AM 7: Durance, chapter 8 (Patreon)

“I think we found the durance,” Darren said.

Kavon's gritted his teeth and held the magic shield as power rained over them. “You don’t say.”

When Darren had felt threatened and had used Bennu’s power for the first time, he had created a storm that had flooded the street with magic, but that had been nothing compared to the power that surged and swirled around them now. Bennu and the monstrous guide clung to each other, huge talons, ripping at one another. Neither seemed to be able to make headway, and Kavon could see why. There was no strategy or battle plan, only the cold fury of two powerful creatures trying to destroy each other.

“Darren, call him back,” Kavon yelled over the roar of the wind. Several people on the street were holding onto light posts and trees in an attempt to stay on their feet, but Kavon’s shield held out the worst of the storm.

“What?”

“Call him back. He needs to disengage. He's not winning.”

Darren's face twisted with fear, and their bond was suddenly blown open. For a moment, Kavon felt as if he’d been cut in two and existed in separate bodies. All of Darren's hopes and fears and memories, his frustrations and his ambition—all existed inside Kavon. “Pull him back!” Kavon yelled.

Darren tilted his head to the side, and a sense of recognition and awareness washed through the bond. Darren raised his hand toward the sky and mentally pushed against Bennu’s rage. Bunnu’s frustration and fury washed back along the bond, and Darren mentally sank under the waves of emotion, but Kavon gritted his teeth and shoved back the cold certainty that Bennu was losing and needed to disengage. They were at an impasse with neither of them controlling the emotions that raged through the bond, but then it was as if Darren came back online.  He curled his fingers around Kavon’s arm and added his own determination to Kavon’s. Bennu gave a barking cry and beat his wings against the magical storm.

“Pull him back!” Kavon struggled to maintain his concentration on the magical shields. 

Bennu wanted this fight. He wanted to kill, to punish this being who he considered so reckless and dangerous. Anger flowed through the bond along with broken memories. Humans scattered across a bloody field, their bodies broken. Children twisted and deformed. Horses wearing rough leather tack that had come from some primitive civilization fled through the carnage. The monster had done this. The memories were rich and powerful. This was the monster’s fault.

Darren touched the tattoo he wore. Kavon followed suit. Bennu had vowed to listen and to give Kavon the right to veto any foolish decisions, and right now Bennu was acting a fool. His emotion drove him so hard that he didn’t see that the monster was doing as much if not more damage to Bennu. Darren rose to his knees and pressed his lips together as he struggled to push his determination upstream against the tidal forces of Bennu’s rage. Kavon’s shield turned flickered.

With a cry, Bennu broke away and flew up into the dark sky. Dark gray storm clouds swirled in an impossible pattern, and the wind picked up every mote of dust, every leaf and twig and stray cigarette butt and sent them all airborn where they were ripped apart down to the tiniest particles to become a haze so thick it resembled fog that crawled along the ground. 

“Find a blind spot!” Kavon yelled. They needed a weakness. They needed to distract the beast so that Bennu could attack from the rear.

Bennu soared straight up into the sky, and at first Kavon thought that he was fleeing the battlefield even though Bennu's rage still flooded the bond. Instead, thunder cracked open the sky and a new power filled the air.

Darren stood, either to better see the conflict or to better direct the fight. It took every ounce of Kavon’s control to not grab Darren and pull him back down into the relative safety of the car’s shadow. Instead, Kavon stood next to him and pushed the shield upward. Without his bull or Bennu to channel magic toward him, he would not be able to maintain the shield for long. But Kavon was unwilling to distract Bennu for even a moment. 

The new-comer, whatever it was, had a power that equaled Bennu's own. Kavon still couldn’t see whatever guide had joined the fray, but the monster clearly could. He twisted and dove to try and reach the enemy, and in the meantime, Bennu attacked its back. 

Surprisingly, the monster ignored Bennu, leaving him to rip the illusory flesh from the monster's body. The monster tried to catch whatever enemy was tormenting it from below. It swept its long, flat tail through the air, and Kavon felt the impact as magic was literally slapped out of somebody. He only recognized Pochi when the small hummingbird righted himself not far above Kavon's head. The bird hovered in midair and fluffed itself up into an angry ball, before all of his feathers flattened out and he darted straight for the monster again.

The magic that had separated from Pochi during the attack took several moments to fade from Kavon’s awareness. Seeds in the earth reached up. Bugs soaked it in, the bacteria in the ground flourished in those precious moments before Pochi’s magic died and became a different power—something only magic users could twist into their spells.

As Pochi flew up like an arrow aimed at a mythical monster, the creature dove to meet him. Its face was covered in bone armor that made it look like a living skeleton, a monster out of a children's book. It opened its huge eagle beak as it lunged towards Pochi, but the hummingbird darted away at the last moment, flying backwards in its escape. 

Bennu chose that moment of distraction to grab the monster’s long pointed ear. 

The monster screamed and so much magic flowed from the wound that Kavon's shields flickered and then died. Without them, winds like from a hurricane blasted them from every direction. Kavon turned his back to the storm and pinned Darren against the car so he would have some protection. 

Above them, the monster twisted in the air, his tail slapping at Bennu before he turned his gaze towards Kavon and Darren. Kavon shouted a warning and then the monster falling straight at them, his beak open. 

“Run!” Kavon shouted. He grabbed Darren's hand and jerked him away from the car half a second before the monster landed on it, crushing the roof as easily as if it had been cardboard. Darren's focus remained on the flight overhead, so Kavon decided to be the sane person on the ground. He dragged Darren to a van and mentally called on Bennu for help.

Pochi came to their aid instead.

Kavon knew that the size of a guide had nothing to do with its power, but he was still stunned at the amount of damage Pochi inflicted. The small hummingbird left gashes all over the monster’s stomach and legs. Bennu might be the flashier fighter, but the wounds he inflicted were healing as quickly as he could inflict them. Pochi did real, lasting damage. 

The little hummingbird had either named himself after or had inspired an Aztec war God, and for the first time, Kavon could see the connection. He was blindingly fast, confusing the enemy with his aerial acrobatics. But he was also wielded terrible power. When he impacted the monster, the earth herself rumbled with magic.

Kavon jerked Darren behind a wall as the monster turned its gaze toward them again.

“Blind him,” Darren shouted over the roar of the storm. “Blind him for Pochi!”

The bond bulged. Kavon didn't have a different way of explaining it. It was as if too much information flowed between them and the connection felt strained, pregnant. But slowly, Bennu shifted his tactics.

He angled his body and flapped those nine-, ten-, twelve-foot wings madly in the creature's face. Guides learned to experience the world as the animals they joined with did, and this beast was clearly no different. With his eyes effectively covered, he listed to the side and began to lose altitude. 

Pochi redoubled his attacks, his small form darting in and out. But the beast wasn't done yet. It twisted and brought that broad tail around. Again he slammed Pochi. Thunder rolled and Pochi’s body fell towards the earth, landing on the pavement where he lay still like a little bit of fluff. The winds ruffled his feathers, but other than that small movement, he was still.

A barking cry cracked across the sky and Bennu’s anger filled all of reality. 

With no shield, Kavon knew they had to retreat. He pulled at Darren, but once again Darren was lost inside Bennu's anger. Pain. Grief. All of it crashed down on them through the bonds, and Kavon struggled to close off the empathy that joined them. The emotions made his bones ache, and he fell to one knee.

Then his bull was there. It stood over Kavon and snorted and shook its horns, and then it started to grow. Once before, Bennu had forced on the bull to take the form of an ancient wooly mammoth, and now the bull chose that form for himself. He grew larger until he towered over both of them and trumpeted his fury. 

For the first time, Kavon truly felt his bull’s emotions. These people were his, and he would not move from them. If he died with his people, he would move to the next world with them, but he would not abandon them to this thing that did not belong. It was alien. It should not exist here. It belonged to elsewhere. Kavon rested his hand against his guide’s huge leg and power flowed into him.

Kavon stood, and got a hand under Darren's arm and pulled him up as well. “We have to run!”

“Bennu!” Darren's voice had an edge of desperation, and his emotions roiled. It was almost enough to send Kavon to his knees again. However, they had to move. They couldn’t survive this battlefield.

A few mundanes clung to sheltered places—one in the shadow of an old tree, another behind a low brick wall. However, they would be invisible to a guide. They were part of Earth in a way that shamans were not. Shamans carried power from the spirit plane and the ifrit would see that power like fairy lights in the darkness.

Kavon did not want to be here when the monster decided to put those lights out.

“Move. Now!” Kavon half dragged Darren several feet before Darren started moving of his own volition. They ran for the SUV. The protections Kavon had built into it wouldn’t hold for long—not against the sort of power these three were throwing around. However, it would give them some protection as they fled.

“We have to kill it!” Darren said as he ran at Kavon’s side.

“Great! How?”

The blast of frustration Darren sent through the bond was an answer in itself. He didn’t know how. Bennu didn’t either. They would have to figure it out later because right now Kavon wanted to make sure that neither of them ended up like those humans from the fragment of memory he’d gotten from Bennu. Those broken bodies with their dead eyes staring up at the sky had been a fairly unambiguous warning about what would happen to people who got caught between battling ifrit.

They were almost at the SUV when Kavon felt his bull ripped away. He turned, his hands up to construct a quick and dirty shield. He hadn’t replenished all his power, but using the living magic around them, he could do that much. His bull was flying through the air, his back arched as if some great hand was dragging him away. While Kavon watched, the bull stopped, and then, still in his wooly mammoth form, he fell the thirty or forty feet to the ground. 

The whole moment took place in an unnatural silent. Neither Kavon’s guide or the ifrit monster made a sound, and Bennu’s cries had turned weak and plaintive. 

When the creature turned to stare at Kavon, Kavon knew his shield wouldn’t hold the beast more than a few seconds. “Run! Get to the SUV and get it started!” Kavon yelled as he cast his power out. He made his shield resemble a net, something to cling to the ifrit and tangle around him. It would slow the beast down. 

The bird monster flew toward him, and Kavon braced himself. When it hit the net, Kavon had to hold it, even if he could only manage a few seconds. It would be enough for Darren to get the SUV started and turned around. And if the man had one ounce of common sense, he would hit the accelerator, but Kavon didn’t count on that. Darren would wait for him.

But none of that mattered if Kavon couldn’t hold the creature long enough to give Darren a few seconds to maneuver. The creature hit Kavon’s shields, but instead of dragging Kavon and his shield with him, the monster tore through them like they were no more than a cobweb.

“Darren!” Kavon screamed, but it was too late. The bird had the SUV in his claws and he threw it into the corner of an ultramodern hotel. The side of the SUV caved in and bricks fell from the damaged building.

Kavon couldn’t breathe. Fear squeezed his heart as Bennu drove straight at the creature. It turned that ugly bone face toward Bennu and then the monster vanished. In the space that existed between two seconds, the storm, the monster, the rain of magic and furious winds all evaporated. The cloud of debris slowly settled back down to the ground, and the sounds of car alarms and screaming people filled the air.

Kavon ignored all of it. He ran toward the SUV which was gray with dust from the crumbling edge of the building. The passenger side was crushed and all the windows were blown out. Kavon scrambled up onto one tire so he could reached the driver’s door, praying with more passion than he had since childhood.

He used his own magic to rip the door open, and inside he found Darren unconscious and dangling from a seat belt that was slowly strangling him. But he was alive. Kavon chose to focus on the sense of flickering life he could still feel from his lover’s broken body.

Chapter 9: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-9-22744305 

Chapter 10: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-10-22817775 

Chapter 11: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am-7-durance-11-22905312 

Chapter 12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/am7-durance-22974766