The Concarnadine Chronicles #022 -- "Enemies"
Title: "Enemies"
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #022 :: “Enemies”
Word Count: c.1750
Rating: PG-15
Summary: The last chapter(s) continue(s), with the obligatory "fight scene"
Author's Notes: This is what I'd been working to. Props to those of you who are still keeping up with the plot twists, and can put up with the cliches
“Enemies”
Across the width of a room the size of a gymnasium, Concarnadine and Elizabeth found themselves facing a quartet of people, most notable among them being Ilona Comeyn.
“So - it’s you fools,” she said. “Very well, if you won’t serve the Master, you can die for him.”
She gestured and the doors behind Elizabeth slammed shut. At the same time, Concarnadine felt dizzy - whatever it was she had done, it had interfered with the Balance of the Cosmic Planes. Urgently, Concarnadine snapped his fingers and time, for the moment, stopped. Which allowed time for him and for Elizabeth to take stock of their enemies.
Ilona wore the cowled robe to which they had become accustomed. Two of the other three wore “grunge”-style clothes - sweatshirts, ratty jeans, trainers, and the last wore a smarter version of the same, and was recognisable as Caleb, the huge Caribbean whom they had met and fought in the Docklands. Except that he seemed to have shrunk in on himself, and now his magnificent physique was a skeletal shadow of its former magnificence.
Turning his attention outward, Concarnadine felt the tension in the Planes, but it was, he judged, something with which they could cope - they were, after all, cosmic in scale, and this was but a microcosm to them.
Feeling time begin to quiver in its restraint, Concarnadine released it, and, almost at once, and with a cosmic inevitability, the conflict began.
At a barked command from Ilona, the two grunges (one a lanky boy, the other a smart, preppy-looking girl) headed for Concarnadine, whilst Ilona herself went straight for Elizabeth. As they advanced, the boy pulled out a tyre-iron and held it ready for a devastating cross-body blow. Reacting, Concarnadine concentrated and transmuted the weapon into a bunch of daffodils. Then, too late, he realised that the entire threat had been misdirection - the real danger had been the girl, who had pulled two jewelled pins from her hair, and was using them to conjure Ethereal Manacles in an attempt to shackle his wrists together. As such, it would be no use turning his body to Air - the Manacles, being themselves drawn from immateriality, would simply close on his immaterial form. He incanted, and seemed to collapse and reintegrate feet away, as his body and clothing became Water and then returned to their true form. And, as he reintegrated, he threw first Light and then Dark at his foes, dazzling them and then depriving them of any recovering sight by depriving them of the wherewithal to see.
He was marshalling his strength again, and sketching plans for the next phase, when he saw the boy crouch and pump his fist against he ground. At once a tremor threatened his balance and he was forced to step aside. The slight sound o his movement was obviously audible to the girl, who immediately oriented herself on him, and began to prepare another spell.
Elizabeth ducked sideways and the vortex passed over her and to her left. Had it not, had she allowed it to envelope her, she had little doubt that, in that instant, she would have ceased to be within her own dimension, but would have been cast adrift on the chancy winds of Chaos. Ilona might have deceived her with the vortices (she had caused them to look like simple binding abjurations) but for the fact that the first (and largest, since it had been launched from a calm mind) had brought with it, and through it, a denizen on Chaos, something between a chicken and a stretched lizard. It had scrabbled and reared at her - and been swallowed up by the vortex, even as she dodged it. And, sooner or later, Ilona would get round to adding a component to focus the vortices on Elizabeth herself, rather than firing them off on prep-programmed courses. Then, dodging them would become a real irk.
For the moment, she was restricting herself to the dodging, the physical negating of Ilona Comeyn’s efforts. For one thing she wasn’t sure that she was powerful enough to drive any attack through the shields that Ilona would undoubtedly have, ready at a moment’s notice. For the second, she wasn’t sure whether Ilona knew that, as well as being Concarnadine’s stage assistant, Elizabeth had learned to wield magic of her own wreaking. And, if Ilona had learned that, Elizabeth felt sure she would have prepared for it.
Whereas, if she hadn’t, then the longer she remained ignorant ….
The next vortex was different. To the naked eye, it would unquestionably, have looked the same as its predecessors: to show difference would have been to throw away the advantage to be gained by making it different.
But Elizabeth’s eyes were sharper than they looked: she could see into the emanations of magick. It had been what had initially altered Concarnadine to her magical potential - the fact that she could see when magic was being used. In this case, she could see that the new vortex was rotating at a different frequency, and that it was canted slightly to one side. So, forewarned, when Elizabeth made her dodge, it was with her eyes firmly on the oncoming vortex. It did not, as she might have expected, reorient toward her; rather, it suddenly spat out three smaller vortices, which were directed towards her new location. And, when she moved again, three more sub-vortices were produced. By now, however, the original had shrunk to one-tenth its original size, and she could sense that its magical lifetime was ebbing fast.
So, instead of dodging, she retreated. There was plenty of room: as the manoeuvring had gone on, it had become clear that the “walls” of the chamber were merely the formal expressions that there was not infinite space available, rather then rigid barriers.
As she retreated, the vortices followed, but, as she had guessed, they were already running close to their maximum duration. Magic could only hold a gateway between dimensions open for so long - these were about due …
They spluttered and died. Ilona Comeyn would have to start over again. And Elizabeth knew one other thing: that each time Ilona summoned the vortices, the spell was taking a little more out of her.
The boy hurled the sapling like a spear, and effortlessly. As casually, Concarnadine invoked Fire, and let it consume the weapon. In almost the same movement, he turned and, finding the girl coming up on what she had thought would be his blind side, he drew in more elemental Fire, and then transposed it with the Air around her. He smiled grimly as she back-pedalled to avoid being roasted.
Then it was time to face the boy again. The sudden change from open room to what looked like light woodland, dotted with saplings and bushes, had come as some surprise, but the effect had been ameliorated by the fact that neither of his opponents looked to have expected it, either. And Concarnadine was far better able to cope - Earth, Air, and Water were all here - and Fire lay to his command.
His male opponent crouched again, and, as his fist rose, Concarnadine poised himself. The boy’s fist hit the ground, but, even as the tremor started to emanate, Concarnadine drew the force into himself and used it to power a twisting leap that brought him to the lad’s side, and let him knock the boy down.
Then he half-turned and fired off a Wind Blast at the girl, reasoning that it ought to take her by surprise as it was effectively invisible.
To his surprise, she dodged aside, and thrust out her hand at him. Reflexively, he threw himself to one side, and the pulse of force she had fired at him, that would otherwise have knocked him back badly, missed.
Ilona missed a syllable. The vortex quivered and then threatened to rebound on her.
“Help me !”
Elizabeth gripped the Jewel, and made the subtlest of gestures. The vortex swerved erratically, and then re-homed onto her. A second gesture and the vortex swallowed itself up, and the arcane energy which had powered it was sucked into the Jewel and shared with Elizabeth.
Ilona Comeyn was already preparing another incantation, but it was clear that she was close to total exhaustion. Suddenly a voice came from thin air: “Unacceptable.” Ilona threw her head back: “Give me more power, dammit !”
“Unacceptable,” the voice repeated. A faint red circle manifested, on the floor around Ilona. Elizabeth edged away, just in case of danger. A second later, Ilona noticed it, and immediately began chanting in an Eastern European dialect. The circle strengthened in colour, until it was eye-searingly bright. At the same time Ilona chanted faster and faster. Elizabeth had no idea what happened - there was a bloody flash of light and Ilona was gone.
And in her place stood Caleb, his Caribbean skin glowing in the light, as he seemed to fill out and swell.
“And now, I’m going to eat you,” he declared.
They were double-teaming him - taking it in turns to attack, and meanwhile each one manoeuvring to force him to split his attention between them. To begin with, he could cope, but as things got more intense, it became clear that he needed to do something.
Concarnadine reached inside himself and tapped into a part of his magic which he often used on stage, but rarely in ordinary life. He had reduced the incantation necessary to the minimum, by hours of study, and now he cast the spell and watched as a duplicate of himself formed.
Immediately Concarnadine hurled down a packet of flash powder (from the pocket in his sleeve), and then, invoking a moment of Invisibility (by warping the air around him to reflect light), moved away from his doppelganger.
As he hoped, the two grunges had been distracted, and he decided to take his opportunity. He rarely forced anyone to sleep, but the power existed within his repertoire, and the grunge boy succumbed to the enchantment, even as his female counterpart was working out that the Concarnadine she was attacking was actually a mere similitude.
As she turned, to seek the real target, Concarnadine tried to freeze the air around her, but time slowed down and he saw both the young people changed, as their flesh wasted away and they waned into apparent senescence within the space of seconds.
“I weary of this,” a voice said: “It is time.”
And, as the false forest faded away, Concarnadine found himself facing a man-shape attired in dark clothes, and sporting a devilish little beard.
“Now, this ends,” Jovimort declared.
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #022 :: “Enemies”
Word Count: c.1750
Rating: PG-15
Summary: The last chapter(s) continue(s), with the obligatory "fight scene"
Author's Notes: This is what I'd been working to. Props to those of you who are still keeping up with the plot twists, and can put up with the cliches
“Enemies”
Across the width of a room the size of a gymnasium, Concarnadine and Elizabeth found themselves facing a quartet of people, most notable among them being Ilona Comeyn.
“So - it’s you fools,” she said. “Very well, if you won’t serve the Master, you can die for him.”
She gestured and the doors behind Elizabeth slammed shut. At the same time, Concarnadine felt dizzy - whatever it was she had done, it had interfered with the Balance of the Cosmic Planes. Urgently, Concarnadine snapped his fingers and time, for the moment, stopped. Which allowed time for him and for Elizabeth to take stock of their enemies.
Ilona wore the cowled robe to which they had become accustomed. Two of the other three wore “grunge”-style clothes - sweatshirts, ratty jeans, trainers, and the last wore a smarter version of the same, and was recognisable as Caleb, the huge Caribbean whom they had met and fought in the Docklands. Except that he seemed to have shrunk in on himself, and now his magnificent physique was a skeletal shadow of its former magnificence.
Turning his attention outward, Concarnadine felt the tension in the Planes, but it was, he judged, something with which they could cope - they were, after all, cosmic in scale, and this was but a microcosm to them.
Feeling time begin to quiver in its restraint, Concarnadine released it, and, almost at once, and with a cosmic inevitability, the conflict began.
At a barked command from Ilona, the two grunges (one a lanky boy, the other a smart, preppy-looking girl) headed for Concarnadine, whilst Ilona herself went straight for Elizabeth. As they advanced, the boy pulled out a tyre-iron and held it ready for a devastating cross-body blow. Reacting, Concarnadine concentrated and transmuted the weapon into a bunch of daffodils. Then, too late, he realised that the entire threat had been misdirection - the real danger had been the girl, who had pulled two jewelled pins from her hair, and was using them to conjure Ethereal Manacles in an attempt to shackle his wrists together. As such, it would be no use turning his body to Air - the Manacles, being themselves drawn from immateriality, would simply close on his immaterial form. He incanted, and seemed to collapse and reintegrate feet away, as his body and clothing became Water and then returned to their true form. And, as he reintegrated, he threw first Light and then Dark at his foes, dazzling them and then depriving them of any recovering sight by depriving them of the wherewithal to see.
He was marshalling his strength again, and sketching plans for the next phase, when he saw the boy crouch and pump his fist against he ground. At once a tremor threatened his balance and he was forced to step aside. The slight sound o his movement was obviously audible to the girl, who immediately oriented herself on him, and began to prepare another spell.
Elizabeth ducked sideways and the vortex passed over her and to her left. Had it not, had she allowed it to envelope her, she had little doubt that, in that instant, she would have ceased to be within her own dimension, but would have been cast adrift on the chancy winds of Chaos. Ilona might have deceived her with the vortices (she had caused them to look like simple binding abjurations) but for the fact that the first (and largest, since it had been launched from a calm mind) had brought with it, and through it, a denizen on Chaos, something between a chicken and a stretched lizard. It had scrabbled and reared at her - and been swallowed up by the vortex, even as she dodged it. And, sooner or later, Ilona would get round to adding a component to focus the vortices on Elizabeth herself, rather than firing them off on prep-programmed courses. Then, dodging them would become a real irk.
For the moment, she was restricting herself to the dodging, the physical negating of Ilona Comeyn’s efforts. For one thing she wasn’t sure that she was powerful enough to drive any attack through the shields that Ilona would undoubtedly have, ready at a moment’s notice. For the second, she wasn’t sure whether Ilona knew that, as well as being Concarnadine’s stage assistant, Elizabeth had learned to wield magic of her own wreaking. And, if Ilona had learned that, Elizabeth felt sure she would have prepared for it.
Whereas, if she hadn’t, then the longer she remained ignorant ….
The next vortex was different. To the naked eye, it would unquestionably, have looked the same as its predecessors: to show difference would have been to throw away the advantage to be gained by making it different.
But Elizabeth’s eyes were sharper than they looked: she could see into the emanations of magick. It had been what had initially altered Concarnadine to her magical potential - the fact that she could see when magic was being used. In this case, she could see that the new vortex was rotating at a different frequency, and that it was canted slightly to one side. So, forewarned, when Elizabeth made her dodge, it was with her eyes firmly on the oncoming vortex. It did not, as she might have expected, reorient toward her; rather, it suddenly spat out three smaller vortices, which were directed towards her new location. And, when she moved again, three more sub-vortices were produced. By now, however, the original had shrunk to one-tenth its original size, and she could sense that its magical lifetime was ebbing fast.
So, instead of dodging, she retreated. There was plenty of room: as the manoeuvring had gone on, it had become clear that the “walls” of the chamber were merely the formal expressions that there was not infinite space available, rather then rigid barriers.
As she retreated, the vortices followed, but, as she had guessed, they were already running close to their maximum duration. Magic could only hold a gateway between dimensions open for so long - these were about due …
They spluttered and died. Ilona Comeyn would have to start over again. And Elizabeth knew one other thing: that each time Ilona summoned the vortices, the spell was taking a little more out of her.
The boy hurled the sapling like a spear, and effortlessly. As casually, Concarnadine invoked Fire, and let it consume the weapon. In almost the same movement, he turned and, finding the girl coming up on what she had thought would be his blind side, he drew in more elemental Fire, and then transposed it with the Air around her. He smiled grimly as she back-pedalled to avoid being roasted.
Then it was time to face the boy again. The sudden change from open room to what looked like light woodland, dotted with saplings and bushes, had come as some surprise, but the effect had been ameliorated by the fact that neither of his opponents looked to have expected it, either. And Concarnadine was far better able to cope - Earth, Air, and Water were all here - and Fire lay to his command.
His male opponent crouched again, and, as his fist rose, Concarnadine poised himself. The boy’s fist hit the ground, but, even as the tremor started to emanate, Concarnadine drew the force into himself and used it to power a twisting leap that brought him to the lad’s side, and let him knock the boy down.
Then he half-turned and fired off a Wind Blast at the girl, reasoning that it ought to take her by surprise as it was effectively invisible.
To his surprise, she dodged aside, and thrust out her hand at him. Reflexively, he threw himself to one side, and the pulse of force she had fired at him, that would otherwise have knocked him back badly, missed.
Ilona missed a syllable. The vortex quivered and then threatened to rebound on her.
“Help me !”
Elizabeth gripped the Jewel, and made the subtlest of gestures. The vortex swerved erratically, and then re-homed onto her. A second gesture and the vortex swallowed itself up, and the arcane energy which had powered it was sucked into the Jewel and shared with Elizabeth.
Ilona Comeyn was already preparing another incantation, but it was clear that she was close to total exhaustion. Suddenly a voice came from thin air: “Unacceptable.” Ilona threw her head back: “Give me more power, dammit !”
“Unacceptable,” the voice repeated. A faint red circle manifested, on the floor around Ilona. Elizabeth edged away, just in case of danger. A second later, Ilona noticed it, and immediately began chanting in an Eastern European dialect. The circle strengthened in colour, until it was eye-searingly bright. At the same time Ilona chanted faster and faster. Elizabeth had no idea what happened - there was a bloody flash of light and Ilona was gone.
And in her place stood Caleb, his Caribbean skin glowing in the light, as he seemed to fill out and swell.
“And now, I’m going to eat you,” he declared.
They were double-teaming him - taking it in turns to attack, and meanwhile each one manoeuvring to force him to split his attention between them. To begin with, he could cope, but as things got more intense, it became clear that he needed to do something.
Concarnadine reached inside himself and tapped into a part of his magic which he often used on stage, but rarely in ordinary life. He had reduced the incantation necessary to the minimum, by hours of study, and now he cast the spell and watched as a duplicate of himself formed.
Immediately Concarnadine hurled down a packet of flash powder (from the pocket in his sleeve), and then, invoking a moment of Invisibility (by warping the air around him to reflect light), moved away from his doppelganger.
As he hoped, the two grunges had been distracted, and he decided to take his opportunity. He rarely forced anyone to sleep, but the power existed within his repertoire, and the grunge boy succumbed to the enchantment, even as his female counterpart was working out that the Concarnadine she was attacking was actually a mere similitude.
As she turned, to seek the real target, Concarnadine tried to freeze the air around her, but time slowed down and he saw both the young people changed, as their flesh wasted away and they waned into apparent senescence within the space of seconds.
“I weary of this,” a voice said: “It is time.”
And, as the false forest faded away, Concarnadine found himself facing a man-shape attired in dark clothes, and sporting a devilish little beard.
“Now, this ends,” Jovimort declared.