The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 18

By Aladdin

Edited by Christopher Leeson

THE WOUNDED WORLD:
A Story of Mantra

Originally written 2006

Posted February 21, 2020
Revised March 15, 2020
Revised April 21, 2020

CHAPTER 18

FRIENDEMIES

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:
Do be my enemy for friendship's sake.  

                            William Blake
 

A quarter hour later, Strike and I were stopped in a dense shadow along Hollywood Boulevard. Before us stood a decaying 1950's-style warehouse. It was in this place that Lauren had run into Necromantra, but I didn’t dare use a magical probe to confirm it. Any use of active magic could potentially alert her. Nonetheless, my passive senses were detecting that strong magic was leaking from within the structure. My enemy was certainly performing sorcery, though I couldn’t ascertain the nature of it.

"Are you sure about this, Eden?" my backup asked.

"There’s a wizard in there,” I assured him. “It has to be Thanasi.”

“Thanasi?”

“That’s the real name of my former best friend.”

"If that’s what you call her, how has it come to this?"

I shook my head. "He went psychotic, made a deal with Boneyard, and betrayed Archimage’s knights. That was when he was still a male. He was a man of honor once; now he’s casual murderer. He – she – has to be stopped, one way or the other.”

"Are you sure you’re up to this? You’re played out and Necromantra's no pushover – not if she’s still as powerful as was back when she was possessing your body.”

"I don't intend to meet her at ten paces, Brandon. This won’t be a duel of peers; I have to make it simple pest control."

"You were friends. Aren’t you afraid that you might choke at the wrong moment?"

"Don't worry about it."

Strike shook his head. “Necromantra is a mean bitch and I know she deserves to die. But maybe you shouldn’t be the one who takes her out. You’re not as much of a hard case as you think, Luke. You seem to carry your mistakes around with you."

I balled my fists. "It’s a dirty job that has to be done. If you're so worried about saving somebody’s soul, start with your own."

Strike blenched. "I’m at a dead-end, I think. I won’t be getting much better than I am now."

I calmed and touched his arm. "You're not a bad guy, Brandon. Unless you’re a damned convincing liar, you’ve only done as much as you’ve had to."

He smiled. "Do you mean that I was a good man of business, Mr. Scrooge?"

I snorted and looked away again, wondering where inside that building my enemy was standing.

"I've been wondering," Strike said, his voice kept low. "Who, exactly, is Thanasi's spirit possessing now?"

He had the right to know, but I had to force the words out: "My... my daughter’s."

That threw my companion for a loop. "What? Evie? You mean --?!"

"No, not Evie. Eden and I had another daughter. Marinna."

"I don't get it. When did you two have time enough to make another daughter?"

"Just believe me; it's true."

"If you say so. But if the witch is actually your daughter, how...how can you even consider --?"

"Necromantra possessed Marinna in the womb,” I told him. “She killed our child before she ever had a chance to live. That's just one of the things she has to die for."

Tark didn’t press this touchy conversation.

“I have to tell you something, Brandon. As bad as this night has been, the days ahead are going to be even worse.”

“Should I know more?”

“You’ve got to know about it, so you can avoid what’s coming. A good part of New York City is going to be blasted, as if by a small nuclear missile.”

He looked amazed. “Yeah? Who's going to hit it?”

“No one knows. But right after it happens, you and some – companions – are going to be seen amid the rubble and you’ll be blamed for causing it.”

“What companions?”

“The newspapers are going to mention only you and Amber Hunt.”

“Amber Hunt? The nutcase that almost destroyed the world last year?”

“The same. With her ability to absorb energy and release it in any form that she wants, I’m supposing that she’ll be the one responsible for the destruction. But, for some reason, it’ll look like you're associating with her and the authorities will jump to the wrong conclusion. You’ll have to stay away from both Amber Hunt and from New York City. Promise me that you won’t leave your own house, not until after you hear that the disaster has already happened. Future history can be changed; I've done it several times.”

“What a minute! You’re telling me that something horrific is going to come down, but I shouldn’t try to stop it?”

“Maybe you did try to stop it, in that other timeline, I mean, but failed. We don’t know enough to be able to make a sound plan that will change the outcome. Getting involved will only ruin your life. You’ll be hunted as a world-class terrorist.”

"Grim choice," he muttered.

“Brandon, there’s something else. If Evie is left with no one...I mean, if I die or if I blink away to another time and place – would you be willing to help her out?"

He looked at me with perplexity. “Like, you mean, adopt her? Wouldn’t she still have a dad?"

I closed my eyes, knowing that he was right. The billionaire Brandon Tark didn't have any known relationship with the Blake family. Evie's guardians -- probably her dad and grandmother – would never permit a total stranger to come anywhere near their little girl.

I looked back at Necromantra's lair. "We're going to have to have a good long chat later on," I heard Strike say behind me.

"Yes," I responded distractedly, "but not now. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. Do you have anything in your pack that could soften Necromantra up? Fighting her in top form would be like flipping a coin.”

“I’ve got a knockout gas,” he replied, and then explained how it worked.

“Good, bring it along.” 

He detached a tank from his cycle carrier and then I led the way, keeping in the shadows as much as possible. Tark followed after me, surprisingly light on his feet for a man of his size and weight. A couple minutes later, we reached the side of the brick building. There were boards nailed over the windows; the nearest boards had a knothole in one. I peered through it, but the glass underneath was filthy dirty and I couldn’t make out anything.

Still determined not to use magic, I ventured to pry one of the boards off with sheer muscle power. My woman’s strength impaired me, as it so often does.  “Here, let me,” Brandon said, and then he tore the board off with little apparent effort.

“Do you have a glass cutter?” I asked.

“I never leave home without one.” The dexterous mercenary needed only a moment to cut out a small disk from the windowpane. He then held the tank of gas in place for me while I manipulated the dispensing tube.

It was a piece of Soviet-era battlefield nastiness, purchased for Tark's arsenal from a Euro black-market dealer. I pushed the nozzle through the cut windowpane and opened the valve. The released gas came out with a faint hiss. The chemical was supposed to be odorless and not deadly, it's primary purpose being to neutralize enemy bunkers and provide the KBG with prisoners for interrogation. If the toxin could knock Necromantra out, or at least reduce her capacity for self-defense, I'd simply go in and slice off her head with the Sword of Fangs. In a sense, I would be committing murder. But so what?

Just then, I sensed a magical surge from within the edifice, like a powerful generator switching on.

"Look out!" I warned Strike, sensing the magical equivalent of a berserk elephant charging at its hunter through a canebrake.

Springing into the air, I tossed a force field around myself. Doing that would start Necromantra’s spell-detecting senses ringing and be a bright beacon for her to follow -- but it would also be a distracting one. I didn’t want the witch to turn her attention to Strike; she could assassinate him with a mere concentration of malicious thought.

I sped skyward, feeling my pursuer behind me, her sorcery sputtering indignantly, like an Independence Day sparkler. “You bitch!" Necromantra was telepathically yelling "You'd actually try to kill me with poison?"

"It wasn’t poison,” I shouted back. “The gas was only meant to soften you up."

"How low have you sunk?” she taunted. "I’d never have taken you down with a back-shot! I too much want to see the agony defeat in your dying eyes!"

I kept ascending, but erratically so that she couldn’t get a clear bead on me.

When we were high enough to minimize doing damage to anything or anybody below us, I seized the magical ring that I carry on my belt and activated it with surge of directed will. In a flash, it transformed into the Sword of Fangs.

Contrary to my prior hopes, I was going to have to fight a battle royal. Well, so be it! This feud had to be ended, and I dearly wished that it be ended here and now. With gritted teeth I braced, anticipating what I thought might be the fight of a lifetime.

Necromantra gave a ripple of laughter. "What do you expect to accomplish with that butter knife? You ran me through with it once; the wound barely even slowed me down."

Her taunt put me on alert; Thanasi oftentimes hurled abuse at a foe just to get him off balance -- just before his strike to kill. Oh, yes, we knew each other’s behavior, even in in stressful situations, so very well.

True to form, the woman sprang at me suddenly, that spiked whip of hers whirring through the air. I dodged and tossed a magic bolt her way -- a discharge powered by the incandescent power of my hatred. That bolt could have burned a hole through a stone wall, but – as Strike had warned -- Necromantra was no pushover. What should have been a kill-stroke flared harmlessly against her magical force field. 


My false daughter launched her reprisal, hurling a wad of fire like a pitcher would throw a softball. My energy shield fended it off and I and I answered with a sizzler. The brawl had become a free-for-all. To recite the exact choreography isn't possible; everything happened too quickly. The heavy bolts we were trading rattled the windows below with thunderous peals. To anyone on the ground, our death-duel must have looked, and sounded, like a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

I wasn't at my peak. Necromantra, contrariwise, should have been better off, but she seemed to lack her usual edge as well. Maybe the spells that she'd been weaving inside the warehouse had taken something out of her. Or had she, instead, gotten a debilitating whiff of that KGB gas?

Yells were coming from below; a good many onlookers had been drawn in by the light-show. The down-and-outers of the blighted street were feasting their eyes on two sorceresses, showing a lot of skin and fighting one another like a pair of foxy boxers. Had the street people seen the pair of us tilt a couple years back, we would have resembled a pair of grunts performing for Wrestlemania. The situation seemed absurd, even to me.

My survival depended much more on reflex and instinct than on any thought or plan. My opponent and I kept maneuvering, firing at one another from possible every angle. Being evenly matched, a single wrong move could have ended the contest. We were scoring off one another's force-fields repeatedly and my exertions were making me fatigued. When stung by some bleed-through, despite my shield, I concentrated additional power toward the side that faced off with Necromantra. This redeployment, unfortunately, made me vulnerable to flank attacks, should my foe get in a telling shot from an angle where my defenses were second-rate.

This was a battle of attrition, for sure. I cursed at the necessity of making this a knockdown, drag-out slug-fest. My resources seemed to be on a descending graph line, but, all of a sudden, I experienced a surge. It's funny how a second wind can come out of nowhere, just when a person thinks that he has already given away all that he has. I immediately bore down, determined to burn my way through my enemy's formidable shielding while I still could. Emotion counts a lot in combat and it's especially potent when using magic.

Thanasi must have been following the same plan, trying to finish me off quickly. It was life and death for her was well as for me. Maybe it would all come down to one factor -- inner rage -- with victory going to the combatant whose hate was the stronger.
 
But – damn it – a thread of our old comradeship still clung like cobwebs to the back corners of my mind. I wondered whether Necromantra – maddened and morally debased as she was – could feel it also.

Suddenly, there came a jarring blast that rived the darkness. By the time that I had shaken off the shock wave, I could faintly see Thanasi in free-fall toward the warehouse roof. I witnessed her striking it like a bag of meal. She then started to roll, sloppily, over its edge -- to bounce upon the concrete walk below. Hanging there in mid hair, I wondered if the ordeal was really over. Had my deadly enemy been reduced to a helpless pile of broken bones? Someone had shot her down? But was the shooter a friend, or was someone gunning for me, too?

#

I descended with measured speed, wary of a trap. Having alighted alongside Necromantra's broken body, I saw blood streaming out of her nose and mouth, saw some shattered bones protruding through bruised and abraded skin. The woman should have been dead already, I thought, but my magical senses told me that Necromantra was still holding on to a flicker of life.

It was then that I heard shuffling boots to my rear. Strike was hurrying up, clutching a rocket-launcher. "I didn't know whether you'd want me to butt in,” he huffed, “but like you said, this is only pest control."

I nodded to him, dazed. Everything around me felt unreal. My emotion, so overheated a moment before, now felt like a dead lump inside me. Did I resent his intervention? Had I really wanted to be the one to kill my former friend?

Wake up, Lukasz!

Not wanting to be recognized in public as Mantra, I flashed into my Blackbird outfit. As soon as I'd done so, some of my magical strength seemed to go out of me. I needed that golden armor to remain a first-class sorcerer. People looking my way, must have been wondering who I was and what I was going to do next.

A low moan drew my attention back toward the sufferer. Aghast, I realized that Necromantra wasn’t about to die. In fact -- against all logic -- she seemed to be reviving! Her magic, as I now remembered, could autonomically repair what should have been mortal wounds, and do it with breathtaking rapidity. This pathetic  human wreckage would be on her feet and at my throat again in mere minutes -- if I permitted it.

“Let me finish this, Eden,” the mercenary said in a low rumble. 

“No!” I said. I couldn't allow Strike the coup de grace. I thought too much of the man to have him drink from the cup of murder-guilt meant for me. But, at the same time, like a drowning person, I was receiving flashes from the past, images of the good things that my fallen foe and I had once shared. It didn't seem to matter that these memories were dead ones. All that had formerly been good between us had gone away; only the hurt and injury remained. When she rose, this terrible ordeal would continue, unless I prevented it. 
 
And to do so, I realized, I would have to channel my inner barbarian – the barbarian that I had been born to be.

I raised the Sword of Fangs over my head; it hung there as if stuck against the sky. I felt a shiver; Thanasi’s execution would obliterate my last living link to sixteen hundred years of life. It would leave me alone, a sole survivor. Yet such thoughts rattled against me like wind-puffs off an ash heap. They were a lie, a wish for normality that could never be attained. What I was feeling was detachment, as if I were somewhere else, my concentration unfixed. 

I don’t even remember striking the blow. The overriding impression was of Necromantra's head rolling from her slim neck, of the arteries in the stump pumped scalding gore over my thigh-high boots. Then, an instant later, I my nerves crashed. I had just slain my daughter, my friend, and my bitterest enemy, all in one. The finality of the kill-stroke left me horrified. Sick at heart, I shuddered as the heat of the spilled blood turned cold. I wondered how I could ever feel clean again.
 
Thanasi, why did you cause this? I mentally asked of the corpse.

A collective gasp broke the stillness. The crowd had just witnessed a Dark-Age-vintage vengeance-killing. It had shocked them, had shocked these soft modern people who couldn’t understand the legacy of the terrible world into which I had been born. That world that had hardened my heart – once so young and alive. I realized, too, that I had just announced to the world that Blackbird was an evil-doer, a murderer. That was how she would always be remembered. She would have to disappear; I would need to create a new alter-ego. In a sense, I had assassinated part of myself along with Thanasi. I would miss the sanctuary from the downside of being Mantra that Blackbird had afforded me.

I could hardly meet the glances of the people around me. They'd been shocked by the killing, though they hadn’t known the victim. They wouldn’t realize how cruel and destructive she'd been. All they would ever know is that she had been a been a beautiful young woman with auburn hair, and they would pity her.

As I would.

I took on last look down on the enemy, the former friend, the flesh of my flesh whom I had destroyed.
 
Why did this have to be, Marinna?” I whispered.

#

I was in a bad state, but not so bad that I didn't remember that Strike and I had to get away. We ran from the crowd, reaching his cycle a couple minutes later. The look that my comrade was giving me only added to the awkwardness of it all. We stood silent for a few uncomfortable seconds.

"Feeling better?" he finally asked.

"Don't be funny."

"What happens now?"

What indeed? I shut my eyes, trying to block out the red stain that flooded my memory. Already it was becoming hard to remember that I had killed an enemy and not a comrade. That bloody head will haunt my nightmares forever, I think, but even in that awful of moments I had a grasp on the fact that even worse nightmares lay ahead.

Soon, so very soon, I would have to confront Evie and let her know how her brother died. How could I tell her without making her hate me for as long as she lived? It was also true that I could tell her that I have avenged her family against mother’s murderer, but I didn’t think that I should impose that upon her. Would she be shocked by it, or would she smile? It would have been gut-wrenching to see that kind of smile on a child’s face. I’d tried hard to keep faith with Eden and be a good parent, but ever since I’d entered Evie’s life it had become filled with so much grief. Why did every attempt I made to protect her always have to go wrong?

Strike was shifting impatiently, waiting for some sort of answer from me, but I didn't have one. Instead I turned my back to him and phoned in to Aladdin. The Outside Desk patched me through to Wrath.

"Where in hell did you disappear to?" the commander of A-Team demanded.

"It's hard to explain," I said, before the hard lump rising into my throat strangled off my voice.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER NINETEEN.