The Frosted Files:Open Eyes

// Chapter 12 \\

    I stood, heading towards the exit. Thief leapt down to follow after me, letting out a quiet inquizitive brr. "Nope, no way, not a chance in hell, see you later, good luck, no thanks."
    Suddenly, Karma stood in front of me, her arms crossed. "You said you'd hear me out, Frost."
    "And hear you I did, but I'm not going to the undercity for some red-skinned genderbent Beetlejuice cosplayer I just met, so, sorry princess, but no." The undercity of Arbitrium used to just be ground level - but the city was built on unstable ground. Eventually, in most of downtown and some of the outer neighborhoods, including my little Northwestern section where the Compound sits, the councilmen decided to just build a new ground. This added up, and over time, the ground floor of these areas were buried, and new entrances were set in the second floor, which was now the new ground floor. Most people didn't know about the undercity enough to traverse it, due to the sheer danger of it, but most citizens knew it existed. Parents tell their children stories of monsters that crawl out and steal misbehaving kids, taking them to their lair and using their eyes for jelly or something.
    During my couple years homeless after running away, I stayed in the undercity a lot. Police were reluctant to follow a kid into the tunnels over some petty theft, even if it was in one of the 'better' areas. "It is unbelievably dangerous down there, and I imagine it's just crawling with nasty magical creepy-crawlies, with enough blood to paint the sidewalks that rusty colour blood gets when it dries on concrete, and-"
    We stood in front of one of the lesser known entrances to the undercity, Thief on my shoulders, purring away.
    "I can't believe I agreed to this."
    "I can. You're very gullible when you're clueless, Frost."
    I rolled my eyes.
    "Now, as a way of saying thank you, I figured I'd do you the favour of teaching you a very basic spell. C'mere, kiddo, gather round."
    "I think I'm older than you, demon."
    "Not a demon, and I doubt it. Now come learn this light spell."
    "I'm thirty one, so nice try, and no thanks. I have other methods." I said, tapping the side of my glasses. The glasses began to filter through various visual filters, and I settled on the greenish overlay you usually see in cameras that can see in the dark.
    "Yeah, I'm older, but your loss, kiddo. Let's go then," she started towards the door, which was set in a little concrete hut, sunk halfway into the ground. It looked a lot like a maintenance tunnel, but locals knew better. I followed after, careful with the steps leading down to the door as to not let Thief fall.
    I hesitated at the door, but kept going, not wanting to be left behind.
    "So, what do you remember about magic, Frost?" Karma asked, briefly turning to me. Her eyes practically glowed in the dark, and she seemed to be navigating the tunnel fine without light.
    "Not much, to be honest. A friend told me a few things, like guest rights, and a little bit about thresholds, but that's about it."
    "Okay, that's a great start, this friend of yours seems informed enough to teach you a few things. Magic is a very strange energy, and interacts with everything, everywhere, always. Even those unaware are affected by it, and ring it up to chance, luck, karma, misfortune."
    "So, can anyone just tap into magic and fuck around with the world?"
    "In theory, anyone can spark their talent, but a vast majority of people just don't have the sensory finesse to feel the magic. It'd be like pumping electricity into a lightbulb with no current reader - sure, it's doable, and you can get the bulb lit, but keeping it lit - and not overloading and exploding it - is a whole other story."
    I took a moment to consider that. When I had my amulet activated, I could see different energies flowing and mixing, and could feel them a whole lot more. Even now, I felt the phantom touch of Alexi's red smoke, the blue swirls of Winter energy, and the strange purple mist that seems to hover in my chest.
    "And can the people that have the sensory ability, like, see the magic?"
    "Not usually, unless they have their Sight open."
    The way she said it made me feel like the word was something big, with an uppercase 's'. It also sparked some little bit of knowledge that was buried in my mind during my amulet joyride. The Sight is like a soul stare - it stays with you. Looking back, I could recall that fight I had with Locke in near perfect detail.
    That sure looks interesting, boss, maybe we can analyze it to find some patterns later, Destiny spoke to me through my neurolink, causing me to just about jump out of my boots. Karma looked at me, either concerned or amused, I couldn't tell.
    "Spider, sorry. What about feeling? Can they feel the energy, even without the Sight?"
    Karma nodded, taking a left turn as we kept walking. "Usually, yeah. These people often follow some religion most modern people frown upon - wiccan, pagan, et cetera. My father was norse pagan, and was burned at the stake for it."
    That caught me off guard. "Oh- I'm sorry."
    Karma smiled again, though she didn't turn to me, so the smile felt faux. "Don't worry about it. He never did much good, anyway. Besides, this was roughly a hundred and ninety years ago - long gone, long over."
    "Fwh- a hundred and ninety? Holy hell, Karma, how old are you?"
    "Honestly, I'm not sure. My father never celebrated birthdays, and my mother was never around. I met her a whole one time in my life. I'd put myself at roughly two-twenty," She told me, still walking.
    That caught me off guard, again. Honestly, I should be used to these kinds of things now, after the past few days, but nevertheless, here we are. I don't know why, but people tend to tell me things like this barely after meeting.
    "And you've been on your own since, like, twenty years old? Back in the 1830s?"
    "Mmhm," Karma hummed.
    As I started to form my next sentence to ask about her fake identity, if she had one (I had come to the conclusion that she had to have some sort of human based identity to pass in modern times. The Fog would make her look human, to others), when Destiny pinged my danger sense.
    Five, next left, with spears.
    Spears?
    Yes, boss.
    What the hell were people doing with spears, down here?
    Well, duh, Fate, what are spears for? Hunting.
    I grabbed Karma's shoulder to stop her just as the people started to round the corner.
    I drew and raised my revolver, and fired at the leading spearman. The hammer hit an empty barrel.
    "God dammit, why didn't I load this thing when I got it?"
    "You were busy with magical rejection. Don't worry, I've got this."
    Karma muttered something in some language I didn't recognize, raised a hand, palm out towards them, and a sickly, blood-red light shot from her palm. It struck the same guy I tried to shoot at, and he fell to his knees, screaming. His hooded cloak shriveled and wilted, falling away, and I saw blood begin to leak from his eyes, ears, mouth, as his screams turned to choking. His skin took on a reddish hue, a lot darker red than the ginger hair on his head, and blood began to sweat from his skin. The kid looked maybe 19, very thin. He probably lived down here. The beam stopped, and the kid lay in a pool of his own blood, barely breathing.
    Damn. Blood drain, huh?
    As she did that, I managed to get my gun loaded, and raised it at another spearman, hitting them in the shoulder. They definitely got hit, I saw their shoulder shoot back, but they kept coming at us, switching to a one-handed technique. That was mildly concerning, considering they just got shot and didn't even yell.
    I shot them in the other shoulder, and they dropped the spear, but kept coming.
    Hey boss, you're not gonna like this.
    What's going on, Destiny?
    Well, either our tech has gone haywire, and the standard readers to determine if something is living have broken...
    Unlikely. Second option?
    Second option being that that person you just shot has been dead for three years, based on decomposition readings.
    I fired another shot into the person, now aiming for the head. Their head snapped back, the cloak falling back, revealing a broken and severely fucked up face. The hole, right below the left eye, could be looked through to the other side, but they kept coming.
    So, zombie?
    Zombies.
    Great. Wonderful, absolutely peachy.
    "Karma, I think we have a zombie issue here-"
    "That's not a zombie, but close enough."
    "If it's not a zombie, then what is it?"
    "One of the lesser vampires. They're easy to bind and control, and easy to make."
    "So, these are pawns?"
    "Aiming to take out a queen, yeah."
    "Cool, cool. That one guy wasn't the leader, was he? Since they didn't scatter when he fell?"
    "Yeah, no. They would have been on him faster than a starving dog on a fresh steak."
    I raised my gun and fired another three shots into the same one as before, its head snapping back each time. When it looked at me again, its face was tilted, and it let out a low, raspy groan.
    Watch my 12, Destiny. It seems we need to do this the old fashioned way.
    Gotcha boss.
    I willed my tech out, felt it flow over my body, taking shape. I felt the large, demonic eyes form, the claws sharpening themselves onto my hand, the inky black suit forming. The amulet was embedded in the middle of my chest on my tech, and after a moment, I stood in my military-grade exosuit, claws ready to slice and dice.
    "Karma."
    She jumped at the sound of my voice, which came through a voice changer to sound deeper, and with a little more reverb.
    "Two and two?"
    She nodded, and turned to the left two, raising a hand again. This time, after her muttered word, a neon green beam shot out, hitting her lead fella. The sensors in my suit said that the remaining three people were all similar to the one I shot up, all officially dead, all decayed.
    I turned back to my two, and ran towards them. The one I had shot tried to swing its arms as I approached, fast enough that it would have hit me had the arms been functional, and it ended up flailing its arms around instead as I sunk my claws into the decayed flesh. They sliced through, breaking bone, and the vampire lost an arm. Swinging into a backspin with my other clawed hand, I sunk said claw into the head of the vampire. The tech got stuck halfway through, however, and the vampire twisted its whole body, flinging me into one of the long abandoned shops of the undercity.
    Groaning, I went to sit up, but the two vampires had other, faster plans. They were on me, ripping and tearing at my tech, trying to get to me.
    It was terrifying, to say the least.
    They were half decayed, one had hardly any use of its arms, yet they still rivaled Olympic finalists in terms of speed and strength. I felt every blow against my tech, spread out against my body due to the tech's design - yet it still felt like I was being stabbed, over and over, across my torso and arms mainly. Now I know why video game characters took so long to start fighting back when attacked - fear, the cousin of adrenaline, is one hell of a drug.
    But, like other people with other drugs, I eventually overcame it, pushing the able-bodied vampire off me and kicking off the wall, flipping to my feet. I took down the flashy bits of my exosuit - the horns, the exaggerated features, et cetera - and used them to form a shortsword of tech, stiff as a board, yet fluid as any drink I've had.
    Behind.
    I whipped around, sword flying out, and sliced the blood-drained kid in half.
    He let out a short gasp before falling over again, the line right under his ribcage separating his body into two.
    Horrified, I knelt next to him - obviously I couldn't do anything, but the kid was living- no, wait-
    It looks like he was rapidly decaying, boss.
    So, he must have been going vampire on us. But he looked so scared when I first spun around. Maybe he hadn't expected it any more than we had, in which case, whoever did this had some explaining to do.
    A spear hit my back, sliding off and to the side. I grabbed it and spun around, ripping the spear from the vampire's grasp, and attempted to stick it through the thing's mouth, but it dodged out of the way with that supernatural speed. It tackled me, and I went down again, landing with my back onto the lower half of the kid. Two more vampires joined the first in swarming me, and, for once, I was truly, truly scared.
    They were tearing my tech away from me. Little bits at a time, which flowed across the floor and back to me, but they were doing it, which was not something I had deemed possible.
    Then again, vampires. What more can I say?
    Another neon green beam hit the vampire that had tackled me, throwing it back and off. It hit a wall and slid down, no longer moving. Mushrooms and flowers began to spring up along the body of the vampire, letting off a faint green light.
    I blinked, thankful for the night vision setting I had, and pushed the other two vampires off me, spinning around to fight.
    Karma got another one, this time with a purplish cone of mist that melted the vampire's flesh, leaving a skeleton with a few bits and bobs leftover. That was also terrifying.
    The last one had started to rush me, and this time I sidestepped, tripping the vampire. I slammed a hand down against the back of its head as it fell, driving its head into the concrete. I felt a little snap as impact was made, and the vampire went still.
    Breathing hard, I looked around. Karma had taken most of them with that magic of hers, but she looked worse for wear; she was leaning against a wall, shivering, and her usual red skin was pale enough that, at first glance, one could assume she was a very pale, very sunburnt homeless lady.
    She caught me looking, and gave a reassuring but weak smile. "Tapped out for a bit, Frost. Evocation isn't my specialty."
    I nodded, internalizing that info, and went over to help her, my exosuit flowing back to the tech's hiding places as I walked.
    "Wait, one more," she said, pointing down the road. A single hooded figure was walking towards us in the middle of the faded street, hands held together in front of them so that they looked like your typical edgy cult member from any given movie or show.
    Living.
    They weren't a vampire, so I raised my revolver and unloaded three rounds into them. The bullets hit, but a purplish shield shimmered into being in front of them whenever a bullet would have hit, sending it flying into the walls. I unloaded the rest of my barrel, to no avail.
    I turned back to Karma. "Are you fully out of commission?"
    The internal conflict was written across her face, but she said, "I could probably take him."
    "Okay, I'll try-"
    The hooded figure, now roughly 100 feet away, cut me off, a vaguely masculine voice speaking. "Fate Frost, Karma Korvus, welcome. We have been expecting you."
    I looked around at the 'we', but didn't see anyone else, and neither did Destiny.
    "We?"
    "Ah, yes, sorry, introductions. My name is Brother Jerimiah, and I will be the one sucking away you two's lifeforce."
    Mildly concerned, I looked back to Karma.
    She was passed out, leaning against the wall, a thick, black smoke flowing from the wall beside her. As the robed man came closer, the smoke got thicker. I formed a gas mask, but too late, I had inhaled some of the smoke.
    My vision started to wobble, and my head throbbed. I suddenly felt very very tired, and nearly fell over.
    I would have thought of some witty comeback, but the floor rushed up to punch me in the face a moment before I could say anything, and I was out cold.