“Right.” Fire danced in the Ifrit’s eyes as Aaliyah opened herself up, then gasped as the Ifrit seized the vast power brimming inside her and directing it to the three witches. Their chants began, one praying to Ishtar, the other two to Hecate. The silver circle burned brighter, the air crackling with energy.
Aaliyah swayed, struggling to hold on to her senses as she poured her power into Zaritha.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The man who called himself Burke felt the magic circle powering up. The connection to his goddess was severed. He had expected this. There was no avoiding it. But he was more than a sorcerer. Burke had dabbled in every form of the arcane. Kyle would think him helpless.
He would disabuse the boy of that.
His eyes flickered to the Vicar and his black staff. “You would not survive challenging me,” Burke reminded his follower.
The Vicar’s flinty eyes held him for a moment. “Perhaps not.”
“Split them up.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Students piled out of the school as they approached. Their eyes were all vacant. Their hands clutched makeshift objects, wielding them as weapons. The metal frames of chairs and desks, the broken wood of flagpoles, heavy textbooks, and whatever else the students could find.
“Burke,” Kyle groaned.
With a roar, the students charged.
“Kyle?” Fatima asked, giving him a nervous glance. “Do we…?”
“No.” He reached into the ground he stood on with Earthbones and commanded it.
The earth rumbled and split, then thrusting out of the depths of the earth was a wall of bedrock, clods of dirt and the parking lot’s asphalt spilling off of it. The students crashed into the wall, yelling and screaming. More of the earth groaned as he encircled them, pinning in the hundreds of students in a prison.
“That should hold them for a short time,” Kyle said. “Let’s go and deal with Burke.”
“There might be more,” Britney said as they ran around the wall of stone. “That may have been half of the student body.”
“We’ll deal with it,” he said. “Burke’s office is by the main doors anyways. Let’s just hurry.”
The wall was wide, covering most of the parking lot. He glanced at the sword and wondered what the limits of its power were. He had commanded all that stone to rise up and he barely felt winded from the effort.
Fatima outdistanced them as they reached the doors. Fire blossomed from her spear and crashed into the main doors, blowing them open and spraying the hallway with glass. Fire alarms squawked, and water sprayed down from the sprinkler system. Britney used Waterclaw to stop the spraying water.
“You always have to be flashy,” Kyle muttered as he strode into the hallway.
An old man stepped out of the main office.
“Bastard! Where’s my mom?” Fatima snarled.
“The terms are simple,” the man said. “Your mom for the—”
The air warped about the man and he disappeared and then reappeared five feet away as one of Fumi’s arrows streaked through the air. The man smiled, his staff crackling with black energy. “I was so glad that was your answer.”
“You can’t cast spells in here,” Fatima shrugged. “You can just teleport about with that staff.”
“Witchcraft is hardly the only form of powers. The very air is alive with power. The natural world is all around us, and it brims with energy.”
The air around them danced and rippled. Kyle tensed, holding his sword up.
“It remembers what had once existed here. Before men had bulldozed this land and built this building. Nature remembers.”
The building began to dissolve around Kyle, trees sprouting up from the ground, towering up and up, the ground rippling as curves and mounds appeared. The school faded and Kyle stood in a pristine wood.
And everyone else had vanished.
“Shit.”
He looked around, trying to see anything but thick ferns and towering pine trees. Birds chirped in the trees, a deer and her fawn walked past in the brush, and mosquitoes hummed in the air. Sunlight streamed down through the dense canopy.
He stepped back and something brushed his shoulder. He whirled to see a tree branch touching his arm. He took two steps back, his entire body tensed. He reached into the earth, trying to sense where every had gone through the vibrations they made.
He sensed only animals.
The blow struck him from behind, cracking across his back and driving him to his feet. Pain flared and he coughed. His sword went skittering into the underbrush. He threw a look over his shoulder. No one was behind him.
The second blow caught him in the side. His ribs cracked and pain flared.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fumi watched in amazement as Kyle, Britney, and Fatima all whirled about in confusion, then stumbled about in different directions. “What the fuck is going on?” Fatima demanded, whirling about, her spear almost cutting into Fumi’s side. “Where did all these trees come from?”
“Trees?” Fumi asked. They were still in the hallway, the currents of air painting the walls bright green. Britney drifted down a different corridor, her body in a low crouch as she hissed and swung.
Kyle was nearby and she reached out to touch him. He jumped at her touch, whirling around and backpedaling.
“What is going on?” she demanded.
The man’s struck Kyle with his staff, knocking her husband to the ground, Kyle’s sword falling from his grip. Then the man cracked the staff into Kyle side, throwing him back. Kyle didn’t seem to defend himself, looking around in bewilderment.
He cast some sort of illusion. Fumi drew her bow and fired an arrow at the man.
The air distorted and her arrow passed through nothing. Then the man was standing down the hallway. She change her aim, firing a second time but he teleported again before her arrow could reach him.
“You can see through it?” the man asked in surprise.
“I’m blind. I can’t see anything.”
He vanished. She looked around and—
His staff cracked into her back and she fell forward with a grunt, clutching her bow. She landed on her stomach, ignoring the pain, and rolled over. He stood over Kyle, raising up his staff to crack it down on her husband while he scrabbled around on his feet, his hands running across the floor like he was searching for something—his katana.
She sent a gust of wind out, striking the man, knocking his staff to the side so it landed harmlessly beside her husband. The man vanished again, appearing above her. She caught his staff slamming down at her with her bow, pushing back, then sent a violent wind down the hallway, pushing the man away.
“Little bitch,” he growled, righting himself.
She gained her feet, whirling to face the man and firing an arrow. He vanished. She spun about, aiming directly behind her and firing as he appeared. He grunted in pain, her arrow embedding in his shoulder.
“You are going to be a problem,” he grunted.
“Thank you,” she smiled.
He vanished. She spun about and fired. He didn’t appear behind her like she expect. She whirled around.
He was right in front of her.
His hands seized her and then everything distorted about them. She felt compressed, every inch of her flesh drawn down to a single point. And then it all popped back into normally. They were in a classroom, desks painted in green all around them. He pushed her away and she tripped over a chair, sprawling onto the ground.