Susan felt a sinking feeling as she watched Ruth charge toward the strip mall. It had taken all of three seconds for their ‘plan’ to go off the rails.
Ruth’s brothers had somehow followed them, and now were in danger from the absurdly large army of werewolves that filled the street in front of the building. Now Ruth had effectively split the party, and Susan was stuck trying to play catchup.
Ruth was halfway across the street when her head-on charge was interrupted. The huge form of Lupus appeared in front of her, and she had to leap to the side to avoid a swipe of his claws.
Then Cole was leaping over the balcony next to her, sword in hand as he chased after Ruth. In a flash he had crossed the distance between him and Lupus, introducing himself with a downward slash of the blade against the back of Lupus’s neck.
Lupus responded by dislodging the teen with a casual shake of his back, and then the three way battle between him, Cole, and Ruth was on. A furious flurry of teeth and blade filled the center of the street.
The surrounding werewolves seemed more than happy to watch the fight take place, but Susan could see that many were inquisitive enough to keep investigating the litany of shrieks and yells coming from the strip mall across the street.
Muttering out a dictionary's worth of swear words, she began tracing glowing runes in the air. Twin circles quickly appeared, followed quickly by a dozen more symbols.
“Uh, Susan? Do we have a plan?” Anne asked with a worried look to her as one of the more inquisitive werewolves poked its head over the railing.
“Yeah, hold on!” Susan snapped back.
A snap kick knocked the railing out of its sockets, sending it tumbling down into the crowd below. The werewolf dodged the railing and snarled. Before it could capitalize, Susan grabbed Anne by the arm before reaching over to snag Mattie.
“Wait, wha-aaaaaaah!”
Anne’s question morphed into a scream as the hundred yards of space between them and the roof of the strip mall’s roof compressed into an area the thickness of a pancake. With a humming sensation that felt like they were standing still and falling at the same time, the trio found themselves standing atop the brick facade of the shopping center.
“-Aaat the hell?” Anne asked.
“Movement spell,” Susan said, quickly looking her and Mattie over for injuries. Thankfully the two looked fine, though judging by the smear of blood over Susan’s shoe, the overly inquisitive werewolf had learned the hard way how dangerous spatial spells could be.
The moment she finished checking them, she returned her attention to the rooftop around them. It wasn't looking very good, the rubber matting stretched for hundreds of feet around them served as the staging ground for what looked like the most dangerous game of tag ever played.
Dozens of werewolves dashed around over it, chasing the fleeting figures of Ruth’s brothers. Snarls and shrieks echoed around them as the boys only barely managed to evade the snatching claws.
“Right,” Mattie muttered, breaking free of the disorientation, “let's get to it.”
Then she was jumping down to the rubber matting of the roof below. Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved a small glowing vial.
A shake caused it to begin glowing, and she threw it forward. Then a muttered word and a wave of her hand caused a small gust of wind to catch the vial and sent it flitting forward toward the nearest group of werewolves.
It caught their attention one by one, and soon the group was so enamored with it that they chased it right off the edge of the roof.
Meanwhile, Anne had vanished into her mouse form. She gave a squeaking war cry before charging directly toward the largest werewolf on the roof.
A flying leap sent Anne flying forward where she vanished into the huge werewolf’s fur. A moment later it was howling in pain as it tried to dislodge the furious rodent that dashed over its body, biting and scratching as it went.
Its smashing limbs utterly failed in their attempts to stamp out the attack, the protection granted to Anne by the Guardian’s amulet left her entirely unscathed. Before long the werewolf was fleeing toward the edge of the roof, chased by an irate mouse.
Meanwhile, Susan once again raised both hands in the air and pushed mana into her hands until they glowed with it. Stepping down to the roof below, she began creating a new rune.
Long hours of practice allowed her to begin tracing runes with all five fingers, each one acting in concert to create multiple lines at once. In moments a small sphere of runes began forming in the air in front of her. They hovered in place, slowly drifting towards each other and linking into a dizzyingly complex formation.
Carefully splitting her attention between the street fight below, the rooftop chase, and her own spell, she tried to keep an eye on everyone.
Even as she continued her rune creation, she reached down and tore a brick from the facade. A casual throw sent it crashing into the face of a werewolf that seemed to be getting a little too close to one of the fleeing boys.
A moment later the tiny form of Anne was leaping over to it and the werewolf found itself distracted by the scratching of the furious mousekin.
Susan found herself ducking down to avoid the flying form of Ruth. A glance back saw Lupus roaring with laughter, crouched in a classic pitchers pose. A sneer covered his face until it was interrupted by a furious tackle from Cole.
Twisting midair, Ruth managed to land on the roof with all four legs. Catching the roof with her claws, she cut four pairs of claw marks in the rubber until she finished skidding to a halt.
Then she was charging forward, catching one of the werewolves in the chest with a body slam that sent it careening backwards and off of the roof.
She rushed over to where Mattie was furiously casting spell after spell, and the two quickly worked together to make a small safe area free of werewolves for her brothers.
Even as more werewolves began to appear over the edge of the roof, the area around Mattie was quickly filled by the boys. Each of them collapsing to the rubber matting in a panting heap.
“Hi,” a small voice came from behind Susan, and she turned her head to see the diminutive Ada crouched behind her.
“Hey,” she replied, then bit her lip as she had to use all ten fingers simultaneously to craft a singularly complex rune.
“What are you doing?” Came Ada’s voice again as a pair of small arms wrapped around her leg.
“Something really stupid,” Susan muttered, half to herself.
“Mom says you're not supposed to do that,” Ada continued, and a glance down showed her staring up at Susan with her enormous doe eyes as she watched the runes be sketched in the air.
“Well, she’s not wrong.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
A second look down showed the same placid innocence on the child’s face. Susan sighed and refocused on her rune.
“Because I’m desperate,” she finally responded.
The truth was Susan had played this game before, and she knew she couldn’t win. She had set herself the goal of breaking the curse on the untold number of werewolves, as well as protecting the double handful of people around her. It was an absurd task with a thousand and one variables conspiring together to ensure no matter what choice Susan made she couldn’t save everyone.
But no matter how impossible it seemed, she had a chance. A path forward to avoid bloodshed that she didn’t have before. So she took it.
“M’kay,” Ada responded, blind to Susan’s inner turmoil.
The fight continued on around them. The three oldest of Ruth’s brothers had joined her and Mattie in the fight. They would corral the werewolves chasing them into packs, letting Ruth and Mattie deal with them easier.
Against all odds, the group was managing to hold their own against the increasing tide of werewolves. Though even as Susan thought that, another dozen heads poked themselves over the edge of the roof and the werewolve’s numbers began to swell even more.
“Are ya gonna help them?” Ada’s question came again.
“I’m trying!” Susan hissed back.
She spared a moment to check on the fight back on the ground, only to wince. Lupus had Cole on the ropes now that Ruth was gone, and seemed to be driving him back up against the front of the strip mall.
Slashing claws came again and again, barely deflected by swings of Cole’s sword. A second brick, once again torn from the front of the building, smashed into Lupus’s warped skull but was ignored.
Desperate eyes looked for a second option, only to catch sight of a small brown shape leap from the front of the building and down onto Lupus’s back. He ignored it the same as the brick, until it scurried up and over the hunch of his back to jam a tiny paw directly into his eye.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
That earned a yowl from the hulking werewolf, and Cole leapt on the distraction. A jump forward let him catch Lupus in the other eye with the tip of his sword, and then before he could retaliate Cole was snatching up Anne and jumping again.
He hit the wall of the building and kicked off of it. Then in a move that seemed straight out of a parkour video, he planted both feet squarely on Lupus’s head and used the monster as a springboard. The move launched him upward, high enough for him to catch the edge of the roof and pull himself over.
He hit the matting and collapsed, eyes wide as his chest heaved. He lay there a moment, even as Anne pulled herself from his unresisting hand to rush back into the fight.
“That was crazy,” he muttered, before finally pushing himself to his feet and looking over to Susan.
“Everything good up here?” He asked with false cheer.
“Better than down there,” Susan said as she grabbed another brick to send flying into one of Lupus’s eyes. Ignoring the resultant scream of pain, she focused on Cole.
“Also, where did you learn parkour?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Hilda says it's the basics of being an adventurer,” he said, then raised both hands to mime air quotes, “Only a dumbass looks for adventure. And being a dumbass is a good way to get yourself killed. So the best way to survive being an adventurer is being able to run like hell when ya do something dumbass.”
Susan listened to him with a blank stare, eventually responding with a shrug.
“Yeah,” she said, “that’s Granny Hilda for you.”
Their conversation was broken up when down below Lupus leapt backwards. In an instant he had crossed to the other side of the street and out of range of Susan’s flying bricks.
He howled, and the dozens of werewolves that filled the roof around them stopped. In perfect unison they fled, leaping off the roof and back into the horde below.
The rooftop was suddenly clear, leaving a bewildered group of teens looking around with wide eyes. Spotting Cole and Susan by the edge of the roof, they quickly regrouped by the wall to look down on the werewolves that gathered around Lupus below.
“Hm,” Susan mused, “that’s probably not good.”
A snarl of a smile came over the hulking werewolf’s face.
“Thanks for grouping up for me,” he crowed, before crouching down and jumping.
He shot into the air, easily crossing the space between the street and the roof in a high arc that had him coming down on top of the closely grouped teens.
Nearing the apex of his jump, he looked down at the roof below and let out a booming laugh that echoed over them.
“I am the cataclysm…”
Mattie took a single look up at the looming figure and huffed out a laugh. She spat out a few arcane words, and waved both arms up and over her head like she was throwing something backwards.
A gust of wind followed, whipping up the hair of the teens on the roof. Up above, Lupus’s fall faltered, and then he was being wrenched out of the air, his leap transformed from a careful descent to a screaming freefall that hit the roof below and went right through.
He impacted the ground below with a reverberating thud that sent dust rocketing back up through the newly punched hole in the roof.
It cleared to reveal a smug Mattie, surrounded by an awestruck group of five boys.
“Awesome,” Seth breathed.
He and the other boys looked up at her with wide eyes, but found their gazes drawn back downwards when the sound of rubble falling was interrupted by a heavy scraping from below.
A word and a wave of Mattie’s hand swept the remaining dust away to reveal Lupus standing up from an werewolf shaped crater carved into the concrete on the floor below. He looked up to meet the group’s gazes, and then his mouth quirked upward in a twisted rendition of a smile.
A gargantuan arm raised high in the air and came down on the concrete. It hit with the force of a battering ram, pulverizing the ground below it and sending cracks shooting through the concrete around it.
Susan sent another brick flying at him, but he casually dodged it with a huff. Then he was vanishing further into the building, where the sound of more impacts echoed.
The roof trembled beneath their feet, and Cole’s head whipped to the side toward Susan.
“I really hope that rune is ready!”
“In a sec!” She snapped back.
“Please tell me you mean that litera-”
Cole found himself interrupted when another howl echoed from below and the roof bucked as a calamitous thud resounded through the cinderblock and steel of the building.
A dozen pairs of eyes turned downwards before the entire structure collapsed beneath them. The teens yelled, the boys shrieked, and they all fell, vanishing into the cloud of dust that rose up from the collapsing building below.
All except for Susan. Even as the others fell, she hung in the air, the sheer amount of mana she had used making the reality around her almost plastic. Her finger crackled as she forced the mana output of a dozen archwizards into it, and she thrust it into the center of the circle of runes she had been creating.
“Guardianship,” she whispered, focusing the entirety of her mind on the concept even as she sketched out a simple shield.
She retracted her finger, before placing each hand on either side of the circle of runes and pumping as much mana as she could into it. As she increased the power the simple shield began to flicker. Slowly growing more and more ephemeral, it wasn’t until Susan was reaching the very limits of the mana her Dragonheart could produce that something happened.
The symbol warped, turning in on itself like a möbius strip as it began to glow with a gleaming light.
A rune appeared in the air beneath Susan’s feet, and her entire body shone with light. It faded a moment later to reveal her now wearing a frilly pink ball gown straight out of the Wizard of Oz. The silver tiara from her previous transformation capping the ensemble, she looked down into the dark ruin of the roof to see nine more glowing transformation circles.
She frowned as she counted one short, then looked down further to see a wide eyed Ada still hanging onto her leg. Only she was now wearing a golden ball gown.
“Whoa,” was the girl’s only comment.
Whatever Lupus had done had demolished the entire store the group had been fighting on top of. On either side the strip mall remained standing but the section of mall Susan now hovered over was entirely gone, replaced by the thick cloud of dust.
A glowing figure appeared from below. Cole, now wearing his own glowing green ball gown, and carrying a blushing Mattie in a princess carry took a flying leap upwards to land on a jutting shelf of cinder block that overlooked the now ruined shopping center. Carefully setting Mattie down, he turned to launch an impressive glower towards Susan.
“A dress,” he called, “really?”
Susan cackled in response.
“A necessary part of the spell,” she lied fluently, trying to hide the relief she was feeling that it had actually worked.
Ruth, still in wolf form and now sporting the classic tutu and tiara combo, was the next to make it to the roof, followed by the tumbling forms of her brothers. They seemed completely dumbfounded by their new strength, several of them completely overshooting the edge of the roof and landing further down the roof before rushing back to where Cole stood.
The last person to arrive was Anne. Now a blue clad mouse, she took a twenty foot leap from the rubble below and up to Ruth’s back before looking around warily.
Her caution was unfounded. The crowd of werewolves outside of the strip mall had pulled back, and were now looking in at the ruined building with wide eyed worry.
“Woah, this is awesome,” Seth breathed, making a light jump that carried him a yard in the air.
“Yeah but it's a dress,” Jeff groused, looking down at the glowing yellow lace he now wore.
“Yeah, but look at this,” Ralph said, then punched him in the chest.
Jeff went flying a dozen feet backward where he hit the roof in a tumble of limbs. He was up a second later with a snarl, before he seemed to realize he was fine. A grin replaced the frown.
“Yeah, definitely awesome.”
A collapsing pile of steel and masonry signaled the reappearance of Lupus down below. He laughed madly and began pawing through the rubble, before realizing that none of the teens had fallen.
With glacial slowness, his head drifted up to meet those of the waiting teens. They met his gaze, and with equal slowness viscous smiles covered every one of their faces.
----------------------------------------
“What do you mean she found the Black Site?” Henry Gatchett snarled, voice tinny as it echoed from the tablet in John’s hand.
“She was searching for the source of the infectious curse spreading around Orienda,” he answered, deadpan. “Locating one of the loading bays was simply a coincidence.”
“Well I don’t want any more ‘coincidences’ after this, got it?” Gatchett continued unabashed, “this project has to go off without a hitch!”
“Yessir.”
He wasn’t surprised Gatchett was onto him, the man could smell a rat from a mile away. Thankfully he hadn’t quite figured out how John had betrayed the BSMP, and Gatchett couldn’t move against him without evidence.
“Sir,” he said after a moment, “I do want to note that if we had dealt with the infectious curse when it was first identified then-”
“Not an option,” Gatchett shot back, “I want the circle active within the hour. Get to it.”
His face vanished, leaving John staring down at the black screen of the tablet. Rolling his eyes, he tucked the tablet under his arm and resumed his march.
The hall he was walking down was completely empty, the squeak of his shoes the only sound audible despite the sprawling complex around him.
The Black Site wasn’t usually well staffed, the glut of procedures and paperwork as the BSMP bureaucracy grew ever larger made sure of that. But the halls were especially empty today, even the cleaning staff having been moved off site in preparation for today’s ritual.
That was why he had been the one answering Susan Hill’s earlier breaking and entering. Normally such an event would have been met with a full hit squad, but they had all been pulled out the building an hour before her arrival.
It was an incredible coincidence, and had almost certainly saved the ongoing project. Though the higher ups like Gatchett would never realize it for the blessing in disguise it was.
The thought of the dragon, and her actions earlier today, brought a frown to John’s face. Her immediate reaction to being told the government was planning to kill her hadn’t been one of fear, but indignant rage.
The absolute confidence she had in herself was obvious, though he wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse in this instance. He had almost hoped that she would raze the complex to the ground in rage, but she had chosen to prioritize the problem presented by the curse.
The choice had preserved what peace remained for now, but John was pretty sure that wouldn't hold true in the future. Rawiyah’s warning echoed in the back of his head, now louder than ever as the final hour approached.
A sharp left had him turning into another bland white hallway, this one differentiated from the others by the huge pair of double doors at the end. He shouldered through them, and stepped into the ritual room.
The cavernous space was a simple rectangular room, but sized up until it was large enough to house a jumbo jet. Etched into the ground within was an empire’s worth of gold forming a single enormous runic circle. It filled the entire massive space, stretching so far that the multi feet tall runes that made up the spell were barely dots to John’s critical eye.
His gaze came up a moment later, and he spotted a small group gathered along one of the edges of the circle. A short walk took him over to them, and he exchanged nods with a few of them.
“John,” Rex Scuggums said with a smile that seemed almost genuine. “Just the man I’ve been looking for. Any news from headquarters?”
The man didn’t look good. Now wearing a grey suit and a sheen of sweat, a heavy mechanical switch dangled from one hand. Thick cords connected it to the floor, and a single press of the covered switch on the top would activate the huge circle that stretched before them.
“No,” John replied, and the man visibly wilted.
Susan Hill’s appearance had been their last chance to delay the project, and now they faced the deadline. As the highest ranking official in the state, Rex was required to begin the operation.
He wasn't taking it well. Let alone making an even greater enemy of the Guardians, the higher ups still didn’t know the full scope of what they were doing.
Every bit of information they had been able to glean about the Archdragon of Ruin spelled disaster. Reports from multiple other realms spoke of calamitous power, and a terrifying propensity for mass destruction.
They still didn’t even know if their current plan would work, but it was the only one with even a chance of succeeding. So here they were, hearts in their throats as the seconds ticked forward towards the oncoming confrontation.
“Anything from Rawiyah?” Rex asked, and John had to shake his head again.
“Just pronouncements of our inevitable demise,” he said with a shrug.
“Right,” Rex said, shoulders hanging for a moment until he raised his head and steeled himself with a deep breath. “Let’s begin.”
A flick of his thumb uncovered the switch, and a shaking hand reached over to turn it with a quiet click. A wave of tingling energy followed, rushing over the men and flowing towards the center of the massive runic circle.
As the power flowed through the gold runes they began to glow red hot, and the air above the circle began to shimmer. John felt his skin suddenly prickle with sweat as a wave of heat blasted back towards them. Above the massive circle the air was pushed apart, an void of empty space forming into an impossibly large shape.
“And may God have mercy on our souls,” Rex muttered as the shape formed by the void grew and grew.