Vol.4 Ch.30 – Another Side, Another Story II
Chapter 30: Another Side, Another Story II
Julia had never met anyone like this woman, was sure she would never meet anyone like this woman.
The woman had hair in all the shades of a sky at dawn, from red to orange to a soft pink, the color so radiant that even what little light shone on it from the slaughterhouse pretending to be a hospital was enough to make it out clearly. The woman had come hurtling from a roof, throwing as much magic around as Julia could summon up in a day and wielding the most ridiculously impractical weapon she'd ever seen.
The woman was a walking contradiction of transfixing beauty and awe-inspiring power. If she had introduced herself as an angel Julia would have believed her. She had come to their aid when they had been trying to save those poor people from the harvesters and she was currently dancing and whirling through their ranks, carving and blasting, leaving only scraps for Julia and her crew to pick up.
Julia rushed after her, finger gun ready to blow apart any cyborg the woman hadn't destroyed fully. James and Vitali stuck closer to the woman, ready to grab any civilians they could. But the cyborgs carrying the civilians were smart enough to recognize the danger and rushed their prizes off to the hospital while the others did their best to block the woman off.
“Damn it!” the woman yelled in a thick French accent. “Make way!”
Julia grit her teeth. She had a way to open a path for the woman but it would suck. Oh, it would suck. But it would suck less than letting the civilians get taken.
Julia drew rivers of power into herself, wrapped a hand around her throat in anticipation of the pain and screamed: “MOVE!”
Sound mixed with magic, turning a simple command into a blast of force capable of tossing five hundred pound cyborgs around like crash test dummies. The blast knocked them all out of the woman's way and she didn't waste a second to capitalize on the opening.
But Julia couldn't worry about that, couldn't even think about anything but the pain that felt like it was tearing her throat apart. She sank to her knees, clutching her throat with both hands, tears streaming down her face. She wanted to take deep, sobbing breaths but they would have made it worse, would only exacerbate the sawing pain she felt.
It wasn't a fault of her magic. No, not at all, though she did often wonder what kind of cruel god would give someone like her an aptitude for sound magic.
As a child Julia had been mauled by a pit bull, the mad thing had crashed through their fence for seemingly no reason than to tear out her throat. Only her daddy arriving and putting the beast down with extreme prejudice had managed to save her life. In truth, she'd been lucky enough to survive either way and the jagged scars all over her throat were grisly reminders of the incident, as if she needed any. Because while her life had been saved, the mauling had done irreparable damage to her vocal chords. She wasn't mute, technically. She could still speak. But anything above a whisper hurt and screaming was agony for her.
In the aftermath of the incident Julia had started seeing white threads in her vision and it had taken her a while to figure out that no, other people couldn't see them, yes, they were real and no, she absolutely shouldn't mention them to any psychiatrist lest they diagnose her with paranoid schizophrenia caused by PTSD.
For years she'd had no idea what was going on with her. Yes, she could manipulate sound but it had never even occurred to her that she might be a mage. For years she'd thought she was a mutant, like in X-Men. Only after the Invasion, only after meeting the other resistance members here in Buffalo, had she learned that people gaining magical abilities after surviving traumatic experiences was actually relatively common and what had happened to her had more than qualified.
In a way, that had made it worse. She'd thought that those sound powers had been given to her because of what had happened. Learning that she wasn't that special, that it had been random chance that someone who could barely speak had been given access to sound magic, had made it feel like her suffering had been pointless. She couldn't speak up without hurting herself anymore, couldn't even look at a dachshund without getting nervous anymore, and none of it had meant anything.
That self-loathing had persisted until she had realized that even a broken bird like her could be a lifeline for the people they were sheltering, could ensure not just the survival of a few people but even give them back a little bit of hope.
All of those very noble thoughts were almost enough to distract her from the agony she was in. Almost.
**
The cute little sound mage had cleared a path for her and Esther wasn't about to waste it.
She charged past the cyborgs the girl had sent flying and, seeing how much of a head start the cyborgs carrying the straights already had, she once again shook out her snatchweaver. She tossed the pendulum at the ground right in front of the hospital entrance and yanked, pulling herself forward. As she went hurtling towards the cyborgs she dislodged the pendulum from the stone it had anchored into and then spun the pendulum through a wide arc low to the ground. Arachne silk was just about the closest thing to a monofilament wire that was physically feasible and so the wire was impossibly sharp. As such, even the half ounce weight of the pendulum could create enough force that when the wire touched the feet of the cyborgs it went through them without resistance, slicing through them like a hot wire through cheese.
All of the cyborgs carrying civilians had their feet lobbed off at the ankles in an instant, the bulky monsters crashing to the ground. Some of the straights groaned as they were buried beneath the bodies of these cyborgs while others tossed and kicked to get out of their captors' grasp. Esther didn't pause to admire their fighting spirit. Instead she took her twinblade in both hands and started collecting cyborg heads. She knew from experience that not all of these cyborgs needed their heads to function but she also knew that they would all run out of limbs eventually.
**
“Up you go,” Vitali said as he pulled Julia up.
Vitali liked to act like a cold-hearted stereotype of a Russian gangster but Julia knew he was just a big softie inside. He pulled her up quite gently, touching nothing untoward, and even his voice was less gruff than usual. He was clearly worried about her and she found it rather sweet of him. Her throat still hurt but she could swallow her own spit again without the edges of her vision going white, which was a marked improvement. She reached into one of the dozen pockets attached all over her harness, pulled out a peppermint and popped it into her mouth, then whispered:
“Clear?”
“Yeah,” Vitali said. “The firecracker took care of them.”
“The civilians?”
“Safe,” James said as he approached the two of them, a dozen men and women in rags trailing behind him. “We should probably get them back to the shelter before more show up.”
“Twelve more mouths to feed...” Vitali grumbled quietly but Julia knew him well enough that she could tell he was happy they'd saved so many. Still...
“Thirteen,” she whispered.
Vitali frowned down at her until he noticed the woman approaching them.
“You really saved us,” James said as he turned to face her.
“Likewise,” the woman said.
“We should head to our shelter before they send out more harvesters.”
“Lead the way,” the woman said.
“Hold on,” Julia whispered, putting enough power into her voice that they all turned to look at her.
“What is it?” the woman asked.
“Your name.”
The woman smiled. “Esther. Esther Silverspark.”