Published at 8th of March 2024 7:44 am

Chapter Thirty Six

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“What?” Alice asked when I stopped. “What is it?”

I grabbed her and moved us both closer to the blister of plants we had been using as cover. “The prisoners I freed ran into some pirates,” I whispered, squinting into the distance. My night vision was as near perfect as I could make it, but as a result, I’m a bit near-sighted. I could just barely make out some of the further figures, while the closest ones were just in focus enough for me to identify them. My improved hearing picked up snippets of conversation, with the occasional wet thump of a blow landing on flesh. Someone was being “questioned.”

Alice cursed under her breath. “I’m in no shape to fight right now,” she said slowly, her hand raising to where Mr. Forgettable had clocked her. “I’m pretty sure I’m concussed.”

I winced, as she hadn’t done much to lower her voice. I threw a concerned look toward the pirates but no one shouted in alarm. I helped Alice sit down next to a bush. “Stay here,” I whispered. “Stay quiet. I’ll be back.”

She made a small noise of assent and pulled her knees up to her chest, crossed her arms on top of them and laid her head upon them. Are you supposed to stay awake with a concussion? Or was that just an old wives' tale TV shows kept alive? Fuck it—Alice is a healer, she knows what to do. I hope.

I crept towards the pirates and their prisoners, using a combination of belly-crawling and my tentacles to slide against the ground like a living shadow, covering the dozen yards in under a minute. I had to slow my approach as unlike the last set of pirates, these were on full alert and were plying flashlights in even arcs, covering all approaches. With my low profile and improved mobility thanks to my new limbs, I managed to hop from shadow to shadow between the beams of light, using small rises in terrain, the odd bush and in one instance, a big-ass crate that looked like it had housed a wild cat at one point. I was again, at once thankful for and stymied by the staggering amount of trash on the island.

There was the thump of a fist hitting flesh and a grunt. A gruff voice asked something in French, but I couldn’t figure out what. “He told you the truth!” A woman cried out. “It was one man, covered in—it looked like shadows! He had things coming out of his shoulders!”

I glanced at my hands. I guess in the poor light they could be mistaken for shadows. To me the LotOS always seemed to be made out of high-density polymer or something similar. Wait—did it appear as something different to other people? Oh my fucking God I got to ask Alice when I get back to her. Then again, with her concussion, better wait until we meet up with Ida.

I shoved my ramblings aside and focused on the problem at hand. With a few well-timed peeks I counted the pirates. Thirteen. Each was armed with an automatic weapon. They were all spread and on alert. Terrible odds for me armed with my mostly melee ranged abilities.

And what the fuck is up with these wards? They should have broken by now! I quested out with my senses and confirmed that, yes, the pressure was still building, but I couldn’t feel the strain that was supposed to be there. There was some, but not nearly enough. Shit, I think I underestimated the strength of the wards and needed to plant more of my own to create the resonance for the effect I wanted. Another fuck up in the Avery column.

A few more peeks and I got the locations of all the prisoners. For the most part the pirates had them surrounded. All of them were on the ground on their bellies, legs spread, hands on head in the pose I’d seen on Cops dozens of times as a kid. Two of the pirates were guarding the thirty or so prisoners while one was giving a savage beating to my man Greg, when the old man didn’t give the answers that were desired.

Nothing for it, I was going to have to use magic.

I’d been holding off on casting any spells for when Terrance showed up. He seemed to be the most dangerous of the warlocks and I wanted to be as fresh as could be to deal with him. But he was nowhere to be seen and—a horrible thought occurred to me. What if he had been in town? Wait, calm down, Colm. The attack shouldn’t be happening yet. The signal was supposed to be the wards exploding. So Ida and crew should still be just outside town, waiting. God, I hope that’s still true.

Anyway, Boss Warlock wasn’t showing and these people needed help now so time to do some magic. The only problem was I didn’t have any spells that would take them all out without also killing the prisoners. All my preparations had been in the mind of protecting myself from a single, powerful foe, so I’ve never given thought to things like friendly fire or selective targeting.

Fire? Nope. Force? Nope. Attention? Nop—wait a minute.

Hmm.

I’d need to move very fast. The more stuff you did, the more outlandish you were, (Say, for instance, if you disemboweled someone.) the harder it was the maintain the spell until it stopped being effective altogether. But if there was one magic I would good at, it was attention.

I shaped the spell in my mind with care and attention as I crawled forward, timing my approach as the guard turned to his left. As the spell took hold, my surroundings became less interesting, the spell bleeding over onto me. I kept a firm hold of my focus as I expanded the spell to include several feet around me.

As the guard fell under the influence of the spell, it was like all the diligence he’d been exhibiting was slowly sapped from his body. His posture changed, his shoulders slumped and a big yawn escaped from his mouth as he dropped the hand holding his flashlight to his side. It was an incredibly educational moment, and I wish I could stick around to observe more. But I could feel my temperature rise at the same time as my surroundings became more and more difficult to pay attention to. I was on the clock.

One of my tentacles came up and punched into the neck of the guard, lowering him to the ground as he thrashed the last moments of his life away. I quickly divested him of his rifle and extra mag, casting a glance at the rest of the pirates to see if any had noticed.

No one was looking over here. In fact, I’d say everyone was doing their best to not look over here.

Sweat began to gather on my face and I was reminded again of the time frame I was under. I knew forcing the attention spell to affect a larger space would cause more feedback but this is more than I had anticipated. Then again, the results were amazing. I hurried to the next guard, taking him out in a similar method to the first. Again, no one looked my way.

The third guard went down much the same as the first two, and that’s when I noticed things weren’t as perfect as I had dared to hope. While the guards weren’t looking where I was, that wasn’t stopping them from looking to where the guards had been once I had left the area. I saw one of the guards moving over to investigate where the first guard had fallen.

Now really feeling the pressure, I rushed forward, killing two guards in quick succession. I felt strain on the spell as the remaining guards began to realize something wasn’t right, which doubled when the guard that went to investigate raised a shout of alarm. I quietly swore and dropped into a shooter's crouch. As calmly as I could I checked my stolen rifle over, making sure the safety was off and there was a bullet in the chamber before raising it to my shoulder.

The pressure on the spell doubled and tripled as more guards reacted to the first’s shout. I hesitated, not knowing who to shoot first. As soon as I opened up I was going to have to change targets fast as I’m sure my spell would not hold through gunfire.

I settled on the guards nearest the prisoners, with the one beating Greg my first target. I waited a bit while the guard straightened, wondering what the fuss was about, before squeezing the trigger. My shot flew true, punching a hole through his head.

My spell shattered, sending a wave of dizzying pain through my head. I lost my balance and flopped on my side, my limbs flopping bonelessly as my vision went white. Return gunfire lit up the night but I barely noticed, my brain feeling like I had snorted a cherry bomb.

Some good luck had finally come my way as falling mostly prone had confused the fuck out of the guards. They couldn’t spot me with their night vision being destroyed by their muzzle flash and flashlights. I shook my head to clear out the after-effects of the spell. An age passed before my eyes started to focus again and I quickly snatched up my rifle and sighted down its length. I was about to pull the trigger when a bullet smacked into the earth just to my right. Time to reposition.

I repeated the method I used during my approach, keeping my belly a few inches off the ground and using my tentacles to help with my impression of a particularly fast Roomba. One of the pirates was screaming something in French, but aside from a few curses, I didn’t understand.

It didn’t matter. In their panic, they had forgotten to stay spread and had grouped together, in a staggered line that I was coming perpendicular to. I stopped, raised into a crouch, made sure my rifle was on automatic and squeezed the trigger, walking it down the line of pirates.

Just like that, there were no more pirates.

I changed magazines and pulled the cocking lever, having fired the rifle dry to make sure I got them all. I waited a minute to make sure no new pirates would show up, and also just to have a minute to process. My head felt like it was trying to pop with every beat of my heart, and I felt like I had a mild fever. I took several deep, long breaths before standing and walking to where the prisoners were. They had all remained mostly where the pirates had put them, with a few crawling away from the gunfire. I found Greg being held by another prisoner, an older, somewhat attractive woman.

“Can’t leave you folks alone for a minute, can I?” I said as I approached, hopefully hiding how worn down I felt.

Both Greg and the woman were startled, squinting up at me. “Colm?” Greg asked, his voice a half-groan.

“Yup,” I said. “Start gathering everyone up. I gotta go grab my friend, after which I’ll take you to the meeting area.”

“He’s too hurt,” the woman protested.

“Then you do it,” I replied as I turned to where I had left Alice. “Just get everyone together.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, with all the gunfire and whatnot, Alice wasn’t asleep when I found her. Electricity arced over the back of her gloves as I approached.

“Who’s there?!?” She asked.

“Whoa there, Tex,” I said, raising my hands. “Awful quick on the draw.”

Alice groaned as the electricity faded, visibly relaxing. “All the gunfire scared me,” she said, the slur back in her speech. “I thought they got you.”

“You ain’t rid of me yet,” I said, helping her to her feet.

We made our way back to the prisoners and found them all more or less on their feet, crowded around Greg and the woman who was with him. Maybe his wife? Some of them had scrounged up the rifles from the dead pirates. As we drew near, a couple of the prisoners lifted the guns at us, which scared the shit out of me because they had terrible trigger discipline.

“Don’t point that shit at me unless you want to end up like the fucking pirates,” I said.

The older folks wisely lowered their rifles.

“We good? Let’s go,” I said.

“Greg can’t walk,” the woman said.

I suppressed a sigh. “Then help him,” I said, then pointed at two relatively fit-looking men. “Help him, we got to go.”

I impatiently waited for the ex-vacationers to organize, about to say something facetious to Alice when a great, booming voice tore across the island from the direction of the ziggurat.

“COLM AVERY!” A very pissed Terrance Love bellowed for the entire island to hear. “THIS ENDS NOW!”

“Oh, fuck me,” I muttered.

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