Henry Rider: Clown Hunter

Chapter Twenty Seven

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Chapter Twenty Seven

"Yesterday, you compared using magic to meditating," said McGus. "What you didn't realize was that that's the most apt comparison you'll ever make."

I was surrounded by a small army of club wielding mannequins, each supported by a spiderweb of strings coming from the ceiling. One came for me, and I swung Splatsy to block its attack. Before I could finish it off, though, a second dummy came at me from behind. I ducked and rolled out of its way, its club smashing into the floor where I'd just been, and came back up to sweep it off its feet with Splatsy.

"You've chosen cogito et creo as your mantra," McGus went on. They were sitting at the arena's edge, safely out of my way. "Latin for 'think and create.' Fitting. What's the purpose of a mantra during meditation?"

The third dummy approached, swinging at my belly. I leaped back and raised Splatsy behind my head to smash its wooden skull into tiny splinters.

"To help you concentrate, I think," Ethan said. "I've never meditated."

McGus grunted. "Close enough. It's the same idea here. I told you last night: for a human to use magic, they have to pull the mana out of its dimension and into ours. You do that with your conduit, in this case your spellhammer. But reaching between dimensions like that requires concentration, hence the mantra."

Three dummies ganged up on me. Taking Splatsy in both hands, I swung her as hard as I could, knocking the first dummy into the second, and the second into the third, like a row of evil killer dominoes.

"Go Henry!" Aesop cheered for me. "You are Queen of the Dummied! Get it, Jade? Like, Queen of the..."

Jade ignored him, her eyes fixed on Ethan as he listened to McGus ramble on.

A loud chunk-ish sound came from above me, and I dove out of the way just as a massive wooden blade came swinging down from the ceiling. It whizzed past, continuing its arc upwards before swinging back the way it'd come like a pendulum. A few seconds later, a second one appeared.

"McGus, you jerk!" I yelled. "When did you add this?"

"Adapt, improvise, overcome!" he shouted back before returning his attention to Ethan. "There's nothing magical about the mantra itself. It's just to help you empty your mind of distractions, which will let you reach into the mana dimension more easily. Let's try it."

At his prompting, Ethan held the spellhammer out in front of himself in both hands. "But what do I do with the magic if I manage to pull some over?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Now close your eyes."

The two pendulums swung in perfect intervals. When one swung forward, the other would swing back, missing each other by mere inches as they sliced an X shape through the air. I dodged one, rolled out of the way of the other, but then found my path blocked by the mannequins I hadn't smashed yet. They moved forward, pushing me back into the danger zone.

"Don't think about anything except the task at hand," said McGus. "Let your mind go blank. There is nothing but you and the emptiness inside your head."

"That do be the nicest way o' calling someone brainless I've heard in all me life," Aesop laughed in his fake accent. "Ow! What was that for, Jade?"

I weaved back and forth, narrowly avoiding the swinging blades. One dummy came too close, and I hit it with a glancing blow that threw it in front of an oncoming pendulum. It shattered.