It took everything Maria had not to falter or slip up. These men were much more unsettling up close.
A kick caught her in the back of the leg, and she lost her balance.
Maria! Maria we’re going… we’re going to find the Gnome. Hold on. Fight! Fight! It was Sherlock’s voice, coming from somewhere in the distance, not as strong as it should’ve been.
Two of the remaining men didn’t fight with swords, but with magic. A dark magic, Maria knew. She could feel the malice laced within every spell that came her way.
“Drugka kol urha!” one shouted, and a stream of fire emanated from his fingertips.
Maria ducked and rolled out of the way, the pain in the back of her leg now nonexistent. She felt the hair singe on the back of her neck and hands.
She sprang up, her legs bent, head on a swivel, eyes darting between each of the three men now closing in around her. Their eyes burned a bright red now. It reminded her of the Arachnids.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Maria murmured. With her left hand, she motioned them forward.
The man with the sword came first, a perfect distraction. She saw what the other two were planning before they could do it, and she was expecting the dark magic that came from their fingertips as they muttered spells under their breath, their lips pronouncing words Maria could never fathom with her limited Earth knowledge.
She blocked the hit from the one with the sword and kicked out, catching him in the middle. The man wheezed, dropping to his knees. Maria spun with her next hit. Gotta make it fast. Gotta time it right.
She spun, and the scream from the man on his knees was cut short as she sliced him horizontally across the chest. She focused now, hearing the dark spells again.
Firelight lit up the sky. Just as Maria completed her spin and faced the two remaining men, she saw their magic combine into what resembled a small mushroom cloud. An inferno of death.
The sword! The sword, Maria! a strong voice said, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
She had no time to question it. It was do or die.
In both hands, she held the sword in front of her, with the point aimed between the two cloaked men.
The dark magic came straight away.
The next thing she knew, her arms were vibrating hard enough to make her think they would come off. She opened her eyes only to close them immediately after; the light was too bright. It was like staring into the sun. A roaring rattled in her ears. The smell of hot steel and burning flesh reached her nostrils.
Then—all was quiet.
She stood in front of the two men, as if nothing had happened. Except…it wasn’t exactly like that. Her sword weighed more than it had before, and fire danced just beneath the surface of the steel.
“No,” one of the cloaked men rasped, his forked tongue slithering out of his mouth like a snake’s. “No, that can’t be.”
The sword!
It all came to Maria in a wave of understanding. Her sword had absorbed their dark magic, and now it was more than a sword.
It was a loaded gun.
A grin found its way to her face.
“Oh, my deformed friends, but it is,” Maria said. With her right hand, she rotated the blade and drove its sharp point into the ground. A crater formed where the blade met the earth. Black smoke and fire shot off the sword’s edge, like two ropes of flame. They lashed across the cloaked men’s faces, leaving a jagged, red mark across their flesh. They cried out and fell to the cracked road.
Maria, her jaw hanging open, raised the sizzling blade to eye level. Beneath the steel, faint orange, black, and red flames danced—fading, fading, and gone.
“What the hell was that?” she whispered to herself.
Movement caught her attention. It was the man that the cloaks had beaten. He was moving away from the smoky area, sliding on his backside.
“Are you okay?” Maria asked him. “No, don’t be scared. I’m on your side. I was only trying to help you.”
“What—what…are you?” the man asked breathlessly.
Maria stepped over the incapacitated Dragon Tongue and hunkered down in front of the old man, sticking her hand out to him. “Oh, geez, where are my manners? I’m Maria Apple, from Earth, and we’d better get the hell out of here before more of those bastards show up.”
The man only gawked at Maria’s hand.
“Okay, buddy, we don’t have time for this. Me,” she pointed to herself, “good guy. You,” she pointed to him, “guy who just got his ass saved; don’t blow this new lease on life. Let me help you up.”
“I-I-I—” the man stammered.
“Yeah, yeah, thank me later. Come on. The rest of my group can’t be far.”
Firelight bounced on the horizon down the road.
Reinforcements.
This time, the man, now looking over Maria’s shoulder at the torches bobbing in the darkness, took her hand. She pulled him up—he weighed next to nothing—and then she sheathed her sword, which was now back to its normal weight.
“There!” someone shouted in the distance. “Over there!”
Before Maria could tell if the reinforcements had seen them or not, she and the old man vanished amongst the empty buildings, the dark shadows hiding them from enemy eyes.
Chapter Two
Sherlock led Ignatius and Frieda, stumbling down the dark alleyway until it wasn’t dark anymore. Ignatius stopped and looked over his shoulder. High in the night sky, fire burned across the blackness, only to vanish in the blink of an eye.
“What’s that?” someone said near the end of the alleyway. Ignatius had to squint. He could hardly see Frieda stopped in front of him. The firelight left a temporary afterimage burning on his retinas.
“Hey, stop! Hey, you!” the man shouted.
“Back!” Frieda ordered her companions. She ushered them down the alleyway, but Ignatius
