image [https://i.imgur.com/jpOYNWV.png]

Marie's face had changed, but none of the others had, and I absently noted the oddity.

They came at us at the same time. As soon as Colson’s words had left his mouth, their collective attitude shifted, and they moved forward as one—blurring with speed.

I focused on them, and I could subtly feel their draw of aether, but not as powerfully as I felt Tanner's. Colson was suddenly right beside me, his presence moving from my peripheral to nearly touching me in an instant. I absently noted that I hadn't felt him draw any, but I figured it was because my concentration was already split.

“Fire at will!” he roared when they started to move, and that’s exactly what we did.

I set my feet, bracing myself and picked my targets. There was no time to consider the consequences and I reacted on instinct. The air was filled with the sound and smell of gunfire, bullets tearing into bodies as we unloaded into the mass of drudges in front of us.

It looked like a massacre. Tranquil mind held firm, but the blood and viscera painting the floor and the walls in a crimson Jackson Pollock imitation made my stomach churn. The phomp and clacks of our shotguns, rifles, and my pistol, made an awful racket.

“On our way!” I vaguely registered Sally yelling over the conference call while I hit one of the drudges in the shoulder, making her recoil slightly.

We managed to score hits on all of them except for Marie, who flitted back and forth so fast I could barely track her. It did slow them down, but none of them dropped to the floor.

With our bullet storm, we managed to keep them at bay, halting their advance six feet from us, and making them focus on dodging our barrage as well as they could. If I wasn’t horrified at the scene, it would probably have looked comical the way they were jumping around.

There was screaming. A lot of high-pitched screaming. After a handful of seconds, my 1911 clicked impotently when I pulled the trigger.

The clip’s empty.

Belatedly I realised that nobody was firing guns anymore, I just couldn’t hear anything, my ears were ringing because the sound had been so loud. I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times to clear out the feeling of tinnitus. The was a stillness permeating the living room, the drudges groaning and staggering, bullet holes and half-way severed extremities aplenty—like a bunch of extras in a George Romero movie—Marie standing in the back looking absolutely furious.

I couldn’t help myself. Something finally snapped and I started giggling at the sight of them. A mild chuckle at first, it gradually intensified until I was roaring with laughter, almost blinded by the tears that welled in my eyes.

I’d dropped the gun at some point and bent to pick it back up and holster it in the back of my pants. Still huffing out breaths of laughter I realigned myself and saw that everyone was looking at me like I was batshit crazy, even the drudges who were in obvious pain.

Maybe you are. Maybe this is it, straitjacket, and padded walls.

Wide eyes and raised eyebrows all around, nobody said anything for a good ten seconds before Colson gently nudged me and I looked up to see him observe me with a worried expression.

“You alright there, kiddo?” he asked with obvious concern.

Sally and Rob burst through the door to the living room, guns raised, but hesitated when they saw we were at a standstill, everyone ignoring them to look at me.

“Yeah, I’m alr- NO NOT I’M FUCKING ALRIGHT COLSON,” I exploded.

I took a deep breath. Colson's eyes widened at my outburst and he took a small step back.

"We just had a shootout with a bunch of pale weirdos”—I gestured at the drudges wildly—“that are all still standing despite us pumping them full of lead and silver,” I ranted, my hands shaking.

I pointed to one of the drudges in front.

“Look at that guy, his hand is almost severed at the wrist but somehow the bleeding’s staunched and he looks ready to jump at me,” I complained.

He did look pretty pissed off, the flesh slowly knitting itself back together.

“How the hell can I be alright after I just witnessed that?”

I was still in the tranquil mind—I had checked and doublechecked—it hadn’t broken.

I’d never experienced that before, my rational mind overwriting the technique before it collapsed, and I was creeped out by it. It felt like my brain was cloven in two, one part trying to compartmentalise and assess our situation from a tactical perspective, the other part panicking and wanting to run as far away as possible.

“I’m alright,” I took a deep breath, muttering to myself. “I’m alright. Let’s get this show on the road,” I moved to get the spear from my holster and have Colson empower it but fumbled with the clasp a couple of times.

He put a hand on my head and ruffled my hair and I stopped pulling at it.

“It’s alright, kid. Sorry for pushing you so far. I should’ve known better,” he muttered in a mild tone, his large hand still pressing down on my scalp. “I’ve got this. Tanner, I need to get Ethan out of here before he cracks. I’m finishing things quickly.”

The drudges who’d been awfully polite about our little tête-à-tête, tensed visibly as something in Colson’s body language changed.

“Do your thing, Colson,” Tanner said seriously from somewhere to my right, and I felt him let his aether go.

I glanced at him briefly and saw that he’d dropped his gun at some point and was holding two visibly shrinking gleaming red sabres in its stead, connected to his palms via two small cuts. They disappeared as I looked back to Colson.

“Here, hold these,” he removed his hand from my head and gave me his aviators, his voice now cold and devoid of emotion. “And Ethan, I know you’re struggling right now but don’t look away, we'll work on it later. Let me show you what a Sigil Holder can do.”

I looked at him. Then I looked at the drudges standing interspersed in front of us. I only took my eyes off Colson for a second and then the woman closest to us exploded in a spray of gore.

In her place stood Colson, bent over, his hands interlocked in a downward hammer blow, just barely touching a pile of slush between his hands and the floor.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Colson had erupted with aether. There was an overpowering sensation of fire and magma, and an image of an erupting volcano presented itself in my mind. He was drawing aether in a way that felt incomparable to anything I’d experienced so far. It was overwhelming and all-encompassing, and I don’t think I could’ve looked away even if I wanted to. And damn he was fast. The drudges weren't even sure how to react, they simply stared at him passively.

He stood up.

“One," he said while he glanced back at me with a raised index finger. His four pupils were bonfires of flame, the white in his eyes gone, replaced by a black void. "Physical augmentation. Speed, perception, and strength," he spoke the words slowly and clearly.

I knew what he was trying to convey. He was showing me the different ways he could use aether, using this as a teaching moment.

He looked away and the air around him suddenly shimmered and distorted to form an opaque orange-coloured barrier; his boots searing scorch marks onto the hardwood floor. It covered all seven feet of him and quickly settled into a perfect sphere. The temperature in the room was rising rapidly and I felt small peals of sweat forming on my forehead.

He gestured at the drudges in a “come hither” motion, his voice indifferent.

“I’m in a hurry. Come at me. All of you.”

It looked like something out of a movie, the hero staring down a group of villains.

“GO!” Marie yelled in a frantic voice, waving wildly at Colson.

The other drudges didn’t need to be told twice and they rushed to attack. Two of the men were side-by-side and reached him first, nails and teeth at the ready, going for the kill. When they entered his barrier they caught fire and then... well, they vanished.

“Two. Barrier creation,” he held up two fingers while he spoke, so I could see them.

Marie screamed in outrage, but she and the rest of her little gang stopped their charge and backed away from Colson. Hesitating. Afraid.

“If you won’t come to me, I’ll go to you,” Colson said—and he let the barrier go—a roaring greatsword of fire forming in his hands.

The sword was beautiful. Almost too bright to look at, with black runes running across the entire length of the blade, it was as long as Colson was tall.

He jumped forward at a speed I could almost follow, the floorboards splintering in his wake, and landed between three of the drudges. They tried in vain to move out of his reach, but he pirouetted with the sword held away from himself at waist level and bisected them all in a single stroke, their halves cauterizing instantly. They screamed shrilly but it was quickly cut off as they died.

What the hell…

“I hate using weapons. Three. Physical aether manifestation."

The sword disappeared, and he held up three fingers.

Marie and the other five screamed in despair and tried to run away. Turning around on the spot, they bolted for the boarded-up windows nearest to where they stood. Before they were anywhere close to the wall, a feeling of heat, oppression and domination ground them into the floor, visibly flattening their bodies. It felt like they were being willed into submission.

Holy shit.

The hair on my arms stood on end.

If I could have let my bowels go, I think I would have. But I couldn’t, my body didn’t have permission. I felt locked down, and I wasn’t even on the receiving end of whatever he was doing.

“Four,” Colson’s voice droned, “aether domination.”

He held up four fingers. He was still blazing like an erupting volcano to my senses, his power undiminished. The drudges writhed on the ground, a couple of them managing to move slightly while Colson calmly walked over to them and raised his right hand over his head, fingers splayed.

“Five. External elemental manipulation.”

Five spheres of flame formed over his hand. They looked like miniature suns, each spinning around its axis, tongues of flame briefly flicking into the air like small solar flares. Colson lowered his hand in a sharp downward motion and the five suns descended on five drudges in a blink. They were engulfed in fire and couldn’t even scream in pain, because they were still caught in his aether domination. They stilled after a moment, their bodies charred to husks.

It was a veritable slaughter, and the taste of bile coated the inside of my mouth, but I didn’t feel the same urge to throw up as I’d done with the empousa. There was an overwhelming feeling of disgust at the brutality and the waste of life, but the same sense of vindictive justice I’d experienced during my fight lurked in the back of my mind, and I acknowledged it. I embraced it.

Colson let his aether go, the fires extinguishing, and the world seemed lesser for it—colourless and bland. I could move again, and I felt my jaw slacken, my knees buckling slightly. I had known he was strong. The way he behaved when he talked about himself was the kind of confidence you’d exhibit only if you were either incredibly arrogant or had the power to back it up. Colson definitely had the power.

Marie started moving as soon as he’d let his domination go and he casually took a couple of steps and picked her up by the throat. She thrashed in his grip and swiped wildly at his arm, but his hand was an iron vice that couldn’t be moved.

“It’s not everything I can do,” Colson’s normal cadence was back, “but I figured it was about time you saw some of what I’m about.”

He walked our way, Marie in hand, and I noticed that his eyes looked apprehensive, his usual mischievous air gone.

“Colson,” I breathed, and he looked at me with trepidation, “that. Was. Awesome!”

I emphasised the last word. Surprise flickered on his face for a moment and his worried expression disappeared, a smile ghosting his lips briefly. His capabilities were scary, overwhelming, and excessive, but damn it if it wasn’t awe-inspiring. I looked at the carnage before us and distilled my feelings about it down to what it essentially was—necessity. It was necessary. It had been them or us. Appreciation for his abilities and the fact that he'd shown me what he could do, was present as well.

“You’re not afraid of me?” he asked as he came to a halt a bit away from us, Marie’s feet dragging along the floor, her efforts to free herself increasing.

“Afraid, why would I be afraid? Are you planning to set me on fire?” I asked.

Sure, his capabilities were frightening, but the way he’d made his feelings on our dynamic clear, I trusted him.

He snorted before he spoke, “Of course not.”

“No problem then,” I shrugged, smiling.

I was still processing what I’d just seen, but the split sensation I’d experienced earlier in my mind was gone, thankfully. I still clung to the tranquil mind like a lifejacket, but my real feelings were bleeding through and there was no fear when I looked at him.

Looking around at the others, I saw that they regarded Colson carefully, seemingly undecided whether they should be jubilant, scared, or offended at the ease he’d dispatched the drudges. He didn’t seem bothered by their evaluating stares, only caring what I thought.

Marie was grabbing at his fingers, trying in vain to dislodge them.

“Stop that or I’ll wring your neck,” he told her in an exasperated tone, and she went limp in his grip, eyes downcast.

Shaking themselves off, our teammates walked closer, and all clapped him on the back a couple of times silently.

“Colson, you’re a scary bastard when you wanna be, you realise that right?” Tanner eventually piped up.

“Hah, yeah, I know,” Colson conceded and laughed humourlessly.

“Just as well you finished it quickly, come around back, me ‘n Rob have something we wanna show you,” Sally intoned in a reserved but happy tone.

“What’d you find?” Colson inquired.

“You’ll see,” Rob replied and smiled at us, “we had to hurry back here when we heard the gunfire.”

They couldn’t have had more than a handful of seconds before the fight broke out and I was surprised they’d found anything at all.

“You up for it, kid?” Colson asked me.

I let the tranquil mind go and my feelings magnified. Breathing deeply, searching myself, I concluded that despite my earlier outburst, the fact that Colson had taken care of things so quickly meant that my breakdown had put itself on hold temporarily. Was I sad and repulsed at the eleven people we'd fought and killed? Of course, just like with the empousa, but like I'd concluded, it was us or them.

I'd have to watch those feelings in the future and make sure apathy didn't supplant empathy. Getting used to killing things seemed all too easy. It was only my second battle and I hadn't even thrown up this time. And I’d have to do something about that breakdown, soon, or there’d be hell to pay. Colson had said we’d get around to it and I hoped that meant we could start working on it tonight.

“Yeah,” my answer was steady, “Yeah, I’m up for it.”

I handed him back his sunglasses and he put them on with his offhand.

We walked outside and around the farm, Marie in tow, Tanner heading towards the car. When we arrived in front of a set of open double doors leading into the storm cellar, Tanner brought the car around, got out, and went over to Colson with a set of manacles. Instead of a chain between the two handholds, there was a solid bar of metal separating them by a couple of inches. It looked to be made of the same material as the head on my spear, runes inscribed along its length.

Tanner secured Marie’s arms behind her back while he spoke.

“I’ll keep an eye on her, you all head down and see what’s going on,” he told us resolutely.

She didn’t resist, the fight had left her entirely.

“Let’s go take a look at the fruits of our labour,” Dink announced and started down the stairs.

We went down single file. There was a faint light at the bottom of the stairs where the stairway petered out. Reaching the basement, we were met with a sight I hadn't expected, and a sour and unpleasant smell hit me.