Salamangka: 12SS 2020

Mages and Tentacles

Yesterday I learned that magic was real. Yes, magic – not sleight-of-hand stage magic, no; but actual spell-casting magic. I know, right? Freaky. Especially to a prayer-hating, God-defying, lifelong atheist like myself.

Anyway, yesterday I was following the ghost of a murdered child down a secret elevator to a hidden temple underneath Robertson's Mall in Ortigas Center, Pasig City. The kid's parents had hired me to find his body, and I thought he was leading me to it, but instead he lead me to a room full of what I thought were five cosplayers, locked up in cages. A guy and a girl had gold-trimmed blue robes, another guy had a green tunic with a yellow sash hanging diagonally over his shoulder and torso, while still another guy had black shorts on, no shirt, and no shoes, and yet another one, a girl, had an off-shoulder robe that kind of reminded me of Shaolin monks.

I guffawed when they told me they were from a coalition of "mages" from different "mage houses", held captive here by a family of black magicians, to be made into human sacrifices to boost the black magicians' powers.

"If you're real magicians," I said, "then why don't you just cast a spell or something and escape?"

"Well, duh!" the cute twenty-something girl in the blue robe stared daggers at me. "The cages nullify all magic, smartass, that's why!"

Uh-huh, yeah, sure, I said. Now excuse me while I look for this ghost kid's body. See ya! But the ghost wouldn't leave the room; he kept shaking his head and raising his arms sideways to block the door. As if an intangible ghost could really block a door!

I was about to walk away when we heard screaming coming from somewhere outside the room. The sound reminded me of how a drug dealer would scream when you electrocute his testicles to make him give up his supplier. Don't ask.

The "mages" all started yammering at me to set them free. Okay, fine – I took my gun and shot the lock off of cute blue robe girl's cage. She stepped out, extended her hand, and – what the hell?! — four fireballs the size of ping pong balls appeared floating in front of her hand. The fireballs flew to all the cages like guided missiles and blasted their locks off. The "mages" all got out of the cages and ran out of the room, giving me evil glances as they went past me.

Ho-kay, you're welcome, I muttered while I followed them out of the room, and down through a hallway.

"Oh shit," I whispered to myself when we came out to what must have been the main hall of a temple.

The room had a circular gray stone table in the middle, with a man in a blue robe strapped on top of it. Hovering twenty feet above the table was a pitch-black, ten-foot wide disc with red flames around it. Shadow tentacles were reaching down from the disc to the man strapped on the table. Where the tentacles touched the man's body, his flesh broke off into small, bloody, ragged chunks that floated off along with the tentacle as it withdrew back into the disc. No wonder the guy was screaming!

Standing around the table were three people in black robes – an old man, an old lady, and a twenty-something millennial guy — chanting gibberish while the guy on the table was being torn to shreds.

The two blue robe mages started casting baseball-sized fireballs. The girl in shaolin-like robes raised her hands, projecting transparent waves of force from them. The green tunic guy grew vines around himself until he became a man-shaped tree, and charged forward with wooden fists. And the guy in the black shorts turned into a 10-foot tall werewolf!

On pure reflex and from years of habit, I aimed my gun at the werewolf while it ran with the others towards the table. Was he an Aswang? But the guy didn't smell like it. His heartbeat didn't sound like it either. Hunting down Aswang was my thing, so I should know, right?

All the mages' attacks bounced off of an invisible circular wall, however, corresponding to a glowing red circle on the floor surrounding the table and the three black magicians. Fireballs, ice, whirlwinds, meteor-like rocks, claws, wooden fists, and force waves, everything bounced off of the red circle.

The millennial black magician stepped forward and shot red lightning out of his hands, while the other two black magicians continued their chanting.

KRAKA-TOOM. The red lightning simultaneously knocked all the mages to the ground with a single, multi-branched, forked strike.

Holy shit, I thought when the millennial dude saw me standing there, gawking with my mouth open. I didn't have time to raise my gun before he fired a bolt of lightning my way. I winced as the red flash came —

— and nothing happened?!

Oh, it's on now, asshole! I thought as I aimed my chunky, brick-like Glock 20 with both hands and fired. The 10 mm hard cast bullet smashed through the invisible wall, shattering it into fading translucent glass-like shards, and hit the black magician square in the forehead, blasting his brains out the other side.

The two older black magicians started screaming. Oh, did I kill your son? Sorry, not sorry.

The old geezers raised their hands and started blasting me with blazing red death rays, but nothing happened again. Yep, I shot them in the head too!

The floating black disc with the red flaming border and wriggling shadow tentacles hanging down from it, vanished into thin air as the two geezers fell.

The guy on the table was already dead, though – hardly any guts were left in his torso.

Fortunately, none of the mages had died from the red lightning. After they'd gotten back up, they asked me who I was and how the hell did I kill those three over-powered bastards. I introduced myself, Roy Diaz, and showed them my Stigmata – the Wounds of Christ. I explained that the Wounds turn anything I touch into a Holy Relic that can destroy all evil. Apparently, they also make me immune from magic, I guess.

I omitted the part where I had to pray at least once every 24 hours, otherwise my Wounds would start bleeding me out to a slow, excruciatingly painful death. I'm an atheist, for fuck's sakes! I shouldn't be forced to pray like this, goddammit!

Anyway, shortly after, we found the ghost kid's body in a room adjacent to the main hall. The room had four other corpses inside, all kids, ages 7 to 10. The other ghost kids appeared, and I promised them I'd return their bodies to their families so they could have a proper burial.

Turns out, the ghosts were being used by the black magicians to lure white magicians into a trap. This was how all these mages had been captured in the first place.

So yeah, yesterday I learned that magic was real. I also learned that I was immune from magic. But most importantly, I learned that the cute girl in the blue robe was named Erin.