Hey all! Enjoy today's chapter -- it's a quick one, but hopefully a fun read. I was going to try to throw in another 500 words or so, but the truth is that sometimes I'm writing a chapter and I'll get to 2.5 - 3k words, and I'll start to get stressed about the book's length. Having a few shorter chapters in there gives me a little more freedom to explore longer chapters when the scene calls for it.

See you Monday with the next one :)

-Plum

6 – Thunderous Flight

Andy stood outside, looking up and down the street, as Omar and the others broke the locks on the sandwich shop door and then filed inside. He could hear them talking strategy as he listened to the wolves’ baying howls: Omar and Bella would stand before the door, using the defensive maneuvers that had come with their shield skills. Trevor would stand to the side, inside the door, and cleave down on the wolves’ flanks. Chani and Delilah would use the counter for cover and try to support them with magic.

Andy scanned the parking lot, trying to think of the best way to capitalize on the element of surprise. His gaze drifted up to the roof of the strip mall. Nodding to himself, he cast Deepsmoke Shroud, just in case the wolves or their beast-man leader were somehow able to see him. Then, as the smoke enveloped and hid him from view, he broke into a run, charging parallel to the line of shops.

When he was near his top speed, he cast Smoke Drift, and then he jumped. Tingling mana coursed through him, and it felt like the air grew thick around him. He soared upward, his muscles powerful enough to propel his magically lightened body fifteen feet into the air. His momentum did the rest of the work, carrying him forward like a kite as the air lifted him further. He couldn’t stop chuckling with glee as he cleared the roofline and then settled down on the debris-strewn roof.

As his spell faded and his usual mass returned, he walked above the stucco façade until he was standing above the sandwich shop door. From that vantage, he looked up the street, gazing over the ruined cars and rooftops to the west. He saw dozens of blackened, charred buildings—evidence of earlier fires—and he got his best glimpse of the downtown skyline yet.

Tucson wasn’t known for having true skyscrapers, but there were still half a dozen tall buildings down there, and Andy swore he saw a gigantic shape shifting along the top of the tallest one—a mirror-windowed building that was mostly blackened by a terrible fire. He wondered if it was the flying monster he and Omar had glimpsed before. He squinted into the orange-streaked sky, shielding his eyes from the setting sun, but before he could get a better look, the howls and barks drew his eyes to the street, and he saw the pack of wolves tearing toward the strip mall.

They weren’t like the ones he’d killed out in the desert—those that the Whistler had controlled. These were more burly, and their fur looked more like quills than hair. They had long, leering snouts, bright yellow eyes, and tongues that lolled over fangs that resembled knives. They snarled and snapped at each other, competing to be the first to reach their quarry.

As they ran, they shouldered each other and refused to give ground, to the point where they leaped over vehicles rather than veer from their straight course. In one case, a wolf tried to jump over an overturned SUV and smashed into it, sending the vehicle grinding over the pavement with a shower of sparks. The animal seemed unfazed, picking itself up and rejoining the chase.

“Damn,” Andy muttered, suddenly second-guessing their intention to stand and fight. Omar and the others were banking on the monstrous wolves to funnel through the doorway, but what if they just smashed through all the windows? He gripped Scirocco and waited—it was too late to flee; even if they went out the back of the building, they just weren’t nearly as fast as the monstrous beasts. The wolves were seconds away, but he looked past them, scanning the street for the beast-man.

Just as he was ready to give up and focus on the pack of charging monsters, Andy saw him—a humanoid figure squatting atop a city bus, watching the chaos unfold from two hundred yards away. He wore a leather cape that fluttered slightly on a gust of wind, and just as Trevor and Delilah had said, he clutched a big recurve bow in his hands. Then, the wolves hit the parking lot, and Andy had to look away.

The monstrous animals had to be moving at forty miles per hour, and they covered the distance from the curb to the shop in a pair of heartbeats. Luckily, Omar and the others were far from helpless, and Andy heard the man roar out a challenge as a line of blazing white fire erupted on the sidewalk before the shop. The wolves slid to a stop, balking at the bright flames, but they didn’t give up; they had their prey in their sights and, growling and snarling, they charged Omar and Bella.

“Good going, Omar,” Andy breathed, watching the wolves focus on the open door, avoiding the fire-covered sidewalk and the big, dust-covered windows. He moved to the side, trying not to let the frantic snarls, scratching claws, and yells make him careless. He could feel surges of mana, too, but the only evidence of spells being thrown, other than Omar’s fire, was the occasional flash of light—hard to detect in the late afternoon sunlight.

At the edge of Omar’s fire, Andy cast Smoke Drift again, then dropped to the pavement, gliding like a bit of ash caught in an updraft. When his feet touched down, he turned to face the throng of baying, roaring, snarling wolves and cast Cinderstorm Blast. Hot mana flooded his lungs, expanding his chest almost painfully, and then he exhaled a cone of fiery black smoke that billowed over the wolves and roiled against the side of the building.

As the wolves’ snarls became more panicked than hungry, Andy charged into his smoke and went to work with Scirocco. The spear was like a living thing in his hands, lashing out, piercing spiny coats, ripping into muscle, and shattering bones. Every so often, one of the weapon’s magical effects triggered, and flames or venom poured into the deep wounds Andy inflicted.

Even without Scirocco’s magic, the spear’s bite was terrible thanks to Andy’s Balefire Lance enchantment. Black flames sheathed the razored spear-blade, and they sank into lupine flesh, burning away fur and eating into the flesh of his foes. The wolves were strong, and they seemed resistant to the heat of Andy’s smoke, but they were nevertheless blinded by it. That being the case, Andy moved among them with impunity.

It was a wild, undulating melee, and the wolves barreled into and over each other. They lunged and swiped at the smoke. Andy might have been hit if he weren’t so quick—if he weren’t in his element. Inside his hot smoke, he was like a ghost. He could see with perfect clarity. Superfluous details were removed from his gray-tinted, monochromatic view of the smoke-filled landscape. Only living things were highlighted with color, and as such, were clear, easy targets for Scirocco’s bite.

When half the wolves lay dead before him, and two more were piled inside the doorway thanks to his companions’ efforts, Scirocco finally unleashed his rarest effect—a lightning strike. Thunder boomed, rattling the windows of the strip mall, and a bolt of blue lightning lanced into the wolf Andy had stabbed. It convulsed with the blinding blast, dead too quickly to even whimper. When the bolt faded and Andy’s vision cleared, he saw that the remaining wolves—four of them—had fled.

He charged out of the smoke, leaped atop a nearby pickup truck, and stared toward where he’d seen the beast-man. He spotted him just in time to see him lowering his bow—and realized his mistake. Whistling out of the sky, a black arrow slammed into Andy’s chest, punching through his drake-hide coat and sinking deep into right pectoral—and deeper. He stumbled back, furious with himself for not seeing the attack coming, for not dodging.

The beast-man blew some kind of horn, and the remaining wolves stopped their retreat, charging toward Andy from fifty yards away. Maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe Andy’s Grit kicked in, but he hardly felt the wound. When he tried to brandish Scirocco, it hurt like hell, though, and he knew he couldn’t maintain a prolonged battle using the spear. His instincts said to run—to get back to the shop and let the others defend the door.

Something fiery burned in his chest, though—anger, embarrassment, or some mix of the two—and he hefted the spear, switching his grip as he hauled it back. “Okay, buddy,” he hissed through a grimace of pain. “Kill that bastard.” With that, he hurled the spear with all his might, ignoring the way the arrow ripped his flesh and his muscles as he did it.

Andy hadn’t practiced throwing his spear much; he had the knowledge of the form from the training the System had granted him, but none of that mattered. Once per day, Scirocco had the ability to perform something called Thunderous Flight. When Andy threw him at the beast-man, Scirocco shimmered with electrically charged mana, then flashed, ripping through the air like an honest-to-God lightning bolt.

The beast-man tried to dodge, but he’d barely bent his legs to leap when the spear slammed home, striking him full in the chest with an impact that boomed off the nearby buildings. The thunderclap was so loud that car windows exploded, storefronts shattered, and the wolves abandoned their charge, yipping and crying as they bolted down a nearby alley.

Andy grinned stupidly. His wound had gone from lancing pain to numbness. “Good job, Scirocco, you badass.” He took a step toward the front of the truck cab, ready to drop to the hood, but then the world tilted around him and he fell. His knees hit the rusty metal and slid, then he fell again, toppling onto the pavement. The last thing he saw, as the world spiraled into black, was a bright string of yellow System-generated text.