I look between the lights in the forest and Ursula a few times, then flex my fingers and split some more Worth into ghost quarters. It’s a little hard to flip them discreetly, but if anyone already knows how my skills work, it’ll be her and Noland. Two heads land in quick succession, and I switch them to my left hand to flip some more.
“Why fifty miles?” I ask as the gold dripping from Noland’s hands starts to coat the interior of the car in a magical sheen. “Can they not follow us after that?”
“Lord, no, sister.” Ursula laughs. “If anything, they'll go a lot harder when we’re not bound by city laws. Unfortunately for us, it’s one of those city laws that’s keeping us from using one of the Architect’s and Noland’s joint efforts to teleport the hell out of here.”
I blink a few times, then lean in with a frown. “Excuse me? We can teleport out of here and we’re not doing that right now?”
“It’d break a law.” Noland says with a shrug. “No long-range teleporting within any greater city limits. And if you don’t want one of the Preservation’s Lawbringers bearing down on us with the fury of a thousand angry suns, then we can’t break any laws. Not the ironclad ones, at least.”
One of the lights starts to move through the forest, then erupts into a spray of tiny green spheres. They pepper the side of the car like hail, and with a grunt Ursula struggles with the wheel to keep the thing from spinning out of control. Still the car gets shoved from the far left lane all the way to the far right, and the spray doesn’t show any signs of stopping.
I duck down below the window, which is starting to crack under the magical barrage, and shove a shield into one of the six ghost quarters I managed to prepare. The second I hear glass shatter a shield goes up in its place.
“Noland! What the hell are you doing?!” Ursula demands without taking her eyes off the road. “It’s your damn job to protect the car!”
“Well, sorry, but I’m a little preoccupied with overwhelming dizziness and a lunch that wants to meet you again!” He snaps back. “Give me eight seconds and it’ll be done! Would’ve been less if you were actually watching out, like you were supposed to, and Shelby didn’t have to call out the Preservation!”
Ursula bites her lip in frustration, but it quickly bleeds away to confusion. She glances at me in the mirror for a split second, then goes right back to the road. “Well, if you actually kept the car in good shape, then you wouldn’t have these issues in the first place. So quit your bitching and do your job.”
“I am.” Noland grunts, but from how his gold is slowly filling the car, eight seconds is a longshot. Hell, it’s probably been longer than eight seconds since he said eight seconds. I have no idea what he’s trying to do with his spell, but if all that needs to be done is to block the green hail for a few seconds, I can easily do that.
I press two coins against the door, take a deep breath, and envision two shields locking together to perfectly protect my side of the car.
“What’re you–” Noland starts, but stops the moment my shields flash into view. “I forgot you aren’t useless like a lot of the others we pick up. Buy me… say… thirty more seconds? Or is that too much of a strain on your brain?”
“You think I can’t keep up two shields for thirty seconds?” I jut a thumb out my window at my shields, which don’t have a single crack in them yet. “Against a weak-ass spell like this that can’t even break a window? Please; I had to hold off a painted dane that kept teleporting its body into my shields like a dumb, fleshy missile. As long as they don’t send in the big ones, I’ve got this.”
“Then you’re on protection duty for now.” As he speaks, the gold in his hands starts to harden and form long, drooping crystals. “Ursula, I’m hiring you to protect this car from the Preservation until we’re out of greater city limits. I’ve got the wheel from back here.”
“You should be the one driving.” Pearl cuts in as Ursula reaches into the passenger’s seat and flicks open her briefcase. “I can watch the road, and your awareness will take over whenever we have to defend the car. But… is that what we want to do? Do we want these people to keep underestimating you instead?”
Good question. One that I’d love to ponder about on my own time, but a flare of awareness tells me that I don’t have the luxury of introspection. Only one of the lights has attacked us so far. Once they realize that we’re not getting run off the road, that’ll change. From how my awareness already warned me, it looks like we’re getting dangerously close to that point. Question is; do I warn them, or do I try and weather whatever they throw at us?
As if to answer my question, my awareness flares once again. This time alerting me to something on the other side of the road–from the farmland, not the tree cover. I snap to it and try to see what’s happening, but there’s nothing to see. Maybe… invisible enemies? Spells that don’t have a physical form? It could be anything, but whatever it is, it’s coming at the exact same time as the one on the other side. Without the green hail letting up to make room for it.
“Damn it.” I mutter to myself and ready more shields. “Please don’t end up costing me way too much.”
The air shimmers with heat as massive hexagonal pillars of white-hot metal burst into existence. I throw two coins against the other side of the car, right past a surprised Noland, and get the shields up just in time. The pillars crash into my shields, sizzling and boiling the magic with magic of their own, and then they start to turn. One moves towards the front while the other goes towards the back.
If they were stuck to the car, which I assume was the point, we’d be being steered off the road right now. Instead, I’m stuck with rapidly degrading shields and a spray of molten steel peppering the road. My eye twitches as my awareness struggles to keep a hold of the shields in the face of whatever magic is embedded in the pillars, and I throw a few more layers of shields in there for the inevitable break.
“That’s a lot of coins, sister.” Ursula says with one leg through the… window? What? “Don’t give yourself an aneurysm trying to protect my paint job. That’s Noland’s job.”
I try to smile, but it comes out like a pained scowl. “Well, when he puts up a spell that stops the massive turning rods from touching the car, I’ll take a break.”
“Turning rods? Of course they adapted.” Noland sighs and taps his forehead with a finger coated in crystallized gold. “Once they realized they can’t destroy us, they went for derailing us. Well, two can play the adaptation game.”
He places his thumbs against the nails of his middle and pointer fingers, then flicks his fingers towards the seat as if he were trying to get something off of them. The gold around the car flares bright for a split second, then expands a dozen feet in an instant. What was previously a tightly hugging coating of gold now hovers far away, pushing both my shields and the rods to the outer limits.
I grunt at the newfound strain, then call off my shields. The rods slam into Noland’s gold, where they aren’t instantly stopped. Instead they poke a few feet into the dome, slowing down inch by inch, until a thicker gold coating stops them in their tracks. Noland nods to himself in confirmation, then goes right back to whatever else he was doing. And I finally notice that nobody’s in the driver’s seat; just a coating of gold that controls the wheel, pedals, and gearshift.
And there’s footsteps coming from the roof.
“Ursula’s on the roof. What’s she doing on the roof?”
An explosion of gunfire puts a stop to all my wondering. A deluge of gold tinged white bullets blur towards the treeline, and a dozen lights blink out as impacts and screams ring out. Something bluish-grey erupts into a massive bottom-heavy pillar, sending even more lights scattering and spawning even more pillars.
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I blink in disbelief and flick a coin into the driver’s seat. “I’m going to pretend that makes sense. And I’m taking over driving now. You focus on defending us.”
“I… okay?” Noland states hesitantly as I relocate into the driver’s seat. “Do you know how to drive a manual?”
I don’t validate that question with a response. I kick the gold away from the pedals and click my seatbelt into place, take a deep breath, and place my left hand on the wheel. My right goes to the shifter, and I open myself up to my awareness as best as I can. Pearl responds by flooding me with her own, granting me a black-tinged sensation of everything around us.
Including how the car works, which is important since I didn’t know how to drive stick a second ago.
Ursula’s gunfire doesn’t let up one inch. It’s periodically joined by the eruption of some spell or another fired from the treeline, Noland upping his shield, or the roar of magically-enhanced explosives zipping away from our roof and towards things I can only feel with my awareness. Something goes up in a fireball, spiralling over the farmland in a strange mixture of flashing magic and a half-revealed enhanced military vehicle. It spins around all of two times before another pillar completely engulfs it, stopping the spiral dead in its tracks.
“What are the pillars?” I ask over the roar of the road.
“Think of them as super advanced airbags!” Ursula answers from the roof, her voice completely unshaken by the constant gun and spellfire. “I’m using non-lethal means, but that doesn’t mean their rides know that. Why’re you in the driver’s seat, again?”
Darkness flares before my eyes, coating ninety percent of the road in absolute nothing. I don’t need Pearl to explain what that means, and I angle the car towards the one opening before it too starts to close.
“Ramp it!” Pearl cries out in excitement. “Let’s see how well this machine flies!”
That sounds like an absolutely horrible idea. But the entire world turning shades of black freaks me out way more than the thought of wrecking Ursula’s car. I split two Worth into skeletal quarters, then force them into shields angled together like a ramp.
“Hold on for dear life!” I cry out in warning as the invisible things ahead shimmer ever so slightly.
“Shit!” Ursula hisses as footprints appear in the ceiling, cemented by rings of marble with gold accents shooting through the metal. “They must have a cloaker onboard somewhere!”
“Really? I couldn’t tell!” Noland snaps back. “All the semi-invisible tanks on the farm side definitely didn’t give it away!”
“Shut up!” I hiss and grit my teeth as the front wheels touch the first ramp. “Noland, soften our landing somehow!”
Another shield joins the first, lengthening the run-up and making the jump way higher than I’m comfortable with. The shields shatter under the weight of the car and Noland’s magic, but they last just long enough to get us airborne. We sail over a barricade of military grey vehicles with mint green accents and symbols, our own screams only drowned out by the panicked orders barked by the armored people below us. Spells that were meant to contain us die out on fingertips as people look up at us in confusion and disbelief as we sail further and further than I expected.
Going two hundred miles an hour over a ramp in a magic muscle car will do that. I swallow my scream and tighten my knuckles on the wheel, my palm pressed horrifically hard into the shifter. Noland’s screaming his ass off while he traces his dripping hands through the air like some kind of golden piss wizard, and I hope against hope that his flailing has a purpose, not just panic.
Pearl coughs to get my attention. “He’s got a lot of magic in those motions. If he’s going to fail, your awareness would be flaring right now. Don’t trust him; trust yourself.”
Right. Trust my awareness. Trust Pearl. I glance out the side window at the treeline and all the new lights that line it for miles, and my awareness flares like a fireworks display. But they’re just that–flashes of awareness. No warnings, no danger. Noland’s shield will hold. All I have to do is focus on the road. Ursula and Noland don’t want to die, either, so they’ll fight with everything they’ve got.
The front of the car slams into the road with a sickening crunch. My everything rockets forward, only to be stopped by a seatbelt coated in liquid gold. Instead of pain at the sudden impact, relief spreads through my chest and into my lungs. I blink a few times to try and sort out what definitely should’ve happened, but I can’t even start to make sense of it. Whatever Noland did didn’t just prevent the impact–it turned it into comfort.
Both back wheels slam down a moment later, and the car squeals off unaffected by the landing. Ursula barks out a quick laugh for the moment her gunfire stops. It resumes in spades right after, accompanied by a crescendo of spells and ammunition assaulting Noland’s barrier. Lightning bolts, fireballs, icicles, even a chunk of half-formed obsidian; they’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us now.
Which has to mean we’re getting close to escaping.
Orange flashes over my eyes. It trails down the road, then branches off into two separate paths. One that continues straight as an arrow, and the other that… veers off of the road. Through a guard rail and into the ditch. I narrow my eyes at the strange intrusion of Fate, but I know better than to ignore whatever the hell is about to happen.
“Noland!” I call over my shoulder. “Flip a coin!”
He summons a single coin that glimmers like the sun on a calm sea. “Why?”
“Doesn’t matter why, just flip it!” I order as I mentally assign heads to straight and tails to going off road. “Do it!”
“Okay, okay! You don’t have to yell.” He mutters and flicks the coin off his thumbnail.
It spins a few times as it reaches its apex, then the world slows down and my awareness prickles incessantly. Everything goes monochrome. Both sides of the coin emit a dull grey aura; one like a weak fire and the other like mist rolling off dry ice. Neither of them feel like the binary correct choice, but luckily for me, I’m not making a choice.
Twist Fate.
Heads or Tails.
Best or Worst.
It’s never as clean as black or white.
Call it.
“Best for me.”
Everything flashes grey. The coin stops spinning instantly and plummets into Noland’s hand. He lets out a yip of surprise, then raises the coin with confusion plainly written on his face.
“What does tails mean?”
I click my tongue in annoyance and jam the steering wheel to the right. The car barrels towards the guardrail perfectly following the line of Fate that was laid out for me. And… only me, apparently, since neither Noland nor Ursula have said anything about it.
Noland white-knuckles the handle and screams. “WHAT DOES TAILS MEAN, SHELBY?!”
The car smashes through the guard rail. Sparks fly and a chunk of metal gets lodged into the barrier, but we keep going nonetheless. Noland never stops screaming, and Ursula curses me out for my apparent lack of driving skills, but I know I’m right. Wheels meet ditch as I cut hard left to keep us from rolling, and I floor it to the absolute maximum while Noland’s spell keeps traction on the dirt.
“I swear to god, sister, you better know what you’re doing!” Ursula yells. “Or else you’re paying for the damages!”
Just because I know I’m right, doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. But I’m sure as hell not telling them that. I shift the gear up one more time, into a slot that’s labeled ‘magic’, and ignore the barrage of magic and munitions that’s only getting more intense by the second.
“Halt!”
A harsh, androgynous voice cuts through the air like a knife. All at once everything stops, as if the spells and bullets were directly under the control of the voice all this time. For a handful of seconds, the only noise is my tires against the dirt and Ursula’s gunfire. Then Ursula stops, and it’s only the sound of my wheels digging up the countryside.
“What’s going on?” I ask reluctantly. “We haven’t gone fifty miles yet. Hell, we’ve barely hit thirty five. Why are they giving up?”
Noland swallows hard. “They aren’t giving up.”
Ursula kicks in the passenger side window and slides into the seat with a grim frown stitched onto her lips. “You feel it in the air, too?”
I look between them in growing panic. “What? Feel what? What’s happening?”
Pearl points up through the windshield. “Shelby. Look.”
I lean in and try to follow her finger, even if it’s just an image she planted in my brain. But it’s not hard to follow when there’s a gigantic hole in the sky, like one of those wormholes from science fiction, but coloured mint green and leaking dull grey fluid like a drainpipe. Something starts to reach out of it, with hands the size of shipping containers and forearms that pulse with enough magic to wipe a small nation off the map.
“It’s… one of ours?” Pear whispers with a mixture of anger and awe. “How did it get here?”