Shadow Magic (Darkling Mage 1)

“Pale substitutions.” Hecate examined her fingers, her facsimiles doing the same. “You are fortunate we allowed you into our domicile all the same.”

Prudence cowed at that, as if even she had to admit that the entity was right. Which she was. We brought Arachne the cookies she wanted, but the base sacrifices we offered Hecate were barely even up to snuff. Something cold trailed along my spine. We didn’t have exactly what Hecate wanted. Did that mean she could demand whatever she wanted of us?

“At the very least,” Hecate said, “you might compensate with entertainment. We haven’t had visitors in so very long.” Out of all her features, I could finally make out her lips. Beautiful, full, and painted black. They quirked in a smile. “Perhaps you could favor us with a game.”

The grass rustled as both Bastion and Prudence shifted their posture around me. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who was uncomfortable with the idea.

“We didn’t come here to bargain with our lives,” Prudence said, her fist clenched. In the starlight, I could see the faint traces of blue energy pulsing across her knuckles.

“Then why have you come to our domicile empty-handed?”

This wasn’t going well. I whirled around, expecting to find the portal there the way Arachne’s gossamer door had been waiting behind us, but I hadn’t seen any gateways since we’d entered Hecate’s realm. We were at the entity’s mercy.

“Then if t

here are no more objections, we shall play our game. There is only one rule.” All three Hecates lifted their hands to the sky. The ground began to rumble. As one, they spoke.

“Try not to die.” Hecate’s smiles grew wider. “It spoils the fun.”

Chapter 13

The rumbling grew louder with each passing second, the tremors so powerful they nearly threw me off my feet. A crack of thunder emanated from within the very ground itself. Spires of rock exploded from the earth, showering us in a rain of dirt and debris.

The perfect emerald sheen of the meadow tore into ruin as the spires rose higher and higher, tall enough to block each of Hecate’s apparitions from view, then taller still until the tips of them disappeared into the sky.

I looked at Prudence, then at Bastion uncertainly, both of them already drawing closer, backs to each other. Prudence’s hands were close to her chest, her fingers crooked like talons prepared to strike, each of them bathed in pulsing blue fire.

Nearby, Bastion crouched closer to the ground, as if readying himself for another surprise. His power had very subtle physical manifestations, as far as I knew, small flashes of light, which only led the unfamiliar to underestimate him. To all the Lorica, Bastion was a walking engine of destruction, and all our issues aside, I knew he would put up a good fight.

And me, I huddled to join the other two, regretting that I hadn’t begged Thea harder to teach me a spell, something explosive I could use to defend myself. I watched the chains and the shadows that the stars cast across them, readying myself to run.

The spires around us, I realized, weren’t spires at all, but columns of rock engraved with uniform grooves running all along their lengths. They surrounded us like sentinels, keeping us confined in a space no bigger than a baseball field. Encircled and entrapped, I noticed that the arrangement of this all looked dreadfully familiar.

A colosseum. Hecate had erected a colosseum from the earth itself.

Prudence spun around, her head lifted to the sky, face twisted in anger. “Surely you don’t expect us to fight each other,” she cried out. “That will never happen, Hecate.”

The air wavered at the far end of the entity’s makeshift stadium, and each of her three simulacra appeared at once.

All three spoke. “Each other? How droll. You will play with us.”

The apparitions lifted their hands. The chains hanging from the stars reared back and coiled like enormous snakes, clanking with the horrible metal scrape of machinery.

As one, the apparitions spoke. “Let the games begin.”

They raised their hands, opening their palms in a slow, deliberate gesture, and the chains came shrieking out of the night. One of them struck the ground just by us, the ground exploding in tufts of grass and clumps of dirt as the huge metal links ate their way into the earth. The chain shook itself off, as if collecting itself from a momentary daze, then lifted back again, rearing to strike, like a viper.

“Scatter,” Prudence yelled.

We didn’t need to be told twice. We broke into three directions, but even as we ran my heart sank when I saw that there were so many of them, these sentient chains dangling from the sky. What I hadn’t counted on was how methodically my colleagues were working to even the odds.

One of the chains, massive and cumbersome, just barely missed Prudence, and its weight and size drove its bulk into the earth. Without uttering a word, Prudence turned and drove her fist into the nearest link. The metal fell apart in a brilliant burst of blue energy, the link snapping from the tremendous force of her power. The chain went limp.

So there it was: these things were alive, somehow, and breaking off a large enough part of the chains was enough to deactivate them. Each functioned as its own being, and dealing enough damage would be enough to “kill” it. Not that I could help at all in that department.

Bastion demonstrated that on his own, and he didn’t even have to be sly about waiting for the things to embed themselves in the ground before striking. He gauged until they were close enough, then cleaved his open hand in an arc. It looked for all the world like he was making a vain attempt at karate chopping thin air, but the effect was immediate. It was as if a massive, invisible sword had cleaved its way through two of the chains, severing them in half and sending the ruined tangle of links crashing to the ground. Each of those links was the size of a car. The stadium rumbled.

“Stop standing there with your dick hanging out,” Bastion shouted. “Just shadowstep and stay out of danger.” For once I agreed with him completely, and maybe I even heard a trace of concern in his voice.