Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (35 page)

“Do it,” said the True Head Cultist.

Cultists moved through the hostages, and shackles fell to the sand. A hushed chatter began to grow among the hostages. They were still scared, still beaten and battered and deathly afraid, but they were beginning to hope.

“Now release them to us,” said Mazik, his gaze fixed on the cultist in front of him. The True Head Cultist nodded, and the other cultists stepped away from the hostages. Sergeant Kolhn’s squad immediately rushed forward, the hostages’ hope growing as the soldiers surrounded them.

“We good?” whispered Mazik, still not looking away.

Gavi looked behind them. “Looks good.”

“Thank you,” said Mazik, and then he released the knife.

All around the arena, people exhaled.

“Come on. Let’s go,” said Mazik, spinning around. Gavi and Raedren didn’t need any encouragement. They turned their backs on the True Head Cultist and walked away.

The trio reached the soldiers and the now-former hostages, and the whole group turned and began walking away.

Behind them, the cultist Mazik handed the knife to walked over to the True Head Cultist and bowed. “Here you go, my Lord. The Edge of Ebon Darkness.”

“Excellent,” said the True Head Cultist as he accepted the weapon. He pulled the knife partway out of its sheath, examining it. He frowned. Then he drew it all the way.


STOP!

All over the arena, weapons flew out of their sheaths. Mazik’s group froze.

“Keep going!” hissed Mazik to the others. “
Slowly,
” he added, and then he and his two best friends turned to face the cultists. The very, very angry cultists.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked the True Head Cultist, holding up the knife.
Half
of the knife. The blade was broken, separated halfway down its length. The upper half was missing.

“Oh,
that
,” said Mazik. Then he broke into a wide, unabashed grin.

“Oh my, how
clumsy
of me!” said Mazik. He reached into his robes and pulled out the rest of the knife, waving the half-blade in the air like a treat just outside of a dog’s reach. “You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to break this thing, but once we found the right blacksmith,
crack!
” he said, pantomiming a blacksmith’s hammer coming down with his other hand. His grin hardened. “You should be careful what you ask for. You said you wanted the knife, but you never said it had to be in one piece.”

The True Head Cultist slumped forward. “Oh,
phew
.”

Mazik’s smile fell away. “What?”

The True Head Cultist patted his chest. “I thought you disposed of it. Almost had an attack there.” He shook his head. “No, we never said it had to be in one piece, because
it doesn’t
,” said the True Head Cultist, and here his voice dropped low, filling with menace. “We do need all of it, though.”

A deep chill shot through Mazik’s spine, burning away his smug delight and leaving only shame and regret. Saying nothing, Mazik wrapped the half-blade in a swatch of black cloth and slid it back into his robes, his hand coming out with one of his own daggers. He dropped into a combat stance.

“It was a good try,” said Raedren as he drew his stolen staff from the strap he scrounged from the guardhouse earlier. He brought the weapon in front of him as mana gathered in his arms and hands. Gavi drew her sword, while behind them Sergeant Kolhn’s squad pulled in tightly around the hostages, whose burgeoning hope had been replaced with abject terror.

Mazik stared at the True Head Cultist. The True Head Cultist stared back, slipping his half of the knife into his voluminous robes and clasping his hands together on top of his cane.

“Is there any chance we can all walk away from this without a big damn fight?” asked Mazik.

“You could give us the rest of the Edge back,” said the True Head Cultist.

“That’s not gunna happen,” said Mazik.

“Well then, it would appear there’s no other way,” said the True Head Cultist, and his voice was almost cordial. He sighed. “You know, I was planning on doing this after we had the Edge back, but I guess now will have to do.”

Mazik frowned, but before he could say anything the True Head Cultist tapped his staff on the ground three times in quick succession, and his body lit up with dark red magick. A burst of pressure swept out from him, buffeting everyone save for his own allies. Mazik and the others were pushed to their knees.

Runes lit up in several circles around the True Head Cultist, their deep indigo light nearly invisible in the midnight darkness. A deeper light began radiating outward one circle at a time, and then four lines of runes shot out, racing across the sand and traveling up the walls until—

The barrier crystals. The fortified huts containing the barrier crystals lit up all at once, red and black and purple light swirling around them as razor-thin runes came to life on their bottom edge. The cloud of mana around them began to pulse, and all of a sudden the mass of energy shot out over the arena floor as one. Great barriers began to form like molten plastic flowing into a mold.

The barriers stopped where the arena’s usual barriers stopped, several meters out from the top of the gladiator’s wall—and then kept going, the inky red mana shot through with deep indigo slowly eclipsing the night sky, until the entire arena floor was encased in a pulsing dome.

Mazik and the others spun around as metal screamed behind them. They watched as the Gate of Life slammed shut, its lock falling into place thanks to a cultist who shouldn’t have been there. Runes lit up all around the gate as the barrier climbed down over it, and over the distant Gate of Shame as well. Somewhere behind the Gate of Life there was an explosion, and fire erupted from the side of the tunnel where the elevator down to the Catacombs resided.

All of this only took a few seconds.

“I don’t remember seeing a spell like this in
Practical Mythology
,” said Raedren as he looked up at the barrier. It looked strange; its mana kept writhing, making everything beyond it look fuzzy and indistinct, like a million tiny hands were smudging every square millimeter of the dome.

“It doesn’t have every spell. You know that,” said Mazik. “Which is just our fuckin’ luck.”

Mazik, Gavi, and Raedren turned back.

The True Head Cultist smiled. “Shall we get started?”

The two chutes behind the True Head Cultist opened, and a dozen cultists fountained into the arena from the Catacombs below.

“Take the hostages to the gates and protect them there!” Mazik told Sergeant Kolhn as the cultists converged on them. Up in the stands the battle had already begun. “Support us however you can from there. We’ll make sure they don’t get the knife!”

“Most of us are melee types, sir,” said Sergeant Kolhn as the rest of his squad grabbed the hostages and pulled away.

“Then be ready to swoop back in if we fuck it up,” said Mazik. “Go!”

“Yes sir!” said Sergeant Kolhn.

Mazik turned back to the onrushing enemies. Barriers appeared around them, Gavi pulled close, and mana whipped around Mazik as his ire rose. It was fifteen cultists against three idiots who thought they were adventurers, with untold more enemies ready to rise up if these failed.

“All right. Let’s do this,” said Mazik. He pointed at a cultist, and with a loud
crack!
a lance of mana grounded itself in the man’s chest, throwing him to the ground.

Mazik grinned a gallows smile. “
LET’S FUCKING DO THIS!

“Y-yeah!” said Gavi, right behind him.

“Fuck my life!” added Raedren as he began casting wildly.

All across the arena, swords clashed, arrows flew, and spells were loosed into the night sky. The battle had begun.

*      *      *

The night lit up with magick. It wasn’t the magic of cartoon drawings or children’s stories, nor of a magician’s show—it was the magick of death, magick bright not because it was lovely, but because it burned. Garish spells streaked across the sky, illuminating the night like an aegisquake in a fireworks shop, all color and noise and senseless destruction. It was a riot of violence and noise, and flying blood.

And in the middle of it all, surrounded by enemies and wreathed in a cloud of sand, sweat, and spent spells, Mazik, Gavi, and Raedren fought like demons.

The trio didn’t fight skillfully, not to a master’s eye, but they did fight ferociously, with every move either Mazik or Gavi made reaching out and
hurting
someone. The two of them spun around a point, Gavi’s blade parrying, blocking, and cutting into flesh as Mazik’s spells burned people alive. And standing at the center of their orbit was Raedren, mana radiating away from him and into his friends, his barriers protecting them, his enhancements bolstering them, and his mana flowing into them, replenishing their mana pools so they never had to stop their attack.

“You know, I’m beginning to think bringing the other half of the knife wasn’t a good idea!” yelled Mazik over the roar of his explosions.

“Ya think?!” said Gavi as she lashed out, her sword singing as it sought flesh. It was not a kind song.

“Eh, I guess so,” said Mazik as he fired a blast of blue-hot mana, knocking a pair of cultists back. He grinned and fired again, battering the barriers of a third. “C’mon, you bitches, come and get it!”

“Please don’t encourage them,” said Raedren. “By the way, do we have a plan?”

The knot of enemies around them seemed to loosen for a second, the cultists pulling away—and then they struck at both of Mazik and Gavi’s sides simultaneously, trying to get to Raedren.

“Not really,” said Mazik as he parried with his knife, and then missed with an uppercut to a cultist’s chin. He swore and lobbed a nuke blindly behind him, which struck an attacker. “We just need to hold out. I’m not sure what’s happening downstairs, but if these guys came up here to fight us then the major and the others should have the advantage down there.” Mazik kicked sand into another cultist’s face and then knocked her away with a spell to the chest. “Plus, these guys are weak.”

Gavi glanced over at Sergeant Kolhn’s squad, and found only a handful of cultists attacking them, probably as much to keep them from helping the trio as anything else. Nonetheless, they fired the occasional spell at the cultists around the trio. Up above she could see the barrier rippling as spells struck it, with no noticeable effect. Across the arena floor, Gavi watched as the chutes behind the True Head Cultist opened again, and more cultists crawled out.

“I think they might have more people down there than we agreed upon,” said Gavi. She swiped at the cultist in front of her, but their numbers weren’t thinning out.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Mazik as he triggered a flurry of explosions. “We did the same thing.”

Gavi grimaced as she dodged a cultist’s spell and kicked another in the shins. “I don’t know. I’m not sure we can keep this up forever. I—”

Suddenly a cultist was under Gavi’s guard, his sword raised to bisect her from shoulder to hip. Gavi hopped backward, pressing against Raedren’s arm as she hauled her sword up and—

The cultist roared in anger and pain as blue light washed over him. He shook his head as the spell dissipated, looking around for his assailant—and then the second blast struck, swallowing him whole.

Mazik grinned as he walked past Gavi, his robes fluttering behind him like a superhero’s cape. “Gods
damn
I’m good,” he said, hands glowing with deadly light. He spread his arms and fired in two directions simultaneously, sending the cultists he struck flying away like bowling pins hit by a cannon ball. They cried out in pain as their wounds scraped across the sand.

Gavi scrambled to cover the side Mazik had abandoned, only to realize that it was temporarily devoid of standing enemies, though it had plenty of moaning cultists and craters. She shook her head.
Of course, if he can keep that up…

Gavi jogged over to Mazik, Raedren following close behind. The cultists had temporarily pulled back, the downed ones picking themselves up, while the ones Mazik was currently focusing on tried not to die.

“Hey Mazik,” said Gavi. “We need to keep—”

“Maz,” said Mazik.

“What?” asked Gavi.

“Call me Maz,” said Mazik.

Raedren backed into them. “Ma—”

Mazik spun and unleashed a spell, spraying mana across the cultist that was trying to come in from the side and interrupt their conversation. He grinned as they reformed their back-to-back defensive formation. “C’mon Gavs, how many years have we known each other? And you still use my full first name. After all we’ve been through, I think we’re a little closer than that.”

Gavi gaped, and then dodged a cultist’s strike. He backed away, trying to come in from another angle. Gavi punched him in the face. “Is this really the time to be talking about this?!”

“No better time,” said Mazik as two cultists lunged at him. Their enemies had regrouped, and the assault was intensifying. Mazik grunted as the two cultists slashed at his barriers, pushing him back. “We might not have another chance, ya know?”

“Then focus on making sure we do!” said Gavi, who was, despite their current predicament, actually blushing. “As I was saying, we need to—”

“Caaall me Ma~aaaz!” said Mazik in a singsong voice, a big spell forming as he slashed blindly.

“Fine,
Maz!
Maz Maz Maz! There, are you happy?” asked Gavi, her cheeks ablaze.

“Like you wouldn’t
believe
,” said Mazik with a wolfish grin. The same pair of cultists lunged at him again, but were stopped cold by a green barrier. Mazik tossed his knife into his offhand and pointed at them. “
Mazik Blaster!

The two cultists were struck by a fat beam of energy, their barriers boiling away as the mana cut into them. They both fell to the ground, twitching. The spell kept going, almost taking off the head of a cultist climbing out of the Catacombs before grounding itself on the distant wall.

“Hah!” said Mazik with a wide slash of a grin. He pivoted and swept out his arm, nearly immolating another cultist who was pressing in. Then Mazik started laughing maniacally in earnest.

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