Chương 128: Chapter 149: Stunned

I tumbled back out a moment later, still with lightning in my mana channels. I could see everything: the expanding wave of devastation crawling across the park, shattering trees into shrapnel, pulping bodies in its wake, tossing stones into the air, shattering benches. The armored guards that the lich had brought with him were facing straight at it, and I could see their headlong charge start to reverse.

They stamped down hard on the leading foot, trying to turn away, to flee from the explosion that was ripping through the park. Maybe their armor will be enough. Sorry guys, but you got hired to protect a lich. The four creatures that the porters had been twisted into were all very much destroyed, they had been no more than twenty feet away when I released three shockwaves simultaneously.

The crisscrossing pressure waves had synchronized and cascaded together, and all I could do now was chronicle the demolition in slow-motion. Honest, I'd already had this whole plan. I was going to curve gold and have that dragon-head turn around and attack the lich inside his coach, while I moved closer and used my powers over paper and ink to shred every spell he had on him, and then I would rip apart the litter and smack him down with steel and stone.

Then he started turning people into monsters and rewrote the whole gameplan. After Braux, I told Thumper and Licard and Elica and Sir Maspers what my new policy is. Going forward, if I'm in a dangerous moment and my plan starts to come apart, I'm going to immediately default to massive obliteration attacks. I won't take any more chances. I'm not going to let my enemies get their plans rolling.

If someone is fucking with me and it's starting to look ugly, I'm swinging The Big Bat before things have a chance to get completely out of control. To my chagrin, I neglected that policy when we were fighting through Uchislowi. I really should have gone gloves-off much faster, and I should have thrown bigger punches. But - and I know this sounds stupid as fuck- it didn't seem fair. I was there with eight teammates in a big mission, and I wanted everyone to have a chance to contribute equally.

I thought it would be nice if nobody felt overshadowed. And that's why I almost got us all killed, twice. So I've got my plan, and I have seen what happens when I don't follow that plan. No, I'm not going to fight fair against a goddamned unkillable necromancer with a closed cabin full of gods-know-what spells, a small army of professional guardsmen, and a cadre of undead mutants. Drop the bomb, get rid of the problem. I'm sure the survivors and the groundskeepers will understand.

Good news: it looks like all those trees getting pulverized is really taking the edge off the shockwave. I run after it, trying to gauge. I bend air to blunt the impact further, to see if I can minimize damage. It would take a lot of focused effort in one place to make an appreciable difference, I can tell that pretty quickly. My current Strength rating for my sorcery powers is a 10, and that does not go far in restraining the danger from my divide-by-zero void-blasts.

I turn away, to look straight at the epicenter of this catastrophe. Of the traveling litter and its contents, there was nothing. The top few inches of soil had been lifted up as well, and every scrap of leaf and twig and trash for thirty feet. I did not leave those voids running long, just a second or so, just enough to fully render down everything at the bullseye and then release together. The air is thin here, most of it is compressed into the shockwave that is expanding around us.

All that air condensed into a brick wall moving at the speed of sound, leaving a light-headed low-pressure zone. Right now I just had all the time in the world to see the consequences of letting one of those things off in a populated area. Like my own anomalous powers were mocking me, demanding I savor the outcome of my work. So instead I dropped the lightning out of my channels, and let time return to normal.

I dropped to the ground as the effects of the low-pressure hit me at once, I gasped and coughed and shivered. But the worst was the backlash, the air rushing back to collide against me as it equalized. I propped up on my hands and knees, listening to a rolling rumble of thunder bouncing off the buildings in the area. I had severely underestimated the effect of standing in this near-vacuum.

I blinked, stunned, and I hung onto whatever I could, I concentrated on the feeling of broken roots against my palms, a gritty texture of dirt in my fingers. Heaving for air, gasping like that, it distracted me from any other movements or awareness. I could not muster enough concentration to budge from that spot, feeling blood drip off my face and leave cold wet tracks behind on my cheeks and nose and lip. This does not normally happen.

Normally when I portal out of the center of an explosion, I emerge myself some good distance away. This time, I was in lightning-time, and I dropped out for just a few moments of accelerated awareness and then back. While I was moving at speed, the air compressing in front of me gave me a semblance of normal pressure so I did not notice the effects of this area, but it was still very much just milliseconds after a bunker-buster cluster-bomb went off right here.

And I had not properly thought through what that was going to do to me. As it turns out, the answer is ruptured capillaries, rapid suffocation, a sharp case of bends, and a monster of a sinus headache. I was incapacitated. And now I had learned: don't do that. I should stop messing around with things, just keep using what works instead of finding out why something else might be a bad idea. My vision was still blurry, but I could vaguely make out shadows moving near me.

I saw them, but could not make my stupid concussed brain figure out what they meant. Someone was shouting. The shadows moved more. I just crouched on the grass, heaving. I became aware, very slowly, that I had thrown up. This was the thought that helped me crystallize my rational brain again. Great. I'm crouching on all fours like a dog over a puddle of my own puke. Way to be a princess, Natalie.

Hands touched me on the shoulder, and my waist, and lifted gently and turned me, helping me to sit up on the grass, leaning forward but a bit more comfortable. And dignified. Huh. If they're holding me up like this, it's probably not the lich's hired soldiers coming back to finish the job. That's good. There were still bad guys around, and I was totally helpless. This could have gone much worse than it did. I just sat there, and listened to the ringing in my ears, and tried to assemble thoughts. It was slow work.

It took me an unreasonable amount of time to piece together I hurt. After a while, I added lots to that sentiment. I hurt lots. It was like a backlash of the super-speed, now I was barely able to comprehend all the things around me, moving in and out of my senses while I struggled just for the basics. And I was almost insensible until a healer got to me. My ears popped and my sinuses cleared and my brain chugged into motion just in time to catch "-not the worst out here but damn close.

There, that ought to right it."

"Holy shit," I coughed, and ran a hand over my face. The blood smeared over my palms, healing me did not clean me.

"Oh, that's so much better. I think that was one of my worst concussions ever." An old lady patted my hand and chuckled.

"Get lots of concussions do you dearie?" I blinked my eyes clear, there was a red film in my vision, blood mixed into my tears.

"Is everyone else all right? I tried to wait until everything was clear but there just wasn't time." I wiped at my eyes.

"Injuries," the healer said, patting my shoulder.

"But you should worry about yourself." I looked around, the park was a bustle of movement. Stretchers, uniformed city guard, healers, white robes from the local hospitals, and lots of motivated volunteers.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," I sighed. That was going to be something I would repeat a few more times, after the ranking guard officer on scene arrived to begin my interrogation. But first, we needed that awkward moment where I push the cloak back so he can see me clearly, and dispel the hydrangea dyes that are mixed into my hair. I could see when he recognized me.

"The Harigold," he said with a cold dull tone. I was still sitting on the ground, with my arms looped around my knees. In times like this it's best to look harmless and small.

"Hi," I said. Clearly he knew my reputation. I've got one of those in Broghton. In Newtown it's a very good reputation. But to the rest of the city, I'm less of a folk hero and more of a notorious bank robber. He was still staring at me so I decided to go all-in.

"In my defense, he was a lich. That should count for something right?" He turned his head to look at the work being done to help the casualties, and seeing no more pressing disasters he decided to give me his attention again.

"It does," he said.

"As soon as word got in that you were casing a business, we put a tail on you. A good agent, and she can read lips. She got a good look at the men turning into undead monsters, and she also got a good look at you specifically saying you are not interested in learning necromancy, that the other party is a lich, and that you did not want to start a fight here in the park because it would endanger innocent lives." The guardsman looked actually pissed off that all the evidence was making me the good guy here.

"If it hadn't been for the undead, I would have used more controlled methods," I said, waving at the blown-over trees, the shattered fountain, the general atmosphere of painful screams mixed with purposeful shouting.

"I was ready to just use wood and steel, but necromancy has a bad habit of multiplying monsters and if I lost control of this..."

"Could lose the whole city," the guardsman finished, bitterly.

"I'm not crediting that you saved the city, because my lip-reader does not know exactly why the lich decided to attack you. Probably your own damn fault."

"I won't mess around here, my main concern is making sure nobody's about to say anything silly about having me arrested or charged," I said. He blew a raspberry.

"Killing undead is not crime, and we've got plenty of evidence that's what happened. Your methods are sloppy and it's going to be awhile before this park is back to normal... but you did not kill anyone who was not undead and you did not give anyone else any irrecoverable injuries." I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm obviously glad of that, but I'm also surprised. I was really worried they would be too close."

"Ironically, the credit goes to the lich," the guardsman said, and he let a half-smile dilute his his glare.

"The armor his lackeys wore had wards to oppose your sorcery. They were only partly effective, but enough to keep not only the henchmen alive, but to break the wave of destruction and save the people. Since they were surrounding you to keep the witnesses away, they made a perfect bulwark." And that made me bark a harsh little laugh.

"Holy shit. I guess good things are allowed to happen. This is a hell of a revelation. So everyone is going to be all right? Everyone that wasn't..." Except now I was having a hard time saying it. The bones splitting through the fingertips, the distorted skeletons subsuming their bodies... I tried to tell myself that they were either already dead when I did my thing, or that killing them in that state was a mercy.

I could ignore those while I was worrying about the park full of passers-by, but now that I know all those people are going to be all right, I'm back to the cold horror of the twisting undead mutations.

"To answer your question," he said.

"Nobody is going to suggest you get arrested. Some comedian might file a noise complaint, there's always one. As for the rest, it all covers under the rules of engagement fighting against undead, and we've got on file that you're a registered Guild adventurer. No, Lady Harigold, I'm going to have to ask you for a completely different matter."

"What is that?" He sighed.

"You are presently the top on-site authority on liches, as it stands. I need to know that his shop is going to be safe. My superiors have already put their concerns forward that there is already a ticking clock and that a wave of evil magic will turn the city into nightmare monsters. So, would you be so kind as to reassure these city fathers that the monster has not got some sort of revenge to bring against us all?" Or, he wants to know if the undying wizard has installed a dead-man switch. Funny. I should refuse.

Because I'm not an expert. I'm not a necromancer or a scrivener. I've got an overview summary of what his magic can and cannot do, and he has surprised me several times already. I'm someone with a better-than-average academic understanding of his capabilities. But, around here? right now? - that does make me the expert. And I would be burning a lot of good will if I refused.

And since this guy is currently in the process of dropping charges against me after I bombed a public park, I feel maybe I ought not to antagonize him. Besides. It's almost certainly perfectly safe. This is the third time I've killed this asshole. And he's never had any posthumous revenges planned before! This is the first time he's come to me after learning that I can keep coming after him. Before he thought he was safe and immune, but this time he's probably planned for me to find him and fight him.

"I'll go," I said.

"But if I don't feel safe, I'm backing out. I'll give what reassurance I can, but honestly we really do need the experts to check this out."

"More than fair."

"By the way- you had people following me before I even got to the park?"

"Yes," he paused, and then forced himself to add "my lady." I hummed to myself.

"I didn't notice them," I said.

"You wouldn't," he said.

"My people are good at their jobs." Cool. Sometimes I start thinking that magic and power can solve all my problems and then I get a wake-up call like this. We walked back to Kurosake's Import/Export. I opened my senses to any materials that have been marked with distinctive shapes in sequence. I began to get signals back. A cast-iron fence, a wooden landscaping timber. Chiseled into the underside of a stepping-stone. I don't know what they do, I haven't studied this stuff.

This is a science I've never studied that is practiced in a language I don't read using mathematics I don't believe in. Some of the sigils I destroyed. I think most of them at the perimeter were early warning signs or some kind of information-based magic. I destroyed them in case they were also rigged to kill people under certain conditions. A brick that had been removed from a wall and then plastered back in. A copper coin buried in a garden patch.

Carved into the wooden wall under an eave, or printed into a sheet of tin slid down a crack in the pavement. The closer we got, the denser they were, and I still had no idea what they did. Maybe they did nothing now that I had broken the chain, maybe they were all interconnected and the whole collection was disabled now. Maybe they were rigged so they wouldn't do anything until a certain number of them were wrecked. I don't know, and I don't have any clues to guess.

I can speculate, and that's all, and it's not enough. And methodically, systematically, I worked my way to the front door of the shop. Sigils were scratched out, torn up, snapped through, broken up, or crumpled out of shape. The remnants I tossed into the street. There was a lot, most of what was in here had been treated with at least a little magic. But I went through, disposing of everything that I could not verify was not a weapon or a trap. Three of the fucking wooden planks in the staircase. Four in the walls.

Fortunately, it looked like most of the merchandise being offered to the public was clean. No evidence that magical bombs have been distributed to the customers across this fair city. So now I'm headed upstairs. It seems that Meadwhite is a man of habits, and he likes a certain format. Innocuous business with a loyal retainer downstairs, and upstairs is his quarters and laboratory. When possible I did not even come within line-of-sight of these spells.

I sensed the shapes at range, and I destroyed the object holding them. Stacks of paper, entire books, a whole sack of rune-scribed wooden tiles... this guy had almost nothing to do with himself other than to study, plot my downfall, and scribe sigils. Gods, it's like he never even sleeps- Shit. Of course he doesn't sleep. Probably for the exact same reason that I don't sleep. When things were mostly clear, I took a pause and looked around. There was broken crap all over the place.

Guards were holding a perimeter around us. The investigator was tallying as we went.

"Nearly done," I said.

"I'm ready to move up. I'll sing out when it's safe to follow."

"Take your time," he said.

"Don't rush. Make extra-damn-certain that it's safe before you call us up." I huffed a laugh, and started advancing up the stairs. I carved away a rune on the wooden rafter, I destroyed a slip of paper, I warped a nail with tiny marks scratched into it. All of this just as I was climbing the stairs. Half of the room was clear because it was just a library, and did not have any sigils included. He separated his research space from his workshop space, which was convenient to me.

I was about to turn back and start destroying sigils in the workspace, but something snagged my attention. A flicker from the status menu. A blink-and-you-miss-it window popup. I paused, and swept back. I went carefully, just a pixel-hunt of an investigation, until I saw the hint marker was indicating one specific book. Souls and Soullessness. Hell of a thing. I picked it up. [New Quest Activation! The Missing Piece. 5XP Awarded. Affection Advancement for Belisa Roadaway (The Broken)]"What the actual fuck?!"

I blurted out, staring at this menu window. I have so many new fucking questions.