Posted using PostyBirb",
"writing": "\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[b]Red Deer, AB, March 2nd[/b]\n\n\n\n“What’s the plan?” Thomas demanded as they exited and a frigid wind tried to blast them back inside. How the fuck had he forgotten it was this cold?\n\n“Improvise!” Gilbert replied as he turned right. “Oh Shit.” The armadillo backpedaled.\n\n At the end of the building stood a coyote with one staff in a hand, the one Magnet had when they’d attack Grant, and another one in the other. This one was black cast iron, ending in a bent point that started glowing red. Thomas joined Gilbert in turning, only to stay in place as a vixen, with the transparent shaft of her staff resting on her shoulder, smiled at them from the other end of the building.\n\n“We need another plan,” Thomas said, wondering where they could go. There were the cargo trucks. Maybe Gilbert knew how to drive one of those, and magic could bypass the locks. The rest of his half-baked plans were wrenched out of him when Gilbert grabbed his arm and pulled him across the parking lot, angling for the road.\n\n“You are wasting your time!” the vole yelled, his tone calm. “You cannot run from us.”\n\n“Gilbert?” Thomas asked, hoping for the armadillo to share his plan. The pause before the response had to have been brief, but it felt like an eternity.\n\n“You’re going to have to get us out of here,” Gilbert said, sounding less than his usual self-assured.\n\n“What about the others?” Thomas replied, “they’re heading here. They’re going to walk right into their arms.”\n\nThe armadillo looked around as they ran, cursing. Thomas saw him look at the charging station.\n\n“Fuck,” Gilbert said under his breath as he looked away and back to the road. “Why do we have to be stuck with electrical? I can do stuff with gas. Couldn’t they have waited until tomorrow to start the switchover?”\n\nA line of searing heat crossed their path, forcing them to stop, just as the wind reclaimed the displaced air. Gilbert picked up a broken Rebar off the ground and held the jagged end pitifully at the four Chamber agents in front of the restaurant.\n\nThe vole paused in taking his staff from Heat Wave, then smiled as he flicked it to the side and the bar flew out of the armadillo’s hand. “Do you understand how serious the predicament you are in is, Mister Hertz?” The vole place the end of the staff down and rested his hand on the top, as if it was a cane. “This is not a battle you will win.”\n\n“Thomas,” Gilbert said, interposing himself between the rat and the Chamber, “when I—” the shifting wind went from frigid to summer hot as its direction reversed. Before Gilbert started speaking again, rain started falling. Warm enough, it steamed as it hit the cold pavement.\n\n“Grant!” the vole yelled, sounding pleased. “I am so glad you finally joined us.”\n\n“Get the fuck away from the kids, Kingsley.” The kangaroo stepped around the building where Heatwave had been, staff raised over his head. On his left was Olavo, on the right—\n\nLimbani let out a war cry as he ran at the vixen, inexplicably dodging the lances of light she sent at him with her staff. He jumped, kicked her in the face, then landed with a triumphant grin. The metal bar that Gilbert had held moments before hit the monkey squarely in the face, and he fell back.\n\n“Someone get Lim!” Olavo yelled, Thomas already on his way to the fallen monkey.\n\n“Get everyone together!” he yelled back. He had no idea if he could teleport more than one person, let alone five, but it looked like he was about to find out. He stopped as he reached Limbani, only for his feet to continue on the slick combination of hot rain on frozen ground and he landed on his ass. He grabbed the unconscious monkey and heaved him as he stood, giving Madoc a silent thank you for all the training the other rat had given him, along with the boosting injection that the sex—\n\nHe tried to step away from the form he noticed next to him, but pain erupted in his side, and before he could comprehend what Light was doing there, his legs buckled out from under him. The monkey slid away as Thomas sprawled, barely able to breathe.\n\n“It worked,” Light shouted, grinning despite her broken and bleeding muzzle.\n\nThomas fought to turn his head enough to see where Limbani was, then tried to reach for him. All he needed was to grab him and he could take the two of them away. Only his arm barely moved. He felt like those days when he was so sick he could barely shift in his bed. At least he had an alternate way to get next to the monkey.\n\nHe remained where he was as shouts erupted around him. He tried to teleport to Limbani again, but nothing happened. As he focused on recreating the shiver down his bad that always marked the trigger, he realized the kind of tired he was. This was the near death exhaustion that hit when he did a long range teleport. Only, instead of falling into unconsciousness with the hope someone would fuck him and keep him alive, he was wide awake, and, other than the exhaustion, didn’t feel like he was dying.\n\nForcing his head to turn, hoping to see what she’d stabbed him with, Thomas saw Olavo in a scuffle with a thin wolf. He’d never seen him before, and he didn’t have a staff. Was he some bystander who didn’t realize who the bad guys were? The capybara had the fight under control, but Thomas wondered about the others and manage to slowly shift and see that Grant was facing off against Heat Wave, visible distortion of heat being batted away from the kangaroo by wind and rain.\n\nThe question of how that was possible was replaced by an even more impossible one. Gilbert was facing off with Magnet, hand extended before him, but instead another candle flame which was all the armadillo could generate, there was a ball of fire nearly two feet in diameter pushing against an unseen wall that had to come from the vole, by his worried expression.\n\nThomas had asked why Gilbert hadn’t practiced turning the flame into a jet of fire, when he’d first seen the demonstration, and Gilbert had laughed, telling him that this was what he was able to after years of training. The only more useless power than his, Gilbert had continued, was Felix’s ability to invade other people’s dreams.\n\nThomas had glared at the otter, remembering some dreams where Felix had been a principal actor.\n\nPain pulsed in his side and his memory and vision turned blurry, then his vision came back into focus. Right. He had something more important to do than wonder at other people’s powers.\n\nThe wooden handle of a knife poked out of his side, through the overcoat. Only, on it were symbols that seem to glow red. He reached for it as someone yelled.\n\n“No!”\n\nThe anguish in the voice yanked Thomas’s attention away from the knife and to the wolf who had cried out. He and Olavo’s fight was interrupted by watching Grant bring his staff down on his raised knee, breaking it into two.\n\nA wave of energy passed through Thomas as he stared in dismay at the kangaroo holding the two pieces of what Thomas was certain had meant more than life itself to Grant. The expression of loss on his face supported that. So why?\n\nThen the icy wind hit him, and he realized that not only had the rain stopped, but the sky was now cloudless, the sun bathing them in light without effect against the returning cold.\n\n“That was mine!” the wolf yelled, then screamed in pain as Olavo got over the surprise faster and punched him hard enough to drop him.\n\n“What did you do?” Magnet demanded, the act surprising him enough the fireball moved closer before he concentrated again.\n\n“Keeping a promise,” Grant said in a soft tone that made Thomas wonder if he’d meant for anyone to hear. He squared his shoulders and looked at the vole, still in a stalemate of sorts against the fireball. “There’s nothing left for you, Kingsley. Just leave.”\n\n“If you think you can commit such a blasphemy and I will let you go, you are mistaken.” Thomas couldn’t tell if the strain in his voice was anger or having to push the fireball away. “Harrison, Take him down, but do not kill him. There is a punishment appropriate to his action waiting for him.”\n\nThe coyote grinned, turning to the kangaroo, then cursed and raised his hands to keep the two pieces of Grant’s staff from hitting him in the face. The kangaroo was right behind them and, as Heat Wave lowered his staff, Grant grabbed it with both hands.\n\nThomas stared as the expected scream of pain from Grant didn’t come, nor did he fly off; rejected by the staff like Yating had. Grant said their power came through the staves, so hadn’t he rejected what he was by breaking his? Shouldn’t Heat Wave’s staff react as violently as it had with the panda?\n\nGrant and the coyote pulled back and forth, not letting go of it while trying to wrench it out of the other’s grasp. Thomas wanted to go help. Without a staff of his own, without magic to help him, Grant was certain to lose, but he couldn’t move with this dagger in his side.\n\nWait, the symbols glowed. That meant magic, right? That had to be why he was so weak, not the knife itself. All he had to do was pull it out, and he’d be able to help. If he didn’t bleed out first. Was there any vitals stuff there that would cause him to lose a lot of—\n\nThe metallic snap was followed by something metal clanging on the ground. The wave of heat that followed dried the asphalt. Thomas stared, along with Grant and Heat Wave, each holding one piece of the metal staff, as a third softened the pavement under it enough it was sinking down. Then the cold returned.\n\n“Kingsley,” Lullaby demanded, sounding dismayed and fearful, “what’s going on?”\n\n“Help!” came the strained reply from the vole. The fireball between him and Gilbert had grown to three feet, and with a grunt of concentration, the armadillo took a step forward. The ball spread more against the wall Magnet was generating.\n\nA note rang out and Thomas felt soothed as more followed. Everything was fine, the melody said, it was safe to rest, to sleep. His eyes snapped open with a cry of pain.\n\n“That enough,” Grant said.\n\nThomas watched Gilbert stagger back. The fireball was gone.\n\n“No!” the raccoon yelled, followed by the snap of breaking wood.\n\nA wave passed over Thomas, and all sounds vanished. Light rushed behind Magnet. Her mouth moved silently, and she gesticulated from Grant to the coyote, then Lullaby. The vole stared at the kangaroo, his expression turning from anger to fear.\n\n“—before he gets his hands on our staves, too!” Light yelled in the vole’s ear, causing him to jerk. She grabbed him and forced him to look at her. “Get us the fuck away from here, Now!”\n\nThe vole looked at the broken staves on the ground, then wrapped an arm around the vixen’s waist. He raised his staff over his head, and everything metal not secured slid toward them. Grant ran, but only made it five long steps in their direction before the metal was flung away and the two of them took off in the air.\n\nThomas smiled to himself as he watched them vanish into the distance. Wouldn’t it be amazing to fly?\n\nAnd on that dreamy thought, darkness finally claimed him.",
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Red Deer, AB, March 2nd
“What’s the plan?” Thomas demanded as they exited and a frigid wind tried to blast them back inside. How the fuck had he forgotten it was this cold?
“Improvise!” Gilbert replied as he turned right. “Oh Shit.” The armadillo backpedaled.
At the end of the building stood a coyote with one staff in a hand, the one Magnet had when they’d attack Grant, and another one in the other. This one was black cast iron, ending in a bent point that started glowing red. Thomas joined Gilbert in turning, only to stay in place as a vixen, with the transparent shaft of her staff resting on her shoulder, smiled at them from the other end of the building.
“We need another plan,” Thomas said, wondering where they could go. There were the cargo trucks. Maybe Gilbert knew how to drive one of those, and magic could bypass the locks. The rest of his half-baked plans were wrenched out of him when Gilbert grabbed his arm and pulled him across the parking lot, angling for the road.
“You are wasting your time!” the vole yelled, his tone calm. “You cannot run from us.”
“Gilbert?” Thomas asked, hoping for the armadillo to share his plan. The pause before the response had to have been brief, but it felt like an eternity.
“You’re going to have to get us out of here,” Gilbert said, sounding less than his usual self-assured.
“What about the others?” Thomas replied, “they’re heading here. They’re going to walk right into their arms.”
The armadillo looked around as they ran, cursing. Thomas saw him look at the charging station.
“Fuck,” Gilbert said under his breath as he looked away and back to the road. “Why do we have to be stuck with electrical? I can do stuff with gas. Couldn’t they have waited until tomorrow to start the switchover?”
A line of searing heat crossed their path, forcing them to stop, just as the wind reclaimed the displaced air. Gilbert picked up a broken Rebar off the ground and held the jagged end pitifully at the four Chamber agents in front of the restaurant.
The vole paused in taking his staff from Heat Wave, then smiled as he flicked it to the side and the bar flew out of the armadillo’s hand. “Do you understand how serious the predicament you are in is, Mister Hertz?” The vole place the end of the staff down and rested his hand on the top, as if it was a cane. “This is not a battle you will win.”
“Thomas,” Gilbert said, interposing himself between the rat and the Chamber, “when I—” the shifting wind went from frigid to summer hot as its direction reversed. Before Gilbert started speaking again, rain started falling. Warm enough, it steamed as it hit the cold pavement.
“Grant!” the vole yelled, sounding pleased. “I am so glad you finally joined us.”
“Get the fuck away from the kids, Kingsley.” The kangaroo stepped around the building where Heatwave had been, staff raised over his head. On his left was Olavo, on the right—
Limbani let out a war cry as he ran at the vixen, inexplicably dodging the lances of light she sent at him with her staff. He jumped, kicked her in the face, then landed with a triumphant grin. The metal bar that Gilbert had held moments before hit the monkey squarely in the face, and he fell back.
“Someone get Lim!” Olavo yelled, Thomas already on his way to the fallen monkey.
“Get everyone together!” he yelled back. He had no idea if he could teleport more than one person, let alone five, but it looked like he was about to find out. He stopped as he reached Limbani, only for his feet to continue on the slick combination of hot rain on frozen ground and he landed on his ass. He grabbed the unconscious monkey and heaved him as he stood, giving Madoc a silent thank you for all the training the other rat had given him, along with the boosting injection that the sex—
He tried to step away from the form he noticed next to him, but pain erupted in his side, and before he could comprehend what Light was doing there, his legs buckled out from under him. The monkey slid away as Thomas sprawled, barely able to breathe.
“It worked,” Light shouted, grinning despite her broken and bleeding muzzle.
Thomas fought to turn his head enough to see where Limbani was, then tried to reach for him. All he needed was to grab him and he could take the two of them away. Only his arm barely moved. He felt like those days when he was so sick he could barely shift in his bed. At least he had an alternate way to get next to the monkey.
He remained where he was as shouts erupted around him. He tried to teleport to Limbani again, but nothing happened. As he focused on recreating the shiver down his bad that always marked the trigger, he realized the kind of tired he was. This was the near death exhaustion that hit when he did a long range teleport. Only, instead of falling into unconsciousness with the hope someone would fuck him and keep him alive, he was wide awake, and, other than the exhaustion, didn’t feel like he was dying.
Forcing his head to turn, hoping to see what she’d stabbed him with, Thomas saw Olavo in a scuffle with a thin wolf. He’d never seen him before, and he didn’t have a staff. Was he some bystander who didn’t realize who the bad guys were? The capybara had the fight under control, but Thomas wondered about the others and manage to slowly shift and see that Grant was facing off against Heat Wave, visible distortion of heat being batted away from the kangaroo by wind and rain.
The question of how that was possible was replaced by an even more impossible one. Gilbert was facing off with Magnet, hand extended before him, but instead another candle flame which was all the armadillo could generate, there was a ball of fire nearly two feet in diameter pushing against an unseen wall that had to come from the vole, by his worried expression.
Thomas had asked why Gilbert hadn’t practiced turning the flame into a jet of fire, when he’d first seen the demonstration, and Gilbert had laughed, telling him that this was what he was able to after years of training. The only more useless power than his, Gilbert had continued, was Felix’s ability to invade other people’s dreams.
Thomas had glared at the otter, remembering some dreams where Felix had been a principal actor.
Pain pulsed in his side and his memory and vision turned blurry, then his vision came back into focus. Right. He had something more important to do than wonder at other people’s powers.
The wooden handle of a knife poked out of his side, through the overcoat. Only, on it were symbols that seem to glow red. He reached for it as someone yelled.
“No!”
The anguish in the voice yanked Thomas’s attention away from the knife and to the wolf who had cried out. He and Olavo’s fight was interrupted by watching Grant bring his staff down on his raised knee, breaking it into two.
A wave of energy passed through Thomas as he stared in dismay at the kangaroo holding the two pieces of what Thomas was certain had meant more than life itself to Grant. The expression of loss on his face supported that. So why?
Then the icy wind hit him, and he realized that not only had the rain stopped, but the sky was now cloudless, the sun bathing them in light without effect against the returning cold.
“That was mine!” the wolf yelled, then screamed in pain as Olavo got over the surprise faster and punched him hard enough to drop him.
“What did you do?” Magnet demanded, the act surprising him enough the fireball moved closer before he concentrated again.
“Keeping a promise,” Grant said in a soft tone that made Thomas wonder if he’d meant for anyone to hear. He squared his shoulders and looked at the vole, still in a stalemate of sorts against the fireball. “There’s nothing left for you, Kingsley. Just leave.”
“If you think you can commit such a blasphemy and I will let you go, you are mistaken.” Thomas couldn’t tell if the strain in his voice was anger or having to push the fireball away. “Harrison, Take him down, but do not kill him. There is a punishment appropriate to his action waiting for him.”
The coyote grinned, turning to the kangaroo, then cursed and raised his hands to keep the two pieces of Grant’s staff from hitting him in the face. The kangaroo was right behind them and, as Heat Wave lowered his staff, Grant grabbed it with both hands.
Thomas stared as the expected scream of pain from Grant didn’t come, nor did he fly off; rejected by the staff like Yating had. Grant said their power came through the staves, so hadn’t he rejected what he was by breaking his? Shouldn’t Heat Wave’s staff react as violently as it had with the panda?
Grant and the coyote pulled back and forth, not letting go of it while trying to wrench it out of the other’s grasp. Thomas wanted to go help. Without a staff of his own, without magic to help him, Grant was certain to lose, but he couldn’t move with this dagger in his side.
Wait, the symbols glowed. That meant magic, right? That had to be why he was so weak, not the knife itself. All he had to do was pull it out, and he’d be able to help. If he didn’t bleed out first. Was there any vitals stuff there that would cause him to lose a lot of—
The metallic snap was followed by something metal clanging on the ground. The wave of heat that followed dried the asphalt. Thomas stared, along with Grant and Heat Wave, each holding one piece of the metal staff, as a third softened the pavement under it enough it was sinking down. Then the cold returned.
“Kingsley,” Lullaby demanded, sounding dismayed and fearful, “what’s going on?”
“Help!” came the strained reply from the vole. The fireball between him and Gilbert had grown to three feet, and with a grunt of concentration, the armadillo took a step forward. The ball spread more against the wall Magnet was generating.
A note rang out and Thomas felt soothed as more followed. Everything was fine, the melody said, it was safe to rest, to sleep. His eyes snapped open with a cry of pain.
“That enough,” Grant said.
Thomas watched Gilbert stagger back. The fireball was gone.
“No!” the raccoon yelled, followed by the snap of breaking wood.
A wave passed over Thomas, and all sounds vanished. Light rushed behind Magnet. Her mouth moved silently, and she gesticulated from Grant to the coyote, then Lullaby. The vole stared at the kangaroo, his expression turning from anger to fear.
“—before he gets his hands on our staves, too!” Light yelled in the vole’s ear, causing him to jerk. She grabbed him and forced him to look at her. “Get us the fuck away from here, Now!”
The vole looked at the broken staves on the ground, then wrapped an arm around the vixen’s waist. He raised his staff over his head, and everything metal not secured slid toward them. Grant ran, but only made it five long steps in their direction before the metal was flung away and the two of them took off in the air.
Thomas smiled to himself as he watched them vanish into the distance. Wouldn’t it be amazing to fly?
And on that dreamy thought, darkness finally claimed him.",
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"title": "Faith in the Family, CH 39",
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