The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.18 Mages and Mobsters

The mage battle had spilled outside of the conference room. Walls and floors had been demolished through the ferocity of the battle, flames engulfing the scenery as the two combatants travelled through the ship. Tourists fled. The more level-headed members of the already meagre serving crew sought to block off corridors and minimise the damage where possible. An alarm began to sound, reverberating throughout the corridors as the sprinklers activated and filled the halls that acted as the battleground with steam.

Abaddon was manipulating a stream of flames into a whip, flinging the attack at Gratin with a series of flicks and audible snaps¹. Gratin had taken flight, dodging the attacks with a range of aerial acrobatics. He skirted to the left, barely avoiding having his robes being set alight, and swooped down into a low dive as the whip was flung back at him. It missed, Gratin picking up speed as he raced towards Abaddon, stretching his arms out in front of him and unleashing jets of flame that filled the hall, ripping apart the flooring as he hurtled towards Abaddon. The rival mage allowed the whip to disperse and leapt to the air, disappearing through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Gratin ended his attack and hurled himself backwards as the patch of ceiling above him caved in, Abaddon bursting through it wreathed in flame. He rolled in mid-air to face Gratin, lashing out with a fierce right hook. Gratin parried it with his right forearm, lunging his left arm forward for a blow to the chest. The attack didn’t connect, Abaddon roughly grabbing Gratin’s wrist and dragging the mage forward, slamming his knee into Gratin’s gut. Abaddon followed it up with an elbow to the spine, sending Gratin flailing and falling to the floor below.

Gratin bounced as he hit the floor, gasping in pain as his shoulder was dislodged from its socket with a grisly crack. He gripped his arm to try to stem the pain but didn’t have time to fully inspect the damage, rolling aside as Abaddon intentionally fell from the sky in an attempt to heavily stamp Gratin into the floor. The floorboards cracked and splintered from the force of the attack, the wood igniting as flames surrounded him.

Abaddon lashed out at Gratin with a series of swipes and punches. Gratin levitated and flew backwards, attempting to stay out of reach whilst he drew more power. The flames engulfing the corridor began to burn more intensely, Abaddon pausing mid-swing as he felt the increased heat rippling around him. The flames were taking a new shape under Gratin’s command, clawed fingers forming and reaching out to grab the mage. Abaddon launched himself upwards into the air to avoid being caught, Gratin directing the flame-hands to continue to pursue his rival, driving him further away.

Abaddon dived to avoid the claw’s clutches, barrel-rolling left through the air as a second lunged for him. He threw a fireball to demolish a wall and dove through the resulting hole to escape the attack, going out of sight.

Gratin used what time he had bought himself to correct the damage to his shoulder. He positioned himself next to a wall and used it to shove the limb back into its socket, grunting in pain through clenched teeth.

He regarded the demolished wall Abaddon had fled through. He could sense his rival gathering power on the other side; a prickly heat laced with the bile of hatred. It sent an uncomfortable tingle down his spine. He knew Abaddon was planning an ambush but he was compelled to follow despite this. He needed to subdue Abaddon or else he may never be free of him…

Gratin followed the trial of destruction towards where he could sense his foe. This part of the ship wasn’t on fire, the sprinklers being inactive. The air felt electric, the hair on Gratin’s arms standing on end. That was the first sign that something was amiss. The second was when a bolt of lightning skirted down the hall and struck him square in the chest. He was flung through three walls before the reinforced hull of the ship caught him.

Abaddon’s laughter echoed around the battle ground as he stepped out of his hiding place, his body rippling with electricity.

“H-how?” grunted Gratin. The type of magic a person could perform was dependant on personality type and emotion control. Fire was passion’s plaything, whereas light magic was the tool of valour and the righteous. Abaddon would have had to develop a whole new way of thinking and have started from scratch in order to learn the new branch of magic – it would be impossible to be able to throw a bolt that powerful after only two years of learning, Abaddon having shown no sign of his experiments with light magic the last time they had fought.

Abaddon laughed at his rival’s confusion and reached to grab his own left sleeve. It tore away with a sharp tug, revealing an electronic gauntlet that dominated his forearm.

“With a little help from an old friend,” he announced. The gauntlet hummed with energy, a display screen lighting up as he flexed his arm, drawing in energy.

“I’ll be happy to give you a demonstration of my new toy.”

The display screen showed his energy levels peaking and he barely had to move a muscle to unleash it. Gratin had begun to form his spirit shield but the lightning bolt stuck it before it fully formed, the glowing bubble that was the shield shattering and the blast hitting its target, Gratin being thrown through the hull and into the empty space beyond.

—

When Doug and Blaise got to Doug’s room, they found the door ajar. Doug ran a hand over the edge of the door, finding splintered wood around the lock, the edge having been prised open with some force. He briefly considered that the mages might have pre-emptively found his room, but it seemed unlikely; wouldn’t they just have burned the door down?

Blaise took up position on the other side of the door, back to the wall. She looked both ways down the empty corridor and nodded at Doug. Without hesitation, Doug kicked the door open and stepped into his small room. Two men overdressed in suits were going through his drawers and cabinets. One was leaning on a crowbar. Upon realising they weren’t alone, the suit with the crowbar raised it up defensively in both hands like a baseball bat. The other went to pull out his Gat™, but hesitated as a woman appeared in the doorway with two pistols levelled at him and his colleague.

“Dalminetti mafia?” asked Doug, fire extinguisher still in hand.

“Nyeh,” replied the suit with the crowbar. “What’s it to you?”

“Well, unless both of you are Doug McCracken, you’ve broken into my room.”

Both suits appeared to have some difficulty coming to terms with what this implied. The one with his hand sitting on the handle of his gun inside his jacket came to a conclusion first.

“Wait, if you’re McCracken, shouldn’t Tommy be giving you the once over right now?”

“We had to cancel that particular party,” said Blaise. Each suit currently had one pistol aimed at their heads, which was the most heartfelt gift that Blaise could bestow to a person and feel genuinely good about.

“Well shit,” said the suit with the gun. Crowbar suit looked at his friend, disappointed. “I didn’t even like Big Jimmy, man,” he whined.

Even when presented with opposition, a part of the human brain is susceptible to stimulus of a certain nature, especially stimulus that’s sudden, urgent and pertaining to one’s continued existence. There’s a fine line between someone yelling out to distract you, and someone calling out to warn you, and making the right decision is one of those 50/50 chances that you’ve usually got to make, whether you want to or not. It was one of these decisions that Blaise had to make then and there, stood in the doorway; when the suit with the crowbar’s face gaped into a sudden shock while looking just over her shoulder, shouting “look out behind you”, Blaise had to decide whether to plug the guy in the face or get out of the way. Despite years of cynicism, bad experiences and mistrust, a small part of her psyche sat her down on a chair, poured her a cup of tea, stroked her hand reassuringly and, while looking dead set into her eyes, said I think you’d best get the fuck out of the way.

She lowered her pistols and dived for the bed. Crowbar suit parted with his crowbar, underhand slinging it at the door. Doug went for no-longer-carrying-a-crowbar suit, swinging the fire extinguisher. A howl from the doorway indicated that the crowbar had connected with someone. Doug spun after knocking no-crowbar suit backwards into one of the bedside cabinets, and Blaise rolled over on to her back on the bed, both of her guns swinging upwards in parallel as if sprung-loaded. A gunshot rang out and she flinched.

The other suit, the one with the gun, stood at her side aiming squarely at the door, smoking Gat™ in hand. In the doorway a mage recoiled, one hand over his face to try and hold back the blood spilling from his nose, the other hand directed at Blaise, a dim glow in its palm. The glow dimmed to nothing, and Blaise realised that, along with the face wound, the mage also had a smoking hole in his chest. One suit had caught him in the nose with the crowbar, the other had finished the job with his gun. The mage toppled backwards into the hall, his body turning to ash as he fell.

Hurried footsteps and raised voices out in the corridor prompted Doug to slam the door and hold his weight against it. The suit now without a crowbar sorely raised himself off of the bedside cabinet.

“Ow, why’d you hit me, asshole?” he complained.

“Er, sorry,” said Doug. “Didn’t actually think you were warning us, thought it was a bad attempt at catching us off-guard.” He could hear shuffling in the corridor, somewhere on the other side of the door. The mage’s friends.

“Who the fuck was that?” asked the gun suit, absent-mindedly shaking the gun towards the wall in the direction of the hallway. Blaise holstered her guns and leapt to her feet.

“Let’s just say that we’re the least of your concerns right now,” she stated. Gun suit, recognising the lack of gun now in Blaise’s hands, replaced his own gun back inside his suit.

“Looked like some sorta monk to me,” said ex-crowbar suit, rubbing the spot on his arm where Doug caught him. “Like one ‘a them fancy magic guilds that rich folks like to employ. Greeklabian Basiliskia² or somethin’. In which case, what the hell did you guys do?”

“We’re still trying to work that out. Or at least we will once people aren’t trying to kill us. Let’s just say that the whole business with your boss…” Blaise trailed off when gun suit appeared to be confused. He looked to his colleague.

“The fake gun lighter thing, what got Big Jimmy killed,” said suit-no-longer-carrying-any-crowbars. Gun suit nodded to indicate understanding.

“Well we do that sort of thing a lot. It’s usually Doug’s fault. Oh, I’m Blaise by the way,” said Blaise, shaking gun suit’s hand. Before gun suit could introduce himself, Doug interjected.

“Guys, gotta problem over here. Maybe we can cut the formalities for now and get back to them when an army of mages isn’t swarming outside the flimsy wooden door behind me? I’ll even buy you guys a drink and apologise for accidentally killing your boss.”

Gun suit went towards the chest-high chest of drawers next to the door, and gestured his head to the other two people currently not keeping the door closed.

“Gimme a hand with this.”

Blaise stepped over and gripped the top of one end as gun suit lifted from the bottom on the other side. They hefted the cabinet over to the doorway to block it, Doug slipping out of the way with one hand pressed against the top of the door as the chest dropped into place over the lower half. Everyone stepped back from the door. There was a distinct lack of mages attempting to hammer their way into the room.

“I’ll grab my stuff and then we’ll get out of here,” said Doug, reaching under the bed for his much-missed left arm. Gun suit and Blaise looked at him, baffled.

“Get out of here, how?” said gun suit.

Suit lacking-crowbar-and-now-with-sore-arm was distracted, sniffing the air.

“Does anyone smell burning?”

---

Post by Sean Patrick Payne | November 15, 2013 at 12:00 pm | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment

Tags: Abaddon, Blaise, Dalminetti Mafia, Doug McCracken, Gratin, magic and mages, the Mercs, the novelty lighter incident

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