‘We can’t know that,’ Mitsuko said.
Nava began casting defensive magic on herself as she moved toward the Harbinger at a slow walk. Mitsuko was sort of right: they could not know how this was going to pan out. It seemed reasonable to give herself the best chance of surviving the experience. Armour, two steps closer. The Harbinger rolled to its knees. Active Recovery, two steps closer. The Harbinger regained its feet and turned to face her. Closer still, and now it was within range of her arm.
‘Something tells me that she’s quite capable of taking that thing on,’ Kyle said from behind Nava. ‘There’s something very dark about that girl. If I met her on a battlefield, I’d be running away screaming.’
The Harbinger drew back an arm and threw a punch at Nava’s face. Her parry was not fast enough and the creature’s fist made contact… with an invisible barrier which flared briefly under the impact. It had left itself wide open for her counterattack. Her fist hit its chest again, and the alien was thrown back the way it had presumably come in, right through one of the building’s walls. Nava ran after it.
Somehow, she had imagined that passing through solid objects would be at least a little traumatic, but neither the people she was dashing through nor the walls presented any impediment. It was like running through air. Outside, she could not feel either the grass or the concrete of a path under her feet. She figured that, had she wanted to, she could have ignored the fact that there was a surface there and slid into the ground.
Out here, the muted colours were worse. Overhead lights provided illumination which seemed starker than usual. The lamps were carefully designed to direct light downward in a cone, reducing light pollution and making more efficient use of the photons. Here, that cone had a distinct edge, quite visible in whatever it was that passed for air. There was still a weird, overall sense of illumination which overrode the real-world light sources, casting a grey, eerie light on everything. The only thing which showed real colour was the Harbinger, running down a path away from her.
Nava followed. She was sure she was faster because she had gained ground running out of the club. Now she slowed herself deliberately. She wanted some distance between them. She needed space to use her Magic Burst. The Harbinger used its apparent advantage and turned a corner, and Nava lost sight of it behind a building for a couple of seconds.
Of course, it was an ambush. She was pretty much expecting it and she went on the defensive as she followed the creature around the bend. The Concussive Force spell – or whatever the Harbinger’s equivalent was – was actually more obvious in this place. It came at her in the form of a visible shockwave in reality, a distortion of space which glowed slightly. Nava threw herself into a dive, out of the path of the incoming attack, and sprang out of it and onto her feet. His second bolt hit her in the chest, tossing her through the air like a rag doll. Her vision darkened as pain lanced through her body. Her Armour spell had taken some of the force out of it, but not nearly enough. She had broken ribs for sure, maybe worse damage, and the pain was agonising.
‘You should not have come here, to my world,’ the Harbinger said. Part of Nava’s brain which was still functioning wondered how it could speak English so well. Was there a spell for that? She was over ten metres away from the thing, maybe twenty. Was it moving closer? ‘I was discorporated for my crimes, but they unknowingly made me more powerful.’
The pain in Nava’s body dulled to something bearable and she turned her head to see where the Harbinger had got to. Casting Active Recovery had been a good move. For that matter, the Armour spell had probably saved her life.
She was lucky; it was a sadist and it wanted her to suffer as much as possible. It was walking slowly toward her as it explained its power and her weakness. It was around fifteen metres away and still walking.
‘I’m glad that you’re awake,’ it said in a crowing voice. ‘I’ll make your last moments as long and painful as possible. I was afraid that I’d killed you. That wouldn’t do at all. Have you ever felt the effects of the Agony spell? Really, you’ll wish I had killed you.’ It raised its hand. Nava lifted her own arm, trembling as though in acute pain. The Harbinger paused. ‘Still a little fight in you? Give me your best shot, human. There’s nothing you can do to hurt me.’ It almost spat the word ‘human.’ Like an insult.
‘I’m not as human as you think,’ Nava said. Her arm steadied and a bolt of incandescent white light left her palm. Even the carrier for Magic Burst was more obvious here and the effect, when it penetrated the Harbinger’s chest and detonated, was even more dramatic. The usual sphere of white light was a bluer colour and lightning arced around it as it expanded. Nava’s sorcerous armour flared as the edge of it touched her and the electrical arcs jumped to writhe over her body. They felt warm and tickled a little.
When the sphere vanished, there was no sign at all of the Harbinger. It was gone. Disintegrated. The feeling of unease the thing caused in Nava was gone too. No more murders. No more murderer.
She climbed to her feet, wincing a little as she felt her broken ribs setting. ‘Okay, so, now I’ve just got
