Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (19 page)

Raedren and Gavi ran over to Mazik. “What’s the plan?” asked Gavi. All across the room weapons were being drawn, and the two cultists on the stage dropped down to join their fellows below.

Mazik calculated their chances. He wanted to save her, but it was three versus seven and they also had two dozen people to protect, and there were another five somewhere….

Mazik cursed and raised his hand, blue mana swirling around his arm as he whipped off his scarf. “
Mazik Missiles
³⁹
!
” he said, and eight bolts of blue mana shot out, each one heading broadly for a different cultist. Six bolts struck home, and they all exploded.

“Where’s that hallway we came in by?” asked Mazik, his head darting wildly as he fired again. The spell exploded in front of the nearest cultist, showering the whole group with a firestorm of blue light.

“Over there!” said Gavi, pointing along the wall they just emerged from. Across the building they could barely see what looked like the stack of crates they hid behind earlier.

The cultists emerged from Mazik’s spell and fanned out, barriers strengthening as they spat out spell words as fast as they could.

Gavi’s eyes darted from the cultists to their charges and back to the distant exit. “I’ll take point, you hold them off, Raedren in the middle. Let’s go!” she said, her sword coming up as she set off.

“Like it, love it, let’s do it!” said Mazik as he sprayed nukes behind them. Some of the cultists began opening up with spells from range.

Green barriers wrapped themselves around Mazik and Gavi, while larger but weaker ones appeared in big sheets over the rest of the escapees. “Got it,” said Raedren as he jogged to the outskirts of the group.

With the former captives nestled safely in the triangle of Gavi, Mazik, and Raedren, the entire group set out. The warehouse was rectangular in shape, and they were on one of the short ends now, scrambling along a wall littered with mountains of boxes and piles of discarded textiles, the ends of the great big storage racks looming over them to their right.

Mazik grimaced as he unleashed another salvo, his spells hammering three cultists clustered together. Each individual cultist didn’t seem to be that powerful, but there were still eight of them, and they had spread out to make it harder for him to attack them all at once.

Wait a second
, thought Mazik. He counted the cultists. One near the hallway they emerged from a minute ago, three still in the vicinity of the spell circle, another running toward him along the first aisle, and…

As Mazik watched, the fifth cultist disappeared in a swirl of indigo smoke. He didn’t see the other three at all.

“Fuck m—Gavi, Rae, turn on your sight magick!” Mazik yelled over his shoulder as his eyes blazed blue. As the fifth cultist swam back into view, Mazik opened fire. The cultists sneaking their way through the storage racks did likewise. Some of the former captives cried out as spells splashed into the barriers around them, the thin defenses cracking as Raedren hurried to replace them with more powerful ones.

“
Dy neth aygn drodios, qvir zyrst—Truesight,
” said Gavi, and as the magick permeated her eyes she watched a black-robed man swirl into visibility mere meters away, a wild look in his eyes and a twisted knife aimed at Gavi’s neck.

Gavi gasped and let her left leg collapse, yanking her body down and to the side just in time to make the blade sail past. Her body screaming with adrenaline and fear, Gavi brought the pommel of her sword up into the man’s exposed stomach; the angle was bad, but it was enough to knock the breath out of the cultist’s lungs.

Regaining her balance as the man staggered, Gavi brought her sword down, aiming for his exposed side. Her blow hit, mana crackling down her blade as the man’s barriers absorbed the strike. He danced away and brought his knife up, a smile of pious insanity on his lips—

The cultist flew off his feet and into the nearest storage rack, green magick burying him in an avalanche of shattered crates.

Raedren gave Gavi a thumbs-up.

“Thanks!” said Gavi as Raedren pushed back against another cultist who was emerging from the storage racks. More cultists were attacking the escapees from the back and the side, but Mazik and Raedren were doing a good job of keeping them from encircling the group, leaving Gavi to focus on the not-so-distant exit. As the air filled with more nukes from the cultists trying to slow them down, Gavi ducked low for the last sprint.

Gavi yanked herself to a stop. As former captives piled up behind her, Gavi watched in dismay as five cultists rounded the corner and spread out in front of the small hallway. They said nothing, but their body language made one thing clear—they had no intention of letting anyone pass.

Gavi’s heart sank. The cultists from earlier. Apparently they hadn’t stay buried for long.

“Mazik, we have a problem!” Gavi called over her shoulder.

Mazik glanced across the room, and then cursed wildly and creatively. He picked up the cultist he had been grappling with and threw him across the room. “Rae, switch with me!”

“Er, okay,” said Raedren as he cast spell after spell, indigo spells pummeling his barriers as he scrambled to replace them. It was like playing whack-a-mole on expert, only he was the one being whacked and people’s lives were on the line.

Raedren stopped in his tracks, too overwhelmed to cast and move at the same time.

Suddenly, a titanic rumble filled the warehouse, one so deep and unsettling that it would have shaken loose the fillings in Mazik’s mouth, if he had any. Mazik stumbled as he ran, and Raedren caught him.

“Thanks,” said Mazik as he stood up, balancing carefully as the floor pitched beneath him. He pushed Raedren toward the back of the group, waving him on. “Go! I’ll figure out what’s going on!” he said, and then turned his attention toward the murky center of the warehouse.

Meanwhile, Gavi was bracing herself against the wall as she tried to keep her eyeballs from shaking out of their sockets. She forced herself to look up, sure that the cultists would take advantage of this to attack. Sure enough, the five were running unsteadily toward her.

Gavi frowned. The cultists didn’t seem to be running toward her so much as running
away
from something….

The shaking stopped—and then indigo magick ripped through the storage racks closest to the exit, picking up crates and boxes and shattered shelving units by the dozen and hurling them at the corner of the room. The tiny hallway filled up quickly, cutting off the group’s only hope of escape, and then more debris piled up on top of that. Soon the hallway was buried under old apparel and packing materials.

They were trapped.

Gavi watched as some of the cultists themselves leapt out of the way of the maelstrom, one barely escaping being added to the mountain. Gavi clenched her teeth as she slowly backed up, forcing their charges to bunch closer together. Now they were not only completely surrounded, they had no exit, and if the cultists’ expressions were any indication, they did not intend to give up.

In the distance, Gavi could hear Mazik cursing. He appeared to have run out of new curse words a while ago, but he was giving it a spirited effort.

That’s when a new cultist calmly emerged from the aisles.

Compared to the other cultists, this new arrival was much fancier, her robes replete with gems and raven’s feathers and lined with rich black fur. She also wore a polished bull skull on her head, and the skull’s blank eye sockets were the only ones visible, as the darkness seemed to hang within her hood like a living veil. She carried a heavy staff made of knotted ash, with yellowing bones, tufts of horse hair, and yet more raven’s feathers tied to the its head as if it were a witch doctor’s rattle.

The fancy cultist—the head cultist, Mazik and the others assumed, and they were right—stopped a handful of meters away from the escapees and pointed her staff at Mazik. A few short, whispered words later, and the head of her staff lit up with indigo magick. Very
bright
indigo magick.

“Oh fuck,” said Mazik, and then he threw up his arms to defend.

Kra-koom!
The spell that engulfed Mazik was bigger than any a cultist had cast so far, a pulsating mass of pure mana that lacerated his barriers and pounded the person beneath. Mazik strained, and then with a terrific roar he disappeared under the barrage, obscured entirely by its light, heat, and power. The escapees behind him cried out and dove for cover as the floor beneath Mazik began to melt.

A busy second passed, and then the mana began to dissipate. It revealed Mazik, still standing.

Mazik lowered his arms, the cracking blue and green barriers wrapped around him shimmering brightly before receding to their usual intensity. He looked like he had been put through a carwash fitted with flamethrowers, but he was still alive.

The Head Cultist tilted her head to the side. Then, as if someone had hit the play button, the battle shuddered back to life.

*      *      *

“Mazik!” said Gavi as the cultists charged them from all sides. She parried the first one to reach her, deftly sidestepping and punching him in the face. She looked over her shoulder, but Mazik still wasn’t moving. “Mazik, are you okay? What’s wrong?!”

Mazik did not respond. He just kept standing there, looking down, his body gently bending out of the way as spells exploded around him.

Had Gavi more time to look closely, she might have noticed that Mazik appeared to be shaking. He was not. What Mazik was doing was vibrating with anger.

Mazik’s head came up, a look of pure death in his eyes. Mazik was
pissed
.

“Rae, take everyone toward the stage and keep them safe! Gavi, go with them!” Mazik barked as his body glowed, mana filtering back into his mana pool. He ignored the spells exploding around him.

“No!” said Gavi as she leapt over a crate, two angry cultists right behind her. She dove out of the way as a third fired at her, former captives panicking and running away as the cultists drew near.

“Fine, you’re with me,” said Mazik as he grabbed a cultist by the head and rammed him into his knee. “Just get ready to run when I call for it. Rae!”

“On it!” said Raedren as green winds pressed down on the cultists around him, rooting them in place. Raedren waved for the former captives to hurry, then used his magick to wrench weapons from the cultists’ hands. The former captives picked them up. Now the men and women who were once so cowed were bristling with weaponry, not to mention the reckless rage necessary to use it.

“This is more like it…” said Mazik as he dodged cultists and their spells with a smile that would have put most kindhearted citizens on edge. In the distance he could see the Head Cultist preparing a spell, which made him smile even wider.

“Coming in!” yelled Gavi as she tore across the warehouse floor, weaving between boxes and shelves like a sprinter in a jungle with a cheetah on her tail. Only she would have preferred the cheetah to the three cultists pursuing her, plus the other two preparing spells not far away.

Gavi skidded to a stop beside Mazik, her sword raised. Mazik calmly waved a hand at the cultists following her, and a spell drove them back. They cried out as their robes burned.

“What now?” asked Gavi as she tracked an invisible cultist, stabbing at him as he came within range.

Mazik flashed her a predator’s grin, his hair whipping about him as mana tore at his barriers. “You ready to do this?” he yelled over the din.

“I don’t know!” Gavi parried a cultist’s blade, then pivoted to another. “What’s the plan?!”

“Kill them all,” said Mazik darkly. “We keep killing them until they give up, can’t stop us anymore, or we go down.” He clapped his hands together, mana crackling between them like lightning between angry storm clouds.

As Mazik and Gavi fell back, nearly a dozen cultists followed them, half that number closing to melee range while the others—including the Head Cultist—remained content to cast from a distance. While a token few attacked Raedren and the others, the rest set upon Mazik and Gavi, which made them heavily outnumbered, completely surrounded, and increasingly pressed into the wall behind them. To an external observer, the odds would have looked grim.

Mazik didn’t seem to mind. He grinned savagely as he pulled up just short of the wall, standing defiantly in the path of the enemy tide that threatened to engulf him. “Now we’ve got you just where we want you,” he whispered.

“Mazik!” yelled Gavi.

“C’mon Gavs, let’s
DO THIS!!
” bellowed Mazik, and then he surged forward, ethereal fire leaping out in an arc in front of him. Mazik’s spell caught five cultists at once, burning away large chunks of their barriers in an instant. Gavi stepped in front of Mazik and caught the sixth cultist’s blade on her own. They struggled, Gavi’s sword locked on the cultist’s curved weapon.

“Thanks.” Mazik pointed at the man’s forehead. A burst of mana like a rocket’s exhaust swept over him, burning through the cultist’s barriers and dropping him to the ground, dead.

Mazik stepped over the man’s body, mana already coalescing into another spell.

Explosions went off around them as Gavi nimbly dodged and Mazik barreled straight through, bearing down on the remaining melee cultists like a train out of hell. The cultists parted, revealing the distant Head Cultist—and then a spell lanced through their lines, heading straight for Mazik.

Mazik stepped to the side and laughed as the spell exploded behind him, right where the former captives used to be. He kept coming.

The cultists tried to back away, but it was too late. Mazik and Gavi leapt into the thick of things, mana arcing off Mazik’s naked fists as Gavi maneuvered to his back. Explosions erupted around them.

Mazik and Gavi fought ferociously, battering cultists left and right—and then the remaining cultists appeared to grow larger, their barriers darkening, their speed increasing, and their blows hammering the pair harder than before. Mazik looked over to see the Head Cultist with her staff clutched in both hands, her unseen lips no doubt moving frantically as she channeled a spell.