Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

When trying to freeze the monster from the inside didn’t work, Anna started to panic. So, she hit it. With her shield. The ice shield. The first few bashes with her shield didn’t do much at all, so she focused her power and sharpened the edge of the shield to hack at the back of the monster’ neck.

Oily blood splattered her face along with flakes of ice shattering from her shield. Grinning at her success, the teen redoubled her efforts and adjusted the thickness of her sword lodged in it. The blade widened and bit gradually into the metal flesh of the monster’s chest even as she hacked its neck apart from above. Then, with a push of the magic that struggled to escape her, she sliced the beast in half from the center outward.

Her blood was rushing her through her fourth or fifth adrenaline high of the day. It was amazing. 

She’d done that. She’d fought monsters.

“Nice work.” Mr. Deville called over his shoulder as he pulled down a barricade to get at the bodies behind it. “How much more of that do you have left?”

“Of what, Sir?” Anna was making her own way toward the barricade on this side of the room checking if the people behind it were alright.

“Stamina.” The teacher clarified. “How long can you modulate your magical control.” She slowed as she began pushing pieces of desks and chairs out of her way, wading through the mess to reach what she hoped was a living person.

“Oh. Four hours without a break. Ow. Stupid metal shards.” She cursed as she stubbed her toe through her shoe.

“Hmmmmm…?” The thoughtful tone from the teacher made her eyebrow rise as she turned to glance at the minotaur over her shoulder. “Good.” They worked without speaking then. “Got a body.” She called out hesitantly before a groan made her amend her statement. “Oh. This one’s alive.”

It was one of the security contractors, half buried under the barricade. It looked like when the students had scrambled out that the pile of furniture had fallen on him. He didn’t look seriously harmed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t.

“I’ve got two over here.” The teacher added. “Do you know any healing magic? Can you get him up and moving?” That made Anna hesitate…because of the caveat.

“Erm…I could…” The girl started as she continued moving furniture. “But then I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.”

“Right.” From the other side of the room, she heard a pause in the moving of metal and the distinct smacking of a large hand into a fury horned head. “Elementalists lose magical efficacy in magics that aren’t affiliated with their element.” Anna had thought that was the end of it before the teacher continued. “We’ll need to work on that. But another time. Not today. You need your full strength today.”

His words made her shudder with a dread chill, and Anna was terrified wondering what else the teacher could sense beyond the ice wall that she couldn’t with her limited affinity. Another sound drew her attention to the ice wall, and she saw the monster she had trapped there struggling to get free. Oh yeah. I forgot about that one while I was dealing with the other two.

With a distracted nonchalance Anna raised one hand and froze the monster in the wall all the way over. Through the new stream of magic, she reconnected with the existing ice construct and extended it around the back of the monster also. She made adjustments to her control and continued uncovering the security guard while strengthening the ice wall construct.

Before long, two security guards had been revived by the minotaur and he resuscitated the man Anna had uncovered. They continued their room-clearing retreat and Anna sealed the room behind them. That was the last room they found that had been breached and the rest of the classes had been evacuated.

That didn’t matter though. The limousine-form-centipede monster was making its way through the outbuildings. Mr. Deville passed Anna off to Dean George before heading back down the dark hallway to his wife. Anna was soon distracted.

“Dean George,” the school’s head of security spoke like he was reporting to a superior officer in the military. He had that look about him, Anna had noticed, and she wondered if he was from one of those civilian contractor firms that her mom was always bitching about. “The majority of faculty and students have been evacuated to a hospital or to the alternate location. It’s just the last two busloads waiting to leave.”

That was good to know. Anna was ready to go. She’d had enough of a monster experience for this emergency and she wanted to sit down and relax for a bit.

“Good.” The dean nodded acknowledgement dabbing away some perspiration from her face. “Are we ready to go?” The security chief checked an enchanted gauntlet he had strapped to his arm where a mini message scroll was keeping him apprised of his men’s movements.

“Yes.” His brow furrowed with concern a moment before his head snapped up. “Ma’am. Primary target is approaching the main building. The busses won’t return to evacuate the remaining staff and students before intercept.”

“Ah.” The dean’s shoulders slumped, and she rubbed the bridge of her nose in resignation. “I see. Pull back and create a defensive line for retreat.” The dean ordered with a sigh before turning to Anna who had been slumped against a wall giving her legs a rest. “Anna?”

“Yes?” She called out unsure how she could help or what she was going to be asked to do.

“I need you to call your mother.” The dean was holding Anna’s phone to her and Anna felt the bottom falling out of her stomach as the remaining students and faculty susurrated in sadness.

“Oh.” You didn’t call Camina Wattkins when you thought the odds were in your favor. She turned the phone back on and dialed. But the call didn’t go through. It went to voicemail.

“She’s not answering.”

“Shoot.” Dean George snapped her fingers in recollection. “She was on a plane when I called her earlier. They would have been redirected away from here and she might be too high up to get reception.”

“I might be able to call someone else.” Anna volunteered hopefully. When the words had left her mouth, she’d been thinking of calling in some of her IOU’s but she quickly remembered that she didn’t have phone numbers for any of the joint chiefs’ of staff. Okay. Then Kyle?

Dialing his number, Anna turned and fidgeted to avoid showing anyone how nervous her face was right then. Voicemail again. Fine. She knew she couldn’t get ahold of her dad and his magic would be useless with all the power out anyways. So, there was only one option.

Before she could dial, a group of five men with weapons and wands drawn came running through the front door of the school. The huge limousine monster leapt into view from around a corner and suddenly it was screams and panic again. The monster fell sideways with a lunge, its pincers gnashing.

“Retreat.” The head of security shouted. “Retreat to the second floor.” A pair of guards lead the way up the double stairway of the main hall, somehow their uniforms looked surprisingly reassuring suddenly. Anna, along with everyone else ran. The guards took up defensive positions on the staircase to cover their charges’ retreat.

Panting up the stairs, Anna made her last call.

“Please pick up Sam.”

12:32 PM September 13th 2026

Heading from the Industrial Park District near the Port of New York to New York Preparatory Academy

“Hang on.” Kyle shouted as he rounded yet another corner on two wheels. Jones felt his body slam against the passenger door as they took the hard left turn then rebounded off it as their armored vehicle lost traction. They slid into a line of vehicles that had been abandoned in the street when the magic collectors had blown.

“Oh, shit.” Jones shouted as one of the vehicles they had sideswiped began lumbering awake in a monster manifestation process. Then he ducked as a traffic light post bent down to try and grab them. Kyle hit the gas to accelerate their vehicle out of the newly manifested monster’s reach. “KIDS!”

Jones pointed to the group of thirteen or so young people, not actually children, but young adults who had shot out into the street fleeing something. They were carrying a collection of various weapons like baseball bats, hatchets – that they had probably liberated from the outdoor store they were exiting – pool sticks, and at least one had a loaded rifle. But some were carrying things like new fishing rods, televisions, and laptops. The vehicle swerved yet again to avoid killing anyone and ended up on the two opposite wheels from before. Several of the ‘kids’ swore at them, one threw a hatchet that bounced off Jones’ bulletproof window.

“You mean looters.” Kyle growled at his passenger before rolling down his window and shouting at the receding gang, “You’re welcome, you ungrateful hooligans.” He rolled the window up and grumbled to himself. “Magic collectors blow out all the shitty electronics and their bright idea is to steal more electronics instead of hiding from the bloody monsters?”

“Real geniuses!” Jones volunteered dryly in an attempt to disguise his absolute terror of just everything in the last few minutes, from the wild ride to the multiple near misses. “They might as well be rolling down their bullet proof windows to shout at idiots throwing hatchets and toting guns.”

“Point taken.” The younger man snorted as he slowed to take another corner and then slammed the breaks on when he saw what the street looked like. There was a herd of vehicle-form monsters. A group of swat vehicles had formed a barricade while heavily armed NYPD officers in body armor were trying to down creatures the size of sport utility vehicles with plain old gunpowder projectile and melee weapons. Yes, they had magic users, but…

“For the love of…” Kyle cut off the oath as he slammed the armored vehicle into park. “They don’t even have adequate cover or a ranged specialist.” Before Jones could inquire about or suggest a plan to go around the herd, Kyle had unbuckled his seat belt and was hopping out of the safety of the vehicle.

“No. No, no, no, no, no. Kyle. You need to get back in the vehicle.” Jones scrambled to retrieve his charge. But the headstrong young man wasn’t hearing any of it. He strode confidently up behind the officers that were cowering behind their luckily un-monsterfied as of yet vehicles taking ineffectual pot shots at an overwhelming force of monster manifestations.

“Hey.” He called out, strolling toward danger with a big friendly smile on his face while reaching for the lanyard around his neck. “Hello. Who is in charge here?” It was such a change in Kyle’s normal self-effacing demeanor that Jones, for a moment, wondered if the conspiracy theory that had been floating around the other military personnel guarding the museum was true. Maybe Kyle really was – Nah! He was just a really dedicated big brother.

“Get back.” Only four of the harried officers risked turning their backs on the approaching throng to see what new hell they had to deal with. “Stay back.” A middle-aged man who looked like he was probably in charge. “We’ve got a massive herd formation heading this way with class ones, class twos, and multiple class three monster manifestations.”

“I know.” Kyle called back, though he’d stopped when he was told to without provoking anyone into aiming a weapon at him. “I’m a consultant from the museum.” He jiggled the identification badge that he was holding by the lanyard in the direction of the man who had spoken. Then he gestured to the armored vehicle they had vacated with the National Museum of Unnatural Science and History logo emblazoned brightly on its side.

The officer seemed skeptical until he glanced in the direction that Kyle was gesturing. The familiar emblem brought a surge of relief to him, and his shoulders sagged as the implications sank in.

“Thank, fucking God.” He breathed almost reverently. “We’ve lost communications. Get over here.” He gestured for Kyle and Jones to advance before calling out to his men. “Museum consultant on site.” His holler as met with a chorus of celebrations.

“Fuck yes!”

“Hellyeah.”

“Praises to Allah!”

“Woot, woot.”

That last one made their leader grimace a bark of laughter and shake his head. Though there was one disgruntled, “About fucking time,” grumbled from someone who all their comrades managed to spare the time to turn their attention to for a second of glaring.

“Hi. I’m Kyle Wattkins.” Kyle introduced himself. Normally if someone made the connection between his last name and his famous mother it made them think that he was a super dope battle warlock. That stupid assumption that his mother’s badassness had been passed onto her son. This time though he was met with dismayed cries.

“The cook?”

“No.” Kyle sternly replied. “Not the cook. The warlock of the Archivist, consultant for the museum.” He released his identification card and resettled his high collard warlocks robe over this suit. It was a kind of classy look, Jones had to admit a bit grudgingly. “Now. Specialist Jones and I need to get through this herd to the New York Preparatory Academy. Is it possible to open this barricade to let us through? And we will draw off the herd as we go?”

Jones didn’t have a thing in his mouth but he was certain he’d just done a spit-take and choked on his own tongue at the same time. The S.W.A.T. officers gave Kyle incredulous looks too.

“You aren’t here to clear out this herd?” The guy who had been the S.W.A.T. team’s spokesperson questioned dubiously. “We can’t open this blockade. We won’t be able to control the herd if they get past us, we’ve got them pinned in for the next several blocks between all the teams. And you can’t get through the herd, they are coming from New York Prep.”

Kyle climbed up on top of one of the vehicles to see sleek metallic wolves pacing impatiently just beyond the reach of the defenders’ weapons. These weren’t the clumsy, nearly mindless half-formed manifestations Anna had described to Sam. No. These were fully manifested class three monsters. Fast, deadly, and partially protected by magical properties from the elements they had formed out of.

“I see.” One of the more ambitious monsters crouched low as Kyle eyed them critically. It saw one of the food sources it had been watching resentfully from a safe distance and decided to risk an attack. It bunched its hind legs behind it and launched for a huge jump from over thirty feet away. “No.” Kyle spoke to himself quietly and he summoned his magic.

Power flowed from his being and out his mouth, twining with his words as he spoke the spell he needed.

“Shield of Aeneas.”

“Kyle!” Jones rushed forward knowing that he was going to be too late to do anything. It felt like he was moving in slow motion. By sheer reflex he unholstered his wand and prepared to fire off the basic fireball spell that he’d been trained to use, because…when in doubt, burn it. But he wasn’t going to be in time to protect Kyle.

The monster was moving too fast. And though Kyle was clearly trying to defend himself, his hand was raising so slowly. It was moving mere inches while the metal wolf monster the size of a large sedan was traveling feet. Blood thundered through Jones’ ears and the words Kyle spoke felt distorted by time dilation even if they were quiet and soft.

“Nooooooo,” followed what felt like an eternity later by, “Shield of Aeneas.” Jones recoiled hard as he choked off his spell mid summon. Because he’d been pouring everything he had into in a last ditch effort to save someone who…clearly didn’t need to be saved.

Lines of fire blossomed outward from Kyle’s raised hand tracing swiftly out to form an intricate and ornate shield of images. Scenes out of history and myth drew themselves into existence in the wall of magical light sprouting from the warlock’s hand. The two babes suckling on a female wolf were Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers who founded Rome. There were several depictions of battles, Rome under siege, ancient peoples and events set against epic landscapes and buildings from times long past.

“Holy shit.” Jones breathed out an appreciative sigh. The spell was known. It was famous. But it gobbled magic limiting those who could cast it to those with naturally high reserves of innate magic, or those who could channel and focus high levels of ambient magic. The second wasn’t recommended. Taking in and channeling that amount of ambient magic had a tendency to make a human sick.

The monster impacted hard.

It yelped and howled with a sizzling hiss as the fiery shield of solid magic burned the metal shell of the monster straight down to its gooey mutant insides. It landed with a whump, twitching a few times before it struggled to stand and limp away. The shield stayed up for as long as Kyle chose to hold it, burning down the arcanes in the immediate area every second it was active. Even so, the notoriously power-hungry spell was hardly making a dent in the Prometheus purple levels of AMD. But it was having an effect on Kyle. He staggered under the weight of the massive shield.

“Okay.” He grunted as he released the spell. “That’s enough of that.” Turning to the awed swat members he rolled his shoulders. “Right.” It was casual, nonchalant even and he sighed sadly before continuing. “There’s between sixty to eighty students, faculty, and security guards trapped in the New York Preparatory Academy, with active monster incursions of at least four different levels and no shielding except a fourteen-year-old cryomancer.”

He stopped for a breath and before anyone could speak, he held up his hand to forestall questions. A gust of wind blew his hair dramatically and a ray of bright sunlight shone off his blonde highlights. Was that just super coincidental or had Kyle actually made the effort to make that happen, Jones wondered. Taking another breath, the young warlock continued.

“That is just confirmed in the school. I’m not even taking into account the hundreds of people trapped in the buildings surrounding the herd that has formed there. People who aren’t getting any assistance because the buildings they are in are being used to contain the monster herd manifestation. I need to get there and get those people out. Preferably without any casualties.”

“I’m sorry, son.” The head S.W.A.T. officer interrupted apologetically. “But we can’t do that. None of my men are trained for this kind of combat. We don’t have the magic for it.” Kyle’s expression turned thunderous.

“You don’t have the magic for it.” His tone was furious as he hissed vitriolically back at the speaker. “There is more than enough magic to go around if you are willing to useit.”  But he visibly restrained himself and tempered his tone. “I’m not asking you to help me. Just let me through and keep quiet about it later.”

“If you die, we’ll need to explain to somebody what happened to you.” Another S.W.A.T. officer added unhelpfully. Jones rolled his eyes at that.

“I’m not going to die.”

“Right.” Someone scoffed and it wasn’t the same asshole who had previously protested.

“I’m not going to die.” Kyle assured the police. “And I’m not asking you to come with me. I’m a warlock from the museum. I know what I’m doing.” Jones had to admit that just hearing those words, ‘from the museum’, did make nerdy dorky unthreatening Kyle seem like maybe he knew what he was doing, that was how strong the belief and faith in the magical knowledge curated by the museum was to citizens.

“Annnd…” the young warlock hesitated nervously as he spoke, “I’m about to do something that is only possible because of the extremely high levels of arcanes around us right now. Any other time, I’m just an average warlock. Right now?” He shrugged self-deprecatingly and gave a quick nervous grin.

Specialist Jones felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Yeah, there had been that rumor about Kyle’s ‘real’ job running around the military personnel who were assigned as guards at the museum. But Jones hadn’t put any credence in it. It was just a rumor…

And sure, Jones had been pretty sure that he was going to be in deep shit for the shenanigans that Kyle and Sam had gotten up to earlier. However, it was just shenanigans. Poking dragon corpses that were only safe to be around because of portable magic collectors was dangerous. Driving across town during a high magic event before monster formation started, dangerous but doable. That was quantifiable deep shit. He was aware of exactly how much trouble he would be in for that.

Letting Kyle drive through herds of actively evolving monsters with the intention of fighting said monsters? Not great for Jones’ career. What Kyle was saying now?

He was going to die. The Last Line was going to hunt down one Specialist Jones if he managed to survive this. Because, he hadn’t even dreamed of stopping Kyle when they found out that little Anna was trapped in her school under active monster attack.

Jones clambered up onto the vehicle next to Kyle. He’d intended to try and help save Anna from the start. But the reminder that he could draw on the ambient magic to perform feats of sorcery far beyond his normal capacity had calmed his galloping heart. It was weird that it hadn’t occurred to him before Kyle had mentioned it.

Kyle turned to face the milling herd. Some were keenly watching them, looking for an opportunity to attack. Others were actively gnawing their way through the walls of buildings or widening holes where glass doors had once been. The normally goofy warlock who sang along with the jingles he used as cell phone ring tones, had narrowed his hazel eyes. The light of laughter was gone from them, replaced with keen seriousness.

“You should stay here, Jones.” Kyle was quiet enough that only Jones could hear him.

“I’m going to help you.” The Specialist insisted. He wasn’t full of bravado, just determined to do the right thing, protect the American people like he was paid to.

“Anna is my priority. If it comes down to it, I will sacrifice every single other person in that hellscape to get my baby sister out.” He turned his intense gaze to Jones who met it stoically. “Are you good with that?” Jones shrugged before replying flippantly.

“It’s what your mother would want.” His reply brought an ironic laugh from Kyle who smiled ruefully at the soldier.

“Oh, you clearly don’t know my mother very well.” As Kyle spoke, he began shrugging off his warlock’s robe dropping it to the hood of the car. Next, he took off the suit jacket that matched his slacks revealing the fitted holster for his magical tome that he wore over his dress shirt.

“No?” Jones was doubtful as he kept one eye on the monsters. They were getting riled up way down the street. There was something big moving around there. But like every other street in the city at that moment, there were abandoned vehicles lining both directions interspersed with dozens of vehicles and other things that had already transformed. Hell, there was even a little manhole cover monster sliding around on its back. Like a moving mouth facing upwards. It was sliding underneath other monsters as they walked and biting off feet as they came down.

“She’s not here, is she?” Kyle was fussing with his tie and lanyard, debating whether to take the lanyard off or not. It was clear that he’d made the decision not to when he dropped it and focused on taking off the tie.

“She might not know?” Jones offered. but knew it was a bad excuse even as he’d said it. Her flight should have landed by now. She would know something was seriously wrong in her city.

“Or she’s been ordered somewhere else.” Dropping his tie with the rest of his extraneous clothing, Kyle changed his focus to taking off his holster, his fingers moving with practiced ease. “Either way, it’s not a great look for a parent.” Jones acknowledged Kyle was right with a tilt of his head and a raise of his eyebrows as everything that the Wattkins boy had discarded levitated and began floating itself back to the armored vehicle behind the barricade. “Need anything from the vehicle?”

“The biggest most effective weapons stored in there?” Kyle smirked at that response and nodded as he turned his back to monsters as he focused on what he was doing.

“Watch my back a minute.” Jones obliged and turned his full attention to the city street. Devoid of people. Bright and sunny with shadows between the buildings, most of which towered over them. He focused on watching the monsters, shooting off a few fireballs that glinted off the windows when he felt a nudge on his shoulder. It was a large riffle, semiautomatic, magically hardened, that shot enchanted alchemy charges with a mount for a bayonet on the muzzle. Standard Magicorps issue. It was one of the weapons that were stocked for the museum guards.

“Nice.” Then he saw a cross-shoulder double-bandolier of alchemy shots, and a bayonet to attach to the gun. “Feels like home.” He smiled ruefully at his charge.

“Be careful with the sword,” Kyle cautioned, “It’s a lot more magically conductive than standard military issue. Have you trained with the museum standard enchantments?” Jones nodded as he geared up with the new weapons in addition to his sidearm and his wand.

“I’ve been familiarized with it.” Jones assured Kyle. “You want me to take point?” He offered, because he didn’t think the nerdy young man had ever done something like this.”

“No. Stay behind me.” With nothing other than a wand in one hand and a plain leather notebook in the other hand, he hopped off the vehicle he was standing on top of into the danger zone.

Immediately, all the monsters who were focused on trying to get past the underprepared police holding down the street at the barricade zeroed in on Kyle. They hesitated, confused as to why food was coming to them. The soft squishy thing didn’t seem dangerous. Did it not know it was in danger? 

Had it not realized there were monsters about? So, they waited, and watched.

And gave Kyle the time he needed to prepare.

Kyle paused for a second after he’d hit the ground. Squaring his shoulders, he took a deep steadying breath. Could he do this? Maybe. Technically. Was he ready for this? Unlikely.

Despite the danger, he closed his eyes for a second and took a second breath. It was fine. He could feel the arcanes in the atmosphere. As a warlock of the Archivist, Kyle had access to the vastest collection of documented spells and magical enchantments in existence. Anything that had been scanned by the archive, his pact item could teach him how to recreate it. And he had a lot of powers granted to him from the Archivist, were primarily used for the preservation or dissemination of knowledge. Something that was exceedingly useful for someone who was also a wizard.

True, Kyle Wattkins was an average warlock.

He wasn’t super powerful; he wasn’t particularly talented. But he was also a wizard with small amounts of natural magic. He was a wizard, and wizards didn’t have large reserves of internal magic, so they specialized in using the magic from the environment around them. He was a wizard with access to the greatest library of spells to ever exist, a natural proclivity towards electricity he inherited from his father, and the ability to channel magic from the environment.

Opening his eyes again, Kyle began drawing on the seemingly limitless ambient magic.  With nothing more than a wand and a book, he began walking into the fray.

Up. Up high above the city Kyle could feel the static electricity of nature in the atmosphere. There wasn’t enough infrastructure functioning in the city for him to draw from the grid. Normally he wouldn’t have even bothered trying to do this. But with so much magic saturating the city, he could.

He reached to the sky with his wand and gathered the awesome power of nature stored there. He was burning arcanes like mad, channeling magic through himself at higher levels than he’d ever done before. It was terrifying, and exhilarating. Honestly, a once in a lifetime opportunity for a wizard really. 

After all, when else would he have unlimited access to raw magic without having to become one of those crazy loons roughing it out in high magic zones of the wild for the sake of magic.

He far preferred the comforts of a city. Plumbing, cell phone reception, the internet…doughnuts. Kyle was exceptionally fond of roads and vehicles. Sure, he walked or took public transportation most of the time, but he loved the convenience of being able to hop in a vehicle and go when he needed to. 

Buildings and roads were pretty important to Kyle, too.

The buildings and roads were crawling with monsters.  Distant screams, intermittent crashes and wailing of sirens were interspersed with the howls and growls of newly manifested monsters. The very infrastructure of modern society that Kyle cherished and had forsaken his wizard training and became a warlock instead for, were turning on the city he loved. It wasn’t just vehicles that were turning.

Yet the power in the air, it called to Kyle in the way that magic called to all those with the proclivity toward wizardry. A craving that he dared not feed. The heavy taste of the arcanes in the air was sweet and savory on his tongue. He licked his lip then bit it in pleasure as he drank in all the power he could ever want. Arcanes flooded Kyle’s body, coursing through his veins and making him feel like he’d grown a hundred times larger without changing at all.

He was going to regret this later.

But he watched the monsters noticing him. The bright fall sunlight was glinting off so many metallic hides making random wild blinding reflections of light playing across the shadowed areas on the street and up the sides of buildings. More magic than most wizards ever saw in their lifetimes.

Kyle grinned. Fixing his targets in his mind.

Though no one could see it, his eyes were glowing. Static electricity arced in little crackles over his body. The scent of ozone wafted from him as flashes of miniature lightning bolts played between the rising hairs of his head.

“Jones?” Kyle felt the weird metallic taste on his tongue that he always found when he tried to speak while casting this type of magic. It mingled deliciously with the flavor of the arcanes. “Stay at least thirty feet back from me so you don’t get hit by a bolt grounding on you.”

“Yes, Sir!” The specialist called to Kyle’s back. Then Kyle started walking forward. Maybe the class three metallic wolf-form monsters sensed the growing danger that Kyle represented because they hesitated to attack, instead growling menacing as they backed away. The class one and two incomplete manifestations of the vehicle form monsters only saw him as a source of delectable edible magic. Emboldened by the retreat of the class threes, the class ones and twos began lumping and huffling their way towards him.

His steps were slow at first, but Kyle grew more confident with every arcane he absorbed. His pace gradually increased until he was walking briskly through the chaos while less evolved forms of monster hurried toward him. Before those beasts could get within attack range, Kyle acted.

“Lightning bolt!” Though his words were spoken at normal volume, they seemed louder, echoing with the dangerous levels of arcanes reverberating in his being. A bolt of lightning split the heavens, momentarily striking down to ground on Kyle with a crash of thunder. He held the thousands of joules on his wand for a split second, before discharging the electricity in dozens of arcs simultaneously onto the monstrous targets he’d chosen.

The creatures were killed in their tracks or maimed enough that their forward movement was halted.  The sound of electricity crackled and hissed as the unfortunate creatures were cooked inside their metal hides. It was quiet for a second, then Kyle, wand still raised to the heavens spoke again.

“Lightning bolt.” Again, a flash of electricity cracked down from the heavens to race through Kyle’s wand then out to the milling monster herd. A thunderclap deafened him then rolled off into the distance as sound does. More monsters fell, screaming and roaring their defiance, some just going silent when the electricity he’d pumped through them had dissipated.  Others didn’t fall. They just started charging if they hadn’t already been converging on this new source of sustenance.

Jones stayed well behind what Kyle had deemed the safe radius. The soldier was glad he had because Kyle was arcing bolts of lightning and conducting electricity for dozens or even as many as a hundred feet away. The bolts of plasma heated air were directed forward and to the sides and never backwards toward the anxious specialist. That didn’t make him feel any safer about it.

Absolute shock had frozen Jones after the first volley of lightning that the nerdy-history-buff-museum-employee, Kyle, had held in his hand, and then used to drop over a dozen monsters ranging in size from two-door hatchbacks to extended cab pickup trucks. It wasn’t until the second spell had triggered most of the monsters in the next two blocks to charge, that he pulled himself from his temporary stupor. There wasn’t time to be surprised after that. The monsters were coming, and Jones and Kyle had a three-block gauntlet to run of class one, class two, and class three manifestations with no backup coming.

Jones steadied his heart with slow even breaths. He could do this. He’d done this before. Okay. Not this, but similar. There were places where he’d been deployed where the monsters ran in packs and overran smaller villages. Or demons had escaped and in an orgy of freedom made things unpleasant for the locals.

Heck, even plain old magical creatures could be a problem if they were big, hungry, or ornery enough.

And that’s what the Magicorps trained for. Days like this when magic wasn’t a helpful aid to civilization bestowing boons of knowledge and safety, and instead, was a bitch. That’s right. Magic was being a sonofabitch today and someone had to kick some monsters in the mother effing teeth. It might as well be the Magicorps. Couldn’t leave it up to the civies, or worse yet, the jar heads.

Yeah!

This, this was just a regular old day at the office for Jones. Not like the lazy lying around the museum shit he’d been tasked with since his transfer to New York. Jones performed another quick scan of the battlefield – this was definitely a battlefield, or it would be soon at least – and chose what he thought was the most immediate target.

Kyle seemed to have a radius on his lightning bolts of not more than about a hundred feet. And he was only aiming forward of his line of sight. Jones focused on the monsters who were parallel with them or slightly behind Kyle, the ones who had been missed in the first salvos. There were three currently under fire from the swat officers behind them, but their plain chemical projectiles weren’t packing enough punch to do the kind of damage necessary to put them down.

Jones lined up the sight of his semi-automatic rifle with the first monster he’d targeted. A smooth squeeze of the trigger made the familiar crack of a chemical projectile weapon. The monster practically ignored the impact thinking at first it was one of the police’s ineffectual bullets. Until it noticed the round had not only penetrated its body, but that the alchemical components within the round were reacting.

Alchemical rounds could do a lot of things. It was alchemy after all, and alchemy was a broad and diverse school of magic. Alchemy was used just as frequently to create, heal, or modify, as it was just for destruction. The ammunition that Jones was using had been mixed to do some awful things. Or maybe it was meant for fightingawful things because the wound in the huge metallic class three wolf monster began smoking.

Then it began flaming, jets of white-hot fire spitting out of the hole in the thing’s chest. Probably some kind of magnesium concoction with that coloring. Which some might try to argue was just a chemical reaction until they saw what happened next. The monster began whining. Shaking, and pawing at itself in an attempt to remove the burning mass of alchemical reaction that was not so slowly consuming it from within.

When it began howling and running blindly, Jones turned his attention to the next target. He still caught the monster rebounding off when it hit the wall of a building and chuckled at its misfortune. The lay twitching until it popped with small explosion that sent the organic metal guts flying a short distance from the creature.

He kept up firing short bursts of rounds into one monster after another, carefully sighting on the creatures and secure in the knowledge that the alchemical rounds would only react with the mutated flesh of the monsters and not with anything else if he missed. While that was a safety measure enchanted into all alchemical ammunition, it didn’t change the fact that he was firing bullets in a city. If he missed, the speed of the weapon firing might just send a bullet through a wall and injure an innocent person if he wasn’t careful. Bayonets, like the enchanted one on this rifle, were distracting to people who weren’t familiar with them. That was probably why Kyle hadn’t taken one of the weapons himself. Jones had been watching the young warlock surreptitiously, partly situational awareness, and partly just because he was so damned curious about what the kid would break out next.

But the lead creatures in the charging horde were getting too close for Kyle to continue fighting the way he had with mass area lightning bolt dispersions. When he saw Kyle calling down another bolt of lightning that was going to be far too late to do any good, Jones was afraid he might have to intervene. A class two manifestation that looked like it used to be a really expensive sports car was rushing forward on stumpy rubber and steel legs. It was nearly upon Kyle and nearly crushed him as he waited for another bolt of lightning to fall from the sky.

It was going to be too late. Even if lightning did travel at the astounding speed of two hundred seventy thousand miles per hour, the spell was not going to strike fast enough to save the warlock of the Archivist from being crushed from several thousand pounds of mutated metal flesh and exoskeleton. Incongruously, Kyle charged the oncoming beast, launching himself – wand, open book on palm and all – up onto the monster. Jumping and running up the hood-head to leap from its highest point over the open convertible top to catch the bolt he was summoning. It coalesced into a long shaft of buzzing light shaped somewhere between a spear and a sword.

The bolt grounded in the pulsating cream leather interior of the monster with a dramatic shower of sparks erupting around the pair. Like a pole vaulter hanging in mid air from the top of a rod of lightning Kyle bore his weight down the shaft extending from his wand, piercing deep into the back of the beast. His pillar of electricity shrank as it discharged until he was left with something the size of a billy club or a nightstick.

Kyle awkwardly clambered out of the interior of the transformed vehicle, one hand holding a hot current lengthening the reach of his wand by about two feet. The depleted energy weapon glowed a dull red, fluctuating slowly. For his part, Kyle’s face wore a look of complete disgust as the formerly sumptuous leather interior of the luxury vehicle was now gooey with some kind of slimy biological fluid. It coated his legs with slime that made his trousers stick to his calves and shins.

“Ohhhh….Gross. Shi – ” Another several thousand pound monster nearly collided with the warlock as he dodged backwards with a yelp. “Oh, no you don’t.” His makeshift cutlass swung and began hacking parts off the vehicle-form. The blade grew brighter, stronger, larger, and more refined with each swing he took.  Its color gradually going up the light spectrum as Kyle fed it more of the ambient magic from around him. From the dull red of hot metal, the sword of captured lightning changed to orange, then yellow, and green, all in the neon brightness of a storm’s captive might.

Sword and warlock became a swirling mass of stop-motion light trails and phantom images. He ran from one encounter to another hacking, cutting, and mutilating monsters to incapacitation. A gathering Roy-G-Biv of destructive force blazing brighter and brighter into the upper echelons of visible light, bright enough to make even the sunny day seem dim.

11:30AM September 13th 2026

35,000ft Altitude between New York City and Washington DC

Poor Jim was nervous. He was handling it well, but now more of the flight’s passengers were asking questions about why they were so long overdue. Some of them were getting angry. It was keeping the already stressed-out flight attendants, who didn’t seem to know what was going on themselves, very busy.

For her part, Camina was fairly certain she knew what was going on. Not exactly, no. She wasn’t clairvoyant. But she could put her observations together and make some educated guesses. Observation one, the ambient magic density had spiked significantly. Observation two, the plane had turned around and flown away from New York. Observation three; none of the passengers, and possibly none of the staff not in the cockpit had been informed of these changes.

Of course, Camina couldn’t be positive she was making the correct deduction, but she was fairly certain that there had been some kind of major magical incident in the vicinity of New York. It hadn’t been cataclysmic. At least, the levels of magic she sensed didn’t feel cataclysmic. It was definitely bad though. Very bad.

Part of her, the maternal part, wanted to scream at the flight attendants and demand some answers, much like the other passengers were doing. Another part of Camina was patient. It sat and waited, legs primly crossed, partly because it knew that staying in tight control over her emotions and biding her time would bring her answers faster than throwing her weight around.

The other reason was that she was a prominent magic wielder, and her actions had very far-reaching consequences.

“Listen here, young Miss.” An angry blonde with twang was shaking an admonishing finger as she harangued the flight attendant. “We’ve been on this here flight for hours longer than it was ‘sposed to last. I think we all deserve some answers. Now aren’t we going to New York or ain’t we?” She’d switched to gesturing around the cabin and trying to get support from her fellow passengers.

“Ma’am.” The exasperated female flight attendant tried to reinstate order one more time. “I’ve already told you. We are being redirected to another airport. But because of the magic arrow swarm intersection happening today we won’t know if we have a path to land anywhere for a few hours.” Well, that sounded like a lie if Camina had ever heard one. The magic arrow swarms weren’t set to intersect for another two or three hours. And they were coming from nowhere near D.C.

“I’ve been watching he news on my tablet thingy that the grandkids got me for Christmas last year.” An elderly gentleman chimed up from a few rows behind the obnoxious twanger. “And the news is saying there’s been some kind of catastrophe with New York.” He smacked his lips against his gums in irritation. “Nobody can communicate with them except by message spell. Was there some kind of blackout of something? They lose their electricity?”

“Sir. As I’ve said before…” Before she could finish her thought, the man that Camina had bet Jim was the U. S. Marshal on the flight stood up and indicated the woman should stop talking. He had been closely monitoring a low-magic communications scroll strapped to one wrist. When he’d stood to deal with the unruly passenger he’d pulled his sleeve down over it.

“You owe me five bucks.” Camina chuckled quietly to Jim who groaned as he pulled out his wallet to pay up.

“You’re lucky I even have five bucks. Any other day and I’d have to use an app to send it to you electronically.” Giggling with glee, Camina settled in to watch the unfolding diversion.

“United States Marshal, Ma’am. The flight crew will keep you apprised of any information you need to know. Could you please sit d – ” Before he could even fully intervene, the passenger address system came on.

“This is your captain speaking.” The words crackled with the weird not-so-great echoey quality that all passenger address systems seemed to have no matter how luxurious the interior of the plane. “Would the passenger in seat forty-four A please come to the flight deck. I repeat the passenger in seat forty-four A please come to the flight deck.”

For a second, just a second, Camina glanced eagerly around to see who it was that would respond to the captain’s call. Who else besides herself could possibly be important enough for the captain to call upon? Then her shoulders slumped, and she glanced furtively at the seat number above her head…and sighed dejectedly.

“Forgot what your seat number was for a second there didn’t you?” Jim quipped quietly beside her.

“Oh, shut it Thafesh.” It was a habit really, to call a comrade by their last name. It made her just a little bit amused. “Don’t let them toss my coffee while I’m gone.” She whispered urgently and stood as nonchalantly as she possibly could. Most of the other passengers were still looking for the row and seat the captain had called out, but their searching gazes zeroed in on Camina like homing missiles despite her attempts to look completely casual.

Sure, the tall, gorgeous brunet with her tropical tan and dark eyes could have just been getting up to use the restroom. But did anyone really think the exotic, muscular beauty who looked like a supermodel had become a professional athlete, and walked like she was marching was just coincidentally getting up right after the pilot called someone to the cockpit? Naw. From his own seat, Jim snorted in amusement. It was funny.

Murmurs started up around the cabin. People turned around in their seats to watch her approach and slowly walk past. There were whispers, talking about how familiar she looked. Damn right, she should look familiar. One person who commented was literally holding a magazine with her picture on the cover and Jim had to stick a finger in his mouth and bite it not to laugh out loud. He had no idea how she was keeping her composure and not rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter.  Like, he could just see that the effort of not rolling her eyes at that one was giving her eye strain.

Finally, she reached the flight deck door and pushed the button for admittance. There was a brief quiet exchange over the intercom, and she disappeared into the interior. The quiet murmurs became an almost instant buzz of gossip.

“Oh, my good Lord.” Someone exclaimed. “Was that Camina Wattkins? The Harbinger is on our flight? How much trouble are we in?”

“Holy crap.” The copilot and pilot had both turned to look at their guest when she entered the cockpit and apparently the copilot hadn’t believed he was genuinely about to see who he thought he was about to see. “It really is you.” Now, he was jerked back in his seat as far from Camina as he’d been able to move.

“Come on, Earl.” The pilot scolded. “Try to pretend you’re a professional when there are people around to see.” Though his words were weary sounding, there was a twinkle of mirth in the older man’s eyes. His salt and pepper hair was cut high and tight and his profile could have been a generic former military white dude with a chiseled jaw.

“Sorry.” Earl coughed apologetically and settled himself down into his seat properly and he glanced between the pilot and Camina. “It’s just that, it’s her. I mean. It’s you. And you’re her.” Familiar with this phenomenon, Camina merely smiled politely while retaining her grip on her patience.

“It’s all right.” She assured him and turned her focus to the person who was actually focused on his job. 

“I assume you both had a reason for calling me up here?”

“Yes.” The pilot responded and keyed up the radio. “There’s a call for you.”

“I see.” She wasn’t surprised. Honestly, Camina had been expecting something like this. The military officer on the other end of the transmission gave their credentials and confirmed hers. Then she listened as she was briefed and received her orders. Her stomach sank with every word spoken.

“Communication has been limited. But reports say that it’s Prometheus Purple in Manhattan.”

She’d known. Not precisely, but Camina had known something was very wrong in the city. The city where her children and husband were at this very moment. Had Lance ever gotten Anna? Or was she separated from her family in the middle of what was happening there? Kyle would be fine; the museum was practically a magic-proof bunker when all was said and done. Sam was…Sam. And her husband wasn’t great at emergencies.

No.

Lance surely would have gotten Anna as soon as he was done with whatever patient he’d been dealing with at the time. Surely. Of course, Camina didn’t expect Lance, an untrained civilian, to risk his life though…for their daughter…

“What do we…” Her voice was tight, strained. Tears weren’t in her eyes yet, but they were stinging. She stomped hard on that train of thought before it could take her mind places that she couldn’t afford to let it go right now. Taking a brief moment, Camina cleared her throat and lifted her gaze to the ceiling of the cockpit. Then biting her lip, she steeled herself and asked the question again with a shake of her head at herself. “What do we know about the monster manifestations?”

“Hundreds. And those are just the class three and lower ones. There’s at least one class four that we know of because it can be seen across the bay.” Camina froze.

“In the city?” It came out in a breathy whisper.

“On Manhattan Island.” Apparently, her whisper had been loud enough for him to hear and respond. Or maybe she hadn’t been as quiet as she thought.

“What are my orders?” It wasn’t resignation, per se. But both the pilot and copilot glanced up at the woman as her voice changed yet again. While she wanted to go and help her children and her husband, she knew that there were others who needed her help, others who were less gifted, less capable. But she wasn’t the person that got sent in to rescue people. She was the person who got sent in to deal with dangers the rescuers couldn’t. Camina knew she wasn’t a precision tool.

“The class four monster manifested at the airport on the North end of the island.” Gasps came from both pilots at the news. For her part, Camina focused on the sleek black plastic of the instrument panel, her eyes roving over familiar gauges that she knew enough about to not accidentally crash. 

“It’s just a standard jump into a high magic monster hot zone. Disable or contain the monster. Do not let it leave Manhattan.”

“Understood.” Her face was bleak. All those people. There would be thousands of deaths, if not from the monster, then possibly from collateral damage.  “Will I have a team? Or any…” She stopped and swallowed the hard lump of dread. “Is anyone documenting what’s happening?”

“No, you’ll be jumping from the plane you’re on now. It’s just you for now.” She nodded stiffly before realizing that he couldn’t see her. “The pilots already have their orders. You’ll be descending to twenty-five thousand feet for your drop. I’ve been told that’s enough time for you to suit up?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I’m sorry.” He offered, only halfheartedly. Because he wasn’t really sorry to be ordering her to save lives. Yet he knew what she was risking, how difficult this was emotionally, and how bad things were going to be for her in the future without an embedded journalist to document what she was doing to combat the vitriol of the conspiracy anti-magic nuts. “There just aren’t any other military personnel on the flight with you. The closest thing there is to an embedded journalist is the journalism student, but he – ”

“He’ll go.” Camina gasped quickly. “He’ll absolutely be willing to deploy with me.” Hurrying to add before she could be cut off. “He’s been sitting next to me the whole flight and I’ve been looking over his work. Good solid stuff. I was going to recommend scouting him. If he’s all I have to choose from, I’ll take back up with a Level Four magic license.”

“Fine.” The officer acknowledged. “We vetted him before calling the plane just in case.” She pumped her fist and did a little happy dance in the cockpit without letting any sound escape her lips.

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.” She was giddy with excitement now when she’d been morose only moments before.

“Right.” He already sounded like he regretted it.

Camina exited the cockpit not in the best of spirits, but at least relieved that she might get one thing going her way today. Sure, she was about to rain fire down on civilian airport and that was going to suck in ways she couldn’t allow herself to think about right now. But the young man she thought she was going to have to nursemaid through endless bureaucratic hoops to get on her team was getting the catastrophic event shortcut. So…bonus.

“Mister Thafesh,” She called out loud enough for her seat mate to hear her voice. He half stood with an anxious look on his face and the rest of the first-class passengers glanced back and forth between the two with confusion and concern.

“Ma’am, what are…” a flight attendant tried to interrupt but the copilot opening the cockpit door behind Camina shook his head for the flight attendant to let it be.

“Yes, Camina? Uh, Ma’am?” Jim ran a hand through his hair and glanced at all the people focusing on the two of them. It made Camina chuckle. He might as well get used to the attention now.

“Have you ever performed a HALO jump into a Prometheus Category Purple zone with active monster formation?” The young man’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull as he drew a sharp intake of breath. Around the cabin, passengers gasped and murmured.

“Uh. No, Ma’am.” He admitted shakily, “I can’t say that I have.”

“Well, you’re about to.” Camina gave just a second for him to process that information before she continued, nodding in his direction. “Gear up. I got called in to work on my time off again and you’ve been approved as a replacement for my regular embedded team.”

“Seriously?” The young journalism student gaped then grinned. Then he hurried into the isle. “Thank you. Thank you.” He was already pulling his carry-on bag out of the overhead compartment, glancing back at Camina every few seconds as he pulled out more camera equipment. “Thank you, for this opportunity. You won’t regret it.” Behind Camina, the copilot was murmuring for the flight crew to go through the plane and start another trash run and make sure that everyone put any loose belongings in the overhead compartments.

“Wait a minute!” The woman with the twangy voice stood self-righteously, arms crossed. “You’re going to do a HALO jump? I know that that is. It’s a high-altitude jump with a low opening of a parachute. Just where are you going to do that from? Passenger planes don’t carry parachutes. They travel too high and too fast for it. And the doors can’t open once they are in the air because of air pressure.” Camina actually laughed at that.

“Oh. You’re not wrong. But you are so very wrong.” The co-pilot gave Camina a put-upon sigh and shook his head as he fished in a storage compartment for a harness and line to secure himself with.  

“You might want to secure any belongings you have out.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” The captain did not have the confident tone he’d had at the beginning of the flight. Instead, he sounded weary and not entirely pleased. “As you are probably aware by now, there has been some kind of magical event in New York City which is why we didn’t land there. Our intention was to return to D.C. when reports of class three and class four monster manifestations necessitated our intervention.”

“The woman standing at the front of the cabin with my copilot is Camina Wattkins. She was returning home from Washington. We find ourselves in the predicament of having on board with us the one person who actually needs to be in New York right at this moment. So, we have been ordered to let her off to go deal with this emergency. What we will be doing is not normal, but if you follow all of our instructions, it will not be unduly dangerous.”

Camina let the pilot drone on about descending below cruising altitude and using oxygen masks while she strolled back to her seat to stow her purse and carry on in the overhead bin. Her adrenaline was already starting to ramp up and it felt good, relaxing muscles that stiffened during the hours on the flight. Her face carried a slight smile, and she hummed a bit. It had been a while since she’d had a really good workout. The hum faltered and her smile faded to bleakness when thoughts of her kids intruded into her pre-fight mental preparations.

“You can’t make us let you open the plane of the door for her.” Twangy was back at it and this time, other passengers were on her side. It was starting to look like it might get ugly. But Camina plastered her biggest I’m-probably-on-camera smile and turned to face the rest of the cabin and the shrill woman from a place that Camina was seriously going to look into the feasibility of removing it from existence for producing that particular accent.

“Yes, I can.” This was one of the parts of her job she hated. “I have orders to deal with a class four monster manifestation at Manhattan North International Airport. It poses a danger to dozens of cities, not just New York or Manhattan Island. I will be leaving this plane. I do not require a parachute. I will fulfill my orders as they are entirely ethical, and I will not be endangering any civilian on this plane if I leave.” Pausing, Camina cocked her head and threw a little attitude while she gestured around the cabin. “Now, I can wait for you all to stow any personal belongings, so they don’t fly away when the door opens, and wait for you to have oxygen masks. Or I can follow my orders without making considerations for the civilians onboard this plane. What do you prefer?” She stared down at the obnoxious blonde, taller than the woman by several inches.

“But…but…” It seemed as if the twanger didn’t have anything to argue against that with until a nursing baby started snuffling and crying. Then she sniffed triumphantly and spat out as if it was the greatest argument of all. “But there’s children on board.” Yet Camina was prepared for it.

“There’re children in Manhattan, and Newark, and Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Hoboken. Do I put the comfort, not safety, just comfort, of the less than three hundred people on this plane before the immediate safety of millions? And remember, every second I remain on this plane, is another second that people are dying in New York.” As she’d feared, she was being recorded by more than one person’s cell phone, but also by her new journalist and she tried not to give him an annoyed twitch of her lips at that. He was just doing the job she gave him.

“It’s still not right.” The woman grumbled and Camina was going to leave it at that.

She scanned her eyes across the passenger compartment. They were scared. Scared and angry. 

Worried for themselves and for anyone they might know in New York. Then her gaze passed a man in, maybe, his fifties or so with a U.S.M.C. ballcap on. He looked like he was sleeping with his eyes closed and his head lowered, and it took a second for her brain to catch up with the fact that no one would be sleeping right now. Camina’s eyes jerked back to the man and looked him over more carefully. Oh, no! Sonofabitch. Quickly taking a few steps, Camina drew level with his row. She wanted to confirm her suspicions before… He had one.

A protective prayer charm for the patron saint of warriors.

It was on a chain around his wrist, and he was rubbing the worn surface compulsively as he murmured something under his breath. The image was barely recognizable as an angel with wings spread holding a large naked blade.

The Archangel Michael.

“Haaahh-ah-ah-le-lu-jaaaaaaah!” A familiar heavenly chorus sounded behind Camina. It was accompanied by the oh so very familiar sounding whoosh of air from a physical body essentially teleporting into existence, and a rustling like the flapping of very large wings. There were gasps and murmurs from the passengers who had seen him arrive.

Camina’s brow furrowed and she closed her eyes with a happy wince. Happy because she loved her patron like a brother. Wincing because he was…a lot. Over the top? And there wasn’t much he was allowed to do right now beside freak the heck out. Divine beings were not permitted to take direct action with their full divine powers on the mortal plane anymore.

No. Michael hadn’t told her why. Just that ‘there were rules’ and if he didn’t follow them, ‘there would be problems’. Gods were extremely limited in what they could do per The Treaty. Demi Gods, angels, and other semi-immortals had more leeway. Miracles were another matter. All divine beings were permitted to influence events through miracles when granting prayers. But there had to be a lot of damned prayer energy going any one way for that to happen.

“Oh, thank goodness.” His familiar voice called out, and the tall brunette turned slowly around to take a look at her patron. He was rolling his eyes with the most put-upon expression on his face. “It’s about damned time someone said a prayer to me.”

“Hi, Michael.” She smiled with genuine, but restrained delight. There he was in his human form. A young ethnically ambiguous man. Possibly Asian-mixed, possibly Hispanic, maybe there was some Middle Eastern in there? No one could tell and he wasn’t saying. But he clearly wasn’t only Caucasian.

He had thick dark curls that sometimes came down to his shoulders and sometimes were kept short around his ears, or anywhere in between. Right now?  They came down to just about around his square jaw. Below the large ridiculously lustrous curls of his bangs – which dangled over his high forehead almost to his eyes like some schleppy-in-a-cool-way skater boy or surfer dude – were wide-spaced heavy brows, also black. Enviously prolific lashes framed brown, almond-shaped eyes.

The immortal patron, who had looked a decade older than her when they’d formed their pact, now looked younger than her by several decades. It didn’t bother Camina at all anymore. Nope. Just like she hadn’t been jealous of the freckles on his broad cheeks when she was a teenager. Michael’s age seemed to fluctuate slightly with his whim and Camina suspected that he could look older than her if he wanted to.

Her patron looked somewhere between his mid-teens to mid-twenties. Michael liked dark colors. Blues, greys, and blacks, colors and shades that went well with everything. Dressed in a pair of designer athletic joggers, tennis shoes, a T-shirt, and a zip front sweater jacket, the angel looked like an average high school or college athlete who was out for a morning run and planning to stop for latte after. Or he would have, if he hadn’t also been noticeably soft around his edges. A stark contrast to Camina’s own svelte physique. So, he looked athletic, but not exceptionally so.

“I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Rushing the twenty feet or so between himself and Camina, Michael took her up in a quick desperate hug. Though taller than his chosen form, the woman felt herself lifted off the floor momentarily before she was placed ever so gently down again. Concern suffused the angel’s face and his pearly white wings, politely folded and contained by his sweater jacket, were quivering over his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” His large hands grasped her shoulders and gave her a tiny shake as if to test that she was really there. “I’ve been waiting for the kids to call me, but they haven’t. Not one phone call, not one prayer.” Though he might have been known as the unyielding general of God’s armies, Michael was incredibly passionate and caring in his relationships with mortals. And he took his job as God father and honorary ‘uncle’ of Camina’s children quite seriously.

“If they haven’t called for help, they are probably fine.” Assurances fell from Camina’s lips despite fearing that her words were false. But she was trying to project calm.

“Are you sure? I can’t see anything in New York. The arcanes are way too high. Us angels can’t even hear anything out of there but a muddled muted mess and even though we want to go down and get up close so we can hear any prayers just in case, the boss is all like ‘Naw dawg. Dems da rules.’” 

When excited. Her patron tended to get a little hyperfixated and somewhat motormouthed. Words were coming at her fast and she was pretty sure those sentences would have been without punctuation if they were written. Then he hurried onward.

“And I was all like ‘I don’t care about no rules, if my gurl Anna calls I’mma gonna go and get her because she’s my godbaby and I…I…’” his tirade devolved into a sob of disconsolate worry. “I can’t hear her, Camina. I was supposed to – It was so sudden.”

Giving an empathetic sigh, the warlock patted her patron on the shoulder in a there-there kind of way. Then, because the mom in her just would not sleep ever, she picked some lint off his jacket and flicked it away. It was tough being an angel. Being able to hear all the world’s woes but unable to act on most of them. Having to wait until the power of prayer was strong enough to act but that strength was not necessarily dictated by the number of people praying for something nor the passion behind their faith.

“Hey. I don’t know if it’s going to be okay. But I’m going to go down there and clear out the worst of the monsters.” Cupping his face in her hands, she smiled her bravest, most encouraging smile at her patron. “Why don’t you stay with these people and give them some faith. Answer their prayers and keep them safe until they get to a safe landing somewhere.” Gently, the warlock guided her patron to her vacated seat and Jim Thafesh, pockets bulging with gear and cameras strapped to his limbs and head, scooched out of the way around them.

Michael almost didn’t notice the young man at all until something caught his attention. Camina was trying to push the angel into her seat when he stopped and resisted. Putting a hand on the back of both Camina’s seat and the one in front of hers, he pushed back against her guiding hands. Head jerking up in sudden alarm, the dark-haired angel sniffed the air. Once.

“Wait a minute.” Eyebrows lowering in consternation, the words were growled out deeply with just the slightest hint of a chorus behind them. Divine power escaped in wisps and curls from his lips. He sniffed twice in succession. “What. Is. That.”

Dark eyes with a hidden light behind them found Jim Thafesh as his gaze snapped to the source of whatever had caught his attention. His gaze narrowed with the unpleasant malevolence a father or uncle might give a man who was talking to his teenage daughter or niece. Realizing the jig was up and her patron had caught on to…something…about her new possibly-protégé that he didn’t like, Camina’s shoulders sagged like she was said teenage girl knowing her ‘uncle’ was about to give some young man a talking to just for being friendly.

“Stop.” The softly spoken command resonated through the air and stopped Jim in his steps despite the young journalist’s back being turned so he didn’t know that it had been directed at him. “Come here.” Now Jim became aware of the archangel’s malice on his back as his feet began walking backward on their own accord then turned him around to face the angel.

“Oh. You meant me?” Gesturing at himself as he asked the obvious question, Camina realized that Jim was just digging the proverbial hole bigger. Though for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what her patron’s problem could be.

“Michael – ” She began before the archangel lifted and hand and made a ‘shut it’ gesture clamping his fingers together like a shadow puppet mouth.

“Quiet, Camina.” He’d silenced her in a way that he never had before and she immediately shut her stunned mouth, straightened up, and paid attention. “Let me just check something first.” Slowly, the archangel reached out one large, manicured hand and extended his index finger. Unable to move his feet, Jim began to lean away from the incoming finger. “Stop moving,” Michael commanded.

Concerned, the journalist glanced at Camina worriedly, but she gave him a distracted and reassuring nod. Jim’s focused eyes appeared to cross as they watched the incoming finger looming closer to his face. For his part, Michael’s gaze was fixed on a spot somewhere on the trembling journalist’s forehead. In a careful movement, the archangel swiped his index finger over Jim’s brow as if he were stealing a taste of frosting off a cake.

Michael then switched his focus to the finger as he critically examined whatever he’d gotten off of Jim. For his part, Jim looked even more confused as he couldn’t see anything at all on the finger. He kept glancing between Camina and Michael in befuddlement. After several seconds of intense scrutiny, the angel lifted the finger to his face and touched it daintily to the tip of his tongue.

Immediately he pulled the finger away. Making a tight-lipped grimace, he dropped his hands in defeat. Then sniffing disdainfully Michael turned to Camina.

“He’s…” Pausing as if he couldn’t even bring himself to say the words, did not reassure Jim about whatever the angel was about to reveal about him. Then exhaling with a vibrating of his lips like he was blowing raspberries, Michael shook his head in disgust. “He’s been snared by fate.”

“Ohhh!” A disappointed groan escaped the soldier. “No. Not again. He’s mine now. They can’t have him back.” Her shoulders dropped and she gave them a little shake before straightening again and heading to the front of the plane to remind the copilot that he needed to let them out from a rear door. He’d need to unstrap himself and connect his harness again after relocating.

“What’s happening?” Jim had been working his tongue in his mouth before finally getting up the nerve to ask.

“Nothing,” Michael assured him in the most unconvincing way. “You’ll be fine. Just stick with Camina and do what feels right to you.” Absently, the archangel patted the young human on the shoulder before sitting down and buckling himself into Camina’s vacant seat. Noticing that the speechless journalist was still standing where he’d forcibly drawn him, Michael looked up.

“Shoo, shoo.” Hand gestures accompanied the instructions and Jim Thafesh, newly appointed embedded journalist of, arguably, the most famous warlock alive wandered towards the rear of the passenger compartment that he’d been shooed towards. More nervous now from pondering whatever had bothered the archangel than he’d initially been at the prospect of jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Wait a minute! They did say that there’s no parachutes on this plane?

Red-faced with embarrassment, the copilot huffed slightly as Camina ushered him toward the back of the plane. He clipped his harness onto a seat leg across from the door and adjusted the length of the tether before locking that in place also. Almost as if on cue, the speakers for the announcement system came to life and the remarkably professional voice of the pilot was broadcast to the passengers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” Did he sound just the slightest bit excited about the crazy shit he was about to do? Maybe. “The oxygen masks are about to be released. Please put them on as quickly as possible. Secure your mask before securing the mask of anyone you are assisting. As soon as I’ve been notified that everyone has their mask, I will begin depressurizing the cabin.”

Short, startled shrieks sounded as oxygen masks descended suddenly. Cumulative hisses filled the compartments as air began to flow. People fumbled with their masks and put them on. It was at this point that Jim realized that he didn’t have one. Neither did Camina, but she had divine, powered battle armor. Or did she?

“You aren’t going to suit up?” He whispered to her quietly. “Also, we don’t have masks.” Smirking a smile out of the corner of her full lips, Camina shrugged nonchalantly.

“Can’t suit up in this confined space. I’d damage the plane. We don’t need oxygen. We’re honestly not that high.” Her assurance had serious overtones of being superior to civilians. “Deep breaths. Exhale fully and quickly, inhale slowly and shallowly. Once you’re out of the plane, even deep breaths. You first, I’ll follow and catch you. But you’ll be falling for a while because we need some distance for safety while I summon my armor.”

“Okay.” Jim nodded. And he kept nodding. More than he really needed to. Was he starting to shake? 

“Oh, God. What am I doing?” Camina smiled kindly at him with a brilliant flash of her celebrity-white teeth. She placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder Jim noticed that there was an ornate white metal combat knife with gold inlay strapped to one muscular arm. Her pact item.

“You are about to help try to protect and save over eight million people from class one, class two, class three, and class four monster manifestations.” Jim had looked away from the warrior before him, ashamed that he was considering backing out of his dream job because he was afraid of jumping out of a plane. Her words drew his gaze upward once more. When Jim met Camina’s eyes, there wasn’t any condemnation there. Just faith.

“This is the captain speaking.” The hollow tones of the announcement system started again. “I’ve been informed by the flight crew that all passengers are ready. Depressurization is starting now. Remain in your seat with your seatbelt secured.” Dull and muted roaring began. Growing in intensity until it stopped, still mostly muted.

The copilot grimaced as he held up his hand with three fingers, then two fingers, than one and opened the door and Camina helped him swing it inward. More likely, she was helping him prevent it from swinging in too quickly. Jim staggered as the wind pummeled the interior of the aircraft. 

Grabbing on to the seat behind him, Jim steadied himself. Which lasted a moment before he felt Camina’s hand on his shoulder again.

He looked up at her as the wind howled around them. She was grinning wildly, excitement lighting up her eyes. Then she pulled Jim forward to the edge and his eyes widened with burgeoning panic. Before he could react though, Camina Wattkins pushed Jim Thafesh out the open door of the plane and down forcefully into the empty blue expanse of the sky.

“Oh Shiiiit!” Jim’s scream came out breathy and he tried not to lose consciousness. Sky howled past him, his journey deafening. His unprepared exit from the plane had resulted in him being in a sideways position. Off in the distance, the horizon was a vertical line from his current orientation.

He was falling and the ground was far, far away but it was also entirely too close. Because it was everywhere below him. Everywhere. Remembering that the least he could do was document what was happening, Jim pulled his splayed arms to his chest and carefully braced the camera securely strapped into his white-knuckled grip to his eye so he could focus it. After filming a few seconds of the ground, he windmilled his arms and flipped himself onto his back.

There the plane was flying away in the near distance. Already further away than he’d like even if it was entirely too late to get back inside. As he watched, Camina seemed to fall out of the opening in the rear of the fuselage. Brown hair streaming behind her, the distant woman spread her arms and maneuvered away from the retreating aircraft which began banking almost as soon as she was clear.

A golden light enveloped the woman gradually coalescing into armor. Glistening pearlescent in the bright sunlight, the summoned armor transformed her clothing around her. Or maybe it covered her clothing.  Honestly, he couldn’t remember if that had been covered in any of Camina’s interviews before. Right now, it didn’t matter what the nitty gritty was, just that he was watching, and filming, the magnificent transformation of The Harbinger of Light.

Yep. He was fanboying out hard core while trying to keep his camera steady. A full body suit of what looked like powered mechanical armor out of some kind of science fiction movie. Instead of being powered by some kind of convenient unobtainium MacGuffin, the Saint of Warriors Armor of God’s General was powered by magic and divinity channeled through the warlock pact with the archangel Michael. It was based, vaguely, on the armor her patron wore in battle. Though, historical renderings made Michael’s armor look decidedly less technological.

What had been the knife strapped to her forearm enlarged and morphed into a giant rifle mounted on the pearly white metal of her gauntlet. All the segments around her joints and her waist were covered in some kind of flexible gold scale alloy. Then Camina’s body spasmed, her spine arching and her appendages splaying wide as her wings erupted from her back in a spectacular display. Multi-segmented wings made up of huge shimmering armored plates shaped like feathers. The individual pieces were jointed together with golden divine magic.

Despite the edges of his vision trying to darken, the journalist fought his body’s desire to faint. These were the moments he lived for. The shots no one else would get, the stories no one else would tell. Camina’s eyes were covered by the sleek white helmet of her armor behind the reflective polarized visor. Her wings flexed as she slowed in the air and Jim saw the distance between them had begun to widen.

Just as quickly though, she’d tucked the wings close and dove after him. Drawing near, she swooped to match velocities with the plummeting man. Tracking her relentlessly, Jim never took his camera off the armored woman. Even as she approached and seemed to hover beside him, taking the time to de-polarize her visor and smile at him before holding out her arms to very carefully cradle his falling form. Ever so slowly, Jim Thafesh felt resistance against the pull of gravity pressing him into the mech armor.

Once she arrested their uncontrolled fall, Camina started flying.

It was glorious.

They were still high up and the ground was still rushing toward them but not nearly as fast as it had been before. Now they were soaring, gliding on air currents. Towering skyscrapers solidified out of the blurry landscape. Then smaller buildings, the river, tarmac and streets. Vehicles and things that had once been vehicles.

They began slowing and the scents and sounds of the city hit Jim even as he continued filming. Smoke, trash, the acrid stench of jet fuel and too much magic filled the air. Sirens were wailing both near and far. An emergency response vehicle lodged upside down in a second story window gallery overlooking the airport tarmac was making an intermittent ‘whoop’, ‘whoop’ as it tried to sound its siren. Its light flashed periodically from beneath it, reflecting eerily from the shaded walls of the terminal.

The intact windows of the terminal were polarized and reflective, so it was impossible to see if there were any injured people around the damage. Roaring and crashing came from further on beyond the weird angular construction of the airport terminal. Whatever it was, was massive. Especially if they could see glimpses of its limbs over the roof of the building and hear it over the rushing wind and the hum of Camina’s powered armor.

With what felt like not nearly enough caution, Camina set down on the closer side of the terminal roof. Thankfully, she’d chosen an area that was still structurally sound. Relieved to touch a flat surface again, Jim almost forgot that he was filming. Her face showing just the right amount of concern, Camina opened her visor.

“You alright, Mr. Thafesh?” Eyebrows raised in inquiry; Camina spoke quietly to avoid drawing attention to them before she was ready. The woman somehow managed to convey the image of friendly neighbor…clad in magical armor and toting a giant pulse rifle that could transform into a wicked lance or sword. Nodding, Jim responded haltingly.

“Yes…yes, Ma’am.” He’d started straightening his clothing without thinking about it with one hand while the other was still trying to keep his camera steady.

“Excellent. Let’s go take a look at what is making such a racket, shall we?” Camina’s wings retracted into her suit. Crouching, she gestured for the journalist to follow her to the side of the building where the monster was actively moving around.