Update
Finished the first short today. I'll probably be taking tomorrow off from writing before I get started on the second short. I think this reads much better than the first draft version I'd previously uploaded. I'm having a blast getting back into writing this character.
Current Word Count: 9,040
Scene of the Day
Before I even grabbed more ammo, the remainder of the
Ifrit released an echoing, ground-shaking roar.
The entire prison trembled around me, and the vibrations
were strong enough to send me toppling to my knees.
Fire popped around his body, sending bursts of napalm to
litter the whole cell.
“I will tear your
heart from your body and use it to season your soul, you treacherous faery
witch!”
I winced, its snarling voice rasping against my mind as
it came from every direction around me.
The Ifrit wrenched against the chains, and they gave a
worrying amount of bend around him.
Another few seconds, and seeing tomorrow would
definitely be off the table.
That just wouldn’t work for me.
I chambered a round, pressed my hand to the top of the
gun, and let even more magic flow into the bullet.
“I call on the magic inherent to this moon metal,” I
intoned.
The metal cooled under my touch, seeming to become a
solid block of ice.
“Purifying magic of Selene’s light, purifying shadows of
Hecate’s torch, all-encompassing power of Luna’s tides, wash this blazing
creature into nothingness!”
The Ifrit finally snapped the chains, sending a
shockwave of power surging through the cell.
I was, frankly, surprised it didn’t release a sonic
boom, with how fast it rushed at me, a wall of fire following quickly after it.
A tiny, concrete cell didn’t give much room to block or
maneuver around the scorching power coming for me.
With only one option, I brought the gun up and fired,
praying to whatever deity might decide to take pity on me for the magic in the
silver to kill the fire, and the Ifrit, before it got me.
What did happen
was surprising, though it also signified I’d have a debt to pay when this was
all over.
The bullet pierced the wave of fire and slammed into the
Ifrit.
Silver light flashed out from its body, and while the
fire wasn’t a danger anymore, the new concussive force did its job for it.
I slammed straight through the opposing brick wall, the
thick wall turning to powder.
As I slammed to the ground, vision greying, I saw the Ifrit.
Or what was left of it, anyway.
Barely a third of its mass remained, the powerful flames
now bare flickers around it.
They were barely enough to even char the concrete under
its unmoving body, anymore.
Forcing the all-encompassing pain sweeping through my
system down, I pushed to my feet and limped back into the cell.
Taking out a small vial from my pocket, I popped the lid
and threw the contents right into the Ifrit’s burning center.
It gave a loud, horrific sound that mixed sizzling,
screaming, and snarling as it woke back up from its short coma.
The sound drove me back all on its own, without any
magic behind it.
Fast, shallow breaths brought painful trembles through
me as it stared at me with what could be said to be horror.
“And that,” I
huffed as his ethereal body began turning to ash, “is how you beat an Ifrit.”
The magic holding the Ifrit together was severed; my own
magic mixed with silver broke the very short tether it’d started with the
second I’d pulled it from Johan.
Working out even better, my bullet had reacted with its
fire, doing even more damage.
Even if it’d been one of the Umbramundus’s Crowns
themselves, though, it wouldn’t have been able to take the holy water dousing
on top of all that.
Not that I could say I’d won, really, when everything
was said and done.
I was almost tapped for magic, I had burns all over the
place, and even where there wasn’t charred skin, there was enough pain to make
breathing turn my sight grey.
Ah, pyrrhic victory, my middle name.
If that all hadn’t been enough to stop the Ifrit, I
wouldn’t be walking out of the sanitarium, alive or otherwise.
From the looks it was giving me as it faded, though, I’d
imagine that it had it even worse.
It was probably going through as close to the pain of a
physical death that any magical creature could get without having a completely
corporeal body.
“I’m not the only
one of my kind roaming this city. They’ll avenge me,” it swore in a voice
like bursting steam pipes.
“You lot are pretty nomadic, from what I’ve gathered. I
doubt it.”
“You will suffer
for this insolence, faery witch,” it snarled.
With it dying, and using such a very tired and cliché
threat, I felt safe finding amusement in the warning.
“Eventy’ly, probably, but not today,” I sighed.
With one last hiss, its existence utterly vanished.
I dropped to the ground, another banished hellion and a
coming healer bill that could match a new car under my belt.
After a small eternity, I finally managed to shakily get
to my feet.
Dragging Johan’s unconscious body to the elevator, with
the psychic screams back in full force, was a fresh kind of hell.
The desk clerk looked ready to drown in booze to forget
the whole night, when I slogged out of the metal box.
“W-wha-what, I mean-”
“Possession. Problem’s fixed,” I explained. “Yer
definitely gonna’ wanna’ send yer cleaner down there. Cell’s burned to Hell,
an’ a wall collapsed.”
She seemed to be struggling to process it all, but she
got her voice back with surprising speed.
“What the hell was he possessed by!? The whole building
was shaking. I thought we were going to sink into some abyss!”
“Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. This one’s checked out,” I
added with a nod to Johan’s unconscious body.
With that, I disappeared from the prison into the night,
looking entirely too bloody to be worth anyone’s trouble on my way.
My clients seemed to have the same mindset, when I
showed up at their mansion with both myself and their son covered in blood.
My exhaustion didn’t seem to faze them as they demanded
to know what happened.
I left out the fact that their kid was a pyrokinetic,
partly for him, and partly because I could go to sleep better at nights leaving
the choice up to him, along with my business card I’d stuck into his pocket.
The Levi’s reactions to my appearance were almost funny
enough to make it worth it.
Almost.
After I’d dropped Johan at their door and grabbed my
check, I went to pass out in my loft, the large sum now resting in my bank
account making the aches and pains and near-death almost seem worth it.
Almost.
Ah, to live the everyday life of Morgana Lugus, Arkham
City’s best and brightest supernatural problem-solver.
You’re all jealous, admit it…
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