Wyverns of Mass Destruction

Seamus I, Part 1

Chapter Five

Captain Seamus O'Brien

Wyvernhall, AK

8:15 AM, November 21th, 2014

Seamus whipped his sword down over his chest. Echoes rang off the walls of SecC-1 as Dorcas Stewart blocked him. The other security officers sent up a halfhearted cheer as the duel entered its second minute.

No appreciation for art. Dorcas sent three quick blows his way, her blade darting back and forth like an angry bee. Spells and training guided Seamus's hand through a graceful figure-eight, knocking back each strike. Rock salt crunched under his boots as he slid backwards. Something electronic beeped. A proud and ancient tradition, and they'd all rather fuck around on their comms.

Dorcas tossed a handful of sawdust into the air. Before she could ignite it, Seamus jabbed his thumb onto the spike on his pommel and smeared blood on the shield-shaped brass chip embedded in the sword's hilt. The explosion flashed uselessly against an invisible wall. With a quick pushing gesture, he thrust the wall of energy into Dorcas, knocking her flat on her arse.

"Ha!" he gasped. When he'd first cast that spell, ten years ago, it had taken all his might to merely deflect a pyromancer's assault. Now the magic came easily.

"Nice trick!" shouted Koleva. Somewhere across the room, a tinny explosion sounded from a comm. "That's a two-star combo, Litvak!"

Angry Coats. "Hold," he told Dorcas.

Seamus didn't have the look of a general; he'd scorned every insistence from Sythos that he try. He was a tall, lanky man of nearly fifty-five, his hair a mess of straw and silver, his features weathered from years of exposure. He wore the same black thermal shirt, leggings, and camoflauge-print snowpants that all security officers wore, with the silver insignia of a double helix pinned to his breast. The respect of his officers was all he needed for command.

"Hey!" he shouted. "You lot call yourselves soldiers?"

HQ's security officers looked up from where they'd been lounging: on bags of salt, broken snowmobiles, the roof of a Hummer. Only half of them had bothered to gather up their weapons for combat training. John, Seamus's twin and unofficial second in command, wasn't even wearing his uniform shirt. Cheeky little gobshite.

"Stand up when I'm talking," he continued. "Spit out that gum, Morales. You've all tracked in salt, too. Is that funny?" John was sniggering. "There's less than twenty of us here. Maybe two hundred Descendants in total under Synthos's banner. Indigo outnumbers us at least five to one. When the war comes, we'll need our brothers and sisters to see our cause as worth joining!"

"Act like scary motherfuckers," Tanner said, shifting his fingernails into canine claws. "Show normal people we won't lie down for them."

"They already call us monsters," pointed out Erin, still watching her comm instead of her captain. It was rude to ask a vampire's age, but Seamus just knew she wasn't older than thirty. "Other Descendants will totally want to join our club. We're the only ones who can understand their corrupted souls."

"Jokes have no place on the battlefield." Especially jokes rooted in superstitions like those. Seamus pulled a string-wrapped marble from his pocket, cataloging all the ambient uses his energy was going to: keeping his muscles young and resilient, enabling the heat spells tattooed in his armpits, healing the cut on his thumb. He had more than enough. "We need pride. Discipline. Devotion to our our cause. Anything else makes us look weaker than Indigo. All of you, come at me!"

Erin pulled sai daggers from her sleeves and lunged at him. Her makers had shaped her for gladiatorial theatrics, which showed in everything from her snarl to the curly hair she refused to cut to regulation length.

Seamus casually tossed an enchanted throwing star into her shoulder She hit the floor, already asleep. "Next!"

Tanner ran at him, going from man to wolf mid-stride. Seamus traced the Nike logo in the air with his finger. Physical strength flooded him as he seized the shapeshifter. Briefly, he reached out and read Tanner's aura—glimpsing the man who lurked within—before flinging him into a heap of old tires.

The strength of an elementalist was determined by their generation, and their power required rigorous training to master. Generation and training also mattered to witches, but the heart of their power came from creativity. They gathered symbols that meant something to them, from stick figures drawn in dirt, to verses of poetry, to pentagrams shaped from gold wire. The touch of bare skin or fresh blood then empowered the latent spells. Elementalists could destroy cities with crude natural forces, shapeshifters could fight with inhuman speed and strength, but only witches had the finesse to achieve almost anything.

Morales swung a warhammer at Seamus's head, hard muscle straining in his arms. Seamus blocked the geomancer. Vibrations jolted down his arms. The reinforcing spells in his sword drew on his energy reserves. "Gloves," Seamus grunted. As Morales looked down at his hands, Seamus kicked him in the kneecap. The geomancer dropped. "I don't give a damn about how well you carved the wyvern's den. You're defensless if you can't touch stone."

Koleva and Litvak came at Seamus from both sides, as agile as the polecats that were their second forms. "Charge, horsefuckers!" John told them as he lifted his crossbow.

Enough showing off, Seamus decided, and breathed on his palmed marble. The thread netted around it unraveled. Each sparrer touched by the thread froze in place, the connections between the brain and limbs temporarily suspended. Koleva's face was locked in a particularly funny half-howl. This spell would be even easier on the battlefield. There, he could simply command the brains of his enemies to die.

"Hah!" John twisted free of the spell and tossed an orange powder at Seamus. Red, itching welts bubbled up wherever it touched.

The thread spell hadn't been made to trap first-generation witches, Seamus belatedly remembered. I should have garroted him with my cord in Ma's womb. He gave his brother a furious glare, wasted on a man without eyes, and thought of a particularly bad summer in Cork. The top of his skin flaked, sunburnt, and fell away. New, healthy skin rose up where the welts had been.

"Impressive spellcraft, captain," Dorcas said.

"None of you were looking at my hand!" Seamus barked. "John. My office. Now."