Chapter 5: Boss Battle (1/2)

“Blue World.”

Mathias’ enchanted words reverberated through the glass like a cascade, spreading the spell through the warehouse as a wave of blue light.

Time paused inside the room; the audience watched, their faces frozen in either glee, relief, or unnerving blankness. Jack’s hand stayed up in the air, ready to fall like a guillotine on his victim. Maggie had closed her eyes, waiting for an end that Mathias had delayed.

Thinking fast, his spell only limited to five seconds, Mathias wondered if he should go in guns blazing or be more subtle. Settling on saving Maggie as his priority, he mentally commanded the warehouse’s lightbulbs to shatter, darkness swallowing the entire building.

Gathering most of the glass into a sphere the size of a soccer ball, he hurled it at Jack’s chest, hitting him at full speed. Mathias heard a loud crack as Jack was propelled back against a wall.

After seeing that psycho’s despicable true self, Mathias had no qualms about using violence on him.

Keeping another shard sharp, Mathias had it cut Maggie’s restraints as fast as possible, accidentally grazing her skin.

Then Blue World’s effect ended, with Jack’s screams of pain as the warning. He held his ribs with both hands, collapsing and unable to stand back up.

Maggie, who quickly realized her restraints had been cut, bolted out of her chair. “What’s happening?” Brown exclaimed. While Mathias could see relatively fine through his shards’ widespread locations, the Mayor and his followers lacked the ability to see in the darkness.

“Something’s wrong!” Henry Powells replied, his hand rushing to his belt and drawing a gun. He began to aim at the darkness, ready to open fire at random in his daughter's direction.

Acting quickly before he could shoot Maggie, Mathias had the touchscreen of the police chief’s phone inside his pocket explode. Glass edges cut through his flesh and pants, then impaling his hand. Although Mathias prevented his glass weapons from inflicting lethal wounds, they still drew blood. Powells dropped his weapon, screaming like his son as his blood hit the floor.

The second it did, the ‘M’ symbol on the floor lit up with a devilish, crimson glow, bringing a dim light back to the area. Brown’s followers suddenly had a view of Maggie free, surrounded by flying glass, and with Jack laying in a corner. Immediately, those who had guns drew them at Maggie.

However, whatever horrible ritual they had started ran its course, smokeless flames rising from the M symbol. Maggie wisely leaped out of the symbol before the flames could claim her, removing the gag on her mouth and taking a deep breath.

“The sacrifice, interrupted…” Whatever was happening, it terrified Brown, who had grown pale like a ghost. “Kill the girl!”

Acting even quicker, and unable to cast Blue World without affecting Maggie too, Mathias reshaped his flying glass sphere into a thick, dense shield, protecting his charge. Good thing he did; soon two bullets impacted on it and came within an inch of getting through.

Then, suddenly, the flames started to dance.

They grew brighter, almost too bright to look upon. The cops lowered their guns, protecting their eyes like all the members of the conspiracy present. Mathias, who observed through his glass rather than his own, vulnerable eyeballs, took a step back in astonishment.

The flames had grown, gathering into a swirling, smokeless cloud of destruction. The fired turned blue and condensed, taking a vaguely humanoid shape, with long, clawed arms. The cloud grew a neck, then a head in the shape of a skull with eye sockets filled with darkness. Brown’s cult cowered at the sight, while Maggie retreated against a wall, paralyzed by shock.

Then, the visage spoke.

“Mortals,” it spoke with an inhuman voice, more similar to cackling embers than any other sound. “Where is my sacrifice?”

“Your grace,” Brown went down to his knees, along with his wife. “The Maleking sent you to us.” The remaining members of his audience soon joined him in on their knees; even if Powells struggled against the pain to bow in his own blood.

The creature didn’t seem impressed. “Where is my sacrifice?” it repeated, slower this time, stressing each word.

“Here, your grace.” Brown pointed at Maggie, yet the skull kept its gaze on the mayor. Its ominous presence cowed Mathias even from his hiding spot. The young man attempted to analyze the entity with Network, to discover its origins, to find a weakness, anything to exploit.

— … —

Nothing.

When Mathias stared at that horror, Network came back with nothing more than buzzing, bleak radio static. The power that had allowed him to crack conspiracies that trained journalists couldn’t and figure out anyone, the magic he relied upon most, had failed him.

Brown took the monster’s silence as the warning sign it was, yet to his credit he kept his cool. “We had a miscalculation, for a reason I can’t fathom yet, but I assure you, the girl is yours.”

“She is alive. You promised our King a fresh soul, sacrificed in his name. Yet I see only a hack jobs.” It stared at Henry’s bloodied form with contempt. “Where is my vessel?”

“Here!” Brown raised his head, bright greed and desire burning in his eyes. “I was promised the gift! With your power, I can finally...”

“Making demands with nothing to show for it?” The fiery entity cut him off, its voice gaining a malicious, cruel edge. “Since you failed to deliver the sacrifice on time, I will seize another one myself.”

“Your grace…”

Brown never finished his sentence. In the blink of an eye, faster than Mathias could react, the burning skull breathed a cone of flames at the mayor, swallowing him whole. Brown’s body burned to cinders within seconds, the flesh seared from the bones, and his skeleton collapsing into ashes.

Brown’s wife screamed in horror at the sight, her hands on her face. It only made her the next target of the monster’s wrath, the beast grabbing her with one of his incendiary arms, the flames spreading across her body and turning her into a living torch.

And the monster laughed, the cackling, childish rictus of a child burning ants.

The rest of the cult had started running for their lives, making their way to the exit. The monster didn’t give them that mercy. It turned its fiery breath to the door, incinerating the female cop before she could unlock it and turning the iron around her searing hot. The flames cut off the cult’s retreat, trapping them with the horror they had called yet could not put down.

Mathias… Mathias just stood there, as his brain went blank at the sudden, brutal display of violence. A stranglehold of pure, unadulterated fear had seized his heart, turned his muscles to stone, as he watched the monstrous entity methodically slaughter its own congregation.

He wanted to jump in and save those fools, whom he had wanted to stop but never to die. Even from the safety of his hiding spot, the sheer horror, a primal survival instinct, kept him anchored. He watched, his thoughts stopped, as Powells was devoured by the flames, then his remaining underlings were backed into a corner and burned to cinders as well.

Mathias felt small, and helpless, and alone.

This was it. This was what true magic looked like.

This was what Hell looked like.

Only when the monster finished killing the last cultist, leaving Jack and Maggie for last, did Mathias’ mind began to work again. By now, the smokeless flames had spread to most of the warehouse, trapping the girl and her brother among the encroaching fire.

However, he still found himself still unable to move. Mathias himself struggled against the urge to just stand there, to run...

No, he thought, don’t think like Mathias. You are Shroud. You are magic.

He had been chosen. He had received the gift, the knowledge, the sacred fire stolen from the gods. A quest. He couldn’t fail right at the beginning, not this way. He had the power. He had all the power in the world.

He had to play a role, like when he played his games. Take on the persona of a strong, mighty figure. Bury his human fears deep under a mask. It would be easy. He had to play the role that came most natural to him.

The villain.

A villain greater, and more terrifying than the monster. Like Doctor Doom.

Jolted out of his trance, Shroud cast a spell, his words echoing through the warehouse, “Blue World!”

His magic bathed the monster in its blue light.

It kept going.

In fact, Blue World only made Maggie stationary, unable to dodge. Thankfully, or unfortunately for Shroud, the burning skull didn’t turn to her.

“A Blue Spell, cast on me?” The burning skull looked at the wall behind which Shroud stood. “You are either young or foolish, sorcerer.”

It was up close and personal, then.

Focusing on his makeshift, glass bulletproof vest, Shroud had it levitate above the ground, lifting his own body along with it. Facing the warehouse’s window, he had it shattered as Blue World stopped working, floating into the center of the shrapnel storm.

Maggie raised her eyes at him from his display of power.

Quick, Shroud, think, this is your big moment, your introduction. Your badass rescue moment. He needed an alliterative title, something badass...

“Tremble before…” He crossed his arms in an arm fold, floating mid-air in a badass, haughty pose he had practiced with the help of a lifetime of Saturday morning cartoons. “The Sinister Shroud!”

Yes, his video game acting had bled through.

“The fuck?” Maggie answered at his totally awesome moment.

“Sorcerer. Have you come to become my vessel?” the fiery entity responded to his declaration.

Shroud blinked at the monster’s words, his own helmet heating up from being near the fire.