Act 3, Chapter 88: Chuma siblings

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around 3 a.m—2 hours into the time trial

Elle Erikson

I sat back against the broken carcass of a rotating cannon, the metal still ticking with heat from the bombardment, and watched the Chuma siblings work their magic while Patricia smeared some kind of cream onto Piotr’s wrist. She had sprinted to him the moment Kito landed and shed the monstrous insectoid form, as if worried he would collapse the second the adrenaline left him. Around us the Allied forces continued their relentless barrage and every few seconds another artillery strike crashed against the giant as it dragged itself toward the shoreline—refusing to die quietly.

Liana extended her slender arm and from the small skin pouch nestled in the crook of her elbow, red ants began pouring out in organized streams. They crawled over her brown skin in disciplined lines, moving along her wrist and fingers before spilling onto the trembling concrete beneath us. At least thirty of them gathered there and Kito—who’s body was all sweaty and tense—crouched over the swarm and focused.

Green and yellow shadowlight flickered across his face and hands as his Authority settled onto the insects. Lia was the one issuing commands through the power of the Orders soulmark—forcing absolute obedience. Every insect around her became an extension of her will, making her a true hive queen.

The siblings each carried access to two soulmarks inherited from their legacy Domain and both stood on the verge of claiming a third. But despite sharing origins, their powers had diverged sharply. Lia’s second mark was Nourishment and from what I understood, it allowed her to restore her own body by consuming the life and vitality of the insects living beneath her skin. They all called it a last stand and in the most dire of needs she would be the one to block enemy’s advancement.

Kito, meanwhile, wielded Evolution. He could perceive multiple evolutionary pathways a creature might take and forcibly accelerate one of them into existence, changing given specimen with an instant adaptation. His Embodiment soulmark then allowed him to graft traits of those evolved creatures onto himself.

It made me realize that Embodiment seemed absurdly common among mages. Maybe because the body was the first thing humans ever sought to improve. Strength, speed, resilience, agility—we all strive to improve certain aspects of our physicality and it made sense magic would reflect that instinct. I simply had to adjust my expectation and assume that most mages could become partially what they had control over until proven otherwise.

As I observed and thought about the nature of my teammates, one by one the ants transformed beneath Kito’s guidance.

Some developed grotesquely oversized mandibles capable of snapping through stone. Others swelled in size until they resembled crimson crustaceans more than insects. One turned slick black and sprouted sensory hairs that twitched violently in the air around it. Another’s abdomen expanded and began dripping thick smoking liquid onto the concrete, the acid hissing loudly as it ate into the surface.

“We have a winner,” Kito said at last, wiping sweat from his brow.

“Yes,” Lia answered immediately. Her Nourishment mark had another function too and allowed her to instinctively understand the biological and magical properties of nearby insects. She extended her arm again and another wave of ants streamed from beneath her skin in orderly files. Kito moved his hand above them and shadowlight illuminated the bugs.

The successful mutation spread through the swarm. One after another the ants reshaped themselves into the corrosive strain until dozens of them stood ready. Then they climbed onto Kito’s leg and higher still, until they stopped in a small gathering on his shoulder.

He walked toward one of the enormous veins bulging beneath a slab of shattered concrete nearby—the vessel thick as a pipe and pulsing with dark blood beneath pale flesh.

Kito inhaled deeply. His right arm twisted violently with wet cracking sounds as bone elongated and skin split apart. In seconds the limb became a massive mantis blade, jagged and black-green, sharp enough to reflect the artillery flashes around us.

He drove it downward and the blade punched through concrete and flesh alike, forcing the blood to erupt upward in a steaming crimson geyser. He left that transformed arm embedded inside the wound, using it as a bridge while the ants poured into the bloodstream.

From what I had gathered so far, Lia mostly housed hive insects beneath her skin, such as ants, bees or termites. Kito on the other hand preferred predators—the likes of mantises, beetles or dragonflies.

“You know where that mark is?” Milo asked, slamming his bat onto the ground to create another base. It covered us all from a mortar shell that was bound to hit us, but instead broke to pieces onto shimmering dome of red and white shadowlight.

“There are actually three in here and in the same bunker-like cavity above us, Peter,” Patricia answered while bandaging Piotr’s hand and looking at the explosion that happened mere meters away from us. We were all resting and waiting for the bugs to finish the job, on a vertical wall that was the beast’s belly and chest area. With many now-broken bunker walls and turret fragments, we had a lot of available places to nest in and wait the insectoid advance out. Unfortunately for us, the longer we waited, the farther we were getting from our main target.

“Can we get them out now?” I asked.

“No. As long as they are part of this colossus, we can’t take them out unless the creature gives them away willingly.”

“We just have to wait. As much as it pains me,” Piotr said. “We will all at least get a decent training because of this bad boy.”

“Maybe,” Kito replied. “Despite the immense size, it wasn’t very powerful.”

“Oh yeah? I’d love to see you try to sting through all those cannons, man. With me around, of course it did not seem bothersome, for fuck’s sake.”

“Milo,” Patricia interrupted him, squeezing the bandages a bit harder than needed.

“You can bicker as much as you want, but both Chumas have an amazing Domain with a lot of power and versatility,” I said. “Your older mages within the Domain must have been very powerful,” I added turning my head toward Kito and immediately knew that I’d made a mistake. He squeezed his jaw and gritted his teeth, while Lia lowered her eyes, looking at the sea in the distance.

“They were. We are the only two left alive,” she said.

“Yes. This third of our family that got killed by vampire terrorists—they were all of the mages within our Domain. Those that were not harmed are sleepers or otherwise non-magical,” Kito added to what his sister said.

“Were those vampires that much more powerful? I can’t imagine them killing someone who could wield both of your soulmarks at the same time.”

“They were not on a pure power scale, but they were organized and killed everyone in their sleep when they could not protect themselves. Those few who could were dismantled by higher vampires able to bend the light and, by extension, shadowlight, leaving our family defenseless,” Kito continued.

“It was a very bad day overall. There was a mageocracy meeting in the city. A conference of sorts, and many powerful houses were left without their archmages and, well... the core of their power. Some suspect that it was an organized attack by a few houses that did not attend, some blame only the vamps. The fact is that most British mages that survived were those that did not leave Oxford. Us included.”

“I understand. It’s just hard to imagine killing so many mages overnight.”

“Yes,” Lia answered simply. “People are capable of a great many things.”

“She means our durability,” Piotr said. “Right?” I nodded in response. “I knew it. Listen, Elle, we are not indestructible. Even me—although don’t tell anyone that.” He covered his mouth with a hand from the side that did not face me. “Even a sleeper could kill me if he catches me by surprise with a bullet to the head from up close, or some really powerful rifle round from afar. Sickness can take us, radiation, fire, lack of oxygen—a lot of shit can take out a mage. I am practically without a defense if someone jumps on me when I don’t have a bat. Might as well decapitate me and I would not be able to stop him, if they are a mage. Well, I could try now with those shadowlight coatings, but it would probably hardly matter against a competent mage. So I might talk shit to my friends,” he winked at Kito, “because I like it, kurwa. But the truth is we are all mortal all the same.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Just look at the reason we all gathered in Paris,” Bastien spoke up. “I called you because a mage thought to be a literal God died in a Nexus,” he added.

Alex Weatherlight

“Already done?” I asked the two Sophies as I stepped into the Ideworld version of our apartment.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. Two empty glasses stood between them, each holding nothing more than a thin puddle of water at the bottom, probably all that remained after the ice had melted.

“For tonight,” Shadow Sophie said. “I'd love to keep talking, but apparently sleep matters, and this girl has work tomorrow.” She pointed at her other-dimensional counterpart.

“I'd gladly do this again when it's not my intrusive thoughts dragging me out in the middle of the night,” Sophie added. “But for today, I'd like to call it here.”

“I could install a portal door to the Domain here as well,” I said. “Then you could travel back and forth whenever you wanted and talk as much as you liked.”

“Portal door?” Shadow Sophie asked.

“I'll tell you about it next time,” Earth Sophie said, touching her hand reassuringly. Thankfully, that didn't trigger some kind of Sophie fusion into a Super Sophie.

“You promise?”

“You bet.”

“I can see how this might be weird for an outside observer. Watching two versions of the same person hold a conversation is some serious uncanny valley territory.” Even as I spoke, my thoughts drifted back to the last sword from my heist. The massive German two-hander was easily the most interesting blade I'd taken, and I couldn't wait to test it properly.

“Alex, please,” Sophie said as she rose from her chair. “Don't make this about yourself.” Then she leaned over and kissed her other self on the cheek.

“It was lovely meeting you, Sophie. I'll try to be kinder when I dream about both of us.”

“It's much better now. Thank you. I'm like I used to be,” Shadow Sophie replied and that answer deepened my curiosity. She still looked noticeably older than my Sophie.

**********

“You're wondering about her skin, aren't you?” Sophie asked three minutes later. The prolonged goodbyes were finally over, and we were standing in our actual apartment on Earth.

“I was hoping I'd been more subtle about my surprise when she said she was already fine.”

“I think I figured it out.”

“You did?” I watched her walk toward her room.

“Yes.” She opened the door and paused. “I've always thought of myself as an old soul. Sure, I enjoy modern freedoms and all the ways people entertain themselves these days. A lot of that wouldn't have been possible a hundred years ago. But online dating, constant texting, memes and all that—they've never really been my thing.” As she continued, Catansi slipped out of my room to investigate. She stretched lazily before padding over to Sophie and brushing against her leg. “I'd rather take care of plants, meet friends face-to-face, study, dance.” Sophie smiled faintly. “Honestly, in my head I've always pictured myself as some Gone with the Wind kind of lady, you know?”

“And you think your soul interpreted it that way?”

“Isn't that how Ideworld works?” she asked, scratching the cat behind the ears while Anansi purred happily. “You're the one who explained it to me.”

“I think that could be it. It makes sense. Especially if it got stronger when you were stressed and feeling even more out of place.”

“Yes.” She bent down, scooped my feline Anima into her arms, and headed into her room. “Good night!” she called over her shoulder. Then the door closed, leaving me alone with that realization and the freedom to do whatever I pleased with it.

Elle Erikson

“It’s dying,” Kito declared when the entire thing we stood on tensed and the bulging blood veins on the walls and the ground turned dark red and black and stopped moving entirely. We were already back on the beach at this point as this behemoth tried to fight the warships on the horizon, forgetting that it lacked the weapon to do so. Instead, abandoned by Allied forces who moved forward and its own Nazi companions, it was now standing unmoving.

“I will topple it the right way,” Milo informed us a heartbeat before his entire silhouette covered itself with red shadowlight and he jumped into the air, high above us, took a swing, and a wave of force smashed into the upper part of the giant, sending it back-first into the sand.

No one shouted anything else, but we knew well enough to catch ourselves as we moved along with the massive body. Piotr landed somewhere away from us, his descent sending another shockwave through this massive construct, but overall the “toppling,” as he called it, went smoothly and after just a few seconds the thing was now nothing more than a bunch of rubble and destroyed machines and buildings on top of the faux Normandy beach.

Patricia just sighed and we moved after her toward the soulmarks calling her from the distance.

“I hope they will be good,” she said.

“I am not holding my breath,” Lia replied. Her mood visibly soured after I reminded them of the family they lost.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “Didn’t want to—”

“No, it’s not your fault, Elle. I was thinking about it the moment we met that vampire guide. I honestly think about it every day anyway.”

“It’s not something easily forgettable,” Kito said as we all jumped on top of one of the bunkers on the creature’s surface. Patricia pointed at another one a bit farther away.

“But I am certain this place is influencing our cognition somehow, making us more susceptible to feeling down. It’s what the men at the gate told us, right? That we would need a good mood,” he suggested.

But if that was true, the brain within my skull did not differ in any way from the ones in the Brain Web outside. Maybe I was exempt from that manipulation, or Kito was simply wrong.

“It’s just bleak,” Patricia replied. “All this death, even when it’s only a reenactment, isn’t something a healthy mind can take lightly.”

“We are not witnessing the deaths of actual humans, Pat,” Laurent replied, jumping over a small obstacle made of twisted metal. “Those aren’t even Shadows, just memories tied to the tower for some reason. And I’d bet this isn’t even a natural splinter, considering it spans half the country.”

“That makes it even worse. Just think about it. A tragedy so immense that it keeps reliving itself at the heart of the country that suffered it, ad infinitum. Every damn week those deaths, those sacrifices, all that hatred and bleakness. It’s just too much.”

“Makes me wonder if what happened in Manchester will become a splinter someday,” Kito whispered. “Something future mages will try to prevent while reliving the memory of the event.”

“Shite,” Patricia cursed under her breath.

“Excuse me for asking,” I said, turning toward the man. “You mentioned that it was your cousins who perished in there and that the rest of your family is fine. Does that mean your parents aren’t mages?”

“Yes,” Lia answered before Kito could. She stopped beside a set of half-broken and mangled steel doors leading into what looked like a command bunker, judging by the maps, logs, and equipment scattered inside. Leaning against the wall, she watched as Patricia and Laurent stepped in to investigate.

“Our parents returned to Kenya a few years ago, where we were born. Our father, who carried the bloodline, was expected to awaken magical abilities. He was conditioned for it his entire life, but it never happened. He married, and then they had us.” She folded her arms. “Since the mage branch of our clan moved to England, our parents followed them to give us a chance to awaken under the influence of the soul core. Once we did, they returned to Kenya while we stayed behind to train properly.”

“Our ancestors were insect observers,” Kito continued. He remained vigilant at the entrance while Piotr slowly approached us through the wreckage. “They spent their lives studying insects and learning how those little creatures could help their village. Then one of our great-grandmothers, our sourceress ancestor, was gifted a Domain. Our great-grandfather became a Reclaimer, a Shadow who reconnected with his human half. The changes he underwent are something we inherited, and some of our cousins did too.”

“But not all,” Lia interrupted. “It’s uncommon for members of our clan to inherit both the predisposition for magic and the bloodline gift of being a hive.”

“What happens to those who are a hive but not a mage?” I asked. Milo, who had joined us a moment ago, seemed equally interested in the answer.

“Our father is exactly that,” Kito said. “Nothing special beyond the necessity of sharing his body with at least one species of insect. The changes we express don’t only help us move those creatures around. Our lungs are almost nonexistent. We only retain small vestiges of them, just enough to speak.” Only then did I realize why, despite his massive frame, his voice was always so soft. “Instead, that space is occupied by the nest-hives where the insects are stored. When they remain inside those organs, their bodies connect to our biological systems and are used for breathing. So our father is a beekeeper, but he cannot use magic.” Kito paused. “And if he ever lost all those bees, he would die.”

“And we would too,” Lia finished the thought.

“That concludes the mood-killing family introductions. My family line were monster slayers and evil-doers' bane. We slashed and pierced dragons, demons, Nazis, and whoever decided it was a good idea to fuck around and find out,” Piotr said with one hand in his pocket while the other tossed his bat spinning into the air. “No tragedies there. We usually die heroic deaths that are fucking cool as bedtime stories.”

He earned a long sigh from Liana, who had joined Patricia and Bastien inside the bunker.

“You could learn a little tact,” Kito addressed the Polish man.

“I know plenty of that, but when someone becomes a specialist in a subject, he learns when it’s a good time to break a rule, right, honey!?” he shouted after Lia.

“Fuck off,” she replied, earning a chuckle from both Piotr and Kito.

“See? She’s all better now. Angry instead of sad,” he whispered. “Sadness makes you dull and prone to mistakes. Anger leads only to mistakes, so it’s ten fucks better.” He winked at me. “How’s it going in there? We got anything good? I hate to be a bore,” he laughed, “but we’ve got a fuckin’ record to break, so chop-chop, Pat.”

“Fuck off, Peter,” she replied. “It’s a delicate process.”

“I am all tender when I have to be sweetie.”

“She’s got two already. A soulmark of Engineering and one of Terror,” Laurent shouted back. “She’s extracting one of Concrete now.”

“Dibs on Terror,” Milo said, peering into the bunker. “Maybe Concrete too. I’d need to meditate on that one, think about what it could awaken in me. But Engineering is a hard pass. I’m not going to be building bridges out of my bats. Kurwa, please no.”

“You’re basically a giant kid, Peter,” Patricia said. “For now, Liana will hold onto them.” She glanced toward Lia, who nodded and reached for her phone. She had an app dedicated to storing the marks.

“There’s also a magical map of this place in here,” Bastien added. He held a yellowed sheet of paper in one hand while taking pictures of it with the other. “It should help us get to the tower faster. It has shortcuts marked on it.”

“Fuck, yes!” Milo responded. „We have a saying in Poland, that goes something like: Whoever cuts the road short may never reach home.”

“I don’t get you man. Why are you happy then?”

“It’s elementary, my dear Watson, more challenges are awaiting and yet, we still might break this record.”