Mana based magic is divided into the most sub groups as it is the most plentifully practiced magic but others exist such as Psionics and even Reality Control.
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Bryan
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After emptying the magazine of the pistol Adrian passed me I retreat back and close the door behind me. The goblins have Archers and if I can’t benefit from ranged combat I need to prevent them from getting to.
“I need another weapon” I say knowing Tomas would have been looking for one.
There are others in the room aside from him and Abagail but they have decided to cower in the corner.
I frown at the broken table leg he passes me but I suppose I can always trade it for a weapon from these creatures. Having no reason to wait on the goblins to break the door down I kick it open slightly and stab the first goblin with the splintering piece of wood in my hands.
It slips in between the rips and I grab the rusted metal rod from the little monsters hands. The next goblin reaches a similar fate by Tomas's hands though he does not manage to grab the weapon fast enough to reach to the third and fourth.
I see a clothed goblin chanting and can only regret my ranged weapon is empty as I block an axe meant for Tomas after knocking out the goblin that attacked me by the benefit of my greater reach.
Golden specs of undulating light form an oval like sphere around him as he walks towards the room Adrian took as cover.
Blood spills as Tomas and me make sure to keep the goblin’s stuck at the doorway in a bottle neck but our line is broken just as an explosion rings out from the room where Adrian is no doubt fighting the robed goblin.
There are three more in the hall, all of which come at Tomas and me, my arms are getting tired but we can’t stop yet. Not yet, not while my friends are in danger.
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Adrian
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I slowly push myself off of the goblin mage, my heart pounding but beginning to slow down as the fight has ended. With that the pain of my left arm begins to rise and I think I have some bruises elsewhere but I’ve no idea how they came to be.
Blood continues to trickle down my left arm in a small but steady stream an inch or so deep cut that I have to do something about now. I reach out with both my right hand and will towards the dwindling fires on the wooden desks of the room and a tongue of flame comes to me. I press it against the cut for just long enough to stop the bleeding grateful my sense of pain is not quite back yet even as I grunt out words that would get me in a lot of trouble.
The tongue of flame dissipates once I stop holding in my will having nothing to sustain it in the air. I look through the goblin’s possessions finding a small book in a language I don’t understand, three vials of strange liquid and the dagger I killed him with which doesn’t seem to have any rust on it unlike the other weapons I’ve seen.
All of them go into my book bag. I struggle a bit to stand up feeling light headed and after giving up try another magic. I barely manage to pull another carton of 9mm bullets from my desk in the basement of my grandfather's house.
I spend a minute reloading my pistol making sure to have one in the chamber and a full magazine before I pull myself up and walk to the door. A few stray goblins are fleeing, their attack has been held off but I don’t know for how long.
There are a few teachers looking into the hall from their rooms but I ignore them as I cross the hall into the room Bryan took cover.
Both he and Tomas are standing breathing heavily just within the doorway. Abagail is checking Bryan for injuries but he doesn’t have any.
“Are you alight?” I ask my two friends.
“Just tired” Bryan answers having more breath than Tomas as he returns the pistol to me.
I put it in my bag to reload in a minute. Some of the cowards in the corner begin to get up but the heavy footsteps of an overweight adult come up behind me.
“I’ll be taking that” a woman’s voice days as she reaches into my bag.
I turn and step away fast enough to keep the firearm only to have the fat female vice principal begin her angry judging toned lecture.
“Young man, you are already going to be expelled. Do you really think not turning that weapon over is a good idea?” she speaks with some venom on the word weapon, as if it is the real problem in the world.
“Leave me alone, you’re not getting it.”
“Now listen here school poli. . .”
“I don’t care. If you want to confiscate weapons bother the murderous little midgets.”
I ignore her further words and enter one location her rules won’t let her bother me, the boy’s bathroom. What the hell is wrong with that woman? Goblins are murdering and I think eating people and she thinks she needs to confiscate weapons.
I enter one if the two stalls to have a place to sit, I need a moment to think and I pull out my second pistol and the partial box of ammo. I probably only have two more of these on that desk. I don’t have the ammo to deal with more than two maybe three encounters with these goblins.
I begin to reload the magazine and make sure to have one in the chamber. It’s dangerous but the extra shot will be needed. Even if my larger concern is the magic that goblin used. It broke the rules I know, he should have been punished for going against what the observers thought as real. Did grandpa lie to me about that rule?
I’ve never tested doing the impossible in front of others, just pulling stuff I forgot out of a bag and knowing what I am going to get out of games of chance. I’ll need to test it but how? If it is true and I do something big I could die by the backlash, something small with few people to disbelieve.
“Adrian, I hear you have something to give to me” a male voice says as the speaker enters the bathroom.
Great now I need to deal with Joe. Damn football elitist, I had actually hoped he was one of those burned by the goblin mage. The idiot thinks because he is on the football team and has a rich dad he deserves anything he wants.
I slide the gun back into my bag and get up. Should I use him as my test subject? I don’t think there is anyone else in here but even if there is it should only be one or two. The toilet flushes automatically as I open the stall door.
Unfortunately, it opens inwards and gives a clear opening to the jock who is in better physical shape than me. I am grabbed by the shirt as he says, “give me the guns.”
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“No” I respond as I knee him in the gut.
He was however ready for that and while hurt does not let go.
“Where is it, Adrian? You might be able to get away with shooting those midgets but I’m not going to let you do anything but what I want.”
The door to the bathroom opens and Bryan walks in. As soon as he sees what is going on I manage to slip my arm into my book bag. Joe grabs my left arm right where the burned cut is and pain shoots down my arm as the warm trickle of spilling blood resumes but I got to where I need to be.
I touch one of the pistol and bend space to my will and physically push it. It disappears from my grasp to be right in front of Bryan. Even in surprise he grabs it.
“Let him go Joe or I’ll shoot you” Bryan threatens as a splitting headache forms in my mind.
"Don’t be. . .” Joe starts to say as he turns towards Bryan.
He notices the gun and immediately releases me. I slide down against the stall, the weakness from my lightheadedness returning in full while coupled with a headache.
Joe runs out of the bathroom while Bryan begins to look at my reopened wound. He pulls out a small pocket knife and cuts a strip of cloth from my other sleeve.
“I'm going to wash and bandage this. Come over to the sinks.”
I nod as he helps me up. Good news Joe has been dealt with for now and I know that rule of magic is real. Unfortunately, I feel terrible. I got punished for breaking what others think is real.
Bryan rises my upper arm before tying the strip of cloth to hold the cut closed.
“How did that gun appear in front of me?” Bryan asks.
Do I tell him the truth? Would I even be believed?
“I put it there.”
“How?”
“Magic like that goblin throwing fire.”
“What? But magic isn’t real.”
“And that’s why I never told you.”
Bryan does nothing for a moment, “what do you mean?”
“Magic has rules, you get punished by them when you break one. Don’t go against what others think is real is one of them.”
Neither of us say a word for over a minute as Bryan finishes dressing the cut and burn on my arm.
“I’ll get Tomas and Abagail and wait in the room you fought in. We need to make a plan” Bryan says and I nod.
“Give me a moment, I’ll be a minute.”
I drink some water from the sink before rinsing my face and looking in the mirror. I see my dark brown hair and hazel eyes as I meet my own gaze while I think for a few seconds.
I can’t stay here at the school, even if I don’t run into any more problems with Joe and the others there are not enough supplies or weapons here. We need weapons and food, something nearby if this isn’t an isolated incident.
I walk out into the hallway, ignoring the muttering words of the other students and enter the room Bryan mentioned. Bryan, Tomas and Abagail sit on the floor, whatever conversation they had before stops as I enter. I sit down next to them.
“How long have you been a wizard?” Tomas asks in a complete lack of tact.
Bryan told them then, I can’t really blame him but I’m unsure if this will be good or bad.
“I’m not a wizard.”
“But you always play as a wizard, why would you play one if you were something else?”
“For fun. Now we have more important things to talk about than me knowing some magic.”
“But you’re a . . .” Tomas begins before Bryan interrupts.
“He's right Tomas, we can talk about this when we’re safe. You want to move to somewhere else don’t you?”
“Yes, there isn’t enough food for all of us here and we don’t have enough weapons to hold the position for long.”
“How much is left?”
“A carton and a half. We need somewhere with more ammunition and guns. Something for melee too if we can.”
“You sound like you have an idea” Abagail interjects.
“Outdoor World, it’ll have what we need and it is closer than any of our homes.”
“What about our families and the other students?”
“If we can’t get to them because if we can’t defend ourselves we can’t help them” Tomas answers the first of her two questions.
“Many of the other students are panicked, dead or plain not helpful. I’ve already been attacked by one over the few weapons we do have” I answer the second.
“But we should help them” Abagail counters.
“Helping others isn’t worth dying over.”
“But. . .”
“Abagail, he's right. If we get ourselves killed then we can’t help anyone” Bryan interrupts her.
“Anyways, why there?” Tomas asks.
“It’s a hunting goods store along with other things. There will be both weapons and some food” Bryan answers.
“It’s also closer than any of our homes” I add.
“Should we let anyone know?” Abagail asks.
“No one here, they’ll just cause problems” I answer while pulling out my phone.
I flip it open to see that I no longer have a signal.
“We already checked that” Bryan tells me.
“I thought it was weird that I wasn’t getting panicked calls. It also means that these creatures are not an isolated incident.”
“When will we leave?” Tomas asks.
“I don’t see any point in sticking around, so now” I answer while standing up.
Bryan and Tomas nod before getting up but Abagail hesitates for a moment before following us.
As we enter the hall I see that some of the other students have gotten in the way between us and the parking lot. Joe is among them, as well as the jocks who didn’t try to defend everyone.
“What do you want?” I ask with annoyance.
“You’re not leaving until you give us those guns” one of the jocks whose name I don’t know answers.
“No.”
“You can’t stop us from taking it from you.”
“Maybe not but I can make sure to spend every bullet before you pry it out of my hands. Many of you will die and you’ll get nothing.”
“You can’t, that'd be murder” one of the girls shouts back at me.
“Self-defense, even if someone does come after me for it you started the fight first. All I have to do is repeat ‘I feared for my life and defended myself.’ Let us go” I say emotionlessly as I shove my emotions down and bottle them up.
No one moves or speaks for nearly a minute before the one of the jocks move out of the way and the others begin to follow his example. We begin to pass through them, both Bryan and me keeping our hand on the two pistols. If anything does happen we will be ready, it won’t be enough but we will be ready.
I breathe a quiet sigh of relief once we are past them. The hallway we enter after taking a right turn is bloody but no corpses are present. I glance into a room as we walk by; broken windows and chairs, blood spilled over the ground but no corpses or goblins. Where did they go? How can all of the corpses already be gone? Only those near the language department’s classrooms are still there. That they are all missing has to be because of the goblins but why would they even clean up the dead? During their attack makes even less sense to me, why would you waste the time and manpower to do such a thing during a fight?
We pass by the cafeteria all the food that was out in the open is now gone, blood is as most of the school scattered around but that is not one of the two things that catch my eye. The purple cloud is gone and the security officer’s pistol lies tossed aside on the ground. I walk over to it and pick up the gun, it seems to have been messed with as if someone had tried to make it work and then abandoned it in frustration.
“Where is everyone?” Abagail asks, with some sickness from what we all see.
“No idea” I answer, not sure if it will be a good thing to figure it out or not.
Whatever reason they have to collect our corpses will not be one that we will like.
“We need to keep moving before someone changes their mind about coming after us” Bryan reminds me after I look around for a moment.
I nod and place the we continue onwards down the hall until the sounds of talking are heard. Everyone but Abagail immediately stop. Abagail bumps into Tomas and she falls to the ground. The voices go silent, until a goblin taking a bite out of some meat on a bone looks out from one of the classrooms. It looks larger and far more muscular than those I saw before.
It shouts something and others of these larger goblins come out of the nearby rooms. They shout in something in their feral and simplistic tongue. Both Bryan and me draw and fire out pistols, the nearest goblin falls as easily as its smaller counterparts to bullets but that does not stop the other goblins from advancing as the first.
I take aim again and again as I empty the magazine, not every goblin falls on the first shot on a gun and by the time it is empty three goblins remain. Bryan takes the first one to reach us as he has neither the time to switch weapons or weapons to switch to.
I draw the goblin mage's dagger and can only hope that I still maintain the advantage of physical fitness over these larger healthier goblins. I take a step back to dodge a swing of a club before moving into close range. Daggers are good for being inside the reach of an opponent’s weapon and that is what I have to do.
Bryan begins to choke his opponent as I try to shank mine. The third goblin goes to attack Bryan who is left open by the ongoing grapple before Tomas and Abagail double team him. My attack misses and a club strikes my arm, I drop the dagger as my arm goes numb.
My foe smiles cruelly and I can see fragments of bone between its teeth as I am forced to smell his rotting breath. I repeat Bryan’s action in slamming my shoulder into the smaller creature to knock him to the ground and begin to grapple the little monster but I do not have the same level of physical ability my friend does.
The goblin is on the ground but he keeps me from effectively choking him. My arms slowly begin the feel sore as I ignore the painful grip of the goblin near my wrists, the nails slowly digging into my skin.
I don’t notice just how the other two goblins die but Tomas ends my foe's life with a dagger to the throat as I hold him pinned. Warm blood flows over my hands before I let go of my partial hold only when the goblin’s grip on my arms ends.