Chapter 9: 9)

9)

Martin- Sitting behind the counter in the Party-Mart, feeling sorry for himself.

The light changed outside as the changing lands lived up to their name, but I did not want to think about it. Ditto on caring.

At least until something struck the front window, loud enough that I thought it was another gunshot.

Outside the landscape had changed to a great mass of trees tall enough to blot out the sunlight. With dozens of short figures milling about outside, the back of their eyes lit up blue from the lights in the store.

One popped up into view in front of the store with a chunk of asphalt in his hand before rearing back to launch it full borne at me by way of the front window again, hard. Only to have it bounce loudly off the tempered glass again to his, wait, let me check. No pants, yep, his raging frustration.

He was barely four feet tall and all wiry muscle with chalky blue skin, shaggy dark fur, and blue pupils taking up his entire visible eyes with a small black dot of an iris in the middle. Stubby dark blue claws on his hands and feet. All this along with a barbed tail lashing back and forth behind him and big floppy ears like bat wings.

Big eyes and ears adapted for running around in the dark, a possible poisonous barb on his tail added up to...again no clue. Studying the races of the Umbral realms had never been a priority for me even if I had access to the philosophies department’s other library.

Right, well let us take a look at the rest of you. Putting up outdoor lighting for the parking lot had never been a priority for Ali, the store’s manager, and the one public streetlight on the front lot had been left behind when I brought the store here. But the security lights hooked into the alarm system on the front and back of the store could also be turned on with a single switch.

Yep, all the blue eyed lurkers looked pretty much the same as the angry rock thrower, perhaps smaller, And apparently, with a much lower tolerance for bright lights, evidenced by them shrieking and dashing off in all directions while shielding their eyes.

My pavement tosser was made of sterner stuff, or just too angry to run as he ducked down covering his eyes. Then reached to the ground to begin prying at the edge of the remnant of the front lot to pull free one more chunk of asphalt for another volley.

“Right, enough of that.” I flipped the switch for the security lights off and opened the front door. The bells rang as I did so.

The little pavement tosser looked up, for a moment relieved at the lack of blinding lights. Then surprised to see me before cruelly smirking as the no doubt to him “invisible" barrier between the two of us was breached by my hand.

“If you are not planning on buying anything, I will have to ask you to leave.”

Instead, he tried to rush the door, only to find himself slowing to a stop, unable to lift his hand to tear into me with his short dark blue claws

“The wards on this store forbid anyone with malicious intent from entering the place, most people can force themselves to come in anyways, but you seem to lack the… shall we say, mental discipline.”

My words just seems to make the little guy even more angry as he panted with the effort to raise his clenched hand higher, then stepped back and tried to rush in again.

“Right, I do hate to do this sort of thing. I am really not all that good at it, and it is not something I wish to be known for, but I think I can trust you not to gossip.”

I made a circle in the air with my hand, visualizing a thick broad circle, then raised my other hand to trace into place the symbols for force and projection.

A force bolt, considered the weakest of combat spells, or more accurately, the simplest.

I eased out what I hoped to be just enough of my mana reservoir to impress, and then utterly failed to control the stream as a two foot diameter burst of bright white, with a bit of a blue tinge, turned into a beam of pure force exploded into the air with a roar...and entirely missed the tree I had been aiming for.

It did hit another one about fifty feet back, destroying an entire section of its main truck with an explosive burst causing the entire body of the tree above the shredded trunk to slowly drop with a horrendous crash as the bolt continued off in the distance with another few cracks of impact as it connected with several other trees before it dissipated.

Sigh. “Well, that was just...sloppy.”

As wizards go, I had never been all that quick to anger, and subtlety...well that took the kind of training that I had never recieved. But power, sheer power I had, it is just that power is not always that useful to the families when it comes to ruling the world from the shadows.

My new acquaintance's ears were flat to the side of his head and his tail hung limp as he made a bit of a whimpering sound before dropping to his knees in front of me.

“Master...”

Ah, what now?

Donovan- Feeling trapped in a small room by an armed woman with no reservations about inflicting serious bodily harm on him.

I was eyeing the tiny alleyway window since toothy was blocking the only door out of the room when red complained about her invasion of someone's privacy.

“Minion, go fetch us some drinks from the store.” she flicked her fingers at me. “Now.’

I swear I gonna make her pay one day. Toothy gave me just enough space to squeeze past her and glared at me when I ended up nudging her tits with my shoulder to do so. Her fault, she put them in the way and she had to know how big they were. Me, I just tried to keep a blank face all the way out of the room in order to not set her off again.

She just growled a bit from behind me, so good enough.

Without her, on my heels, I took a peek into the other room coming off the wide hallway with the couch sitting opposite a big screen with an old game system plugged into it.

Total mess, some girl’s clothes tossed about on the floor, cheap furniture, a bunk bed, a bunch of colored candles, jars full of stuff, bundles of weeds, not the fun kind, and scattered printed and handwritten notes. Nothing helpful.

Walking by the kitchen on the way out was more promising with a wooded block with knife handles sticking out, but I was in running shoes, blue jeans, and a tank top. I could tuck a knife down the back of my pants and pull out the shirt to cover the handles, but then what? I get spotted with it and one of the witches might get more imaginative about hurting me. Maybe try to find out what happens if stuff gets cut off.

No thanks, not worth it.

Downstairs I looked around for something worth drinking, and found nothing. No liquor shelves behind the counter, no beer in the coolers, just kid's stuff, various cokes, juices, and energy drinks. No cigs anywhere to be seen either.

What kinda shit hole was this anyways? Guess I really was in Hell.

I took a good look at the place for anything useful, taking my time knowing that most women would take the opportunity to scream at me from upstairs at least twice before they would bother moving their asses to come after me.

No gun under the counter, not even a bat, but I did fill my pockets with the cash from the register. You got to take your opportunities when they present themselves.

I had gotten about halfway through the tiny office in the back when the first incoherent screech and a stomp on the floor from upstairs sounded off. I rolled my eyes. Really, like I could understand anything from that far away, on another floor. Think woman.

I did find a toolbox and slipped a flathead screwdriver into my pocket, with the metal part poked through a hole in the bottom and lined up along the seam on the side. That put the entire handle out of sight along the side of my wallet. Not all that easy to get out, but really hard to spot.

Since they seemed the type to make me stand around for hours waiting around on them even if they didn’t have anything for me to do, all the while asking questions they should know that I would’nt be able to answer. I decided to take my chance to hit the can.

Dam. I had never seen a store shitter this clean. Did my thing and turned around to wash my hands. Yeah, I do that, I know where my hands have been.

That’s when the little evil blue fucker with big ears, a mouthful of sharp teeth, and a set of cheap plastic sunglasses looked out of the mirror at me.

I hit the opposite wall trying to get away from it while I fumbled at the handle of the door. It pressed its fucking paws up against the glass from the other side and then licked it, its split tongue leaving a trail of bubbling slime on the glass.

The other side of the glass. What was it Red had said about mirrors?

“Yeah, you just stay there on your side little guy and we’re good.’

I could see from the light in the toilet on the other side that the door was open on its side and heard the sound of splashing from over there like the sound was coming from the other end of an indoor pool. Then an echoey voice called out "You two wash your hands, that’s not drinking water.”

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Don’t want to know.

I slipped out the door and held my hand against it to slow it down as it closed to keep it from making a noise. Looking around for another mirror I spotted a Mylar bag of some kiddie drink called Ischia Moon, I grabbed it and turned it around for the largely fingerprint free mirror like backside.

The blurry distorted reflections showed an entire store filled with rampaging little blue fuckers and some guy waving his arms around. I could dimly hear barking and a voice yelling things like “Bad critter, that doesn't go there”, and “Don’t eat that, that’s not for eating.”

Sorry guy, but I think I still got you beat on having a bad day.

My second warning screech sounded off. Right, a couple of cokes, diet stuff, they were for girls after all and if they didn't like it I had another excuse to piss off for a while.

That’s when the store lit up with a bunch of colors and the sound of a gun racking up a round came from behind me.

Slowly I turned...

She was so a cop, even without the state police tac vest and the badge on her belt I would have guessed cop. Tall, bony, dirty blonde hair tied back behind her head, minimal makeup, suit pants, white shirt rolled up to her elbows, office job shoes, the kind almost without heels.

And the gun aimed up at me with both hands.

“Lady, I gotta tell you. I don’t want to get shot, but after the day I've had that gun just don’t scare me that much.”

Cassy- At the entrance to hell.

My Boss smirked at me. “At least you don’t have to jump down.”

I just ignored her as I tightened up the straps on the side of the vest. The glyphs inscribed on the liner plate would make it stop a lot more than bullets, but a hit from the orc woman could still knock me on my ass by sheer force.

“To review, you are sending me down, while Johanson watches the cameras. You’ll pull me up if I give the signal or things go to hell, no... ” I held up a finger to stop her ” Don’t say it, we have already established that I am going to hell. So change that to, or if things hit the fan. My question is why did you drag me all the way out here to send me down?”

Natalie reined in her disappointment. “The locus in the pit is connected to the store so it’s easier to send you down the closer I am to it. Because even I can only cast so many cross reality spells before my tank goes dry.”

“ ’kay. Whenever you're re..." and then I was surrounded by colored circles of sigils springing up around me as everything blurred and then they dropped back to my feet and vanished as I chambered a live round in my Glock 18L

In front of me was the skinny teenager who was responsible for this whole mess. Spouting off something to make him sound brave and trying to look like a tough guy, while loaded up with an armful of diet cokes and flavored waters

“Lieutenant Cassandra Varrow, State police. Answer my questions and we can see about getting you top side.”

That got his attention. “Holy shit, you can get me out of here” He half dropped, half set down his collection of drinks. “Fuck yeah, let’s get the hell out of here. Some psycho chick is going to be here any moment with a big ass sword.”

Great, I did not want to engage with the natives “I need information for the, let’s call it the device, to be able to lock onto you. What’s your full name?”

“Whatever gets me out of here. Donovan Riggs.”

“Why were you in the store Donovan?”

He went on guard, looking around “Why do you need to know that?”

I saw the orc woman peeking through to the crack of the partially open back door, listening in. At least while she was doing that she wasn’t creeping around to the front of the store to get behind me. Of course, they were still two more of them that had been upstairs. I glanced up at the curved mirror in the corner of the ceiling, set up there to allow someone to see the entire interior of the store.

Which gave me a clear view of Martin Thibedeau lecturing a group of little blue demon things taking up the entire interior of the store as seen from the mirror.

Right. Mirrors doing weird stuff. Noted.

"Why did you have a gun, Donovan?"

Weird, he looked more confused than guilty. Maybe he really had been under a compulsion.

“You mean this gun?”

The orc pushed open the back door, half behind the metal security door for cover, a relatively tiny looking revolver in her left hand.

Dammit, I gave her a dramatic line, guess I should warn her too. “That gun may have a compulsion spell targeting whoever holds it, you may want to get rid of it unless you like being someone’s meat puppet.’

She didn't seem all that concerned. No orc would, they shrug off most spells that target them directly. Even disguise spells like the one that lets Johanson walk around without people freaking out or asking him if he was cosplaying needed to be anchored onto a lithoglyph.

Speaking of which, the very man himself spoke up on the open channel of the radio hooked onto the back of my belt. “Clarice? Sis? That you?” and then of course the boss had to chime in. “That’s your sister Chuck?”

The orc girl’s eyes went wide, “Charles?” and Donovan took the chance to go scrambling down the aisle.

“Natalie, the shooter is running, pull him up.”

Once she had his name, the fact that he was now a moving target just meant the sigils moved with him. It was nice to have one of the best magi of her generation working as support.

I kept my gun on “Clarice” for all of this, she was still holding onto her gun and pointing it at me.

“I’m afraid we need Mr. Riggs for questioning, you’ll have to find some other punching bag.”

In a flash of whitish blue light, Riggs reappeared a few feet up in the air and flew into the front door, hard, then dropped to the ground looking completely confused.

Or maybe they won’t.

“Who the hell are you bitches!” Well, at least we knew being bungle jumped from one level of reality to another and back again hadn't affected his charms.

“Lieu..” I got out before Clarice growled out, “I thought we were clear on you not using that word.”

The shooter scrambled to his feet, I got the hell out of the way of standing between an angry orc woman with a gun and an idiot disrespecting females.

Hey, that’s my glamour stone on the counter. Score. Back my pocket you go.

And dumb ass is still talking “Shit, I ain’t never seen you before...Bitch. Wait, is that my gun?”

He began looking around on the floor as the familiar colors sprung up around me and I was topside in the parking lot, with my boss holding up in the air, by way of a wispy twisting streamer of light going from her hand to his throat, a certain Donovan Riggs who was struggling with both hand to try to take a breath.

You know while pulling me back from another dimension at the same time. Showoff.

Also, what is up with the guy being held up in the air, also being the guy I just left behind in Hell?

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