Arcana 99: Stage One

Etteilla had learned something important about herself: she hated trains. Sure, they were fast and required no effort from her to move. One of the best ways to get ahead in the race. The ride was relaxing, the view breath-taking, and the resting tolerable. But as Etteilla sat in the cramped lavatory of the train’s third car, having spent five minutes being pushed to ever more distant cars because of one toilet problem or another, she struggled to think of anything but her loathing. To make matters worse, someone had been pounding on the door since she had started.

When she had finished, Etteilla grabbed an extra dozen sheets of toilet paper, leaving only a few on the roll, and flushed them. She had considered flushing the whole roll to spite the man at the door, but she decided that was a bit petty. She opened the door and saw an older man standing on the other side.

“Sorry it took so long,” Etteilla lied, “There isn’t much toilet paper left, but I’ll ask an attendant to get some so don’t worry.” Etteilla meant none of it and hoped that the minutes spent waiting would teach the man a valuable lesson about, well, she wasn’t sure what lesson he would learn. She knew it would be something important. She stepped around the man, he moved towards the bathroom, and the train violently shook. A dim flash came with the shaking, but Etteilla was too busy parsing the message embedded in the explosion to notice it.

The third arcana, that of communication, allows for those under its effects to understand the meaning behind the words and actions of someone else under its effect. It allows people to communicate without the risk of misinterpreting each other, as well as allowing for complex non-verbal messages such as the one carried by the explosion. That message told Etteilla of what had happened to Nerio while she was gone. The train car full of people seeking to kill them, the bomb on the bridge, and Nerio’s intention to leave her to deal with the bomb.

Perhaps it was her desire for vengeance upon the man, or anxiety caused by Nerio’s message, or just simple luck. Whatever it was that drove Etteilla to glance at the bathroom behind her did it in time for her to witness the man swinging a small knife. She flinched back, dodging the blade and following it up with a fist powered by the fourteenth arcana, that of enhancement, to the man’s chest. The fourteenth arcana had one of the simplest rituals to cast it. All she needed was a bead of sweat and a hand to press it into the target's body. Thanks to her disaster in the bathroom earlier, she had sweat to spare.

Had Etteilla been given the same training as Nerio, she would have noted that as the man bent over from her blow, not a single drop of saliva fell from his mouth. Had the moment she struck his chest been frozen in time, had she been given a minute to view a second, she would have looked into his mouth and discovered it to be dry. Like a bone left in the desert. Like the maw of a corpse freshly placed in the casket. But time did not pause. It did not slow. It continued on as it always had. As Eteilla’s fist met the man’s chest, breaking his rib and bringing him to his knees, she noticed nothing beyond the pain in her wrist.

With her assassin defeated, Eteilla had time to reflect on the mission Nerio had thrust into her lap. Nerio’s message had brought with it the likeliest location for the bomb. There was plenty of time for her to walk to the front of the train and pull the brake before they reached the bridge. An act that would only have her face a few train conductors rather than a heavily armed fireteam. She closed the bathroom door behind her, planning to do just that. Until she saw the line that had formed for the bathroom. Well, upon second glance, line was not the right word. The group of people was far too disorganized to be called a line. It was more of a crowd, consisting of everyone in the carriage bunched together, placidly staring towards Eteilla. That is, until Etteilla’s third glance to them changed her mind once more. Crowds didn’t often wield weapons and move in unison to surround something. This was a mob.

On an unrelated note, Etteilla decided it was better to stick with Nerio’s plan. She took a cautious step back, then a faster, more reckless one as the mob charged after her. She threw open the car’s rear door and stepped onto the gangway.

Had Etteilla been given the same training as Nerio, her only option would have been to fight off the mob. To fight them all off would be dangerous. To jump off the train would be death. Etteilla jumped. Had she been Nerio, her only option then would have been to hope she had the velocity to clear the train, and that she would miss any large rocks. Luckily, she was not Nerio. She pulled the bottle containing her shrunken horse from her cloak and uncorked it. With the container broken, the arcana of ensealment acting on Zippy ceased, bringing it back to consciousness. A few more hand motions to regrow the horse and a swift cast of the fourteenth arcana to strengthen Zippy’s legs and speed led her to land unscathed onto her horse’s back.

Aided by Etteilla’s spells, the horse easily outpaced the train, weaving between the bottles and briefcases hurled at her by the train’s passengers. Within a few minutes, the curve of the tracks hid the train from her sight. Ahead of her was the bridge Nerio believed the bomb to be on. Etteilla was unsure exactly what kind of bomb she was looking for. She couldn’t see any red sticks or black balls on the bridge. Though, she did see a man, a car, and a suspicious pile of wires.

Etteilla stopped her horse and greeted the potential bomber, “Hey fuckhead, are you the guy with the bomb I’m supposed to kill? I assumed they’d be ugly, and you fit that well.”

The man put down the cord he was tying and chuckled at an unspoken joke, “Ms. Laveau I presume.” Her question answered, Etteilla began to dismount, “Your insults need work.”

Etteilla cocked a brow as she surveyed the scene before her. The man stood next to a wire that ran towards the bridge. A few feet beside him was a makeshift camp built against a large boulder. Calling it a camp was stretching the term a bit. It was nothing more than a pair of stools sitting atop a blanket. One stool was empty while a small grill sat on the other. Between the man and the camp was the detonating plunger.

“Ya see,” the man continued unaware that his monologue was giving Etteilla time to prepare one of the arcana, “an insult should be yer first strike against an enemy. Craft it well, use it well, and you’ll decide the battle before it comes to blows.” As he spoke he meandered closer to the detonator, a non-subtle threat for Etteilla to keep still, “A proper insult must be two things: definable, and relevant. A ‘fuckface’ ain't a thing. The only reason I even registered it as an insult was your tone. A proper insult should be obvious even when spoken with a smile. It must also be relevant to the insulted. I am by no means the most attractive man, but I am far from ugly. Call me a murderer, worthless scum, but not ugly. A formless, baseless insult such as the one ya made is the work of a child. A child who played too roughly for the other kids. Always left alone as no one wanted to play with the girl who broke bones more often than hurt feelings. Such isolation stunted yer social development I bet. Ya grew older, smarter, perhaps kinder. But ya never evolved yer ability to converse beyond those grade-school days. After all, how could ya learn to improve yer speech when no one wants to speak with ya.”

The words stopped Etteilla for a moment, and the man leaped onto the detonator, “As I said miss, a proper insult decides the battle. Now take a step back and put up yer arms. Don’t want a surprise bullet in my head.”

Etteilla raised her arms and slowly pulled her right hand from her left arm, completing the ritual to cast the seventeenth arcana, the seeking flame. The line of ash she had spread along her left arm began to smolder as it raced toward the circle drawn on her hand. Upon reaching the circle, the ash glowed brighter and formed into a small ball of fire that launched toward the man.

The man jumped to the side and the flame curved through the air to follow. It struck his shoulder, pinning him to the boulder. By then, Etteilla had drawn another line of ash and cast the spell again. The train was starting to come into view behind her, in less than three minutes it would cross the bridge. Given how the assassins at Navajo Bridge chose to blow themselves up for a chance to kill Nerio, Etteilla rightly assumed the man before her would do the same. The only way to ensure the train was safe was to put him down before it arrived. She aimed the second blast for his head. As the name of the spell implies, the Seeking Flame tracks its target and only stops when the fire goes out or it makes contact. She had only moments to cast her first spell, so it was weaker than normal; not even advanced enough to explode. This second cast was considerably more potent. The fireball raced towards the man like it was a professional baseball pitch. It first struck his nose, followed by the rest of his face, before exploding and engulfing his body and the boulder in flame.

The smoke cleared, and Etteilla looked away from the man's charred corpse. She could tolerate bodies when the situation called for it, but she never could handle viscera or burns. She was uncertain as to whether this fear was from the gore or a more psychological reaction from seeing someone turned into something. Regardless of its source, this fear kept Etteilla's gaze glued to the detonator so when the man's corpse clicked its tongue she couldn't see it shake its head.

"Should've known ya'd have something like that. A one-armed man and an unarmed woman could never have beaten our team without some bullshit help at their side."

Etteilla studied the man's non-corpse state. He was standing against the rock, an annoying smile plastered onto his face. Aside from some mild scorches on his arm, he was unscathed. This was Ettiella's first time paying attention to the man's face. For her to describe it in a word, it was off, odd. His face was flat and ill-defined but was normal enough. The rest of him was the same. His short dark hair laid tight against his head. His arms rested against the rock as if they had been pinned to it. And, due to some trick of the light or how he was positioned, he cast no shadow upon the ground. Wait, she thought, is he. . .

The man interrupted her thoughts, "May I ask what yer artefact is? I need to know which part of ya to keep pristine," He raised his arm as Etteilla finished her thought. He had no shadows falling upon his face at all. Not under his nose, nor under his chin. It was as if he had been drawn onto the rock. All of him, except his left arm which extended from the rock and pointed a pistol at her chest.

Does everyone know about this artefact crap but me? Seriously, twenty-four years of training magic with three generations of magicians and not even so much as a mention! But three days with this gunslinger and it's all anybody talks about!

Etteilla hid her rage with smugness, "Sorry, but my tricks are all me. I don't need some piece of rubbish to be amazing."

The man did not appreciate her comment, or so Etteilla assumed given that his response was a pair of bullets. The first sailed by her head. The second didn't. It hit her arm and if she hadn't been under the effects of the arcana of enhancement, it would have gone through. Instead, it only fractured the bone. Before he could fire again, Etteilla put the thumb and forefinger of each hand into a square shape and spread them out before her. Inside of this growing square was the thirty-eighth arcana, the barrier, in the form of a shimmering yellow wall. The man fired another volley that was slowed when it entered the spell until the bullets dropped harmlessly to the ground. Like the rest of the arcana, higher numbers meant a more potent effect and a more demanding cost. Etteilla had less than three minutes before the train was safely across the bridge and less than two before the spell sapped her energy.

Etteilla always took care to wear her emotions openly. Her mother had taught her that emotions were the purest form of someone's thoughts; learning to truthfully display them was the first step in mastering the arcana of communication. The ritual was simply placing a mark on the target and yourself but if you were busy hiding your feelings the messages became muddled and unclear. The mere fact that Nerio had been understandable on the first day was impressive. Being able to use it as he did on the train, embedding a complex plan in a simple message, with only two day's experience was frightening. She was only seven at the time, but it still took Etteilla a full month before she could use the third arcana like that.

Scientist my ass. Learning that fast and being that calm with a train out to kill you? Please. He knows a mountain more than he told me yesterday. When I put this guy under I'm gonna twist Nerio's arm till he tells me the truth. But to do that. . .

She refocused on the man. She didn't need to beat him. Stalling him until the train had passed was enough. If she kept the barrier up, she'd be safe from his bullets, but she'd be out of energy before the train arrived. If she put it down to attack him, he'd shoot her before she could perform any useful incantations.

As she ran her options through her mind, Etteilla kept her face as stoic as she could but decades of habits and discipline can't be undone so easily.

"Ya look troubled Ms. Laveau. Thinking about how ya're gonna get out of this one?" His voice was cool and even, but as he lowered his gun and flattened his arm back into the rock, Etteilla saw the truth of it. He wasn't doing it to relax his arm, he was doing it to protect it. He was nervous and just as clueless as her on how to survive the encounter.

"You know, your chance at success is about to roll right past. And given how your boys at Navajo chose to off themselves rather than fail, I figure failure brings some pretty heinous punishments. It also doesn't look like you got all your bombs planted" Etteilla finished this with a nod towards the small pile of cartoonishly red dynamite by his camp. Come on, just move outta that rock. You know you have to push that plunger, and I know your organization's the type to make victory your only way to live. One good shot is all I need.

A smile was his only response, "Do ya see that bridge Etteilla? That bridge is a testament to the power of modern engineering. And that?" He gestured towards the small pile of red sticks placed along the bridge, "That is my testament to the power of modern technology. A bridge is designed to hold a load; an engineered bridge is designed to barely hold a load. With their modern calculations and manufacturing methods, bridges can be built to hold the expected load and no more. Have that train run on anything other than the tracks and the whole thing'll collapse. Drop the train, even just a few feet, anywhere onto the bridge and it collapses. Meanwhile, Nobel's great contribution to the world has had a century to grow. A modern stick of his red death has more than twice the power it used to. When they called Nobel the 'merchant of death,' I'd need hundreds of sticks to destroy a steel bridge such as this. But now? His apprentices made it possible with a dozen, and engineers made it possible with half that. All this to say, that thanks to men much smarter than me, I only need those few sticks I've already planted. They are more than enough to destroy the track and force the train to fall a few feet. The shock of that impact'll do the rest. And as you said, the only way I survive this is by destroying that bridge."

Etteilla swore under her breath. He saw right through my bluff, no way he's going to move until the train gets here. And by then I won't be able to fight him. . .

Etteilla watched the man. He'd made his intention obvious, to wait her out until he thought of a way to win. So long as she kept an eye on him, watching for any movement, she could keep him still. Regardless of how her bluff went, he was the one with the clock. He would have to be the one to make the first move. She just had to. . .

As fast as a man could run, his flat body slid from the boulder to the dirt ground. Then it began to move across it, sprinting towards the plunger without him so much as lifting his legs. Etteilla's waiting strategy left her with only the option to react to the man's movements. In a pure draw and fire, she expected the trained gunslinger to have the edge. Only those with experience with artefacts would have even considered the possibility that the man's would allow him to move across the ground in his two-dimensional state. She couldn't beat him in a fair fight. To throw surprise and her own exhaustion into the mix?

The man's body was underneath her now. The image passed between her legs and paused behind her before it began to raise its weapon. The man stopped as his eyes focused on Etteilla's outstretched palm; her hand in the same position that conjured the fireballs earlier.

Etteilla was not most people. She had never encountered an artefact before she met Nerio, much less fought against one. Despite this, her experience with the arcana had led her to suspect the man's ability spread to the ground as well. Coupled with a swift incantation of the fourteenth arcana of enhancement (thanks to the heat causing her hands to sweat), she was swifter than the man by far.

"Go ahead Mr. Gunslinger," she addressed him with as much venom as he had placed in calling her 'Ms. Laveau', "You're running out of time, and surely your boss can do worse things than a few burns."

All traces of the man's stoicism had left him now. Flat streams of sweat began to pour out of his flat face as he looked over his shoulder, "Can't see the train from down there? Don't worry. You'll see it soon."

Perhaps her last sting was too much, or perhaps it was just enough. Whichever it was, it turned the man's fear into anger. Nerio had been taught that anger was the exact emotion you wanted your opponent to have. It made them reckless and lose their sense of strategy. But Etteilla was not Nerio, and when she saw the man's eyes burn with rage as he pulled his body from the ground despite her threat, she fired her shot without thinking and jumped back. The seeking flame struck the first thing Etteilla saw leave the ground. The man's left arm; the arm she had already injured.

The man wasted no time with his newfound advantage and used his good arm to pull Etteilla's legs to the ground. With his opponent prone and the train only seconds away, now was the perfect time for him to pull the plunger. But he was angry, and angry people aren't thinking about anything beyond what made them that way. He fought his way out of the ground and got to his feet as Etteilla did the same.

With the arcana of enhancement boosting her speed, Etteilla landed a punch on the man's face before he could aim his gun. Dazed from his broken nose, a kick to the chest was all Etteilla needed to push him onto the tracks. The man lay there a moment. Etteilla was not a trained fighter, and without the fourteenth arcana boosting her strength her strikes weren't anything special. But the act of putting him on his ass was more than enough to remind him of the deep burns along his arm. He struggled to his feet, slowly rising as blood dripped from his nose and his injured arm continued to blister. The last thing Etteilla saw before the train struck him was a smile.

She didn't need to witness the impact to know the outcome. The roar of the train's engine and the clacking of its wheels over the tracks masked whatever crunch would have been made. Any drops of blood would launch forward from the impact. Most of all, had he been hit, he couldn't have shot her. The bullet hit Etteilla in her stomach, tearing a hole through her robe and staining the blue fabric red.

"A warning shot Laveau," the man stood inside the tracks, his body flickering between two and three dimensions. He was on the wall of the train car. His image waved forward and back as the windows and doors passed over him. When a car or one of the many open windows traveled through him, his body thickened before flattening and pasting itself onto the train's surface once more. All the while, he still had the same eager grin on his face, "Those artefacts of yers are impressive, but even they won't help ya here," he moved his arms into a mock pose of surrender, "I'll even let ya get a hit in. With how fast ya drew earlier, ya might even make it to me before the train rips yer arm off." Etteilla staggered towards the man, clutching her wound to curtail the bleeding. The man, believing his challenge to have worked, continued, "Tell me where ya got 'em and I'll-"

Etteilla never heard his offer as her fist, strengthened by the fourteenth arcana, shattered his jaw and forced him to drop the pistol. When the pain faded, and Etteilla's hand wasn't rendered a bloody mess by the train, a look of shock ran across the man's face followed by something Etteilla couldn't quite make out. She assumed it was along the lines of, "How did ya do that!" or "Ow!"

This was easily Etteilla's second most satisfying punch and she couldn't help riding that high, "You called it earlier. I always was too rough with the other kids. Not 'cause I was mean or anything. You give someone powers like these when no one else has them? Of course, it goes to your head. I'm sure you know what I mean, that artefact of yours made you feel special, invincible. But there is a difference between you and me. I grew up. You have no idea how pathetic it was to watch you act so smug and proud for using a toy to perform parlor tricks I've been doing since I was eight."

Her words and her fist arrived at the exact moment the man realized that she was in the same two-dimensional space as himself. He believed it to be a similar artefact in her possession. Etteilla knew it as the second arcana. Her second punch sent the man through the train car's wall without breaking it. The man looked around, unsure of how he had entered the train, "Didn't know it could do this, did you?" Etteilla's flat image appeared on the wall the man fell in from before stepping out of the wall and into the car.

She moved a hand towards her stomach, rubbed it against the wound, and brought it to her face. Damn. Guess I gotta hit this guy a little more.

She stood over him. Between the healing arcana, the second, and the second casting of the fourteenth, Etteilla's reserves were almost empty. She had enough left for one more casting of the second. She raised her leg above the man's chest and brought it down. Her foot passed through the floor and onto the bridge beneath them, bringing the man's body with it. She had no doubt he survived, but he did so by becoming an image on the bridge's tracks. By the time he recovered, the train would be long gone.

Exhausted, Etteilla slumped against the wall and reached for the open bag of jerky in her robe. There was only a single piece left. She angrily crumpled the bag as she ate the jerky [Dammit Vivian! You want to eat, you have to help!].

Vivian crawled out of her hood and squeaked [I saved you a piece! I am so nice and kind!]

Etteilla sighed and gave Vivian a pat, "Thanks. . . [I'm too tired for this, but don't you think this is going to become a regular thing! I need this jerky.]"

Vivian sunk back into Etteilla's hood without a sound. Etteilla didn't need the third arcana to know he planned to do it again.

As Etteilla swallowed the jerky and felt the magic within it course through her body, she surveyed the car. She hoped it was empty, explaining how she crawled through a wall and who she assaulted was going to be difficult. So, in a way, she was lucky the car was full of bullet casings and corpses rather than people. Though, Etteilla didn't appreciate it.