Chapter 39

  I set all the gear and weapons down in the middle of the clearing. Is letting go of positive control of them a good thing? No, it really should be frowned upon. But keeping it in a central location seems like the best option at the moment, and I really don’t want to be carrying all three sets of the stuff while having Sandra do her magic thing. They get heavy. Besides, I’m still keeping them right next to me.

  But enough of that, let’s get down to business, to defeat the immortal alchemist that’s been pulling far too many strings behind the scenes. This training montage of a day has already been long, and it’s probably been even longer for poor Sandra Dee. We might as well test what she can do for a bit and then head back to the house.

  “So Sandra, what can you do?” I kept my tone casual. No need to make her feel overly pressured.

  “What do you mean ‘what can you do.’ I thought you were training me!” Did my question rub her the wrong way?

  What she means is what kind of magic do you actually do? There are many approaches to the occult, and the kinds of things you do differ vastly from what she does. You’ll have to forgive her for being a bit blunt, but it really should be clear by now that we’re just seeing what you’re capable of. Maybe I should have Liah handle all of the tricky stuff like this? She seems far better suited for handling retions with others like this.

  And you. She whirled to face me. I’m not letting you abdicate all responsibility out of ziness. You’re supposed to be in charge, you could try and communicate a bit better. I’m just your familiar, after all. She lectured in the authoritative tone that belied the deeply-held feeling of wanting to take a nap in the sunlight that drove her insistence that I take command. I really shouldn’t be surprised, but the fact that she was right was enough to get me to shelve the idea, for now.

  “What she said. We just want a basic overview at what you’re best at. For all we know your skills could be completely impractical for what we seek to do, in which case we’ll need to see about getting you a bit more practice with shooting. But if it’s the kind of magic that will help… well, the focus at the end of the day is on practicality.” We’re being super practical here. We have a limited time after all.

  “Hmmm.” Sandra seemed to understand, pausing to consider how best to continue. “If you had to describe most of what I do, well, I’ve done a lot of reading into ceremonial magic.”

  “So, like ‘Lesser Key of Solomon’ kind of stuff?” Liah wouldn’t be happy with that, she seemed really uncomfortable with the idea of demons.

  “Oh, no, nothing of the sort. While it wasn’t really what I relied on for the, uhm, incident, most of my research went more into the exact opposite of demonology. If I’m being honest, although I didn’t know much when I first started my research, I thought my…grievance, for ck of a better word, might have been caused by them. So what better way to counter that than with an angel?” Logical, but still, talk about typecasting.

  “So… someone who shares a surname with Queen Elizabeth’s Court Magician, uded for his work with Enochian… uses angels for magic?” It’s so cliché.

  “Well, the issue ended up being something else entirely, and it’s kind of hard to use angelic magic for what I ended up needing to do. The powers that be really don’t like the world being warped like that, apparently. But I used it as inspo for the rituals I ended up performing. Just, with my own force of will as a substitute for the angelic? It sounds weird when I put it that way…” She seemed to defte after hearing her theory put to words, like she was in the depths of the Dunning-Kruger effect realizing how odd and uninformed her words seemed to sound.

  “But it worked, didn’t it? Or else you wouldn’t have gotten bck-bagged and conscripted into working with us. We can debate the bigger issues of what you did but practicality is the bigger concern at the moment. And on the topic of practicality, what trade-offs are there between the two methods you mentioned?” I needed to get this back on track.

  “Both ways involve prep-work. It’s not like I can just give people the evil eye after all. Overall I would say the angelic method would be easier to perform on the fly. All my previous rituals, the scrying and the interdimensional traveling, involved a bunch more prep-work and were location specific, so that approach is probably out unless the stars align. Er, figuratively on that one. Meanwhile my approach to angelic magic is a bit more convenient. I was able to pare down the extra stuff you see filling most of the publicly avaible grimoires on the topic. It’s bare-bones, but I found I could somehow push it through.” She concluded.

  You do seem to have a pretty strong will. You likely can use that to make up for issues with the rituals. Unlike this one here who gets by solely on the potential she was born with and a weird stubbornness, you still need more framework but inversely, you can do things she likely wouldn’t have the patience to do. Depending on how we use it, this could be an asset. I think. None of us are really experts here. Not the most inspiring note to end on.

  “So, you just need to see about doing a ritual and-” I was cut off.

  Shush! Something’s coming. Liah’s ears twitched as she listened.

  We all fell silent. There wasn’t a single noise, audible initially, not even the sound of birds. Hm? Oh, that’s usually a bad sign, when the woods go quiet. We strained our ears, trying to tell. Then, I heard it. The faint sound of footsteps.

  I let out a sigh of relief. It was probably just a hiker. Most people don’t know how to move through the woods, and it can scare wildlife who aren’t used to the tramp of someone new to hiking. And boy was this guy fat-footing it. Snapping branches left and right, the heavy sound of walking through leaves… But then, there was something odd about that. As the footsteps got louder, it became clear they were approaching us.

  Maybe it could be a hiker. Maybe. But there was that other oddity in the noise. The sound of the branches falling. It was too faint, like the footsteps were making a disproportionately loud noise. Whatever was causing them was going out of their way to stomp loudly, or was much too heavy.

  I grabbed my set of bino’s and gssed the area where I expected the source of the noise to appear from. Eventually what seemed like a head appeared, wearing a bck, hooded robe. Odd. Normally I’d think it was some kids fucking around, but just in case… I handed the binos to Sandra, then grabbed my rifle. If it was an innocent hiker I’d feel really bad, but the gut feeling I had told me that something was wrong with the figure. I mean, besides them wandering the woods in a creepy robe. That’s technically not a crime in and of itself.

  “What are they, the Bir Witch?” Sandra whispered, “though considering I’ve worn simir, I have no room to talk.”

  “You know that movie was shot in these woods.” I whispered back as I got in the prone. I only had a 4x zoom optic mounted on my rifle. The only reason I even picked it is because it was what I was most familiar with. There are probably better options for longer distances or shorter distances, but I figured it’d be best to go with a compromise. You can do all sorts with a 4x zoom, and if you were having to shoot closer you just needed a bit of practice shooting with both eyes open.

  It’s actually kind of a neat technique. You know how when you have something close over one of your eyes it seems semi-transparent? It’s sort of the same thing, but with the little glowing arrow in the optic. It gets superimposed over your vision. It makes shooting accurately much easier that way. If you practice enough it’s as instinctual as the older methods of point shooting.

  At this range, of about 300 yards maybe, it’s a bit more tricky. The figure crested the hill and is moving slowly, but I’m also carrying a short-barreled rifle with a heavy, subsonic cartridge. But who knows, maybe this is all an overreaction.

  “Liah?” I asked.

  Whatever it is, it’s not human. I’m not feeling any normal signs of life from it. Something about it is definitely unnatural. I don’t even want to see it up close, it makes me feel sick. She gave off a feeling of almost palpable disgust.

  “That’s the only endorsement I need.” I leaned back down over my rifle.

  Ignoring the fact that I’m not any sort of expert with long-range shooting with what’s a very heavy and slow bullet, my best bet is probably to walk the bullets on target Elmer-Kieth Style. An extremely rough estimate of bullet drop, known better as intuition, had me pcing the reticle about a meter and a half above center of mass. It had already completely crested the ridge so I had a safe backstop. Aaaaaaaaand round a way!

  And a miss. The leaves by its feet went pinwheeling through the air though. Whatever it was, it had enough awareness to stop, if not the intelligence to immediately take cover. Good for me. Add another bit of elevation, flip the selector to full-auto and let’s go!

  The rounds traced across the figure. But it didn’t fall, much to my dismay. And rather than a more subdued sound of rounds hitting a flesh and blood thing, it made an odd metallic thunking sound, the figure being rocked back slightly. Then, the figure raised its arm.

  “Fuck!” I rolled out of the way, just to feel an impact through the dirt. There had been no noise, but something managed to make a decent enough size hole where I had just been ying.

  “I think it’s time for the practical, Sandra!!” I shouted as I ran to take cover by a fallen tree. Someone has to draw its fire.

  AnnouncementI had a bit of writer's block since I'm not the best at fight scenes.