibly a broken wing. She was completely unburnt.

“O-oh, god. Thank god,” I cried softly, cradling her to my chest.

The sound of metal ringing through the room caught my attention. I looked over just as the flaming weighted ball of the chain stopped a foot away from my face.

Rage boiled through me.

This fucker had tricked me!

He like’s playing with fire!

I growled as I dug deep into my core seeking out Spectres presence. Then I gave her a command. An empathic flurry of thoughts and feeling’s answered me. Concern and fear the most prominent of all.

“As you wish, young Sovereign,” came Spectre’s voice to my mind.

“I do,” I hissed, and the chain caught before me swelled with a different type of fire. It was starry-purple and blaze hotly as it shot along the chains length. My mind buzzing along with it as I sank my consciousness into the flames.

My head felt like putty in the clumsy—sticky—hands of a toddler. Which meant it felt like mush.

I was distantly aware of Karen and Patricia trying to battle more chain’s the flame-skull kept weaving at them. My own Telekinetic fire, blazed across the chain. Leaving a trail of molten metal pooling to the ground in its wake.

Just before my own fire reached flame-skulls hand he let go and dropped the chain. I bubbled the Telekinetic fire, and leapt from the falling chain and grabbed a hold of flame-skulls sleeve.

Rage soared through me hotly as I burned across the fuckers body, seeping into the gaping hole Karen’s spear had made previously. I then split myself in a dozen different directions through the interior of flame-skulls body. Melting a burning path everywhere I went.

When I finally linked back with other pieces of my consciousness, I released my hold on the starry-purple fire. It popped in a series of small explosions. Each time it happened. My head reeled in agony. But it was fucking worth it if it meant killing this asshole.

When the last fiery explosion erupted from within flame-skull, blowing out another large chunk of his chest, he collapsed dead. His skull head rolled off his corpse. I squinted as my consciousness struggled against fading.

The black horned skull rolled to a stop on the floor everyone held their breath.

Blue flame blazed out of the skulls eyes and floated upwards. Its jaws unhinged as a mad laugh began to bubble out. Karen’s spear launched through the air and struck the skull meeting it dead center forehead. The blue fire puffed into nothingness. The mad laughter stopped. Then Braken, in its crackling glory drifted back to the blonde Stormcaster’s hands.

“Is everyone—” I slurred as my head began to sway.

“Oh god!” Natalia gasped and rushed towards Ophelia in my arms.

“It was a fucking trap after-all!” Patricia snarled as she and Karen came towards us. My head pulsed over and over. Each beat an unending drum in my skull. It almost made me consider throwing myself on Karen’s spear. Sharp insistent pokers jabbed at my eyes.

“Calm down, Patricia,” Natalia told the Technomancer.

“You were the fucking bait this whole time, dumbass,” Patricia retorted and shook her head. “That fucker was waiting for us.”

“Oh, fuck,” Karen said quietly, realisation written plain across her face.

“Ex-plain…” I almost drooled on Ophelia still wrapped in my arms.

“The illusionary wall,” Patricia said simply. My mind had to catch-up for a few seconds before the points all connected together. “That flame-skull-fucker was an Illusionist. I don’t know how, but we all saw it.”

“He felt us come through the illusionary wall in the barracks, and waited down here with the bait,” Karen continued.

“The Lich is sending us a message,” Patricia said darkly. “That he’s way more capable than we realised.”

“Fuck!” Karen hissed.

I hadn’t realised my eyes were closed until a soft voice murmured something and hands cupped me. Drawing my face downwards. Warmth enraptured me in its embrace as my lips were enveloped.

“Hmm?” I mumbled softly. I cracked a single eye open to see Ophelia’s beautiful features inches from my face as she kissed me.

Her healing powers swaddling us in an embrace of light. I felt the hot lances of pain in my eyes bleed away slightly. The constant heavy thumping in my skull receded to the background.

I sighed and let myself go. Giving myself over to this woman and her power. My own seemed to reach out and intertwine with hers.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]