Current mood:	blank
Entry tags:	denarians, dia, in my time of dying, mantis-girl, max, nano, obsidian statue, poor fool he makes me laugh, stephen, tessa

Section 11
Word count: 1 534

Warning: Character death.


You don't have a choice

Max's eyes widened and his nostrils flared.

I am sorry I won't be coming back, Dia. I am sorry, Stephen. I wish we had the rest of forever.

Thank you.

I love you.

He hadn't missed many chances to tell either of them that, through the years. Matter of fact, there was very little that they had missed on doing, neither the good, nor the crazy, nor the unique that nobody else could, but them. He was sorry there wouldn't be more of it. But he regretted nothing, not a moment, not a thought since he first walked into Stephen's office. Not a word. Not a choice.

He looked down at the coin now, really looked. Or so it seemed to his two observers. Rocked forward until he wasn't sitting on the ground anymore, but in a way squatting, or perching, on his feet. The cuts on his legs protested mildly, as did his muscles, about the pressure added to them. It wasn't too bad.

He rose his eyes to look at bug-woman again, and gave a small, slow nod. "I... guess you are right."

A deep breath.

She was, in fact, wrong. He did have another choice. Not a nice choice, and not an easy choice at all. But he had another choice, even if it would be his last one, and he was going to be smart about it.

Again, Max rocked forward, hand reaching tentatively forward - towards the coin, but carefully just in case she decided to stop his motion even for that.

She didn't.

He tensed just moments before his fingers reached their destination.

And they didn't. He spread them around the piece of silver with its sigil, firm against the concrete, and carefully not touching it used the point to roll out and away from the flowing water.

As soon as it wasn't touching his skin, he started gathering his will. He used all, every scrap of energy he had collected over the last - he didn't even know anymore how long it had been already. But he used everything, concentrating it on the run as he came up to his feet, used his momentum and slammed into the middle of the shorter Denarian, bringing her, with the surprise, back and down into the ground. He had no weapon but his body - but then again, it was a finely honed weapon at that. He'd seen that those things could be killed, and it would be easier to work that on a coin alone, rather than a bearer, so he tried to do that.

Using his well-trained reflexes alone, as her clams were raking over his body, back, shoulders, side of his neck. She even tried to bit him--

He was using his mind to set up the spell. Yes, it was working, all the built-up emotion, pent-up, confined, and all the planning for the spell made it easier. It only took him moments to put it together, and a muttered word released it in the direction of the coin lying on the wet asphalt. Good timing.

-- just as he was about to slump with the energy drain, the feeling of a small train hit the side of his arm, and he could hear the crack of the bone as he went flying, rolling in the air, and the second crack as he landed with his body over the same arm, and gasped in pain, but at least it gave him an excuse to sag for a moment without revealing how strong the spell he'd realeased was. The longer they were unaware of the fact that nobody could really touch the coin again, so the Fallen Angel was trapped inside it, unable to ride anybody else, the better. The other two would be harder even without the knowledge...

"He did something. What did he do?" The voice was high-pitched and gasping a little - nice, at least the fact that his fingers had been tight around her thought had some effect, Max thought.

"I don't know."

A moment was all the wizard could afford, and he was gathering his will again. His right arm was hanging limply and there was more pain - more pain to draw on - as he stumbled to his feet and lurched in the direction of another couple of corpses. Grabbed a gun and shot the remaining two rounds into the obsidian, statue-like figure, which barely slowed him down. Moved on to the next, grabbed a sword. That should give him a few more moments, and thanks to Stephen and his two swords, he was as good fighting with the left hand as the right...

As head of the outfit, Max tried to slip the same spell of insulation around bug-girl's coin, but she had some defense up that he couldn't immediately plough through and didn't have time to figure out, so he turned on the other one.

The one who had threatened to torture and kill his wife. To mutilate his daughter, and make his son a slave.

"Ward up right now, he's trying to do something to us," came the rushed voice of the insectoid, but Max was attacking already, physically and not.

It was sort of a trade-off. One strong hit of the broadsword sent his own weapon flying in the air, and the black fist was against his chest, grabbing him, pressing him down on the ground with a force that left Max in no doubt of its ability to crash right through his chest down to the asphalt.

But his spell was reaching in to the coin. He could feel it, working more slowly than on the unshielded denarius, oozing through the life force of the person - or creature, by this time - that the Denarian was riding, and starting the coating of the coin, right as it was held at the core of the person...

The large figure above him arched back, screaming in pain, the pressure on Max's chest releasing so he could breathe, not that he had much energy left to breathe with, draining himself as he was with the spell. He was glad, for a moment, that he had power enough to do it twice.

For a moment, he wished that there was some way to leave a note with this spell so that somebody would figure an energy-effective version and they could lock up the rest of the coins for good. At least the information of the coins held this far was still safe, and would be for a good, long time.

For a moment, he was aware of some resistance against his spell. He feebly rose up, his good elbow propping him up, in time to see the great broadsword descending against his head with a final gust of inhuman strength.

I'm sorry--

~~~

Half of the wizard's head flew off, rolling a bit on the road with the force by which it had been severed.

The black figure knelt on the street, curling around itself with pain. New spellwork had stopped coming in, before it was complete, and it was sure of that, but it didn't stop the sensation of separation. It couldn't reach its rider fully; the Fallen couldn't reach its host fully. The dark, smooth surface of the body flickered in specks of skin revealed underneath. Solidified. Flickered again.

The shorter figure hissed, "burn him."

"I can't."

"What?"

"I can't reach for that kind of power. He did something. Tried to sever the coin."

Silence, only broken by insectoid click against the asphalt, then a cry of surprise and pain as she tried to pick up the coin.

"I cannot touch it."

Slowly, the obsidian statue-like Denarian heaved up to his feet, swaying. "We need to get going. There will be mortals here soon."

"I'll create an opening. We need to clean up."

"Yes."

By the time the police and ambulances got there, they only found eight bodies sprawled variously around the two cars. Destroyed by a violence and the kind of wounds that were mostly totally incomprehensible at first sight.

For a while after arrival, mobile phones and cameras seemed to give off some deffect, but eventually the forensic teams got all the photos they wanted and all the items of evidence were packed and carried - or driven - away and all the corpses were transported to another, colder location until somebody could be found to identify and claim them.

The fire hydrant was fixed.

Eventually, the small quiet street was quiet again. As the night fell, a gust of wind brought actual rain, which cleansed the sidewalk and asphalt of the blood left on it.

~~~

The dream is ended: this is the morning.

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