For hundreds of years and bare a moment, the homunculus of Robert Lackey crouched in the boundless void, waiting… waiting… waiting for a hero to open the door, to match four points by four, prove their mettle and a complete the portal. The fools of The Union were creatures of the moment, unsuited to long terms plans that spanned forward and back in time. They would never suspect their greatest foe would escape them by creating a hero. And when the moment was gone, when four years by four had passed since the so-called defeat of the Demon Lord, when the stone box anchoring the magical portal was finally complete, the homunculus pulled itself from the space in between.
The homunculus grinned at the hero who’d opened the door. She was a slip of a child, wide-eyed and terrified and ripe for the plucking. She had done her job and would be of no consequence. A man of Lackey’s power could dispense with her in moments.
But the homunculus was only a sliver of Robert Lackey and therefore had only a sliver of his power. It needed more. Fortunately, there was a source just behind it, bound in stone. The homunculus put a palm back to touch the surface of the box and drew the power from it, just as Lackey had drawn the power from so many hapless parahumans. The power swelled within him. He grew taller, straighter, stronger. Not quite his former shape, but cross of the two.
• • •
The thoughts of the homunculus spilled over, and for a moment, Emilia knew everything it did. She knew it was sucking the remaining magical power within the stone box into itself. She knew when it was done it would come for her. She knew she was in trouble, she just didn’t know what to do about it.
“You did well, little hero. You were the perfect pawn.”
Emilia grimaced. She had suspected it was too easy, that she was being set up, but she wasn’t sure what else she might have done. She couldn’t have just let the elemental fiends wreak havoc.
“Happy to help. I don’t suppose you’ll just go away now and leave us alone?” Emilia was surprised to find her voice steady.
The homunculus laughed. Behind it, the stone crumbled to powder, falling in on itself with a whomph and a haze and where the box had stood was a warping of space. Emilia looked past the gloating homunculus, at the portal to that pivotal moment. The view was warped and canted, but still she could see what had happened. She watched the confrontation between the Demon Lord and the Heroes of Humanity.
The moment stretched.
Robert Lackey had been defeated by a team. Foremost among them was the Purple Prophet, a myth and legend, a literary trope and hackneyed cliché. She had struck the final blow. But she could not have done it without the riffs of the Guitarist, the storm of the Dancer, the steadiness of the Athlete, and the precision of the Speedster.
Emilia watched the battle of the Heroes of Humanity play out in reverse. Her eye was drawn to the flickering streak of speed that was Mary Reuben. And as she watched, the light resolved into the figure of a woman: lithe and tall with short, dark hair and pale grey eyes and traceries of heat and energy streaming from every movement.
Emilia watched Mary Reuben move.
The homunculus raised its arms. Emilia’s ears popped, dragging her to the present. Creatures rose from the earth, breaking the surface and pulling themselves forth. Goblinoid creatures with squashed features and long arms, short and squat, much like the homunculus of Lackey had been moments before.
Screams and shouts sounded around Camp Arrowhead and Emilia realized the wavery reflections had solidified. The box was open, the trials were won, and they were all in the present now.
“I’ll kill you first,” the homunculus said, winking at her.
Without her having to think it, Emilia’s mind summoned the image of Mary Reuben, one of the Heroes of Humanity, strong, confident, resplendent in her scarlet morphcloth. Emilia’s body responded, muscles shifting and changing, hair lightening, perceptions accelerating.
The homunculus noticed. Its eyes widened. Surprised? Afraid?
All it had taken was one look. One look at Mary Reuben from sixteen years ago, and now Emilia was a speedster. Her mind swelled with the possibilities. If she could shift shape to become a speedster, what else could she do? What couldn’t she do? A voice in the back of her mind quailed at the thought. It was too much. Emilia pushed hard at the thought and tried to focus.
The world around her moved in the slowest of slow motion. Emilia knew it was because she was moving, thinking, perceiving at super speed, but from her perspective, she felt like she moved normally.
Sixteen goblin creatures were spread through the courtyard of Camp Arrowhead. It was midday and a bevy of kids milled to and from the Main Hall. The goblins spread from the homunculus, threatening the people of Camp Arrowhead with tooth and claw.
Nearest to Emilia, a goblin charged a group of boys she knew only from seeing them around camp. Emilia took a careful step. Dust sprang up under her feet, but she felt steady, and took another.
Not only did she feel steady, she felt good, she felt confident, she felt powerful. With a hint of a grin, she picked up the pace and grabbed the nearest goblin by the arm. Once she had ahold of it, she didn’t know what to do with it and as she tried to stop, she realized her forward momentum wasn’t so easily halted. She was moments away from plowing into the goblin and the group of boys alike. She jerked hard to the left, throwing up a scatter of debris in her wake and losing control. The power of the Speedster burst through her. She tried desperately to pull back, slow down.
In the next moment, she found herself on the backside of the Main Hall, near the archery range. Dazed and startled, the world around her moved again. The goblin she’d grabbed looked equally dazed, but also furious. It lashed out blindly with its claws.
Emilia kept back, out of range. Her stomach roiled and her throat convulsed. She heard shouting. It came from all around, but she couldn’t make out words. Her head buzzed and her thoughts wouldn’t settle.
The goblin, still swinging, focused and came for her.
She tried to think, to focus, to channel the power of the Speedster.
A pair of arrows zipped past her to strike the goblin. Her perceptions sped again so the arrows seemed to slow midflight. She marveled at the way the arrow shafts flexed as they flew. They were blunt-tipped, but even so a low-pitched crack reverberated as they struck the goblin, one dead center of its forehead, the other just below its sternum. The goblin began a slow-motion stagger as Emilia’s perceptions reached their height.
She turned to find the girls of cabin 12 decked out for archery practice, multi-hued hair agleam in the summer sun. Nadia and Maria stood with bows up, expressions serious.
Without warning, Emilia’s perceptions snapped back to reality and she staggered. This time she couldn’t stop the queasiness of her stomach rising to her throat. She spat bile, cleared her throat and spat again. She’d had no practice with this set of skills. She needed to focus.
“What the hell? Emilia?” It was Frankie.
“I opened the box,” Emilia said, as though that would explain everything. She looked back to the goblin, shaking its head furiously, pushing to its feet. Another blunted arrow flew past Emilia to strike the goblin’s chest. It staggered and snarled and made for the archers of cabin 12.
Before Emilia could react, a volley of arrows struck the creature, not one of them missed. And though they were blunted, the crack of metal on bone was rapid tattoo. And then one of the arrows took the goblin in the eye, splitting the orb and lodging in its head. The creature had only a moment to shudder before it cracked and burst into a million motes of light that scattered to the summer and disappeared. Emilia felt her stomach roil again but swallowed hard. She looked back at the girls of cabin 12 and knew it was Frankie who’d felled the goblin.
“There are more,” Emilia said. “Find somewhere to hide.”
She could feel the power buzzing in her brain, warring with her doubt. What if she couldn’t channel the power of the Speedster again? What if she couldn’t control it? What if, even with all that speed, she couldn’t defeat the goblins and rescue her peers? With a breath, she closed her eyes and with a thought she pictured Mary Ruben upon a mnemonic trading card. Her perceptions accelerated. Her skin vibrated, and she walked carefully around to the front of the Main Hall.
The chaos that greeted her tightened her jaw.
Lackey’s homunculus still stood where the stone box had been, looking about, seeking her she suspected. Kids ran from goblins and though the squat, bent creatures weren’t particularly fast, some had caught their quarry. Emilia went to them first. She didn’t have any arrows. She couldn’t pierce their eyes but she could at least pull them off the kids they threatened.
The first was a junior councilor, a boy she recognized from movie night. He preferred comedies to actions flicks. He was flat on his back, a goblin kneeling upon his chest. There were scrapes and cuts on his arms where he defended himself. Emilia considered a moment, the grabbed the goblin by the shoulders, planted her feet firmly, bent her knees, and heaved.
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At first it was difficult, the inertia of the goblin resisted. She remembered from science classes: an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Well, she was an outside force. So, though she moved at superspeed, the goblin did not. It took some time, at her accelerated senses, for it to catch up with her. With persistence, the goblin moved, and the task eased, until it felt like she lifted a block of foam. She shoved the goblin, sending it gliding slowly at Lackey’s homunculus, then moved to the next.
One bared its teeth at a trio of girls too frightened to flee. She put her palm upon its chest and shoved until it moved. One had hold of a boy’s arm. She pried its fingers off, carefully, one after the other, and sent it with a deliberate shove. One leapt after a fleeing group, and Emilia found she could use its own momentum to redirect its flight.
Emilia stopped, took a breath, and let her perceptions slow. The goblins she hurled slammed into Lackey’s homunculus in rapid succession, sending them to the ground in a tangle of limbs. She could feel the power of the Speedster, tingling along her shoulders, ready to be called upon again.
Lackey’s homunculus struggled with the goblins before shouting in frustration and, in a burst of light, pulling the magic from them back into itself, destroying them.
Emilia pulled at the power of the Speedster, and as she did so, as the world around her slowed, she noticed the homunculus kept pace. Or at least, didn’t slow as much as the others. She could see motes of magic dancing under its skin. That was the key, she realized. If she could take out the homunculus, the goblins would be without their power. She raced toward Lackey’s homunculus, but it snapped to face her.
A burst of crackling energy coalesced like ketchup from a bottle, slowly at first, then all at once, and leapt for her. Emilia tried to dodge aside, but lost her balance. She tumbled to the ground, rolled with it, and pushed back to her feet. She could feel her skin scraping at even the lightest of touches against the abrasive surface. She tried to stop her momentum and couldn’t, so she took a lap around the Main Hall to shed the energy and slow down. When she came back around to the front, she was at regular speed. Her head ached, her stomach growled, her joints felt loose and watery, but she took a deep breath to ramp up again.
From the corner of her eye, she saw one of the goblins leap for someone at the entrance to the Main Hall. She turned, blinking sweat and exhaustion from her eyes. Mrs. Fir stood, facing the goblin, holding a shotgun braced low against the crook of her arm. She fired and the explosion destroyed the goblin in a gout of magic.
The courtyard fell silent. Even Lackey’s homunculus looked at the camp counselor with wide, surprised eyes.
“Everyone inside!” Mrs. Fir’s order boomed through the courtyard. After a moment, kids who hadn’t already sought shelter scrambled for the buildings.
“Um, Emilia?” Eddie stood behind Mrs. Fir. She looked at him. “Your ironspike.”
She put a hand to the smooth, steel ironspike still in her shorts pocket. It was warm to the touch and buzzed with strange energy. She pulled it from her pocket and gripped it in her right fist. She pulled the folded sock from it, revealing the polished tip. It glowed faintly, as though some bit of summer sun had taken up residence, and faint lines of symbols she didn’t know ran along its length.
Filled with a sudden confidence swelling in her chest, Emilia looked from the spike to the homunculus. She’d never met Robert Lackey, had only ever seen him in the memory of his homunculus and the canted view of the portal it’d come through. But she thought she detected a familiar smirk on the face of the homunculus. And she enjoyed watching that smirk melt to fear.
With a shout and a gesture, the homunculus sent the goblins charging at her.
Emilia stretched her neck and felt her back pop. She bit her tongue against her headache and pushed her senses to superspeed. She ignored the hunger and fatigue, griped her ironspike, and moved to meet them. She knew the homunculus was using the opportunity to flee, she knew its own magic-based speed could rival hers, but she couldn’t leave the goblins behind, allowing them to harm anyone.
Emilia counted the goblins. Frankie’s arrow was one. Three reabsorbed by the homunculus was four. Mrs. Fir’s shotgun was five. That left eleven. Emilia sought the closest, hurried up to it, and thrust her ironspike. The goblin exploded into nothing with just a touch. Emilia counted carefully as she sped about the courtyard until she was certain sixteen magically created goblins had been destroyed, then checked again just to be sure.
When she turned her attention back to Lackey’s homunculus, it was gone, as she’d expected, but her enhanced perceptions could just pick up the wake of its passing as it fled into the woods surrounding Camp Aspen: broken limbs, trampled undergrowth, shivering flora.
Gritting her teeth against the headache pounding up from her shoulders, Emilia gave chase.
With her perceptions accelerated, she could see the wake of its passage like ripples in the air. She followed at what was, for her, a careful pace, but must have been a blink to anyone looking at her. The wood was thin about Camp Arrowhead, but there were ample opportunities for ambush, so she kept an eye out, expecting trickery.
She caught a glimpse of him, half hidden behind a tree. Whatever magic had allowed him to move faster had apparently ended as he appeared as frozen as the rest of the world around her. Her instinct was to pounce, to strike him head on at super speed, but she made herself creep around behind, doing her best with every footfall not to kick up debris. Sneaking at superspeed felt counterintuitive, but she felt the caution was warranted.
She approached, spike in hand, and swung for all she was worth. She noticed, just before her thrust was about to connect, something odd about the homunculus. His form shimmered just slightly, at regular intervals. She was certain she’d not have seen it if her perceptions weren’t sped. As it was, she realized too late she was about to strike an illusion, and on her left a burst of magic told her where the real homunculus crouched, hidden. She looked its way just as her thrust swung through the construction of magic and light, throwing her off balance.
The next moment, she was glad it did, because the conjured lightning bolt of the homunculus was faster than her. As she tumbled to the ground, the friction between earth and her tearing at her clothes, she closed her eyes against the blinding flash of lightning snaking its way above her, pale purple trailers zipping off the main bolt. Her skin tingled and stung.
The lightning bolt struck the tree.
Emilia watched the tree grow white hot, like an iron in the forge, and knew as the sap in the tree expanded, it would be too much, the tree would explode, and she would be struck by shrapnel.
Still tumbling, Emilia dug her heels into the earth as they came down, trying to shed momentum and get herself on her feet. The move jarred her ankles, but it got her upright and allowed her to control her movement. She dodged between trees, putting distance between herself and the slowly exploding tree. At the same time, she looked for the origin of the lightning bolt.
But he was gone.
She looked for any sign of his passing: kicked up dirt, trampled undergrowth, swaying flora. Thunder cracked in her ears and she winced, staggering from the compressed air as it rumbled over her. After the initial shock, with her hearing accelerated, the rumble of the thunder was deep and protracted, like a great giant’s peaceful snore.
Before she could find any sign of the homunculus, a flash of light caught her attention. It was behind her, and to the left, and she didn’t wait for the flash to become a bolt. She curved around to the left, dodging this way and that, until she spotted it, lightning just leaping from its hands. She made for it, ironspike at the ready, but when she was within arms lengths of it, the homunculus suddenly turned to face her, expression surprised.
It stumbled backward as its reaction sped up.
Emilia grinned.
It seemed the homunculus could only cast one spell at a time, and the spell that granted it speed couldn’t be maintained while when it attacked her. Which meant she had to lure it into attacking, dodge, and strike.
The homunculus reacted as it fell, a counter strike of pure force taking Emilia in the sternum. Her breath exploded from her and her speed fled. She was knocked backward. Her left shoulder struck a tree and her trajectory flipped, throwing her to the undergrowth and spinning her through the dirt. Gasping and scrambling, Emilia fought for purchase on the world around her. Blinking, she tried to reclaim the power she’d glimpsed beyond the portal.
A second cracking roar joined the tail end of the first and the thunder only aggravated her headache.
Using a tree, she got to her feet, breath coming in gasps, head pounding a hard rhythm against her concentration. The mental trading cards were blurry in her mind. She closed her eyes and focused on the Speedster, reached for it. Her head pounded harder and her stomach rebelled. She spat bile and reached again, through the pounding.
The image sharpened and the world slowed.
Several meters away, the homunculus scrambled to its feet, slowing as her perception sped. She could have sped for him, but she waited. That reactionary blast had seemed like a failsafe and she wasn’t keen to trip it again, at least not until she was ready. She leaned hard against the tree and waited for the homunculus to gain its feet, move its hands in an intricate pattern, and suddenly it moved at a pace even with her, though she thought she was probably a step and a half faster. She waited for it to notice her. She waited for it to grin, starting its next spell and, just as she’d expected, he slowed down as he cast it.
Biting her tongue through the pain, careful not to move her left shoulder, Emilia picked her way through the undergrowth. She shielded her eyes from the flash of lightning. She hunched against the initial crack of thunder. She waited for him to start the intricate hand motion that would increase his speed. And as Lackey’s homunculus began to speed up, Emilia struck with her spike then immediately ducked aside, expecting the magical counterstroke and hoped to catch him unaware. Instead, the homunculus staggered back, eyes wide. There was no counterstroke. The last one had been accidental.
It just wasn’t as fast as her, and now they both knew it.
The homunculus fled. Emilia took a deep breath and gave chase. She gained on it, bit by bit, weaving through the wood. It couldn’t stop now to cast another lightning bolt for she would catch it in a moment. They broke from the wood into grassy hillocks. Dirt and grass sprayed in their wake as they sped over the hills.
Emilia didn’t know where they were, but decided it didn’t matter. She pushed at her speed and swung with the ironspike, but the homunculus swerved and she missed. It took a sharp turn Emilia couldn’t match after her momentum with the swing, and her turn was wide. The homunculus widened their gap.
Emilia wondered who would run out of speed first. Perhaps she could simply wait it out. But if his magic lasted longer than her power, she’d lose him. She couldn’t do that. She’d released him, she was responsible for him. Again, she gained on him, determined to be more careful.
The hills flattened. They dodged rivers frozen in a moment and highways dotted with stationary vehicles. The homunculus tried to shake her by turning this way and that, but Emilia stayed patient, matching his movements, inching closer and closer. She felt herself beginning to flag and if she missed again, she wasn’t sure she could make up the ground.
Then the homunculus stumbled.
Emilia didn’t hesitate. She strained, pushing herself, feeling herself stretch, and the homunculus was within reach. This time, when she struck, it could not react in time. The moment the ironspike touched its blue green skin, rune-like markings flowed from the spike, glinting like sunlight, and into the homunculus. For a moment, there was nothing. Sound and color drained. All motion stopped. Emilia couldn’t breathe. In the next, the homunculus exploded in a whirlwind of magic, and Emilia was boosted with energy.
Her speed intensified.
For several moments, everything blurred as she ran, unable to control herself. Desperately, she imagined the Speedster trading card in her mind and tried to push it away. It resisted, but slowly, slowly, slowly she was able to shed speed. She kept one thought on slowing herself, the other on not running into anything. And for moments that felt like hours, those two thoughts were all she could manage.
When she stopped, her breath came hard, her skin and eyes stung, and her thoughts were a whirlwind of chaos. She was covered in dirt, grass, and bugs. Her clothes were tattered and her shoes falling apart. She stood in the middle of an unfamiliar city against a backdrop of mountains. She was lost, but the homunculus was destroyed.
She’d won.