9

(Adam Jensen- Street Fight)

Brenden

I relaxed my senses, easing my mind and focusing solely on my index finger. The air fell still and my attention locked onto the dull hum of the universe around me. The hum pulsed through my mind into a point of focus. My finger, illuminated and vibrating, gently traced embering lines in the air while I walked.

The book calls magic jzanmah. A word spoken like a breath. A combination of the words for create, jzanas, and destroy, mahkit. Jzanmah is the magic of this world and to harness it, all I need to do is will it to a point on my body and create a shape.

A sensation like resonant static tingled from my brain, down my neck, through my arm, and into my finger until it glowed neon red with heat. The sensation of channeling jzanmah into my body was unexpectedly natural and invigorating. The feeling of energy was like taking caffeine shots on a day where you don’t need them. Even though I was already awake and mentally focused, my eyes took sights in more clearly, my ears filtered out background noise, and my mind honed in on that electric feeling.

I was lost in my meditative place, walking blindly when a massive hand grabbed my arm and yanked me backwards. My foot dangled off the edge of a sheer cliff over a shimmering blue lake. When I looked into the water, all I saw was the sky, and I thought about to dive off the cliff and up into the clouds until my mind came back to reality.

“Um, th-thanks.” I stumbled backward, grabbing Adam’s arm to steady myself.

“How about we save that for later.” He awkwardly smiled and closed my book, his cheerful yellow eyes shining like the sun. For being such an imposing figure, there wasn’t a shred of intimidation in that man.

Suddenly, Desmond yelled out. “Get your asses off the edge! Behind us!”

Out of nowhere, a pincer slashed through Adam’s knee and splashed my lap with blood. He yelled as he turned to face the massive grasshopper creature. It flared its mandibles just as one of Desmond’s arrows collided with its exoskeleton.

Shit! Adam can’t fight that thing alone. I need to help him.

The moment I drew my sword, another of the insects skittered out from behind the one attacking Adam. It darted up to me on all six legs and snipped at my ankles. I jumped backward at each attack, losing balance each time. It backed me toward the cliff and rose to its hind legs, standing a whole head taller than me. It raised all four of its pincered arms like it was about to launch simultaneous attacks at all of my vital points.

We locked eyes and entered a standoff, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move. The thousands of tiny shimmering lenses on each of its eyes were focused on me alone. Its mandibles dripped viscous saliva as its mouth clicked and chittered. My heart raced and the electric feeling of the jzanmah coursed through me a thousandfold. If I couldn’t act, it was going to mercilessly kill me.

The wind calmly blew through, stirring up leaves and debris between us. Suddenly, the creature lunged forward. The top pincers went for my arms, and the lower pincers went for my legs to snip all my limbs in one attack.

I ducked to my right at a speed I wasn’t expecting. My mind barely had time to catch up with my body by the time I had switched places with the bug, which whirled around in confusion. Its back was to the cliff. I had that small advantage, so I needed to leverage it. It was then that I noticed a burning sensation in my shoulder. It had cut almost the whole way through the muscle above my collarbone. The book fell from my left hand as I lost grip from the pain. Panic was starting to set in. I was already an arm down and I didn’t know how to use a sword.

I slowly backed away from it, toward the forest, praying that it wouldn’t lunge like it did before. However, it was already raising its pincers like before. My breath quickened and trembled as I flinched at its every step toward me.

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Then it lunged again. I slammed its two upper pincers away with the sword, but its lower ones drove forward only cutting skin deep because I backed away quickly. It didn’t stop the attacks. I flailed the sword in an arc after the first hit, smacking away its lower pincers, then again deflecting its uppers. Its ravenous attacks weren’t going to stop until I was dead. Each time I deflected, I got slower and it got closer, cutting shallow like paper cuts, then deeper, then stabbing into my sides and tearing strings of skin off.

Oh my God, I’m gonna die. If I can’t do anything, I’m fucked.

In a desperate attack, I drew my sword all the way back and turned my body to dodge its attack. Its attacks carried it forward and into my arc as I used everything in me to slash in a downward strike, severing its upper pincers. The top right one dropped to the ground while the top left pincer dangled from a gooey yellow tendon in its armor.

It showed the first signs of weakness, screeching and recoiling backward. My brain stopped thinking and I lunged forward at it, slashing up toward its head. The creature tried backing away but it couldn’t match my speed. My sword glanced across its exoskeleton about to miss until Desmond’s arrow shattered on the back of its head. Its head lurched forward just enough for my blade to cross through its right eye with a grotesque squelch. The bug screeched and chittered wildly as the force from my attack knocked it onto its back.

It stood up, not on the verge of death yet, but definitely wounded. The lakeside breeze chilled my left arm, which was now coated in blood from shoulder to fingertip. I knew the bug recognized my labored breaths and sloppy steps. It knew I was hurting, but it was hurting just as badly.

Out of nowhere, Tells stumbled backward into the right side of the bug, into its new blindspot. It recoiled madly, flailing its two good pincers out at Tells, who managed to slam them out of the way with her buckler.

Adam was to my right, screaming for his life. Desmond was to my left shooting arrows rapidly at what I could only assume was another bug behind a cluster of trees, where Tells came stumbling in from. We didn’t have much time before we would lose. I had to try something stupid.

“Tells, can you hold it off for a second?! I’m gonna try some magic!”

“We love casting spells,” Tells raised her eyebrows and gave an unconvinced side nod, never breaking eye contact with the chittering bug. She raised the sword and buckler, pumping her arms and bouncing on her toes like a boxer. Her expressionless face concentrated, letting out a deep breath to hone her senses, but a trembling anger was breaking through her unfazed visage.

I stuck my sword into the ground and followed Tells’ cue. I breathed deep into my lungs and held out my hand, the sensation of static crawling from the back of my head to my arm and into a coalesced point on my fingertip. I just had to remember what the book told me to do. This was one of the simplest sigils in there, I had to be able to do it. Tiny flames licked off the end of my finger as I began the first step. I traced my hand in a half circle, topping it with three triangular points, the middle point rising highest. The line started as a red, fleeting flame, following my finger until I joined the ends and it flashed into a white hot shape, like it was emboldened in the air.

It was time for the next shape. I let out a breath and willed the energy into each of my fingers. With each of them glowing, I channeled the energy to create shape and flicked every finger up at once, like I was drawing lines of smoke that the geometric fire was giving off. The lines shimmered for a moment, and then emboldened in the air. The sigil was ready to be activated.

All I had to do was grab fire and my hand would ignite. I hadn’t done it yet, but I couldn’t be afraid now. Determination coursed through me, jzanmah exhilarating me, helping me forget my fear. I grunted and threw my hand through the sigil as if grasping for a sword. Flames burst out of the sigil and wrapped around my hand and wrist, but I couldn’t feel any heat at all. The static sensation curled through my head and coursed down my arm. The jzanmah spread over me like a thin glove keeping my body safe from the fire around my hand.

Tells was still fending off the monster, actually giving it a hell of a time. She bashed at its lower pincers and slammed its exoskeleton with her sword, doing more bludgeoning than cutting. The bug was getting hits in, though, using the broken, jagged shell of its upper arms to get sneaky stabs into her upper body. They weren’t deep, but she was staggered and heaving.

She glanced over at me and I nodded back. She lunged forward, bashing its pincers aside, but one managed to glance off and gouge her shoulder. She pressed her sword beneath its head, forcing it to lean backward. At that opening, I sprinted forward, wrapping my flaming arm around its head and into its good eye. Tells pushed up while I pulled it down, and the bug fell backward onto the ground, its pincers pinned by Tells’ buckler and shoulder.

My hand burned through its eye, melting the flesh into a bubbling paste and pushing further and further. The bug screeched and lurched, bound and helpless, trying to grab at my wrist with its mandibles in a desperate attempt to stop me. I wouldn’t let myself stop. My body was invigorated, angry and energized. I twisted and ripped at anything I could find until my fingers latched onto a fleshy mass the size of an apple, which slowly melted to goop in my palm. Finally, the bug stopped fighting back.

I yanked my hand out and fell backwards. Losing focus, the jzanmah dissipated. My body shuddered as the fleeting static left me drained, or maybe it was the blood loss. I couldn’t tell anymore. My head was in the clouds with my weak breath. I tripped backward into the dirt, unable to move. Tells stumbled down next to me and groaned, clutching her bleeding stomach. We both laid there, struggling for life as the battlefield fell silent.