Frenzied marines ran to and fro around Cameron Brisal. Kept awake by pain in his leg, he’d worked on inventory reports all night. He’d noticed activity kicking up around the base earlier, more than normal, but thought nothing of it. Then, around three in the morning, a foreign voice had flooded his thoughts and shocked him out of his bureaucratic stupor. Evidently, it had crashed through everyone else’s brains too. The base had erupted into chaos as various servicemembers began showcasing supernatural powers.
Cameron had stumbled around blearily while flares of this novel ‘mana’ had cascaded across the base. Nobody’d been badly hurt, yet. The news coming in from other military emplacements painted a different picture. There were reports of casualties as people fought at other bases and installations. Cameron had seen some of the news on his phone, and it was not looking great in places with extremely dense populations. The last video he'd seen coming out of New York had shown two individuals thrashing each other high up in the air above the city, with large portions of the Hudson River being picked up and used as ammunition.
In the hours since the voice had shaken everyone awake, cell towers and phone lines had become completely clogged or damaged. Cameron couldn’t reach his family by phone and the official lines of communication remaining were too choked for personal use. Frankly, there wasn’t much for him to do to help, so he had mostly spent time tracking down people from his office. Cameron and the people on his floor had gathered outside the building they worked in and were waiting for orders about what to do.
As they waited, they showed each other videos of mages that were showing up all over the internet. They saw massive fights breaking out in urban centers across the world. The scenes were heartbreaking. Mad with power, people were turning the densest parts of cities the world over into meatgrinders. Cameron had stopped watching after a helicopter camera of an unfamiliar city in Africa banked around a building and revealed a street full of bodies. A woman spread an actinic yellow gas from her hands, clouding the market and choking victims fleeing the expanding cloud through the warren of streets.
Of course, chaos reigned elsewhere, but Cameron was hearing that anywhere above a certain population density was at serious risk if rampaging mages weren’t kept under control. He was very worried for his family back in Raleigh, but there was precious little he could do from Camp Lejeune. He began to drift off into sleep as the flares of light around the base petered off. There were no fires to fight or immediate emergencies, so he decided to finally rest.
Just as sleep began to fog Cameron’s brain, a woman who worked at the desk next to him shook him frantically.
“Cameron, you have to see this,” she sounded harried, so Cameron decided to go along with it.
The video she’d pulled up on her phone showed a street in Raleigh that he vaguely recognized from his childhood. People were fleeing towards the videographer, a common theme in the videos that were flooding the internet as brave or foolish people stopped running to take videos. Down the street, police vehicles had stopped with a truck in between.
Cameron’s breath hitched. That was John’s truck. He grabbed the phone and leaned closer to the screen. As the crowd cleared out, a standoff between two groups became visible. One group was just outside a shattered building. A second trio interposed themselves between the first trio and the police cars. Cameron zoomed in on the second group and gasped. The video confirmed his fears. John and his two friends were standing there. They clearly exchanged some words, but Cameron couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the fleeing crowd and car alarms.
Cameron watched the fight play out, wincing every time mana flashed between the combatants. John’s friends seemed to know what they were doing, but John was charging headlong with a shotgun. Cameron watched anxiously as the fight played out. He barely relaxed as John forced the explosion slinging mage into a retreat while his friends captured the other two.
When the video finished, Cameron’s colleagues consoled him, but it couldn’t lift the crushing despair he felt. He was stuck on base, unable to help them, while they were running around in a world gone mad. Despair set in and Cameron’s exhaustion transitioned to panic. Tinnitus drowned out his colleagues, his breathing hastened, and his heartbeat pounded against his temples.
His coworkers started looking around nervously, and Cameron realized what he was hearing wasn’t his heartbeat. The percussive thumps were coming from the north, near the main gate. Cameron sniffed and raised his head to look that way. Brown light flashed over the buildings, in time with the thumping noises. After a few more thumps and flashes, a new alarm sounded, sending a chill down Cameron’s back. They were under attack.
As if cowed by the blaring alarms, the thumps slowed down before petering off. People all around paused at the absence, checking radios and phones for updates. As Cameron started to let his guard down, a terrible crashing noise sounded out. It coincided with a massive flare of light that backlit huge pieces of rubble soaring through the air. The crowd exclaimed and ran for cover. Cameron was too shellshocked to move, and when chunk of concrete half a meter across impacted the ground, he failed to dodge. The debris threw Cameron backward and knocked him out.
***
Tessa Al-Shafir worked frantically to calm the children she was responsible for. The mosque had organized a weeklong sleepaway experience for the middle schoolers in the community. The kids were excited to go to a lakeside cabin compound in Colorado, and they’d spent the past two days swimming, hiking, and enjoying the beautiful vistas along the lakefront. The neighbors had greeted them as they’d unpacked and pointed out the good fishing spots for the kids to enjoy.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Overnight, the idyllic retreat had turned into a nightmare. As they wrapped up the campfire, a man in clear distress crashed through the tree line. Tessa and her husband had intercepted him while the other adults shuffled the kids away. The man had raved that power had been revealed to him, then started ranting about immigrants. A malevolent clarity had entered his eyes as he decried ‘evil foreigners’ and threatened their group. Tessa’s husband directed him to leave, but the man refused and grew agitated. When Tessa reached for her phone the man snapped, and his eyes flared a putrescent green.
A burst of virulent water shot from his hand. Tessa had leapt aside, but her husband was too slow. He was spun around and fell over to the side. Screaming, Tessa ran back to the cabins. She ran into the building with the others and locked the door behind her. In the time it’d taken her to explain the situation, the man had begun hammering on the cabin door. Tessa and the other adults desperately tried to plan some way out.
The thumping grew more forceful before stopping abruptly. After it stopped, a concerning sizzling noise started. A frightening green liquid seeped under the door, and smoke began rising from the floorboards. The kids were crying as they huddled in the back of the cabin. Tessa held a broomstick as she watched the door and prayed. She prayed for her husband, her children, and the other adults clutching random items defensively. I should never have brought them out here. Lord, forgive and have mercy.
Just as acrid smoke began seeping around the doorframe, Tessa heard a muffled impact. The cabin shook and two male voices were audible outside. One of them screamed, and the next second a man crashed through the remnants of the door. He wasn’t the lunatic or Tessa’s husband. Instead, he was a blonde with grey eyes and a slightly pudgy visage. Golden flames flickered around his body. Tessa would have sworn the flickering flames almost outlined a halo above his head.
He made eye contact with her, speaking with a smile despite the burns and blood trickling down his face, “Hello Miss. Name’s Deliverance. I felt faithful in distress and rushed here to help. I burned too much energy arriving in time and find myself overpowered. I think I’ll need a little help to win.”
Tessa looked out the door, where the man with the glowing green eyes was struggling to stand back up. Thank you, Lord.
“How can I help?”
“I just need you to believe in me,” the blonde man’s smile never wavered.
Tessa tried not to let her doubt show on her face. This so-called Deliverance was clearly in a bad way. Patches of his skin sizzled and he was badly bruised. Blood with a golden sheen ran freely from his nose.
Tessa smiled weakly, “I’ll do my best.”
Deliverance staggered to his feet before turning and giving her a thumbs up, “That’s all I can ask for.”
More golden flames flared around Deliverance as he braced and charged the other man. A spray of necrotic water steamed away, leaving only a handful of pitiful sparks protecting his skin. Unsteady feet hindered Deliverance’s ability to dodge, and the next wash of hostile mana glanced off his shoulder, burning through cloth and skin to reveal raw muscles.
Tessa’s breath hitched. How was she supposed to believe in this stranger? She believed in her lord but didn’t know how to do the same for this man, really a youth on a closer look, before her. She prayed under her breath for his success, but it seemed that wasn’t enough. Tessa refused to blaspheme and pray to Deliverance. All the while, the fight raged on.
Deliverance was taking worse and worse hits, accumulating gruesome flesh wounds in his dogged defense of Tessa and the children. As she watched, she realized that Deliverance was young, frightfully so. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Tessa’s stomach turned. He’d exhausted himself just getting to them, and now he had no hope of winning. Yet he fought on.
Deliverance’s opponent seized an opening and launched a ball of malignant fluid towards the door of the cabin. Tessa squared her shoulders and prepared to block as much as she could to protect the children.
She never had to. Deliverance threw himself in front of the hideous projectile, catching it squarely on his chest. He had no flames left to protect himself, and the gobbet of bile began eating through him immediately. Tessa gasped. He had sacrificed himself to buy them all a few more seconds. He would never stop. Deliverance would save them, no matter what it took. A spark ignited in Tessa’s heart, at the same time the flames around Deliverance flared. The bile was burnt away as his chest healed over. Deliverance slashed his hand, releasing an arc of golden flame. It carved its way through two frantic blasts from his opponent and crashed over his surprised form.
The man with the virulent magic was burnt away entirely, leaving nothing but a pair of boots and golden ash floating away on the wind.
Deliverance heaved for breath, hands on his knees. Tessa approached him, eyeing the spot where their assailant had stood. Off to the side, her husband was slowly recovering. Tessa was thankful that his arm looked only mildly singed. She reached Deliverance and hesitated.
Tessa firmed up and asked the questions burning in her heart. “How did that work? Are you an angel? Was that man a demon?”
Deliverance laughed, “No ma’am. The world has magic now. Mine is based on faith, in a way. I don’t want anyone to worship me, but I gain power from people freely practicing their faiths and believing in me to protect them. I have a long road ahead; the world is going to be in tumult. But you are the seed. I’m going to take your faith and place it in this flame.”
Deliverance gestured at the firepit before continuing, “As people’s belief in me grows, so will this flame. It will transmute the surroundings, gradually becoming a redoubt for me and my followers.”
A mote of gold spiraled from his hand before settling into the logs. Despite having burned away almost entirely, the flames raced back upwards. Around the base of the firepit, the rocks took on a creamy luster.
Tessa was awed. Lord, thank you for your gifts. From behind her, more motes came from the cabin. The other members of their camp must have met the qualifications for believing in Deliverance. The flame swelled, and the blessed area around the firepit grew slightly greater.
Deliverance smiled at Tessa, “You’re welcome to stay here if you like, but I can feel others in need. Will you manage without me?”
Tessa looked around and sniffed, “I bet we can figure something out. Thank you, Deliverance.”
Deliverance nodded, then burnished eagle wings sprouted from his back as he soared away, leaving behind the seeds of something greater.