25: Rules of Engagement
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“Well, we all want to help people here,” Dremea said in her soft, gentle voice. “Only problem is that… well, with the exception of you, we don’t really know what we’re doing with magic.”

“It’s not just magic that you’ll need to learn about,” I replied. “I’ve been practicing more mundane stuff as well, plus getting fitter. My casting style is really active so it’s sort of a requirement for me, but I’d highly suggest we all do some sort of martial arts training too.”

Grumpy old Tarmack gave me a nod of agreement and respect. “She’s right. This isn’t some comic book fairy tale bullshit.”

“Yeah, it’s more like the old fairy tales,” I said, snorting in amusement.

He cocked his head at me. “Huh?”

“Old fairy tales are brutal and nasty,” I shrugged. I’d rather live in the real life middle ages than anywhere that old fairy tale creatures existed. Guess I needed a time machine, because that was my reality now.

“Okay… so we should get combat lessons,” Dremea nodded, producing a notebook from thin air. My eyebrows rose. That wasn’t an exaggeration, she did actually pull it out of the air like it had been sitting on an invisible shelf.

“Combat lessons according to your style,” Tarmack corrected her gruffly. “No point in having Spirit Boy learn judo.”

“Right,” the small peafowl girl nodded, scribbling down notes without so much as a sideways glance at the grumpy man’s perpetually bad attitude.

“I think the hardest thing will be actually learning magic, right? Like, we all have the ability to learn it, because of our spirit blood or whatever,” Stoneskin asked, passing me a wink. “I wouldn’t mind getting lessons from you.”

“No,” I said, laughing at the audacity of this dude. “I’m not giving you lessons. I also can’t really give you lessons. I’m not good enough with magical theory to teach you anything and my own casting technique wouldn’t work for you.”

“Why not?” Drenea asked, looking all excited and curious.

“Magic is like… a language that you need to learn, and it needs to be compatible with your spiritual physiology, if that makes sense,” I explained, an ache beginning to pulse in my temple as I tried to figure out how to word it. “That is a very rough explanation. For me, I use a form of sign language to cast my spells, which is further augmented by my gauntlets. Before the whole Concord Event thing, I was relying purely on my gauntlets.”

“Wait, you had magic before all of this?” Stoneskin asked, cockiness fleeing for a moment.

“Didn’t you see the news?” Tarmack snorted. “She was at the protest, beat up a bunch of fuckin’ pigs who were trying to protect those bootlicking rednecks with their fucking toys. Watched her do it, it’s why I’m here.”

I gave him an appreciative, considering look. Had his heart in the general vicinity of the right place, I guess. An idea occurred to me as I thought back on that night. I had a way for us to get what we needed… I think.

“Do you know what happened?” I queried, glancing between each of the fledgeling super heroes. “That night, why we’re all here? I think I should explain from there, before we continue on.”

“Um… magic suddenly became real, or whatever?” Stoneskin asked, then shook his head. “No, re-real… um, real again. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.”

“It’s um… something about…” Dremea began, trying her best to think. She gave up with a shrug after a few moments.

“Magic has been disappearing because a secret organisation has been hunting mages and magical beings since the dawn of history,” I said slowly. “They have been poisoning the leylines of the world with the blood of sacrificed mages in order to slowly cut off the flow of magic to the world. Until the Concord event, they had all but achieved that goal. They were in maintenance mode.”

“Is that what happened?” the small peafowl girl suddenly asked, her eyes lighting up with understanding. “The magic got out somehow! A… a... a cascade of failure all across the network of poisoned nodes.”

“It is,” I said, smiling now. Then, I began to lie to their faces. “Something happened, a massive injection of spiritual energy was shoved into a locked leyline node, and the resulting explosion created a wave of failure that rapidly spread across the entire globe. That same event was what caused everyone to turn out like us. That much spiritual energy bouncing around caused our ancient bloodlines to resurface physically.”

Spirit Boy was the one to understand the terrifying implications of that. “Wait, so everyone who looks different is a mage? Does that mean the hunters are going to start killing us again? What do we do?”

“If they figure it out, they will probably try,” I agreed, but I didn’t share his look of fear. “That’s where we come in. We can solve a few immediate problems in one blow. If we can figure out where they store all the magical artifacts they’ve stolen, we could put them on the back foot and find us some help with understanding magic.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Dremea mumbled, but I could tell she was already working on the problem. “I imagine a spooky global organisation like that would have a whole bunch of different secret bases across the world. We’d have to find the nearest one and attack that. Maybe they have some sort of big base too. What do we know about their organisation?”

“Not a whole lot,” I said apologetically. “I’m honestly a self taught novice who happens to have a bit of a knack for magic. I don’t know much… Ah!” I snapped my fingers as I realised something. “That guy who fought me at the protests. Him and his goons were all hunters, so if we can figure out who he is, we have a lead.”

“I can work on that,” Dremea said happily, bouncing up and down. “My specialty is information, after all. I’m sort of useless in a fight.”

“It’s good to have a game plan, but right now I’m more concerned with the monsters that keep popping up to cause chaos,” Tarmack rumbled, gesturing to the city around us. “There’s a whole lot of innocent people out there dying and nobody seems to care enough to do anything. Besides us, that is.”

“That’s going to keep happening, unfortunately,” I sighed. “The veil between the spirit world and ours is a tattered mess, and things are not all sunshine and rainbows over there. There will be more and more spirits invading our world, some are benevolent, some are not, and some are nothing more than mindless killing machines. That isn’t even taking into account the gods.”

That last part got their attention. “G-gods?” Dremea asked, expression fluctuating wildly like she was trying to figure out if she should be excited, curious, or scared.

“Yeah. So far I’ve met Artemis,” I nodded, fighting a blush at the look of wonder they all gave me. Even Tarmack. “She seems okay, but I don’t trust her. Apollo is a cocky, self absorbed dick, from what I can tell. The rest… I don’t know. Not all the gods from our mythology have survived the years, though, so we won’t have to deal with every pantheon.”

“How do you know all this?” Tarmack asked, giving me an odd look. “Seems like a lot of knowledge for a college age kid like you to have.”

“My ah… cousin,” I said, thinking quickly. “Well, she isn’t actually my cousin. She’s an irish fox spirit, shares ancestors with me. She sought me out because she was alone and scared, filled me in on what’s going on in the spirit world. Which is to say, it’s a hellhole of misery, disease, and constant conflict. The slow death of the Earth’s magic hasn’t been kind to them or their realm.”

“Shit, that’s grim,” Spirit Boy muttered, kicking gravel across the rooftop. I watched it get picked up by the rising wind. Was there another storm coming in?

“That’s just a brief overview,” I said, thinking back on my short time in the spirit world. The poverty and suffering had been everywhere you looked. “But my cousin is safe now, so the important thing is that the spirits arriving on Earth are scattered, scared and liable to lash out, even if it isn’t normally in their character. That also means that the ones that are vicious and evil… they will be ravenous.”

“This is going to be a lot of work,” Dremea sighed, then squared her shoulders. “But I think we can do it. Hopefully our actions will inspire others to help out.”

“It’s good to have some objectives,” Tarmack grunted. “And to know who the enemy is. I’d like to know what our rules of engagement will be, however.”

Spirit Boy spoke first. “I’m not going to be killing anyone.”

“I will,” I said blandly, trying to hide my nervousness over the admission.

All eyes turned to me.

“The hunters,” I said, shrugging apologetically. “Mindless, evil spirits. The first, because they’re fucking awful. I know what they’ve done… I’ve… ah, suffered at their hands personally. My family tree looks like it’s been struck by lightning because of them, charred and broken. The second, because I don’t have any idea of how to deal with them otherwise.”

“That’s reasonable to me,” Tarmack nodded, taking my side. “I think, based on what you’ve told us, that I’ll be doing the same.”

“The hunters hurt you?” Dremea asked quietly, eyes wide. Internally, I winced. Poor girl had a heart the size of my gauntlets.

Taking a chance, I pulled at my collar, carefully revealing pale skin, along with the ugly star-shaped scar between my breasts. The bullet that had killed me. “They… tried to use me to poison a leyline.” It was a half truth, but it was close enough.

There was silence as the four of them stared at the scar, then Spirit Boy sucked in a long breath and said, “Okay, that’s fair. I still don’t want to kill anyone, but… yeah.”

Dremea gave a noticeable shiver and pulled her notepad back up. “Rabid monsters and hunters are fair game for deadly force. Got it… okay, what’s next?”

“Equipment,” Tarmack stated, tapping his truncheons.

Ugh. This meeting was going to take a while. Still, I felt myself getting a little hopeful. We might actually be starting something amazing here. Only time would tell, I guess.

 

Sorry for the long absence. Been taking a rest and just writing whatever story I want, when I want. If you're interested in more of my stuff and don't want to wait through these long breaks, I'm usually spamming something on my patreon. Just 2 USD Q.Q.

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