Published at 8th of March 2024 7:44 am

Chapter Twenty Five

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“This is awkward,” Ida commented as Alice and I invaded her personal space to study her amulet. She had a slight blush coloring her neck and cheeks. “I have not had a chance to shower.”

She did smell a bit ripe but seeing as how we all have missed a shower or two I wasn’t going to mention it. I was also keenly aware of being very close to two very attractive women but I did things like think of baseball and long division to keep myself from being unduly distracted. Alice waved the comment away, holding the amulet on the flat of her palm while the necklace was still around Ida’s throat. The handful of deaths she’d seen from people taking them off had made her understandably cagey about taking it off.

“It won’t be forever,” I muttered, running my magical senses over it. The amulet itself was a piece of jade, or perhaps serpentine, that didn’t seem to have any obviously warding on it. It certainly felt magical, but the method of enchanting was not one I was familiar with. Unless…?

“Can I hold it for a bit?” I asked.

Alice shrugged and motioned for me to take it. I plucked it from her palm and held it between my index and thumb, closing my eyes as I ran my sense over it. It took nearly a minute, but I finally found the telltale signs I was looking for.

“It’s gem imbued,” I said, opening my eyes. “In fact, I doubt it’s keyed to you directly, Ida. They probably make these in batches.”

“What does that mean?” Ida asked. “Gem imbued?”

Alice grabbed the amulet out of my hand and began studying it with greater intensity, so I began to explain: “Usually when you want to put magic down on an item you have to mark it, both physically and metaphysically. This is labor intensive, especially when the objects are small like your amulet here. Gem imbuing, however, focuses the enchantment through the gem and onto the object or objects, creating a staying enchantment without actually having to mark the object. It’s not something I’ve ever done a lot of because it destroys the gem in the process and you usually need one bigger than a thimble for anything useful.”

Ida looked thoughtful, her gaze going inward. I shifted my attention to Alice. Her expression was one of deep concentration and I felt her magical senses roaming over the small green stone in her hand. It was strange. Did she feel mine? I made a mental note to ask her when our lives weren’t on the line. Assuming we live through this.

I sighed.

“What?” Ida asked.

Since Alice was hogging the amulet and probably had a better magical education than myself, I stepped back a few feet and shook my head. “Nothing, just…” I gestured vaguely at the rest of the ship. “The enormity of it all.”

Ida met my eyes, a flash of understanding passing between us. We were both in way over our heads and were at the end of our respective ropes. After two years under cover with this crew, I’m sure Ida had seen some crazy shit. She could have kept her head down and maintained it but instead she reached out to me—which, if I thought about it, she probably immediately regretted as I instantly acted like a crazy asshole.

Come to think about it, I owed her my life. She guarded me and took care of me while my body was wracked with fever. I think a good good way to pay her back would be to get her out of this mess so she could see her mom and sister. In fact, if I managed to pull it off, it’d be the first completely good thing I’d do with my growing power. That’s…

Kind of sad.

“I…” Alice said slowly. “I think I got it.”

“Got what?” I asked.

“The enchantment,” she clarified, looking up.

“The entire thing?” I asked, impressed.

“I think so,” she said. “It’s a rather simple identification tag with a more sophisticated behavioral isolation enchantment layered on top of it.”

I snapped my fingers, pointing at her. “That’s kinda clever; the sick fucks,” I met Ida’s eyes. “That last part is probably what has been stopping you from calling for help.”

“The mental block you mentioned earlier?” Ida asked.

I tapped my nose in the “Bingo” gesture. She swore in French. Whenever she does that all I could think of is the Merovingian’s line about swearing in French from the second Matrix movie. Jesus I need to get out more.

Well, I need to get out and not be hunted by pirates.

Okay, rein it in Colm. You’re letting your mind wander.

I came back to reality to watch Alice produce a sports bag from under the bench I had been on while she healed me. She dug around in it for a second or two before coming up with two Japanese style charm necklaces made from cherry wood rectangles. They were currently blank but she retrieved an X-Acto knife from the bag and quickly went to work carving on one of them, using the bench as a table.

“Will you need the amulet further?” Ida asked.

“I shouldn’t,” Alice said. “I’ll need to compare mine with yours once they’re done but I’ll need an hour at least to finish them.”

Ida nodded. “I am going to the restroom.”

Still looking a bit flushed, Ida opened the door to our little room left without checking both ways with her usual diligence, like she couldn’t wait to get out of the room.

When the door closed I glanced at Alice. “Seemed in a hurry to not be here,” I commented.

Alice huffed a small laugh. “She’s…” Alice seemed to weigh what she was about to say. “Let’s just say that it’s been a long time since she’s spent any time around people she didn’t actively despise, and was feeling a bit… flustered.”

I squinted at her. “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?”

She briefly met my eyes. “You were experiencing it yourself, so...” she shrugged as she returned to her work.

Goddamn empaths.

I crossed to the corner of the room I had claimed as mine, the one opposite the big industrial sink. I paused and went to the faucet, drinking from it for a bit before sitting down in the corner. Clean water might be hard to come by depending on how the rest of the day went. I grabbed my spellbook from where I had left it to examine the amulet and began leafing through the section where I’d recorded the spells that were meant specifically to maim and kill.

Obviously there was the one that boiled the fat off of things, so we’re going with that one because I would love to watch the knify Australian try to deal with that. I only had so much time to memorize spells so I skipped a bunch that didn’t seem effective for how much effort they required.

After hemming and hawing for half an hour, I went with the Boiling Fat spell, (Which I really should figure out a name for) a spell called “Heart stopper” that I’ve only used on rats (saved me a bunch on exterminators), a spell which was confusingly labeled “enervate” when I found it but seemed to disintegrate or accelerate decay, and a final spell that I’m calling “Hail Mary” for lack of a proper name. I’m not sure about that final spell, having never tested it. It seems like it’d kill me just as much as it would another guy but, if it works like I think it does…

Ida suddenly barged into the room. Some of the grime had been cleaned off her skin and her hair was wet. Maybe she found that shower she’d been looking forw—

“They are coming!” She announced as she thumbed the safety off her AK.

I froze for a good three seconds, not hearing Alice’s panicked reply. Suddenly the gears in my mind started working and I slapped my forehead. “Fuck! They can track me!”

Alice shot me a wide-eyed look. “You didn’t think to mention that before!?”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said as I tossed my spellbook aside and crossed the room to her bag, ignoring her noise of protest as I began to paw through it. “I must have forgotten it between the torture, the concussion and the near death experience!”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I found another blank charm and snatched it up. “How much time do we have?” I asked Ida.

She tilted her hand back and forth. “They were arguing when I overheard them,” she said. “The big Russian was refusing to come, saying his contract was complete. I do not think the others are eager to fight you again without his help.”

I snorted as I began to etch the charm with my index claw. “Maybe I’ll be lucky and they’ll line up to fight me like last time,” I said derisively. “They would have kicked my ass if they had just all jumped me at the same time.”

“I think this is the first time any of them has fought another practitioner,” Alice said as she came up beside me and glanced at what I was doing. “What are you doing?”

“I have a spell that stops their tracking,” I said. “It also stops ward keys from recognizing me and I have a feeling some other side-effects that have yet to make themselves known but it works and may buy us some time. Now stop jogging my elbow.”

Last time it had taken me five to ten minutes to draw out the spell on a piece of vellum, and significantly longer to etch it into a piece of a can of peaches. The practice paid off as I got the spell onto the wood in just under three minutes. Probably had something to do with the healing spell removing the shakes from my hand. I felt the metaphysical snap of the spell settle around me as I placed the charm around my neck.

Ida had been watching the hallway as I worked. “Got it,” I said, standing from the crouch I’d been in. “We change locations.”

Alice frowned. “But they can’t track you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how they are tracking me,” I said as I grabbed my spellbook and shoved it into the slit in reality that still hung in the middle of the room. “It could give them a general heading, point directly at me or, for all I know, show my exact location on a superimposed image of the ship. They might be able to use the last information it gave them to figure out where we are.”

Ida was nodding along. “Also it is just a good idea,” she agreed. “When someone hunts you, do not be where they expect you to be.”

With that we grabbed what stuff we could and headed out. I closed the cubby holding my book and was the last to leave the room. Because of this I was just in time to see Mr. Rasp come into view down the hall.

I hadn’t seen the hall before, being mostly delirious/unconscious when they brought me in. The hallway looked more like a maintenance tunnel than a hallway. Metal walls, grated floor, slight rust. It reminded me of the engine room a bit, but there was obvious less traffic on this part of the ship.

Ida spun and leveled the AK at Mr. Rasp but I pushed it down before she could squeeze a shot off. “Don’t, it won’t work,” I said, eyeing Mr. Rasp who stood looking… awkward? “Plus, you’ll destroy all our ears firing that in here.”

Ida made a frustrated noise and let the AK drop on it’s sling, before pulling out her pistol. I mean, same problems, Ida. We’ll just be slightly less deaf. But whatever makes you feel better. I glanced at Alice to find her metal-backed gloves shimmering, like a desert road at high noon. I kinda wanted to sick her on Mr. Rasp just to see what they’d do.

Mr. Rasp slowly raised his hands, like you’d ward off an aggressive dog. “Ah, this is—this is awkward, yes?” He said. “But you have nothing to fear from me. I am just looking for a quiet place to call for extraction. My contract is up, you see.”

Mr. Rasp paused, studying me. He swore in Russian as he recognized me. “I did not recognize you without the—“ he made a weird gesture with his hands, imitating my tentacles and lack of eyes. “Is good you have eyes now,” he continued. “You were very scary without them.”

Strangely, I found myself warming up to the big Russian like I had prior to our fight. I clamped down on the emotion, though. Now knowing my emotions could be manipulated, I wasn’t going to trust anything around potential enemies.

“You recovered,” I commented.

“Da!” The big man said, laughter in his voice. “Though it was a close thing! You are only third man to hurt me, but first to hurt me so much! I have no wish to repeat our fight, thank you very much!” He laughed, boisterously. “Especially when you have backup. The one on the right looks like she has many tricks.”

I glanced to my left, to find Alice raising an eyebrow at the big Russian.

“So…” I began. “We’ll just, go our separate ways?”

“That is my wish as well,” Mr. Rasp replied, glancing behind him in the direction he had come. “I am making to leave. My former employers are less than happy with me, I think.”

“What about the people they are going to sacrifice?” Ida asked.

Mr. Rasp’s expression became pained. “That is unfortunate,” he said, real seeming emotion in his voice. “I did not know of their plans before accepting contract. One enemy to sacrifice? This is…” He tilted his hand back and forth. “Not ideal, but good money. Sacrifice hundreds? Unacceptable.” His shoulders drooped. “But I cannot interfere. The contract has provisions for interfering with the efforts of the employer, just as it has protections for the contractor going beyond the agreements of the contract.”

He shook his head, as if to clear it from thoughts he’d rather not have. “I wish there was more I could do.” He shrugged.

We stood, staring at the Russian as he watched us. After a bit I cleared my throat.

“You can go,” Ida said.

The Russian frowned, then his eyes widened. “Oh! Of course!” He barked a laugh. “I am going! Good luck!” He waved, turned and went down another hallway.

We waited, listening to his receding footsteps. We heard a door open and close.

“Despite him nearly killing me,” I said. “I kinda like him.”

Ida shot me an incredulous look while Alice raised an eyebrow at me.

“What?” I said as we turned in the opposite direction Rasp had gone.

“Boys,” Alice muttered, getting a nod from Ida.

“What?” I repeated.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Alice said. “You had your fight in the sandbox and now you’re best friends. Totally understandable.”

“We’re not best friends,” I said. “Just that—he could have been waaaay shittier than he was.”

“So now you like him,” Ida said from in front of us as she checked a small intersection.

“Well I’m not going to blow him or anything,” this got a startled laugh from Alice. “But out of all the crazy magical assholes I’ve met on this trip, he’s definitely in the top two.”

“I’m a magical asshole?” Alice asked, mock-outraged.

“Oh I forgot about you,” I replied. “I meant top three.”

She went to shove me but I hopped out of the way.

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