Clearly, neither of these guys had any interest in reminiscing over old times. Nor were they about to demand I surrender. Maybe they knew just how much they would be wasting their breath. Either way, they came at me in a coordinated rush. A rush that, a year earlier, would’ve left me dead on the ground before I could even start to react. On the night of the Exodus from Crossroads, Patrick himself had been fast enough that Avalon, Shiori, and I all would’ve been dead without Harper.

  But things changed. Through the time I’d spent dealing with all those rifts, I had killed several things that added to my speed. By this point, even without actively using my Seosten boost, I was quick enough to react. And definitely quick enough to make these guys realize I wasn’t some punching bag for them to put down.

  Patrick, the black guy who always wore a dark suit over a red shirt and looked like he should have been sitting in an office somewhere, was first. His left hand snapped out toward me and flung a bunch of tiny blue marbles through the air. At the same time, he ducked down to the side while his other hand rose with a small pistol crossbow. Without hesitation, he shot four glowing energy darts at me.

  Then there was October, the non-Calendar October. Just like Patrick, he looked the same as I remembered him, a blonde guy with long hair wearing a Hawaiian shirt and loose white pants. These partners really did look like they went out of their way to appear as different from one another as possible. And yet, they were obviously very much in sync. As evidenced by the way October jumped forward just as Patrick leaned over. The man landed on Patrick's raised and extended arm, the one he used to throw those marbles, just long enough to launch himself forward off of it. That sent him clear over my head, leaving a trail of glowing silver energy in his wake.

  Instantly, I felt weaker. Not physically. I felt a big chunk of my Necromancy energy get sucked right up out of me and into that glowing silver stuff. At the same time, the blue marbles that had been flung through the air exploded into large spinning balls of ghost-fire that quickly spread around me. And not just any normal ghost-fire, this stuff was the strongest I had ever seen.

  That was what these guys were doing, using these big ghost-fire balls to burn away any ghosts I might try to pull out, or already had with me, and draining my actual Necromancy energy itself so I couldn’t summon up any new ones. They wanted to cut me off from my strongest asset. And then, most likely, kill me before I could even try to get it back. They weren’t playing around now.

  But, that was okay, because I wasn't playing either. And not having my Necromancy didn't mean I was helpless. Not by a long shot. First, we had to deal with those crossbow energy bolts that Patrick had sent at us. Tabbris was on that. We didn’t trust the energy-absorption power, given those two would absolutely know about that. It had to be a trick, a way of trying to get me to let the bolts hit so I could absorb them, only for something to go wrong. We weren’t that dumb.

  Instead of trying to absorb the bolts, Tabbris sent a cloud of sand sweeping up and into their path, before abruptly making a portion of those bits of sand grow to the size of fist-sized rocks. That was just in time to make the bolts collide with the enlarged sand rocks. As soon as they did, we found out why letting them hit us would’ve been a bad idea. The ‘energy’ disappeared, revealing the smaller metal bolts inside. Metal bolts that had been hidden from my item sense. There was some sort of liquid inside the bolts, which it injected out onto the rocks. I wasn’t sure exactly what the liquid was meant to do if it had hit me, but something told me it wouldn’t be good.

  Meanwhile, as Tabbris countered those darts, I was focused on October. He was landing in a spot that would’ve been right behind us, but I had already pivoted that way. As the blond man brought his hands together and swung them forward, a huge black and gold axe appeared in his grasp. But I was ready, my staff rising to intercept the thing right below the blade, against the shaft. I was strong enough to lift over ten thousand pounds by that point, even without extra boosting. And yet, October was clearly much stronger than that. Strong enough to completely blow through my resistance like I was made of tissue paper. The man would easily have cut me in half if I was relying entirely on matching my own strength against his on a one for one basis.

  So, it was probably a good thing I wasn’t relying solely on that. Instead, even as our weapons were about to clash, I used the power I’d taken from that Fomorian ape-croc monster to increase his axe’s resistance to motion. Suddenly, it was much harder for him to swing it, slowing the thing drastically. And I wasn’t done cheating. The second my staff collided with his, I made it larger. The staff abruptly grew to about twice its normal length, which shoved October’s weapon, along with his arm, up and out of the way. Before he could recover from that, I used my object-pause on his axe, making it freeze in midair while his arm was out at full extension away from himself.

  Obviously, this wouldn't buy me more than a second, if that. This guy was too good to let himself be left open and vulnerable like that for any longer. It wasn't like he was lacking in his own powers he could use to counter what I was doing. But, he had to actually take the precious second he needed to use them first, and that was long enough for me to take advantage of.

  Launching myself upward, I twisted in the air, slamming my left foot as hard as I could into the man’s chest as it was oh-so-briefly exposed, with his right arm extended out of the way, and the left not quite in place to block me yet. Except it wasn’t just a simple kick. Just as my foot collided with him, Mountebank finished what he had been working on. Namely, switching with Extra. She, in turn, instantly activated her own power to magnify the physical effects of anything we were doing by several times. So, just like that, instead of kicking the guy with about ten thousand pounds worth of force, we were kicking him with roughly thirty thousand.

  That was enough to take the man off his feet and send him tumbling backwards in a haphazard roll, wheezing in surprised pain. The axe, which was still paused, stayed right where it was and just floated there in midair. That single kick wouldn’t be enough to stop October for good, but at least I’d made an impression. Now, he definitely knew he wasn’t mercy killing some helpless student. I was a hell of a lot stronger than I’d been last year, even without my Necromancy.

  Patrick hadn’t exactly been still during all that. After shooting those darts and having them blocked by the enlarged sand, he was already coming at us from the other side. But that was why I had pivoted while leaping up to kick October. The motion brought me back around in midair to face the other man, just as he sent a rolling ball of what looked like acid right underneath me. Jumping over that wasn’t an accident. My item-sense was exact enough to tell us exactly how the man had been standing, so when he extended his arms to point right at the space where we were standing, Tabbris had figured out he was trying to send something dangerous into that spot.

  All of which meant we jumped right over the incoming ball of acid, kicking October in the process. It might’ve been worth it to leave him there for the acid to hit, but given how well these two worked as partners, we really didn’t think Patrick would’ve sent that acid there if it had any chance of actually hurting the other man. October was almost certainly completely immune to it.

  Still in the air as the acid ball passed by underneath me, I extended one hand, using my special glove to summon Princess Cuddles out of that private lake dimension. The enormous shark appeared inside that bubble of water, colliding with Patrick almost before he knew what was happening. And she wasn’t alone. Eurso emerged right behind her, the armored raptor snarling dangerously as he lunged to grab onto the Boscher man’s left arm. The very same arm he had just been lifting to shoot one of those crossbow bolts at Princess Cuddles. The bolts went sailing off safely to the side, and the Great White shark slammed bodily into him. Her mouth closed around him, trying to bite the guy in half, but he was too tough for that, and her teeth simply bounced off. Still, he felt it, given the way he grunted and stumbled backward. At least, he stumbled as much as he could while Eurso had a tight grip on his arm. Like a dog with a bone.

  Unfortunately, this bone could fight back. Just as Eurso started to tighten his grip, there was a jolt of electricity and the raptor abruptly released, stumbling away with a whine while shaking his head. That jolt had clearly hurt. Which was just another thing I’d have to make Patrick pay for.

  By that point, obviously, I would’ve fallen back to the ground again. But Extra was using her power to solidify air, so we just landed on it and stood like that, a few feet off the floor. My hand was still extended toward Patrick, as the rest of my shiver of sharks emerged to back up Princess Cuddles and Eurso. All of them had a very basic version of the armor the raptor had. I’d experimented with that during the vacation ‘rift.’ Unfortunately, I could only summon a little bit of it at a time, with long breaks needed in between. So, I had been spreading out uses of it in order to give every shark at least a little armor before expanding that. As of now, the sharks had armor over their most vulnerable spots. Mostly across where their brains, hearts, and stomachs were. I hadn’t wanted to put them into full combat until they were totally armored, but Gaia needed us.

  Besides, part of me really wanted to shove Patrick and October’s faces in the fact that taking my Necromancy away still completely didn’t stop me from having an army I could call on. The jerks.

  So, Patrick was beset on all sides by various somewhat-armored sharks, as well as a very-armored raptor, as soon as Eurso shook off that jolt of electricity and jumped in to back up his aquatic siblings. Worse, as far as Patrick himself was concerned, Extra was taking advantage of another power I’d picked up from the rifts. This one came from the rift where Rebecca, Eiji, and I had been swarmed and nearly killed by an army of monsters, before Sun Wukong showed up. One of the reasons those creatures had been such a pain was that they had these floating sacks of flesh and eyes that seemed to share every creature’s power amongst the others. I’d managed to kill one of them, and while I couldn’t actually share powers that didn’t belong to me, I was able to channel them through my sharks and the raptor. And presumably others with some practice.

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  Extra used that to share her own abilities with them. Namely, the one that allowed her to absorb kinetic energy to turn into a physical boost, and the one that let her hit people with an electric jolt by touching them. She actually managed to send those powers through those guys. Which meant that every time Patrick tried to hit them with anything physical, they absorbed part of it and got stronger. Then, every time they tried to bite him, or crashed into him, he was hit by another jolt of electricity. None of it was enough to put the guy down, but every little bit added up, and distracted him.

  That distraction was a good thing, since October was back on his feet. Even as the man rose, I was already planting my foot against his own frozen axe (that five second pause was just running out) to kick off of and launch myself that way. A quick rocket-boost sped that up, sending me hurtling right at the guy. At the same time, I released my hold on my staff, pausing it so the thing froze in the air.

  Meanwhile, Tabbris snapped our right hand backward, summoning the energy disc to send it toward the floor just in front of Patrick. She held the thing just long enough to give it a bouncy power first, so it ricochetted off the ground, before turning gooey as it collided with his face. Now the man had to fight off a bunch of sharks and an angry dinosaur while his face was covered in slime.

  By that point, I was about a half-second away from slamming into October. Which was when he abruptly lifted his hand, summoning that axe of his before swinging it right at my incoming form. That… would’ve been a problem. Except I had been planning on him doing just that. Just as I was about to impale myself on that wicked-looking curved axe blade, I triggered my Seosten boost. Not to actually make myself even faster or stronger, at least not right then, but to boost my reaction time. With that boost, I was quick enough to use a certain other power in the exact instant that the blade cut through my shirt and started to touch my skin. It penetrated just barely enough to draw the faintest line of blood, before I possessed the small piece of wood that I had stuck against the blade.

  That was the first real reason I had kicked off the thing a moment earlier. I’d summoned that small block of wood, using the power that allowed me to move objects all around my body to put it against my foot. As I kicked off the floating axe, I’d pushed that piece of wood onto the blade. October had been in too much of a hurry to notice. Now, just as the axe started to cut into me, I possessed the wooden block, disappearing into it. And that was when Extra solidified the air we had just been in, so the axe collided with that with enough force to actually cut the small wood block in half, sending both pieces flying past either side of October. We were in the left piece.

  Just as the piece we were in made it past October, while he was still reacting to what had just happened and realizing that he hadn’t actually managed to cut me in half, I emerged back into open air, landing on my feet. He pivoted instantly, swinging at me. But I was swinging too, my empty hands grasping nothing. At least, at first. And that was when I used the other reason I had physically kicked off the man’s axe a moment earlier. Because, as I’d learned during my little vacation time while training with Avalon (she’d make all of us really earn our break), I didn’t actually have to have held an item within the past few seconds to call it back to me. As long as no one else was holding it at the time, just touching the object counted. Which included kicking it.

  So, in what amounted to a blink of an eye, our positions were dramatically reversed. Suddenly, it went from October swinging a huge axe at my face, while I was swinging nothing at all, to him grasping empty air while I held his own weapon and continued the swing I had already started.

  Even that might not have been enough. After all, the guy really was a strong Boscher, with plenty of experience, and a lot of powers to work with. But we weren’t done stacking the deck against him. At the same time that I had summoned the man's own weapon right out of his hands, Tabbris was cancelling the pause on my staff. The staff that I had very deliberately aimed this way while triggering its kinetic burst just before temporarily freezing it. The instant it wasn’t paused anymore, the staff rocketed forward, right at October as he pivoted around to face me.

  There was no warning, and no hesitation. I couldn’t afford to give the man either, not right now. The staff rebounded off the back of his head with enough force, while he was swinging empty air now that his weapon was gone, to make the man stumble forward a step. Just that single step. Slight as it was, that was enough. I continued my swing, using the strength and speed from the boost I’d activated a second or two earlier to move faster than he could react to. And then… then I cut right through his neck, decapitating the man with his own axe, and sending his head bouncing.

  I tasted that death. I felt it rush into me. Not the briefly crippling way I had as a Boscher. This was like food. A delicious feast all for me. It was distracting, yet not enough to stop me from noticing Patrick’s reaction. The man screamed at his partner’s death, sending out a concussive blast of energy in all directions that made the sharks and Eurso go flying. He was absolutely enraged, hurling himself at me in a blur of motion. He came at me so quickly that any normal Boscher, still affected by the whole killgasm thing, would’ve been caught completely flatfooted.

  But I wasn’t a normal Boscher. I wasn’t a Boscher at all, when you got right down to it. I was an Ankou-fae, and I was already reacting. Pivoting that way, I hurled the axe. Once again, that wouldn’t have been enough on its own. Patrick was too strong, too quick, even in his sudden grief.

  So, it was a good thing for me that he’d used that blast to free himself a second earlier, because Extra channeled her kinetic energy-absorption through the sharks and Eurso again. She couldn’t take all of it, and what was left was still enough to send the animals flying. But the man had intended it to completely vaporize them. Instead, it managed to boost me far beyond what I was already capable of. When I released that axe, it flew so hard and so fast that the thing completely bisected Patrick in mid-leap.

  Before the axe could travel much further and hit anyone else, I recalled it, along with my staff. Then I stood there, breathing heavily with a bloody axe that was as big as I was (the blade itself was about two feet) in one hand, and my staff in the other. A headless October lay behind me, and both halves of Patrick’s bisected body lay in front of me, as I absorbed both of their deaths.

  The sense of movement coming from behind made me pivot, axe raised. I caught a brief glimpse of a man stepping out of the wall there, and started to swing. But he raised both hands and called out, “The red lady can sing if she wants to! Whoa, whoa, the red lady can sing!”

  Right, the code that meant he was one of the guards on our side. I stopped myself from throwing that axe again, and took him in quickly. He was a skinny Latino guy, with short, bright red-dyed hair, dark jeans, and a light gray turtleneck. There were flintlock pistols in both of his hands.

  Before doing anything else, I took in the rest of the room, ready to jump in to help the others. But they didn’t need it. The fight was over. Marian, Avalon, Miranda, and Aylen had all dealt with the guys who attacked them. With, it seemed, help from the other rebel-aligned guard, since there was an unfamiliar black woman wearing clothes similar to this guy, standing next to Miranda.

  We all met up again, breathing hard. Marian thanked the guy who had come up behind me, since he had apparently taken a couple shots from his hidden position to distract her own opponent long enough for her to get the kill.

  “I would have intervened in your fight,” he informed me, “but you seemed to have it in hand.” He nodded toward the woman. “That’s Harris. I’m Rico. Glad you guys finally made it in here.”

  There was a lot I wanted to say to that, but I focused on the matter at hand. “Any more threats?”

  Harris shook her head. She was a tall woman, standing just over six feet, and clearly quite muscular. Her hair was a neat afro. “Not exactly. But there’s another problem. We can’t get Gaia out.”

  I frowned, as did the others. It was Avalon who spoke. “What do you mean, we can’t get her out? We’re getting her out, right now.”

  The two former guards exchanged glances, before Rico explained, “There’s a spell on the tube. A series of spells, really. They were designed by Litonya, Ruthers, and Sigmund. If you get anywhere near it without the proper counters, the ones only they know, you’ll get every memory in your head zapped into nothing. You’ll be a drooling vegetable. I mean no memories at all. You won’t remember how to talk, anything about your life, nothing. It’ll be like you’re an infant again.”

  Avalon cursed loudly, looking at the tube. “We are taking her out of here, today, right now. There has to be a way.”

  “We were working on it,” Harris murmured, “but there’s just no way to do it, not right now, and not without finding someone who knows a hell of a lot more about memory magic than we do.”

  That was when a new voice spoke up. “Lest you shake your fist, I believe I may assist.”

  We all turned, to see a cloaked figure standing there. They wore a long crimson robe with gold trim, with clearly unnatural shadows around the face that left just enough exposed to let us see olive skin and dark, curled hair. Their eyes were mismatched green and blue. I couldn’t tell if their body was male or female, thanks to the robe, and a rather androgynous face.

  “H-He-Hecate?” Harris stammered, stumbling back a step before going to one knee seemingly by reflex.

  “None of that now,” Hecate insisted. “I’m not here for a bow. My apprentice has been held long enough, through a year that has been quite rough. I will disable the spell, and open her cell. But we must work with haste, for my arrival here will be traced.”

  Tabbris actually managed to speak then, through my voice. “Y-you’re… you’re Hecate, like, the actual Hecate?” She sounded completely overwhelmed.

  “I have been given many names, but that is one,” they acknowledged with a nod. “Now I must work.

  “While you prepare to run.”

  Joke Tags: Man? Teach Is Gonna Be Annoyed That His Descendant? October? Turned Out To Be A Loyalist Through And Through