Borrowing Chris's car allowed us to reach the creek in record time. Unfortunately, it also meant we had to hike the last leg of the trip; the S40's trunk was never going to fit four bikes and none of us felt comfortable taking it too far off the road. Thanks to the lack of a ditch, Dan was able to park the car in a patch of grass about a quarter mile away from where we had fought the shades.
"Ready?" Dan asked, turning to look at Sarah and me. His gaze was intense and there was no hesitation in his expression as he made eye contact with us. Right now, he trusted me; he had to.
"Yeah," I said as I exited the car and firmly but quietly closed the door behind me.
"Riverside first, then the clearing?" Sarah asked as she emerged.
"Sounds good to me," Dan replied curtly. He had already begun walking into the forest.
I knew this area pretty well from the years Lucas had spent riding around it with our friends; I could immediately tell that Dan was making a beeline for the creek. I leaned against the car and called out to him.
"Wait."
I reached outward, pushing at the boundaries of my perception, grasping for the tingling sensation that had washed over me when Chris activated his circle. I involuntarily started trying to grip the side of the car but found little purchase on its rounded body panels. After what seemed like a long stretch of time, I still felt nothing. I was not sure why I had even bothered. According to Corona, sensing magic was nearly impossible without special tools, even at short range.
I shook my head. She had to be wrong. I swallowed my doubts and jogged to catch up to my friends.
"Okay, I tried my best, but I was not able to sense anything unusual. At least not from here," I said as I came up alongside Dan and Sarah. "We should check out the creek. I will do my best to keep an... eye out? For magic, I mean." Dan and Sarah shared a glance and then we continued forward.
The three of us trudged through the forest, keeping to paths that were relatively clear of foliage and fallen leaves to reduce the noise we were making. The quickly fading light of the evening was enough to make out our path, but sunset was approaching all too quickly. As darkness fell, my fears grew. Were we still being too loud? Had we already given ourselves away? I took a few deep breaths, imagined Chris’s smiling face, and did my best to keep up with the others. A few hundred feet from the river, Dan took cover behind a tree and waved us closer.
"Sense anything?" he whispered. "Chromos says it's clear."
"Nothing from Corona," Sarah whispered.
As before, I probed outward in search of that strange sensation I associated with the arcane. At first there was nothing, but after a moment I felt a vague, distant hum echoing around me.
"I found something. The air here is buzzing," I breathed.
"The background level of magic here is still high even after I drained it. It did not seem relevant so I chose to omit it from my report," Chromos said quietly using Dan's voice. The haughtiness of his words still came through at full force despite the diminished volume.
"So, what I am sensing is not the shades?" I asked.
"Let's make sure. Stay close and try to be quiet," Dan said before slowly moving towards the creek.
The final stretch took the longest of the entire hike. We could not just rush in and rely on our magic to protect us; Chris was in danger and we could not risk letting his captors see us. At least that deflection ward Chris had cast might still be active. Unless it had already been expended when he was abducted from his home. I nervously checked my own copy of the enchantment and was relieved to feel the alien twinge of its presence. I kept looking all around me expecting to see shadowy figures closing in, but such assailants never showed. The clearing was empty; the soft burbling of the creek was the only sound I could hear.
"Do either of you see anything different from yesterday?" Sarah said as her head slowly scanned the edge of the creek and nearby clearing.
"No," I said and looked at Dan.
"We should head to the clearing where we found the giant piles of silk," Dan said, pointing further down the river.
"According to Aurora, those were 'skin stitcher' eggs. Which are giant spiders by the way," I said. "Oh, and they hate fire. Use that if you can. Otherwise, aim for their joints; they have less armor there."
"Spiders, huh? I guess it was either that or giant moths. I hope you’re ready to barbecue some bugs, Sarah," Dan said.
"Uh, yeah. Of course. So now we’re up against both murder ghosts and monstrous spiders? You can’t just mix two completely different horror genres together like that." Sarah said uneasily.
"I doubt they’d care about that," Dan said. "Let's go. We're running out of time."
Dan moved quickly toward the clearing, following the same path the three of us had taken previously. I continued my search for magic as I followed. Dividing my attention while walking through the forest at night was a little risky, and I nearly fell a few times, but my determination did not waver. Chris’s life was on the line and I had to do everything I could to find him. We reached our destination quickly enough, though we were all panting a little as we stumbled out of the woods. It was completely empty. Even the giant silk spider eggs were gone. Dan walked over to where they had been just the night before and looked carefully at the ground.
"Looks like someone picked these up and carted them off in a wheelbarrow. There's only one tire mark here, and it's small," he said quietly, pointing at a soft indentation in the ground that led away from the riverside.
"Time to follow the magical spider silk collector's tracks I guess?" Sarah said. "Too bad there's no snow on the ground or else this would be way easier."
"It's a good of a lead as any, Sarah," Dan said with a sigh. He began to carefully follow the trail.
The ground was soft near the creek, so the signs of our quarry were pretty clear. But as we pushed deeper into the forest the dirt became dry and hard while the underbrush thickened substantially. Dan had to resort to looking for broken branches or crushed leaves to make sure we were still on the trail. Suddenly I felt a strange sensation, like something was pulling on my heart even though my body was still able to move freely. My eyes went wide as I realized the source.
"There is magic nearby," I hissed just loudly enough for the other two to hear.
Dan immediately darted behind a fallen tree and waved the rest of us over. The tree's upper branches were still attached when it fell, so it provided plenty of cover.
As soon as Sarah and I had huddled up with him, Dan put his index finger in front of his mouth and asked, as quietly as he could, "Laura, which way?"
Instead of speaking, I just pointed past our shelter in the same direction we had been heading. Dan peeked over the tree and his head swiveled back and forth a few times. I moved next to him and tried to spot the source as well. Sunset was rapidly approaching, so I could barely see anything more than a couple dozen feet away.
"Looks like the ground slopes downward a little further up," Sarah said.
"Wait, can you see in the dark? Did Corona give you a night vision spell or something?" I whispered.
Sarah shrugged.
"I think we're close to a road," Dan added.
Sure enough, when I listened carefully, I could just make out a distant mix of tire and engine sounds. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dimmer light, I noticed that a few of the more distant trees did not seem to have a clear point where they were touching the ground. Sarah was right. We were at the top of a slight rise.
"We should not use magic until we have to, our foes might also be able to detect it," I said, pushing back my fear and nerves. "I am going to move a bit closer. What I felt came from just up ahead."
I stepped out and moved forward as quietly as I could. The ground curved down gently and a few hundred feet away I spied the silhouette of an old building looming menacingly between the trees. The area around the structure appeared to have been clear-cut so there was no cover to approach it from. I stopped to catch my breath behind a large oak with a thick trunk and got a better view of our target, which appeared to be an old brick house. Dan and Sarah joined me a moment later. We all carefully examined the face of the house that was closest to our hiding place. It seemed to be one of the sides, since there was no sign of a door and its only landscaping feature was a rough path through some unkempt brush. A dull light emanating from somewhere to our right illuminated an overgrown lawn. That was probably the front. The rear of the house appeared to be completely dark, but one of the side windows was leaking a dim and flickering glow, possibly from a candle.
"Laura, how were you able to sense all this from so far away?" Dan said, "Didn't Corona say the maximum range was only a few dozen feet?"
"For the spell in question that was the case. A larger spell may leave a larger trace," Corona said quietly through Sarah with a droning lilt.
"I could just barely feel it," I said defensively. "And it was only there for a moment. Right now, I feel nothing."
"Still, to produce a detectable signal from that range there would have had to be a significant expenditure of arcane energy," Chromos said through Dan. He sounded smug, but I was pretty sure he was just repeating Corona's statement.
It struck me that I could easily tell the difference between a guardian speaking through their host and the actual person. The guardians' speech and inflections always felt so unlike what I expected from my friends. Although it was surely just as weird for them to see me talking and walking around with their friend's body.
"We need to get a closer look and make sure Chris is in there before we charge in," Dan said in a strained voice. He was clearly itching to take action and only barely able to restrain himself.
"Dan, they're going to see us if we start peeking into windows," Sarah said.
"Maybe we can distract them. It looks like there's a candle in one of those rooms. What if you make its flame-" Dan began.
Sarah cut him off abruptly, "No. Dan, I'm not burning someone's house down. Chris might not be in there and even if he is, that would put him in serious danger. End of discussion."
Dan looked over at me with a frustrated expression and said, "Any ideas, ice girl?"
"Maybe one of the doors is unlocked? Although this place probably belongs to a magic user, so even an entrance that appears unguarded could be full of invisible booby traps," I said, turning away from the pressure of Dan's glare. "Oh. What about if we say we are delivering something?" I was racking my brain for any plan that did not involve us busting in with swords drawn and fireballs flying.
"I don't think we have time to order a pizza, Laura," Sarah said wryly.
"I am just throwing out ideas here," I said, exasperated. "Please let me know if you come up with something other than blasting down the front door."
"Honestly, I think that's the play here," Dan said warily.
"Okay fine. But we do it strategically. I will knock on the door and ask them to use their phone. If they ask why, I will say I got lost in the forest. After a minute, if I have not come back out yet, then charge in after me. I should be able to tell if we have the right place by then," I said quickly, hoping to cut Dan off before he came up with a plan that was even more dangerous than mine.
To my relief, Dan and Sarah both nodded in approval.
"Dan, you cover Laura. I'll try and get a better look in the windows while she is distracting the occupants," Sarah said. "And I'll toss in some fireballs if absolutely necessary."
"Laura, I'll be right outside the whole time. And I'll try to get Chromos to cast his weird spiky shield spell before I charge in," Dan said.
"Hold off on that as long as you can, we do not want to tip them off that we are here. My deflection ward is still active, so I should be pretty safe," I said, trembling a little as I stood up and slowly walked towards the front of the building.
I did my best to look relaxed, though maybe a bit of distress was reasonable for someone who was supposedly lost in the woods. As I turned the corner of the building, I could see a small porch illuminated by a light mounted above it. The large window to the left of it had its curtains drawn. No easy answers were forthcoming; the only thing left for me to do was knock.
I carefully opened the outer storm screen which was unlocked and knocked three times on the thick wooden door, as politely as I could manage. After a few minutes I knocked again, louder. A short time later I heard someone moving around inside, and after a few moments I felt a sharp pulse that prickled across my skin.
Magic.
This was definitely the right place.
I turned towards the tree line and waved urgently at Dan. He immediately broke into a full run directly towards me. The door opened a crack and I jumped back on reflex, expecting a spell to come hurtling out. I was not exactly eager to test the effectiveness of the deflection ward I had cast.
"Hello?" a woman's voice from within asked. No other projectiles so far.
"Could I use your phone? I got lost in the forest and separated from my friend. Have you seen him? He's really tall," I said, slowly edging away from the door's opening. It was probably risky to describe Chris to this spellcaster, especially if Chris had been abducted by her, but maybe I could get some sort of information before the hexes started flying.
"Go away, no one is here," she replied gruffly.
Dan came up alongside me. He had been careful to approach at an angle that would not be visible from the porch. Quietly, he began to cast the complex defensive spell that Chromos had used in our first battle against the shades. It had been big, flashy, and had some sort of reflection component which had significantly helped in that fight. But it was definitely not stealthy. Instantly, the door flew open, revealing an unexpectedly mundane interior, a few gaudy lamps, and the woman who I had been speaking to. Her legs were spread and she looked like she was ready to fight us. I immediately started pulling my ice blade into existence, but my stomach turned as I was once again reminded of how much the accident in the library had depleted my reserves.
The woman in the doorway stood a few inches taller than me with long raven hair and bright blue eyes. Her black blouse and jeans seemed to be coated in a thin layer of chalk, and her fingernails were painted bright red. She lifted her arm up and spoke a few nonsensical words and a bright circle with complex interlaced shapes briefly flashed into existence perpendicular to her fingertips. When I saw its design a single piercing scream echoed through my mind in Aurora's voice.
Move!
I leapt directly away, trying to put as much distance as possible between me and the spell. My hand that held a partially formed ice blade spun wildly and cut a deep gash across one of the support beams holding up the porch's roof. A white-hot bolt of lightning shot past me and my deflection ward flared to life on my wrist.
"Oh fuck!" the woman yelled.
My deflection ward stopped vibrating, but I could tell it was still in place.
I landed from my jump and spun to see the woman holding her shoulder. Dan stood with his sword of pure energy pointed directly at her.
"Where is he?" Dan screamed at the woman.
A snapping sound behind me made me spin once more and I came face to face with a familiar shadowy figure charging directly for me, its long knife held outward. Then suddenly, a bolt of flame flew over my shoulder and smashed into its face. The heat from the projectile made me twinge, but it staggered the monster and gave me the opening I needed to slice it into nonexistence with a swift cut from my blade.
"I've got you covered Laura!" Sarah called.
As I turned back to the house, the large window to the left of the door stood out to me. The doorway was not an option unless I wanted to risk getting hit by a stray sword swing from Dan. It was time for me to make a new entrance. I began summoning a second ice blade, shaping it much thicker, blunter, and longer than the other one I held. As soon as it solidified, I heaved it at the window. The glass and curtains did not stand much chance against an enormous spike of ice. There was a shower of shards of glass and ice as my overgrown icicle embedded itself in the floor with a thunk. I quickly cleaned up the sill with my remaining weapon so I could safely clamber through.
I spotted a small TV, a couch, and a coffee table as I gained my footing in the front room. To my right, the sorceress was rapidly backing away from Dan. Past her was the kitchen and a hallway which led deeper into the house.
"Why did you attack my friend?" Dan shouted. He turned his sword and slammed the flat of the blade into the woman's hand as she attempted to repeat the gesture she had previously used to cast lightning magic. She screamed again and turned, bolting down the hall and through a door.
Dan turned to me and said, "You check for Chris in these rooms. I'll follow her."
"There are shades here too, be careful. Sarah already took one down outside," I said to him quickly.
He nodded and dashed off.
Sarah appeared in the doorway as Dan rushed after the woman.
"The person in here shot lighting at me! She is a magic user, like us," I said to Sarah. I was still shaken. "We need to find Chris."
"Considering the company she keeps, this is definitely the place," Sarah said. "I'll take the right side."
"She went through that door," I pointed to the second one on the left.
Carefully, I edged down the hallway peering into doorways one-by-one to look for shades. The first few were empty. Sarah squeezed past me and entered a room I had not yet checked. I pushed open the door across the hall from her and flipped on the light. At first it appeared to be empty except for a large square table in the middle. Every available surface in the room was plastered with intricately painted polygons and arcs. My eyes traced the patterns from the wall to the floors and even across the ceiling. I could make no sense of what I was seeing. Was this whole room a functional magic circle?
"Laura!" Sarah called urgently from the room across the hall.
I pulled my eyes away from the mesmerizing array of arcane glyphs and rushed to join her. Sarah stood just inside a seemingly ordinary bedroom and was already throwing a blast of flame across the small space at a shade slumped against the far wall. Three others leaned against the three remaining walls as if they had just fallen asleep standing up. There was a bed in the center of the room with a thick comforter tossed across it and two pillows placed unevenly near the headboard. The remainder of the floor was covered in a scattering of loose clothes. More clothes were piled on the dresser which stood opposite the bed. Did that woman sleep with four knife-wielding ghosts standing around her?
My hesitation resulted in me having to pull back as the creature resting on the wall next to the doorway suddenly lunged forward in a haphazard attempt to stab me. A cartoonishly long kitchen knife with a hilt guard on the cutting side of the blade flew very close to my face as the upward arc of its swipe passed just in front of me. I quickly responded with a frantic slash of my own and cut through the shade's arm with only a slight resistance. It fell backwards gaping at its missing appendage. The phantasmal blood gushing from its transparent stump faded into nonexistence before it even hit the carpet, but I still had to fight through revulsion at what I had just done.
These things were not real. They were not people, just magical constructs. Whose idea was it to give them blood anyway?
Another blast of fire issued from Sarah's outstretched palm and turned her original target to ash. I darted forward and finished off my injured foe with a precise thrust, careful to stay out of range of its remaining arm. It began to disintegrate so I pushed deeper into the room. A third shade, which had been blocked from advancing earlier by my most recently dispatched opponent, pushed forward suddenly and struck out at me with a broadsword-sized blade. I barely deflected the blow, and my poor defense allowed it to follow up its strike much quicker than I expected. The tip of its crude sword slashed into my clothes at my midsection and the deflection ward on my wrist pulsed with heat as its jagged edge was repelled away from my skin. Thankfully, I had chosen to wear a blouse tonight instead of the dress I loved so much.
The shade faltered as it realized that I had not been ripped open, so I darted forward and drove my ice blade directly through the middle of its chest. It stuck fast and the monster screamed in agony. Tugging on my blade did not immediately free it, but as the arcane entity began to come apart, I was able to get control of my weapon again. Before I could advance around the bed, Sarah forced the final shade back into cover behind the dresser with another blast of flame. She must have done something different from before because this fire spell swept in a wide cone across the room and kept her foe completely boxed in. As the dresser began to char, I clambered onto the bed to approach while staying out of the range of Sarah's spell.
"Now!" Sarah called and the flames started to quickly drop in intensity.
I struck from my elevated position and the cornered shade only barely managed to parry me. It was pinned between the dresser and the wall, and its cover prevented it from properly wielding the machete it held. As I stepped down from the bed another small blast of flame from Sarah forced it to cower once again. A quick series of icy slashes easily overwhelmed my cornered opponent. False blood spurted from several of its deeper wounds as I pressed my attacks harder. Its dissipation took me by surprise and my blade dug deeply into the plaster wall behind the formerly corporeal being. After I fruitlessly pulled on its hilt for a few seconds it was still rigidly stuck, so I shrugged and left it.
"We need to keep moving. There is only one room left to clear. I think that door the woman and Dan went through leads to the basement," I said turning to Sarah.
"Give Dan some backup, Laura. I'll clear the last room," Sarah said, waving me out the door.
"Not if there's four of them again," I said pointing at the large slice in my blouse.
"I-uh, fine. Lead the way, I guess," Sarah said hesitatingly.
The final door swung open to reveal an empty bathroom. It was small, buy meticulously clean compared to the rest of the house. Maybe the shades doubled as housekeepers?
"It's clear," I called.
Sarah spun and darted for the door that Dan had disappeared through. I did my best to keep up. She swung it open rapidly, causing it to slam into the wall with a bang. Immediately after Sarah's dramatic entrance there was a bright flash from below followed by a loud thunderclap. The woman must have just cast that same spell she fired at me earlier. I sincerely hoped she was running out of energy. I had not heard that spell while we were fighting the shades, what had Dan been doing while we were upstairs?
Light blazed from the bare bulbs that hung above us as we pounded down the stairway. Moments later we emerged into a much larger room. My eyes darted around the mostly bare basement, and I saw a partially dissected giant spider on a table in the corner surrounded by more magic circles. This time they were drawn in chalk instead of paint and several of them were glowing faintly. Sitting under the table were the silk eggs that were missing from the clearing. Across from this display was a normal washer and dryer unit. Beyond that, the bare concrete opened to a section that had been stained a deep crimson around a large drain set into the sloping floor. A folding plastic table had been set up directly above the drain, and a very tall unconscious person had been secured to its surface with several straps. There were several circles drawn in chalk, some only partially drawn, strewn across bloody concrete. The woman was looming over the familiar body, and she was holding one of her hands outstretched with a glowing circle floating just in front of her fingertips. It was the spell from before. And it was primed and ready to fire directly into Chris's chest. I froze.
"Chris!" Sarah screamed as she approached at a run.
"STOP!" The woman shouted. Sarah skidded to a halt.
I glanced around for Dan and spotted him lying face down on the floor several feet away from the table, just short of the blood stains. Thankfully, it did not appear that Dan was bleeding, but judging by his melted sneakers, he had probably been hit with the bolt of lighting we had heard earlier. As I helplessly glared up at the woman who held Chris's life in her hands, I had to hold myself back from summoning another ice weapon. Startling her right now could make her pull the trigger, so I forced myself to examine her closely instead. She appeared to be in her thirties and looked surprisingly mundane, though her outfit was looking even less fresh now. The left shoulder of her blouse was torn and the skin below looked scorched. Her hand holding the spell circle was shaking slightly. She clearly knew she was outnumbered.
"Get down here, you useless shadows!" She shouted. Her hand which was not holding the pent-up spell twitched rapidly, and her eyes darted around the room. I followed her gaze and saw nothing. She clearly had been expecting something to happen. A grimace formed on her face.
"We already took care of them all," Sarah said smugly. "You're all alone."
"You guardian-infused brats need to leave right now! If you don't, I'll kill you all in the least merciful manner possible," she said.
"Cancel that spell and we will leave," I said while slowly moving closer to Dan.
"Stop! Stay back!" She called to me.
"I'm just checking if he is alive. If he is will carry him out of here," I replied evenly.
Following an old memory of Aurora's, I bent down and pressed two fingers to Dan's neck to check for a pulse. A faint heartbeat was present, but Dan did not even react to my touch. As I went through the eerily familiar motions, I felt a sudden impulse whispering that I should push a mote of my ice magic into Dan to soothe his pain and heal some of his wounds. I cautiously began the spell and arcane energy flowed from me at as slow of a pace as I could manage; I needed to avoid alerting the sorceress. After a few moments she did not react, so I increased the rate slightly and felt the spell complete.
"Is he okay?" Sarah asked.
"He will live," I said, allowing hope to creep into my voice.
A groan issued from Dan as he rolled onto his back and his eyes shot open. A large black mark sat dead center on his green shirt; a grim souvenir of the lightning bolt spell he had taken directly to the chest.
"The witch is holding Chris at spellpoint, Dan. No sudden movements," I whispered. Dan's eyes darted to mine and he gave a slight nod.
"Okay boys and girls, time to back the hell off if you value the life of your friend," the increasingly harried spellcaster shouted.
"Oh, fuck you," Dan said as he clambered to his feet. "Do you really think your magic can do anything to us? And what's the story with the giant spider over there?"
"None of your business, child," she spat.
"Don't you want to tell us all about your master plan?" Sarah said with a forced laugh.
"Quiet," the woman said. "Your confidence is misplaced. I could take you all down right now, even without a hostage. It's just such a bother dealing with the bodies. But so be it."
She raised her free hand and a circle matching the one she was pointing at Chris exploded from her fingertips. I saw that Sarah's palms were already cupping a swiftly growing flame. Realizing what was about to happen I frantically began the process of summoning more ice. Faintly, I also sensed Dan was beginning to cast something.
The air in the room vibrated with intense arcane energy as all four of us let loose with our magic. Lighting blasted from the witch's fingertips with a sharp crack. It shot rapidly across the room. Sarah's softball sized fireball did not make it very far before the bolt slammed into it, producing a blast that knocked her completely off her feet. As my icicle grew into a spear, a protection spell from Dan flowed over me and bolstered my waning deflection ward. Unfortunately, it had not reached Sarah in time. As soon as my weapon was complete, I threw it directly at the sorceress with a cry of effort.
She dodged clumsily to her right and found herself directly in front of Dan as his sword snapped into place in his hand. Her eyes darted back to Chris's unconscious body strapped to the table and she let loose the spell she had been holding at the ready since I came down the stairs.
"No!" I screamed.
I pushed all my remaining stores of energy into an uncontrolled blast. After all the magic I had burned through today, I only had a few drops left in my tank. The meager energy congealed into a small blade no larger than a butter knife. It shot toward the lightning wielder and sank deep into her abdomen, but it was too late. The bolt slammed into Chris and his body convulsed. My legs gave out as all the energy drained from my body and I slumped to the ground; it took all I had just to keep my eyes open. Brilliant arcs were rebounding from Chris's body and lancing back towards the unknown spellcaster. I felt a dull snap as the ward Chris had cast was consumed in an instant. Even Chromos's augmentation had not been enough to preserve it.
One of the stray arcs of electricity slammed into the witch's leg and she toppled over. Dan took the opportunity to charge forward. Without hesitation he swung his glistening translucent sword downward and into her shoulder. The blade bit deeply and one of her hands feebly grasped at it in shock.
"This is for my friend," Dan said hoarsely.
He pulled the blade out, adjusted its angle and slammed it back into her body. Screaming in agony, the witch raised both her arms and an enormous magical circle materialized above her. The equally enormous blast that followed completely missed Dan and instead punched a sizable hole in the floor above. From my prone position on the ground, I looked upward through the wreckage and felt a strange fuzziness wash over me as my world collapsed into darkness.