Wraithsight Fiction Fragments

[Adam]

It materialised out of the gloom; literally. The grubby shadows thrown by Gilead's lamp dripped and shook across the wall, a subtle motion that passed unnoticed until Natalya gasped.

"Sorcery!" she whispered.

Gilead looked. The fuzzy lines of light and darkness that delineated the square were breaking up, marbling together like wet paint. Darkness ran like dirty rainwater, threads of it infiltrating the lamplight, running along gaps between cobbles and the channels between housebricks, pooling in crevices and gutters.

With an audible sizzling noise, this suddenly-liquid shadow flashed to steam. Black smoke coiled up, wisps of it drawing together, assembling slowly. Gilead’s hand found his baton. Wrenching it from his belt, he flicked the secret switch, and a solid, dagger-length blade shot out of the other end, alchemical rune-carvings glowing. Natalya had already done the same, and the two watch-officers backed away from the apparition, wary and nervous but ready to defend themselves.

Agonising seconds passed. The thing took its time forming. Any civilian would have already fled, maybe been chased and cut down. The watch-officers couldn’t do that. They had a duty to defend this city from any who would threaten it, be they common lawbreakers, armed criminals, rogue sorcerers or even rebel Night Walker wraithseers. And there’s something about such a heavy duty that hardens the heart. Natalya extracted the bell from her back, ready to ring it and alert others.

Before she finished the first swing, the smoke suddenly coalesced and came alive. A blurring limb lashed out and smashed the bell away, Natalya’s cry of surprise a sorry substitute for the ring of alarm. The bell shattered on the cobbles and was silenced.

Gilead’s perception distorted, the stillness of adrenalin closing in for a moment. The wraith hung in the air before him, a black shard of malevolence. Its torso dissolved below the waist, its legs indistinct and intangible. It was thin, almost emaciated, with long, spiny arms. Its head was a smooth inverted egg, the only feature a single blue oval in between where its eyes might be.

He was only aware that he’d attacked the beast when he felt the momentum of his stab pull him forward. The runic blade lunged at the creature’s torso – which dematerialised, the legs solidifying as its essence moved. Natalya’s strike lashed through a suddenly-immaterial arm, which immediately reformed and punched her solidly in the face, throwing her to the floor. Gilead didn’t dare look to see if she was okay. He swung with the knife again, once, twice, his strikes passing through nothing but steam each time. Then he struck true. The sigils on the blade ignited, and Gilead slashed down. Stunned by the sudden pain, the creature didn’t react in time to desolidify its body, and it was sliced in half. For a moment, the body parts twitched and fell, before it exploded softly, the shadows restoring themselves.

Immediately, Gilead turned to his partner. She was breathing, but unconscious; an ugly bruise covered one side of her face. Overcome with relief, he slumped as the adrenalin began to fade, realising that he was breathing hard and drenched in the sweat of fear.

“You have no idea how hard those are to summon,” said a cold voice from behind him.

Gilead tightened his grip on the runic blade, slowly stood up, then turned, keeping the weapon behind his back. The speaker was a man of average height, dressed in dark clothing and a battered brown overcoat. Nondescript; could have been anyone in that outfit. Gilead’s eyes were drawn to his hands; poking out from the slightly overlong sleeves, the fingertips glowed, a lambent reddish light that seemed to come from under the skin.

“You won’t be needing that weapon, proficient with it as you apparently are.” An illuminated finger twitched, and the runic blade was wrenched from his grasp, pinwheeling off to the side. Something black and mysterious stepped out of the darkness and took it.

“I am not going to kill you or your companion. I want you to deliver a message for me. Inform Captain Howells that unless the instructions in the letter he received earlier this week are followed, there will be consequences. As my presence demonstrates, I can move freely through the city, and I doubt even another seer could track me down if I was trying to hide.”

Gilead fumbled for his gun. Too slow; another shape detached itself from the night and closed in on him, snatching it from his hand. It stood next to him, inspecting the weapon, apparently quite interested; another one of the smoky creatures, this one fully solid. Then it spoke, its voice the voice of the nondescript terrorist. “Interesting. Watchmen get Rorke and Ballmer .50s these days? With a back-alley tri-shot modification. I think I’ll keep this.”

Gilead didn’t reply, inwardly cursing his own rashness. Should’ve kept it a secret until the seer turned to leave, then shot him from behind, dammit!

The wraith moved over to its summoner and casually lifted the jacket, stowing the gun in an inside pocket. The movements were natural, as if it was a part of the seer; the seer certainly showed no reaction. Gilead, like most people, knew little about wraithseers and understood them even less; their magic was a mystery even to sorcerers, and Gilead was no arcanist.

“Make sure you deliver that message for me now, would you? I’d hate there to be any unnecessary suffering because the good Captain didn’t know I was serious.” The seer gave a twisted smile. “This regime is dying, my friend, and we all know it.”

Turning on his heel, he left.

[Adam]

The weapon churned and whirred, a stream of alchemically treated iron slugs chewing up the undergrowth. Alenis cursed and ducked behind a tree, just in time, leaves and bark raining down on her as the line of fire passed across it.

The battlesuit’s fire moved on. Alenis moved with whiplash suddenness, darting to another tree and hiding again. She cast a spell, feeling the essence drain, and targeted the lone war machine with two scouts perched on the ridge, more extensions of her will. Aiming carefully, the spites disabled its heavy machine gun with pinpoint shots.

Alenis pounced. Sprinting from the trees, she grew crackling blades all over her body; from her back, her elbows, the top of her head, and her four hands. The spell she’d cast blurred time around her; her vision tunnelled as she pelted towards her victim.

A leap, the motion blur that was her surroundings tilting slightly. She landed directly on top of the armoured battlesuit, which thrashed clumsily in slow motion as her limbs stabbed and sawed. It went inert very quickly, its pilot slain.

Time collapsed back into its normal form as she stepped off the battlesuit. That ought to be the last of the enemy’s support units. She was about to melt back into the terrain when a large, winged, shining figure landed in front of her, crouching, wielding a large and very dangerous-looking two-handed glaive. A spear angel, a standard Arcanum wraith, and a match for her spike-covered cruelty.

Alenis withdrew her focus from the cruelty, not wanting to suffer the disruption if it was killed. With her consciousness back in her own brain again, she had a fuller awareness of the battlefield, and the various shards of herself moving and fighting around it. Two spites on the left flank, through which she shot bolts of energy at the spear angel; the cruelty, through which she danced and parried; two sorrows in front of her, gliding forward in search of a target; another two spites on the right flank. The enemy support units had been dealt with, and it was time to press the attack before the seer retaliated properly. Or summoned a second shielder; Alenis wasn’t so naïve as to assume he hadn’t summoned any at all yet.

Alenis stretched out a hand, concentrating as she pulled in magic from her surroundings. The sensation in her head was similar to the feeling of drinking a cold glass of water; when she judged she had enough, she made a fist and closed her eyes. Visualising the malevolence came easily; her brain already intimately knew its shape, sight, feel, and a number of other sensory descriptions only wraithseers ever experienced. Her mind easily split once more, dividing like an amoeba, and she opened her eighth pair of eyes. The malevolence’s intense hunger for destruction assailed her consciousness for a moment; high-powered wraiths often had rudimentary personalities of their own, changing that which they inherited from their summoners.

She transferred her presence into the malevolence, as she had done with the cruelty before. Her mortal body became just another extension of her will. For a brief moment, she enjoyed the sensation of being a thirteen-feet-tall, snake-headed monstrosity with blunt-nosed chainguns mounted on its muscled, taloned arms. Then she loped towards the enemy, her flesh-and-blood body in tow. She brought the sorrows in to join her.

It’s hard, really, to describe how a wraithseer’s mind works. Even as Alenis was drawing in energy and summoning another wraith, she was also searching the battlefield for enemies through the eyes of her sorrows and two of the spites, shooting at the spear angel with the other two, and frantically defending herself with the arms and blades of the cruelty. The spear angel was evidently receiving some considerable arcane support from its controlling wraithseer; Alenis suspected he had focused on it, as she was now focused on the malevolence. She headed towards it, the sorrows leading the way.

She arrived just in time to die. The wounded cruelty dodged a blow the wrong way, and the spear angel kicked it in the face, sending it sprawling. With an economical movement, the angel spun its glaive to point downwards and impaled the cruelty, destroying it. Brief echo-pain ached in Alenis’ chest before the cruelty’s essence dissolved, bleeding back into the earth and Alenis’ soul, the sources of her power.

The spear angel looked up as the malevolence burst from the trees. Alarmed, it spread its wings and leapt backwards, intending to fly away. The spites fired, and struck true. Feathers and essence-blood glistened in the air, fading away quietly when they touched the ground. The angel, hobbled, landed heavily, readying its spear.

Expecting it to be supported, Alenis didn’t charge in. She raised her arms, and the chainguns spun to life. The magical, little-understood substance that was essence could replicate anything known to man, in a way, and when Johann ven Soltan summoned the first malevolence, the recently-invented Golding gun was one of the most lethal weapons in existence. Since then, the Night Walkers had killed many wraiths and claimed many lives with the malevolences’ arcane imitations.

Bullets, bullets made of magic, spewed forth. At this range, and with her focus boosting the wraith’s power, the spear angel didn’t stand a chance. Caught in the stream of fire, it was torn apart.

Its reinforcement arrived slightly too late – but this hardly mattered. Light flared, delineated a shape, and where there had been nothing, stood a knight as big as the malevolence. It wielded an enormous broadsword and a filigreed shield. Its helmet had no eyeslits, but through the metal, a brilliant glow began to well up. All eight of Alenis quickly turned away. The light exploded; trees smouldered and darkened, intense heat singing the wraiths’ hardened skin.

As soon as it died away, Alenis turned back, raising her hands in a defensive position. She was lucky; the huge sword hit the malevolence’s long, metal claws with limb-severing force. She pushed back, shoving the sword away and aiming a flurry of swipes at the knight, which it easily deflected or avoided. The sorrows sprang at it, their swords mostly glancing harmlessly from its armour.

Summon, she thought. The enemy seer must be nearby. There will be more.

Drawing in power again, she cast a spell to cover the malevolence in armoured scales, then brought two cruelties into being – just in time. As dark flecks of broken reality quickly coalesced into a pair of her spined hunters, light tore space open just behind the blinding knight, the fading glow revealing a twisted angel. It raised a hand, and lightning speared from the sky, destroying one of the sorrows and both the spites in brief flashes of pain. The cruelties leapt on it before it could cast any more, one of them managing to cling on as it rose into the air.

Alenis narrowly dodged another sword-swing from the knight, stabbed, was foiled by the shield. Ducking a decapitation attack, she went low, and this time was rewarded; her lunge plunged both sets of claws into the knight’s guts. Blood – or rather, essence – spilled from the wounds as she retracted the talons, vapourising quickly. Then the holes sealed themselves, armour re-forming, returning to its pristine quality. The damage had been done, but it would take several more such attacks before the damn thing actually died.

Alenis sighed – the sound issuing from the malevolence’s jaws as a hiss – and returned to the fight. This was going to take a while.