Industrial Strength Magic - Chapter 71: Closure

Chapter 71: Closure

Natalie peeled her gummy eyes open and came face to face with silk sheets, the likes of which she’d never experienced back home.

She pushed her head out of the sheets and glanced around, finding nothing but a single light left on in the main room.

“You guys awake?” Nat asked, dragging herself out of bed and stumbling toward the main room. I can’t believe I fell asleep in my overalls.

There was probably engine grease marking her bed now. The sheets were probably worth more than she’d been before she Triggered.

Well, at least I’ll know it’s my bed. Maybe she could try not giving a crap, like Heather and Perry seemed to be able to do. Those two seemed totally jaded to luxury in a way that made her poor heart clench up violently.

She stepped out into the main room, where a savory smell lingered in the air.

“Guys?” There were spatters of grease on the stove, a lingering scent in the air, and her two teammates were nowhere to be seen. Did they make dinner and leave?

Nat’s stomach grumbled at the thought of food, and so she checked the fridge, pleasantly surprised to find that they’d left her a portion of…whatever this is.

Nat read the note and checked her watch. The sun didn’t come up for another half hour or so. She’d panic then. In the meantime, she was hungry.

Can’t rescue your friends on an empty stomach, Nat thought, microwaving the dish before setting it on the dinner table and poking at it with a fork.

What is this? Nat thought, poking at the yellowish lumpy stuff that had a bit of wiggle and give to it, along with the weird curly brown things. She referred back to the note.

“Eggs…scrambled.”

These are eggs?Real eggs? Nat’s brows raised. Then what are these thin curly strips? They look like someone fried up a tapeworm. Kinda gross, actually.

They smelled okay.

Nat picked one up and took a delicate bite.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she convulsed in her chair.

“Oh my god.”

BLAM!

“EEK!” Natalie let out an unintentional squeak and jumped in place as the door slammed open.

Heather entered the room, her eyes red and watering, clothes burned, smudged and bloodstained as she marched into Nat’s room and slammed the door behind her.

Perry followed Heather into the living room and carefully closed the door. He looked similarly ragged, his burned clothes almost falling off, and what wasn’t falling off was covered in bloodstains.

“Are…you guys okay?” Nat asked.

“I’m fine, but Wraith’s gonna need some time to process. I’d let her sleep it off.” Perry said, slipping his shirt over his head and tossing it in the trash. “I’m gonna take a shower and try to get the smell of demon-blood off me. We’re gonna go shopping for clothes later tonight, if she’s still up for it.”

Natalie swallowed.

“What happened?” She asked, her guts twisting as she thought of Heather’s expression, a raw mix of grief and fury.

“Well…”

***Perry***

“Welcome to madame Kris’toluth’s Answers from the beyond.” An old woman’s voice echoed from behind a blind corner. The walls were covered in chintzy ‘occult’ paraphernalia to set a certain mood.

Perry could see the mould lines.

Matter of fact, all the fake occult stuff was based on what Earthlings considered occult, and not a single thing actually contained any essence. It was plastic.

Perry wasn’t going to hold the facade against this creature until he knew more, though. Actual magic ingredients were too valuable to use as decorations. Not when someone could walk in and out with a couple grand in materials in a matter of seconds.

“Come forward and meet old Kris’toluth. Acquire the answers you seek.”

Heather and Perry met each other’s gaze and shrugged.

Perry walked around the corner, and was met with a well-appointed room covered with embroidered silk and slightly more realistic chicanery. Old wood tables and drawers, with a megadeer skull as the centerpiece against the wall.

Is it bigger on the inside? Perry wondered, glancing around for any hint of a ritual that might be responsible for such feats. He couldn’t see one with a quick glance: If it existed, it was most likely buried under silk and fox skulls.

Sitting in the middle of the room was a hag: The demon’s legs were shriveled and about the size of a six-year old’s, crossed in front of her. She had a noirmal sized upper body, and a mouth that looked a couple sized too big for her, twisted into a permanent grimace.

“What answers do you seek?” She asked abruptly, seemingly impatient with Perry’s gawking.

Perry motioned to Heather, prompting her to speak.

“I’m looking for my father. He’s a shapeshifter who goes by the name of Karnos. He’s got blonde hair, and a habit of crawling into people’s noses and bursting out of the top of their skull.”

“Come, sit. Peer into my crystal ball and I shall perform a ritual to locate him…” She said, waving her hands mysteriously around the crystal ball in front of her. Perry could make out a bit of glue where the price sticker had been scraped away.

She began babbling a chant in Manitian that went a little something like this:

“OOOooh, dear Ka’thran, Please let High Tide tourist season be over soon, these stupid idiots are good money but if someone asks me how to get superpowers again, I’ll throttle someone.”

“Now,” she said, turning her attention back to Perry and Heather, switching to english. “Look into the crystal ball, focus on the person you want to find, and I shall take that energy and use it to home in on their aura.”

“Oh, come on, you didn’t even ask for a strand of hair or get out a Kinseeker nose. You’re not doing an actual ritual. It would be way faster if you just call your contact instead of texting them with your monkey feet.” Perry said.

Madame Kris’toluth froze and raised a brow, studying him carefully for a moment with predatory intensity.

“You’re Manitian aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m from Franklin City,” Perry said.

“Oh. OH!” Madame Kris’toluth’s eyes bulged as she pointed a gnarled finger at Perry, nearly hyperventilating. “You’re a Zauberer!” She snapped her fingers for a moment. “Paradox!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You can have whatever you want! Hold on a second!” She stood up, the withered legs stitched onto the front of her apron flopping around as she passed her cell phone from her feet to her hand, pressing it to her ear after quick-dialing someone.

The withered old woman paced back and forth as she spoke on the phone.

“Hey John, A Zauberer came in, looking to find someone. Yeah. Yeah, right away. The guy’s handle is Karnos. Shapeshifter, natural blonde, likes to target the nose and mouth.”

“Must be nice to have famous parents.” Heather said, looking at him reproachfully.

“Hey, don’t knock it while you’re benefitting from it.” Perry said with a shrug.

“uhuh,” Madame Kris’toluth said, nodding. “I see. Alright, I’ll look for him myself.”

“So your father’s not in Washington city. As far as we know, there’s no shapeshifter by that description in the city. If you don’t mind giving me a hair, I can run a search.”

“Payment in cash,” Perry said before Heather could pull out one of her hairs.

Kris clicked her tongue, her perpetual scowl unmoving.

“Of course,” she said, opening up a drawer full of actual ritual ingredients, many of which Perry couldn’t identify, but he knew enough of them to know they were a searching ritual, judging by the kinseeker nose and giant cornea.

There were at least three other ingredients that Perry didn’t know.

He used his connection to his magical computer hundreds of miles distant to make a quick sketch of the ingredients on MS paint.

She glanced at Perry suspiciously, and he gave his most innocent ‘definitely-not-stealing-your-spell’ look.

“The hair,” Madame Kris’toluth said, holding out her gnarled hand.

Heather deposited the red-gold strand in the creature’s hand, and she grinned for the first time, revealing an inhuman row of flesh-rending triangles.

“Thank you very much, my dear. One moment.”

Perry leaned forward as the woman began working.

A typical ritual involved a long complicated process that activated the essences and convinced them to blend together.

This demon’s method was more natural, reminding him a bit of his grandmother as the demon’s natural essence seeped into the half-dozen ingredients and teased out strands of essence above the giant cornea.

It’s odd though, she’s not using a couple of the ingredients. Perry thought. It was distinctly possible the ritual was a multi-stage one, as the more advanced rituals tend to be.

Madame Kris’toluth began chanting in a demonic tongue that Perry was only passably fluent in, so it took a moment for him to wrap his brain around it. It went a little something like this:

“Ka’thran, lord of Hags, Coyote of the Afterlife and Hoarder of souls, give me the power to tear through the veil and deliver this girl her father…that I might better devour this royal soul you’ve delivered to me, and offer his blood as a sacrifice to you.”

She winked at Perry.

“Oh, crap.” Perry muttered, his skin turning cold as the temperature dropped in the room by several degrees.

“Wha-ACK!” Heather’s question was cut off as Perry tackled her to the ground, desperately trying to get himself between her and the hag. He wasn’t quite fast enough.

A greyish bolt of raw, cold energy leapt from the hag’s hand and caught Heather in the chest, swerving around Perry’s interposed arm like it had a mind of its own.

Heather’s eyes instantly rolled back in her skull and she began convulsing violently on the ground. Her form destabilized and Anya was flung out of her writhing body, lodging itself in the nearby drywall.

“I’m getting the suspicion that you don’t actually like me!” Perry shouted, diving behind the table as the hag began weaving another spell.

“Your house has centuries of brutal conquest to answer for, and it made many enemies who will pay handsomely for your corpse. But that’s not why I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you because your soul will delight Ka’thran and make me the most powerful hag ever to exist!”

“You’re not even a little bit afraid of my family tracking you down?” Perry asked, listening as the hag approached the table he was ducking behind. her feet-hands were growing talons.

Click. Click.

“Not once I turn their own strength against them. They will retreat with their tails between their legs or suffer your fate.”

Okay then, Perry thought.

Perry lunged forward and up, catching the hag’s scrying table on his shoulder, flipping it over and slamming it into the hag herself, rushing her like a linebacker.

The hag let out a demonic curse, sending a ray of white-hot power through the thin wood of the table and past his face.

Perry snapped a leg off the table before kicking it aside, revealing the hag’s transformation. Her maw was growing wider, her body unfolding into something massive and deadly. Her arms were easily a foot longer, and her fingers were tipped with inch-long claws designed to tear apart mortal bodies.

“You should play basketball.” Perry said, looking up at her.

Of course, the modern Inter-City Basketball Association disallowed supers of any variety from competing, but the point stood.

The demon cocked a brow and reached for him, and Perry parried with his makeshift table-leg club.

“Ow,” Kris hissed for a moment, shaking out her taloned hand as if it’d fallen asleep. “Did you bless that table leg?”

“Idunno.” Perry shrugged, mentally directing his spare suits to converge at his location. He glanced over at Heather, who was still twitching on the floor.

“no, stop , no, stop , stop, stop,” She said between panted breaths as she twitched on the floor.

Perry felt a cold anger settle over him.

“What did you do to her?”

POW!

A bolt of energy flew from the hag’s fingertips and fizzled against the table leg Perry interposed, followed by a swing at his head, which he deflected, a disembowling strike Perry didn’t see coming that was warded off by his HP, and a shoulder check to the face that sent him reeling backwards.

HP: 4

“You’ve got some strange magics, boy.” Kris’toluth said, shaking out her claws and glancing at his shredded shirt and the unblemished skin beneath it.

“What. Did you do. To my friend?” Perry asked, dipping a finger in the blood dripping from his nose and scribing an angelic symbol on his shirt.

Intentionally modifying the design of his shirt should reinforce it somewhat. Drawing something a hag found offensive was just a bonus.

“Gah,” Kris’toluth squinted, as if Perry had just become uncomfortable to look at. “I gave her what she wanted. I reunited her with her father. The arrogant fool’s dead. Been dead for months.”

She’s possessed, Perry thought, glancing between Heather’s convulsing body and Anya, an idea brewing.

Unfortunately Perry didn’t have time to act on it as the massive hag charged him, against, battering him against the wall.

Blue flames began to emerge from Kris’toluth’s body, searing on contact and turning Perry’s pants to ash as he deflected a taloned kick aimed at his crotch.

Pain bloomed in Perry’s skull as the hag head-butted him, just lightly enough not to drop his HP.

The impact sent searing pain through Perry’s head and knocked him off balance, forcing him to stagger back against the wall as tears clouded his sight.

When Perry blinked the reflexive tears out of his eyes, he spotted the hag’s taloned hands cradling the final three ritual ingredients and a wavy sacrificial blade.

“Crap.” Perry muttered.

“Indeed.”

Perry tried to let his legs give out and drop him out of the way, but the wave of essence rolling out of the hag’s palm buoyed him up, lifting him off the ground as it deadened his nerves.

The hag’s temple beaded with sweat as she pulled Perry through the air towards herself, completely paralyzed.

“Why…are you so resistant?” She demanded, gritting her teeth, the muscles in her jaw standing out harshly against her papery skin.

Not resistant enough, Perry thought, struggling to thrash his way out of the spell, and doing little more than twitching.

“The soul I take for myself.” She murmured in the ancient tongue. “The blood is for my lord.”

Perry tried not to gag as the hag shoved two fingers into his mouth, prying it open as she brought his face close to her own warped visage.

Then she began to inhale, and Perry felt his stitching come loose. Like he was a stuffed animal, and his stuffing was being recklessly torn out of him.

Pain covered every inch of his body as some intangible thing shifted inside of him. A sensation he didn’t even know he could have. It was nauseating, painful, and made his vision spin violently, like he was moment’s from throwing up, but couldn’t relieve himself.

A scintillating mist flowed out of his mouth and into the hag’s mouth.

Cough!

Perry dropped to the ground, banging his head against the floor as the hag shoved him away, coughing violently like one of those idiots taking the cinnamon challenge.

“Wha-“ Kris’toluth was wracked with coughs as the demon’s body collapsed back to its normal proportions. “What are you!? That is-“ She coughed, blood dribbling from her mouth, eyes and nose.

“That is not natural!”

“Never said it was,” Perry said, picking up the sacrificial blade.

“Ka’thran, lord of Hags, Coyote of the Afterlife and Hoarder of souls,” Perry said in Kris’toluth’s tongue. “Please send the following memo to your followers.”

“Wai-“

Perry pinned the monster to the floor, staggering backward as it twitched on the ground.

He wanted to collapse, but Heather was still in serious danger.

Perry dragged himself over to Anya.

“I know you have a deep distaste for men,” Perry said, folding his fingers around the hilt of the haunted club and wincing as pins and needles erupted up his hand all the way to his neck, deadening his arm and making it nearly impossible to lift the weapon.

Perry gritted his teeth and wrapped his off-hand around his wrist and lifted the club up, staggering over to Heather.

“But I think I know a man you might dislike just a little bit more than me.”

Perry jammed Anya deep into Heather’s chest, as close to her heart as he could get, causing the softened girl to fold around it.

***Heather***

“STOP!” Heather cried as Karnos hurt her friends over and over again while she was trapped in a glass box that crept ever inward, compressing her smaller and smaller.

“You see what happens when you don’t do what I tell you!?” He demanded over Perry’s agonized form. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t disobeyed me, I wouldn’t have to do this! You think I enjoy this!?”

KArnos’s hands turned into claws and raked down Perry’s skin, wrenching a pitiful scream out of him. “This little bastard stole you away from me and corrupted your mind. And then you, blindly following along, got me killed! You were a mindless pawn then, and you’re a mindless pawn now, you’re just following what’s between your legs instead of your father.”

“Stop, please!”

“You know how to make it stop!” Karnos said, sneering at her as her cage shrunk even further, making it harder to breathe.

“Give me your body! I’ll take care of some business, kill Solaris and then I’ll give it right back.”

Her father’s expression softened, and for a fraction of an instant, Heather considered it.

“NO!”

“I guess you need some more persuasion,” the cowl’s sneer returned, and he lifted his taloned hand above Perry’s wretched body, which reverted to a whole state, staring up at Karnos in helpless terror as he was about to be killed again.

A hand caught Karnos’s wrist.

Karnos frowned, glancing over at the blonde woman in homespun clothes, wielding a frying pan in her other hand.

“You, sirrah, are a poor fatha,” She said with a thick accent.

“Who the f-“

She bashed Karnos in the face with the heavy iron pan, sending him reeling backwards.

Perry cried out in pain moments before he was drawn into Karnos’s toe. Her father staggered backward, clutching his face and cursing violently.

A fake? Heather thought. A shadow puppet to cause distress and manipulate?

Heather’s eye twitched.

The invisible cage around her expanded.

A FAKE!? He was manipulating me like he’d done my entire life!? AGAIN!? Heather thought, her rage building.

The walls of the glass box began to bow outward.

“Miss, ya maybe not get ten and eight ans, but it be your only chance to settle things!” The woman shouted, throwing the iron pan at her cage, shattering the glass, which exploded outward in a shower of glittering fragments.

The blond woman vanished, leaving behind the heavy iron pan.

“Heather!” Karnos barked. “Get back in your-“

Heather scooped up the heavy iron and tried to put it through her father’s head.

“You think that’s enough to stop-“

Heather hit him again.

“Young lady-“

She hit him again.

“Stop!”

She hit him again.

***Perry***

Perry waited, holding his breath as Heather went limp.

Suddenly Heather convulsed one final time, her eyes opening as she began coughing violently.

“Ugh, what the heck, it feels like you broke my sternum,” she said, rubbing her chest and scowling.

“I had to get Anya as close to your heart as possible…I assumed.” Perry said with a shrug. “How you feeling? On a scale of zero to ten, how possessed do you feel right now?”

“Zero.” Heather said, her expression cold.

“So umm… My family might not be as popular in Washington city as I thought,” Perry admitted as he helped Heather to her feet.

“You don’t say,” Heather said, her gaze landing on the demon pinned to the floor by the sacrificial blade.

“So you were complaining earlier about having things handed to me because I’m famous.” Perry said. “I’d just like to take this opportunity to-“

“Not in the mood,” Heather said, shaking her head.

“I’ll save it. We should probably leave.”

“Uh,” Heather groaned, nodding as he threw her arm over his shoulder, limping towards the front entryway.

“I think Solaris killed my dad.” Heather said, staring at the floor.

“How do you feel about that?” Perry asked.

“Ask me tomorrow,” She said. “Or maybe never.”

“Gotcha.” Perry muttered, pushing open the front door of Madame Kris’s Answers from the beyond.

At least we actually did get some information. Almost died, but we got answers.

In a three-deep semicircle around the building were angry looking thugs of various Manitian origin.

In the lead was a tall man wearing biking leathers, with wild hair and a sword at his hip, standing next to a rugged motorcycle with a horse head emerging from the front.

“It seems I won’t have to pay Kris for your body.” He said with a cruel smile.

Perry mentally reviewed his interaction with the demon.

“You must be John,” Perry said. She’d told his name to a man named John over the phone, probably learned of Karnos’s death, then decided to use it as a tactic to disable his bodyguard (Heather).

“I’m honored a Zauberer would deign to learn my name,” he said, bowing sarcastically. “Now you and your friend are going to be coming with us.”

“I guess you guys didn’t get the memo,” Perry said as his remote-controlled Mk. 3 suits arrived, landing inside the semicircle.

***Natalie***

“Then we hopped onto one of the suits and flew like a bat outta hell while they were distracted,” Perry said, slipping out of his shredded pants and tossing them in the trash before grabbing a towel.

“There’s people in the city…hunting you?” Natalie asked.

“Seems that way,” Perry said with a shrug. “I could tell them my soul is inedible, but they probably wouldn’t believe it. I’m gonna go soak in the tub for an hour or two and process what just happened. I’ll see you later.”

“Later…” Nat waved as Perry marched into the bathroom and closed the door behind himself.

She glanced at the closed door leading to her room.

Hesitantly, Nat crept up to the door and used the handle. To her surprise, it wasn’t locked.

“What?” Heather’s voice croaked from the bed as a beam of light from the living room invaded the darkened bed.

“Are you okay?”

“Maybe.” Heather said, the tremor in her voice twisting Natalie’s guts.

Nat climbed up onto the bed and put her arm over Heather.

In response, Heather turned over and pulled Nat tight to her chest, squishing an involuntary squeak out of her.

“I got what I needed, but I don’t think I wanted it,” Heather said. “Closure is a bitch, and my dad was worse than I remembered. It was like an addiction to touching a hot stove. Sometimes I wonder how much of what he said was right.”

Nat didn’t know what to say so she stayed quiet, listening as the powerful super cried herself to sleep.