Chapter 53: Chapter 53

I squirm, starting to freak out, as Asteria and Marika let out shrieks. Asteria’s sounds angry, while Marika’s is more startled. Another voice snarls, familiar, female, and deadly cold. “I really wouldn’t get in our way again. You might’ve escaped again last time, but now WE hold all the cards.”

Randy’s knee digs into the small of my back as he cruelly uses his weight to inflict pain, the blade in his hand pressing against the base of my wing.  He begins to chuckle nastily, a sound that anyone who’s been bullied would instantly recognize. The sound of someone who enjoys having power over someone who can’t fight back. The sound of pleasure and amusement derived from perpetrating suffering and torment to those weaker than them. He begins angling his weapon to begin sawing at my wing, to cut it off! No! NO-

 

“Mind if I cut in, you bastard?! GET YOUR HANDS! OFF! MY DAUGHTER!”

A voice I never expected to hear rings out, and suddenly, the weight on my back and the feeling of metal against my wing is gone, as Randy lets out a muffled “HORF!”

As I roll onto my side to scramble to my feet, a shadowy figure catches me, helping me stand, the dark mist surrounding them fading as I see a player I don’t know, but instantly recognize. He’s modelled himself after his I.R.L appearance.

I gawp, stunned, as my dad smirks and says, “Hey sweetie. You mind if I take this one? I’ve been wanting to give him a piece of my mind since I saw him stab you on-stream.”

I nod, stepping back and speaking to my streaming orb. “Hey guys, sorry about the awkward camera angle for a minute there, I got ambushed by that jerk again. But, guess what?! We have an unexpected guest showing up to save me! It’s my dad! Say hi, dad!”

My father waves and says, grinning, “Hi, dad!”

I groan and pout, as Randy pries himself off the floor. “Ohhh, you’re dead, old man!” he charges, throwing a short knife to the ground and drawing his battleaxe. My dad moves like flowing water, vaulting over the first swing, ducking under the second, and backflipping into a kick to the chin, sending Randy crashing to the dirt again, the axe skittering across the ground to land at my feet. I pick it up, and, looking around, shrug and drive it handle-first into the earth, bringing a gauntleted fist down on it to hammer it in deeper. He won’t get THAT back in a hurry.

Anri hisses in fury and leaps at my dad, her clawed glove flashing. Without even looking, he catches her by the wrist and throws her over his back, sending her cannoning into Randy, who’d been halfway to standing, putting him back in the dirt on his ass for the third time in as many minutes.

As the pair of griefers disentangle themselves and swear, my dad grins over at me. “Well, it’s no patio, but it IS two irate teenagers. Still counts!” he chuckles, and I giggle, thinking back to his comment on my birthday, about wanting to provoke Jeffrey into wrestling him.

Finally, the two problematic players make it to their feet, circling my dad as he stands there, arms folded. “Well? Are you coming at me, or not?” he says, and Anri gives a wary, sidelong glance at her partner in crime.

Randy charges, and my dad simply sidesteps, smacking him in the back of his head with a hammer-blow fist.  Randy sprawls in the dirt again, swearing and scrabbling to rise. Anri slides her gaze from me to my father, before pulling something from inside her tattered cloak, hurling it to the ground. A muffled boom, and a cloud of thick white smoke boils up, shrouding the area.  A few seconds pass, and then… Shunk! The sound of a weapon piercing flesh…

As the smoke clears, I stare in horror. My dad is standing there, Anri’s claws sticking out of his chest. She’s standing behind him, her weapon rammed into his back. As she cackles, her laughter tails off. “… Wait, what?”

She begins trying to tug her claws free, before my dad’s left arm snaps around, his elbow slamming into her cheek and knocking her on her ass. He turns, the same dark mist from earlier surrounding him. His form warps into a shadowy, ghostly thing with glowing white eyes. His voice, when he speaks, is a ghastly, tortured whisper. “Now, did you REALLY think that was going to work?”

Randy, having stood and drawn another axe from his inventory, growls, “Okay, freak, I’mma hurt you SO bad!”

My dad turns to him, and wags the silhouette of a finger. “Come on, that’s not even a threat. Here, I’ll show you!”

He vanishes, and Randy jumps, whirling, as my dad’s voice seems to come right out of the air behind him. “I’m going to peel your skin off and wear it like a bathrobe…”

A black, almost spectral hand reaches up and grabs Randy’s ankle, appearing out of the Argonaut’s shadow, before pulling him down into it completely with a shriek. A few seconds later, he flies up out of Anri’s shadow, knocking her a metre into the air, his face white as a sheet.

 

Dad rises from the shadows behind them, his silhouette’s fingers elongating into claws, as he grabs Anri by the throat, hoisting her into the air. “Let’s see how YOU like it when you get stabbed through the heart!”

As Anri flails and spits like an angry feline, my dad draws back his free hand, and slams it through Anri’s chest, his black, shadowy claws punching clean through her shoulderblades as she goes limp.

Wrenching his hand free, he tosses the corpse to one side, blood dripping from his claws. “Now… for… you…”

 

Randy’s face twists, half in fear, half in a dark, bitter fury. “SHUT… THE FUCK…. UUUUUUUUUPPPPPP!!!!!!”

He hauls himself to his feet, balling his fists, and charging. My dad ‘solidifies’, becoming more real, the claws and the shadowy haze around him fading. He takes one step to the side, and backhands Randy across the back of the head.

Randy sprawls, rolling through the dirt, before righting himself and charging again. Dad sidesteps again and delivers a second searing backhand to Randy’s skull, causing the arrogant warrior to go tumbling a second time. Over and over, the same scene plays out; Randy charging, dad sidestepping, and ending with a loud ‘crack!’ and Randy’s ragdolling body doing a cartwheel into a heap.

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After almost a dozen times ending up flat on his face, Randy starts doing something I’ve never seen him do before…. He starts using his brain.

Approaching slowly, Randy circles my father, who stands there, relaxed, utterly unconcerned. The sound of fluttering, faint at first, sounds overhead, and dad points up. “You should look up,” he says conversationally. Randy spits, “like hell I’m gonna fall for that-BWERF!”

A figure plummets from the sky, landing smack-bang on top of Randy, knocking him flat and pile-driving him into the ground, leaving an impression several inches deep, like something out of a cartoon. A woman in glasses, with a big witchy hat and black robes is standing on him, her high-heels digging into the small of his back. My mother waves. “Hey, sweetie! Sorry it took so long to get here!”

Asteria and I both almost fall over. I splutter, “Mom! What the heck?! How’d you do that, you don’t have wings!”

She waves a wand at me, and winks. “Gravity magic, dear.” I simply stare in shock, as she hops off the back of the flattened Randy, who digs his face out of the divot it’d been driven into.

Swearing filthily, he claws his way out of the crater my mum had embedded him in, and draws a blade. “Gonna… kill… ALL Y’ALL!”

My mother waves her wand and simply incants, “Gravity Dispersal.” As he leaps, Randy finds himself drifting up, up, rising lazily, unable to return to solid ground as he swipes and flails with his pitifully-short sword, impotently fuming. My dad crouches, and leaps, flipping in mid-air to position himself beneath Randy and delivering a piston-kick upwards, sending the other player rocketing into the sky, straight up, before landing lightly in front of his wife.

“Nice timing, dear! Lovely spellcraft, too!” He kisses her on the cheek, and I cover my streaming orb. “Muuuum, daaaad, not in front of the camera!” I complain.

They step apart, and I uncover the camera again. From above, the distant sounds of Randy’s vulgar profanity can just be heard. My dad smiles at mum. “Care to put him out of our misery for now, darling?” he asks, and mum waves her wand again. “Terminal Velocity!”

A few seconds later…

BOOM.

I wince at the earth-shaking impact, followed by the sound of gravel and pebbles raining down from where they’d been thrown up by Randy’s less-than-graceful landing. Dad chuckles, “Well, that’s one more good reason not to get on your mum’s bad side, huh, kiddo?” he reaches out and ruffles my hair, and I giggle as my mother wags a finger teasingly.

“And don’t you two forget it!” she smiles.

Asteria, breaking free from her almost trance-like state, bounds forward to start discussing the finer points of magic with my mother, while Marika absently strokes her new Steelwing Griffon’s neck. It chirrs and nibbles lightly at her cheek, blinking huge golden eyes. Dad waits patiently for his wife, poking idly through the loot he’d gotten from Anri, and I… I decide to finish up my stream and contact the mods I’d trialled.

Dialling them all into a conference call, I wait for the three of them to pick up. Cassie Lindbeck answers first, followed by Ravi Dechaines, with Mia Katz a few seconds behind. I smile. “Well done, guys, I think you all did a great job. I’ll talk to someone I know, get her to draft some contracts. Once they’ve been signed, I’ll assign you more permanent status and see about getting you set up.”

Cassie chimes in. “Does that mean…”

“We got the job?” Mia finishes.

I can’t help myself, I let out a giggle. “Yes, all three of you are hired! I think we’ll work very well together, and I can’t wait to see what happens next! I’ll get the paperwork drafted as soon as Ii can and send it over for you guys to check out, okay?”

Ravi’s voice sounds like he’s smiling. “This is going to be the most fun I’ve had in ages! I’m looking forward to working with you… boss.”

 

After I finish up my hiring, I check my map. I’m not too far from Vassim, and all its stores and seamstresses. I still have a few hours before the evening, I still have time…

 

LATER THAT EVENING, JUST BEFORE SUNSET

I stand outside a small, dark brick building with an arched doorway. There are sconces on either side, burning a deep, rich lavender. The name of the establishment is etched above the arch. THE VOID. This is the place.

Pushing the doors open, I step through onto a platform, suspended above what looks like the inside of a missile silo, carved straight down into the earth. There’s a sign on the wall, opposite the edge of the platform. It has one word on it. ‘JUMP.’

 

Shrugging, I take one step, two steps, and let myself fall off the edge of the platform, tumbling down, down, down into the darkness, wind rushing past me as I plummet. I can’t be sure how far I fall, since there’s no major source of light, just little twinkling sparks embedded in the walls.  They look like stars, but they grow less frequent, until I’m falling through pitch blackness. Just when I think I’m going to fall forever, my wings snap open on their own, my body being guided to a perfect landing positon as a cushion of air slows my fall to nothing, a ring of the same purple sconces lighting the so-dark-it’s-invisible floor beneath my feet. I’m here. Standing opposite my landing point, another arched door stands, swinging open as I approach.

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