The Effaced: Chapter Sixteen

Kelly was screaming behind me, but I didn’t have the time or energy to care. I spun out a series of spells, one using my experimental rune bond, focused on myself, and the other a metal spell, altering the threads of metal woven into my shirt. 

At the same time, I was building a metal sensory spell and pouring power into it. Between my third arch-star and my metal recharge, it was rare for me to have to worry about running low on aura unless I was blowing through power quickly, like trying to alter an entire airship. 

Stopping an airship weapon before stretching a sensory spell across the open sky, up to the airship was one such occasion. 

I was refueling, but it wouldn’t be enough to fuel the other two spells I was working on. I needed to close the distance to the airship, and get into range of the false Mist. 

I reached up for my first arch-star, which allowed me to store away power for another time, and drew it out, instantly replenishing me, then completed my spells. With the threads of metal forming a crosshatched pattern over my body, and my experimental rune bond’s spell rendered me weightless – or at least, a close approximation to it –  I lifted the metal, and thus, my body. 

This was more expensive than using my flying disc, but I didn’t have the disk on me at the moment, so this would have to do. 

But it was even more taxing than I expected, and a moment later, I realized that Kelly, the fool he is, was grabbing onto one of the crosspoints of metal, clinging on for his life. 

The false Mist was spinning out spells of his own, moving the gun, rotating it to aim at us, so I snarled out a curse and started writing out a copy of my own weightlessness spell, but aiming it on Kelly instead, while also manipulating the weave of metal around me, to prevent Kelly from losing his grip and plummeting to his doom.

Doing all that while sustaining my flight and sensory spells stretched even my shaping skills to their limit, but then…

There. 

My sensory spell lit up with information about the airship. It was heavily warded, of course, so the amount I got was severely limited, so I reached for my fourth arch-star, the one that allowed me to hide my power. 

It was a potent hiding arch-star. It could hide aura from divinations, wards, and even the sight of an archmage. It wasn’t a panacea protection against such things, of course – a diviner could still use blood or hair to track me, a ward could still be tripped by someone physically crossing through the space it protected. 

Normally. 

Odril’s infusion aura power allowed me to infuse properties of power into my aura, and thus, into my spells. I could get a bullet to ignore detection wards by wrapping the bullet in aura, infused with my fourth arch-star. 

And when it infused into my sensory spell, the wards fell away, and I got a sense for the whole ship, or at least, all of the metal on the ship.

Including the gun that the false Mist was aiming at Kelly and I as we rocketed through the sky towards them. 

Though I was already stretched to my limits, I pushed myself to build one more, simple metal spell. Though the spell itself was simple, it was the greatest feat of discorporate ignition I’d managed since I was in the army, and I felt like I was going to break, as I made one, tiny little change within the gun. 

The false Mist pulled the trigger. 

Nothing happened. 

Then the false Mist’s own magic spun through the airship gun, and we were struggling over it then. The fake had the advantage, being so much closer, but we were moving closer with every second, and I’d finished my spell to re-weave the threads of my metal shirt to hold Kelly, and had more attention to focus on the spellcraft. 

Still, it was an uphill struggle, and I was forced to draw more power from my first arch-star to help me bridge the natural advantage that he had. It turned into a race between us to throw off one another’s spellcraft – he’d repair the damage I caused to the firing mechanism, only to have found that I’d slipped away and misaligned the barrel so it would blow up in his face. 

Then the fake version of me froze and whipped his head around, looking from place to place, his magic retreating from my grasp. I broke the airship gun in several more spots before I paused to try and figure out what was going on. 

The sound of a snap clued me in, and I glanced over to see Kelly, holding up magic in his hands. He hadn’t even managed to hide the spell from the naked eye, and I could see how poorly shaped it was – he had built no less than two dozen extraneous lines to stabilize the shape of the spell. I could see how inefficient it was, as aura gushed from his fingers every second, constantly. I could see how much strain it was for him to hold onto it, as Kelly was pale, sweating, and gasping. 

For all that the spellcraft was flawed, I was impressed to the void and back again. It had been a struggle for me to fight with another mage over this distance, and Kelly, with almost no experience, was managing to hold some sort of mental illusion over it. The kid was a natural at separating the output of his spellcraft from himself, far more than me. If the other Mist had any sort of mental defenses, then that only made it even more impressive that Kelly was able to manage it. 

But there was one problem. 

Even though Kelly was snapping, his aura was draining faster than it was replenishing, and I could feel my own metal recharge dwindling as the ambient aura in the air draining around us as we moved. 

I stopped us for a second, so that the wind wouldn’t make it completely impossible to hear my words. We were still high enough that the wind that blew off the mountains was strong, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it was while flying. 

“Use your arch-star,” I barked at Kelly. He stared at me like I was a madman, and I lit my aura up around me, then shoved it at him. 

“I have power saved up. Take it!” 

Recognition lit in his eyes, and he shifted his arch-star to alight onto my aura. The instant it touched, I felt a channel open between us, not entirely unlike fueling an enchantment, and I shoved power through it, drawing it out of my arch-star. 

My power was far denser than Kelly’s own, and it didn’t take much for me to get us flying while also feeding him enough power to keep his spell stable, but the other Mist was clearly starting to struggle against whatever illusion Kelly had put him under, as Kelly’s spell continued to fray and pop. I poured on extra speed and stretched my sensory spell deeper and deeper into the airship, looking for two crucial pieces. 

A moment before I found them, we passed into the windshield around the airship and landed on the gunner’s bridge. Kelly’s spell popped like an overinflated balloon and the other Mist staggered to his feet. 

I released all of my spells except the sensory one, then built two new ones, wrenching open the door to the airship and reshaping the metal in my shirt to release Kelly. 

“Get inside,” I told him I faced the other Mist. He did, so I slammed the door shut and drew my knives, sorely wishing that I had my gun. 

The other Mist had drawn his sword, and we stood across from one another on the slender bridge. I took in as much of his appearance as I could with the mask. 

He was shorter than me by several inches – not exactly a staggering revelation, but noteworthy. His mask was slightly different than my own, like someone had painted it from memory. 

But the real difference was in the coat. The plates were much thinner than they’d been on my own coat, more built for speed than defense, and the runes that had been carved into them for enchanting were also different, force enchantments of some sort There were also subtle differences in the tailoring of the metal threads woven through the clothing. 

Then my doppelganger spoke, and her voice was young and feminine, the voice of a teenage girl. 

“She didn’t think you’d be able to survive the initial shot,” the false Mist said, sounding absolutely delighted. “I knew she was wrong, though.”

My mind raced as I processed the implications of that, even as my split focus snaked my sensory spells through the airship. The she that the false Mist was referring to had to be the Arenamaster or her demon, and they’d been trying to kill me.

But why? 

“I have to admit that I am kind of disappointed,” the fake me continued. “I mean… The guy is my age, maybe a year older? And you’re old and wrinkly now. I guess it’s true what they say, never meet your heroes.” 

“I’m not old,” I muttered. “And I’m not in that sort of relationship with him. He’s hanging around with me because… Honestly, I’m not sure why. He’s a child.”

I looked at her, trying to see past the mask, to the girl who was underneath.

“Please, if you ever respected who I was, listen to me now. You shouldn’t idolize Mist. He was a child soldier who was brainwashed into fighting for someone who made him strong. The Contractor said that you underwent similar modifications to the ones done to me.” 

The girl flexed the muscles of her sword hand. 

“They made me strong. You’re trying to tell me that’s a bad thing? The Arenamaster did tell me that she made some mistakes and was too mean, and too restrictive with you, but she’s not like that with me. She trusts me.” 

“She doesn’t,” I said. “Do you know how many people of my generation she adopted?” 

“There’s Firefright, the ward girl, the water one who got killed by the constables, and you,” the girl said, sounding nonplussed. 

“Wrong,” I said. “She adopted nearly fifty of us. The four you mentioned are the ones who survived until adulthood.” 

“The others were weak. They didn’t have what it took to make it. The world is cruel, this is just reality,” the girl said dismissively, and I was tempted to shout at her.

But I couldn’t. Because that had been me, once upon a time. 

The girl sighed, then her sword flashed out at me. I flicked my magic out to wrap around it, but it had anti-tampering enchantments of a far higher quality than the ones in the gun, and in the moment it took for me to overpower them, her sword was coming for my head.

I leaned back, and the sword passed through the space where I’d been moments ago.

Before I counterattacked, the fake Mist pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and slapped it onto the gun. It released a flash of magic, and I felt the airship’s gun rerouting to make it look like the shell it had fired had come from a fault in the enchantments. 

“I’m gonna have to go,” the girl said. “Decent stalling attempt, but I wish you’d just fought me. Next time, okay?” 

Then she stepped off the platform and fell towards the ground, her coat flaring out as she layered her magic through it. I considered following her for a moment, but then turned and forced the airship door open. Kelly was staring at me. 

“What was that? Was that Mist? Why was he trying to kill us?” 

“It was a discount version of Mist,” I grumbled, closing the door again. “Come on. The constables are going to swarm this place any minute.” 

I stretched my sensory spell one last time, straining, until… 

There. 

Within the core of the airships defensive networks, I could see the enchantment that decided who was allowed to pass through the wards. It had been beaten into the metal plating on the underside of the boiler, which was strange, and part of why it had taken me so long to find it. 

It was possible this ship wouldn’t be used by the Arenamster again, since the constables would have checked it out, but I doubted it. If the false version of me really had taken over a random ship, there would be no need to make her actions look like they’d been a misfire. 

I noted down the ship’s ID – it wasn’t one I recognized, but it wasn’t as if I’d serviced every airship in the city – and then released my spell. If I needed to, I could use that ID number for tracking, and now that I knew where the defenses lay, I should be able to circumnavigate them better in the future if I had to.

I shifted the threads of metal in my shirt into a lattice that wrapped around Kelly, then dove off the side of the airship. As we flew across the city, I glanced over at him and shouted over the rushing wind. 

“How confident are you in your invisibility spells?”