Kyle the Apprentice Warlock

1:15 PM September 13^th 2026 
Industrial Park District Near the Port of New York

Sam gripped the steering wheel tightly.  Palms slippery with sweat, she made sure to keep her grasp secure by occasionally rubbing them dry on the leg of her slacks one at a time.  She waited until she had the wheel firmly clasped in her hand before taking the other off.  Gleipnir had taken the front passenger seat and was humming In the Hall of the Mountain King to himself softly.

Despite his relative bravado when he spoke to Alex a few moments earlier, once it was just the two of them, his attitude changed somewhat.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be a little nervous, Gleip?”  Though she’d tried to keep her voice neutral, her own apprehension came out as she spoke.

“What?”  The pact item exclaimed with the high-pitched screech of someone who is totally lying.  “Me?  Nervous.”  He laughed haughtily.  “You must be mistaken?!”  His voice ran haltingly through the octaves like the terrible actor he’d always been.

“You are shaking like a chihuahua that’s been approached by a great Dane.”  Her dry voice was matched by a wry smile, which quickly faded with worry.  “Are you not sure that you can contain this thing?” 

“Oh, Sam.”  Gleipnir patted her on the knee with the end of his ribbon in a way that she knew he meant to be reassuring but which would have been utterly condescending if anyone else had ever done it.  “I’m not worried that I can’t do it.”  He sighed, or at least, simulated the sound of a sigh.  “I’m worried that you might get hurt in the process.  We’ve never fought something this big together.  But we got this.”

Her pact item, who was really more friend than anything else, moved his long sword portion as if he were nodding in affirmation.  It reassured Sam because she could hear the solemn smile in his voice and she glanced down at him just in time to see him turn toward her.  He patted her knee again and she grabbed the tail of his ribbon and gave it a comforting squeeze.

“Yeah.”  She scoffed with false bravado.  “We gots this.”  Then she yanked the steering wheel hard over to the right and skidded to a drifted stop with her door facing the oncoming behemoth.  Taking in the towering figure, Sam suddenly found that her mouth was very dry.  She pulled out some lip gloss and smacked her lips with a pop to spread it.  “Though this is one time I really wouldn’t mind having mom bail me out.”

“Oh, pashaw!  Sam.  This will take us no time at all.”  Gleipnir opened the door and hopped out on the side of the vehicle opposite the monster.  Yeah, it really did look like he’d hopped out and his ‘body’ bobbed along around the front of the car as he moved to join her.  He opened the door for Samantha bowed with a flourish, “Mi’Lady.  Would you care to join me in a dance?”

It made his warlock smile, and that was why Gleipnir had done it. 

“Sure, Gleip.”  She giggled at his silliness as she clambered out of the vehicle with her wand at the ready and reactivated her most arcane hungry spell to assist her personal magic collector with reducing the dangerous levels of magic around her.  “Integumentum infernis.  Do we have a plan?”  Brilliant flames erupted around Sam.

“Yes.”  Gleipnir replied assuredly…. Then he was silent.  The monster was not, however, as it realized the prey that had so recently escaped was now returning.  It trumpeted angrily, a blast of sound and force that revealed its jagged teeth of twisted broken steel beams. 

The crushed and mangled body was still there lodged inside its maw.  Even more blood oozed and dripped from the cracked and crumpling concrete walls which were now the beast’s hide. 

“Are you going to tell me?”  She asked as the lumbering giant broke into it’s version of a run.

“I don’t want to”  He admitted with a shout to be heard over the growing thunderous noise.

“What?  Why?”  Despite being in the middle of facing down a charging monster, Samantha Wattkins took the time to slowly turn her head to her pact item and give him an incredulous wide-eyed stare.

“You aren’t going to like it.”  He admitted as the monster’s jaws came for them.  “DODGE!”  Samantha had been waiting for the order and she grabbed him and rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being bitten in half by the head the size of a school bus.  She was up and running with Gleipnir in hand before the monster even realized it had missed them.

“Tell me what the heck the plan is, Gleipnir.”  Sam commanded as she pointed her wand at the ground and conjured a blast of wind to propel her up onto the monster’s back.  “Bregðandi.”  Her feet hit the sloping fractured wall of hide and she ran up the side of what was once a building.

“I need to get to the magic source and cut it off so that you can kill the monster.”  It was a good thing that Sam had just about reached the former roof of the building because she sort of choked and stumbled as she understood what Gleipnir meant.

“We have to go inside?”

“We have to go inside” He confirmed gravely.

“This is so far beyond my pay grade.”  Muttering between gritted teeth, Sam fought the revulsion she felt against deliberately placing herself inside a living body even if that body used to be a building.  “Especially because inside that monster is either a lot of dead people or one really big dead dragon.”  She pointed to the trail of blood that was leaking from the monster.

“It could be both.”  The lumbering creature was turning and twisting as it searched the ground for them trying to figure out where the tasty little mortal morsels had gone.

“Why would you do that?”  Shaking her head in exasperation, the warlock blinked at her pact item again.  “I was trying to psych myself up to do this.  Now I’m even more grossed out.”  Gleipnir laughed.  Sam laughed.  Then they sobered.

“Cut a hole.”  Gleipnir instructed.  “I’ll go in and secure the probably-a-dragon corpse to suppress the arcanes it is emitting.  Then you come in afterward and kill the monster before it finishes manifesting to a fully organic state.” 

“Okay.”  Gleipnir transformed in Sam’s hand to a sharper blade, making himself look more like a fencing saber than an oversized sewing needle.  She slashed downward through what seemed to be a particularly vulnerable portion of the back.  This roof had been covered in gravel and tar prior to its transformation and the portion she’d picked had partially caved in.  It just needed a bigger opening; one she could climb through on her own.

Together they hacked apart the concrete and steel beneath them.  Every few strokes they’d hit a newly formed blood vessel or a pocket of false matter flesh that would spurt and splatter on the pair.  This was gross, dirty, and difficult work.  And it was made more difficult by the heaving of the monster upon which they stood even if the creature’s back had its own safety wall around the edges.  The enraged thing was trying to remove them with short hops and flexes now that it realized where they were and that it couldn’t reach them with any of its limbs.

“I think that’s good, Sam.”  When Gleipnir finally spoke, Sam was more than ready to stop.  Her arms were tired and sore.  Her feet hurt.  And she was pretty sure that she’d pulled a muscle in her abdomen in the constant flexing and standing as she brought Gleipnir’s blade down over and over again.

 

Alex had been watching through a pair of binoculars shed snatched from Frank the second Sam sped back off again.  When they’d stopped in front of the manifestation and Sam had just stood there?  She’d never been so terrified for someone else in her life.  Had Sam fallen prey to the same fear or terror field that Alex herself had? 

There was no way to know.  Because Alex wasn’t there.  Because she should have stayed with her partner.  Like her partner had come back for her.  All the probationary agent had been able to do was watch as that bloody mouth of horrific metal teeth came closer and closer to eating her partner. 

Oh, God.  Run.  Why won’t she run.  Oh, God.  Oh, God.  OhGod!  OHGOD!  I can’t watch!”  At the end, she hadn’t even been able to watch and had tried to fling the binoculars away.

“Give me those.”  Frank, of course, had taken them back so that he could watch.  “Ah, hell!”  He cursed as he focused the magnifying device to his own eyes.  “Did they just get eaten?  I can’t see anything through that dust cloud.”  Alex hadn’t actually stopped watching.  Instead, after a brief eyes-squeezed-shut moment, she raised a hand to block the bright sun from her eyes and tried to survey the fight unaided.

“I can’t see anything either, boss.”  Someone commented.  Alex didn’t care who.  Nothing mattered right now except for whether or not Sam was okay.  Sam was what mattered.  Not just because she was Alex’s partner, but because that monster was being fueled by something inside it.  It wasn’t going to just ‘go down’ without a big damned fight.

“I see her.”  Another voice commented.

“Where?”

“Where?”

“Where, where, where?”

Even among the chorus of ‘where’s’ Alex knew hers was a little more intense than the others.  She was just concerned for her partner.  That was all.  Sam had just saved her life.  It wouldn’t be fair if something happened to her before Alex could properly thank her.

“She’s climbing up the side of the thing.”

“Holy shit.” 

“I see her too.”

Sure, there were a lot of people talking and running commentary.  Yeah, there was a lot at stake.  Beside her Frank was scribbling frantically on his message scroll requesting backup yet again, conveying every bit of data about the thing they were going to have to fight any minute now if Gleipnir wasn’t as all-that as he thought he was.

“What’s she doing?  Is she…?”  But Alex could see it too.  The distant warlock was wielding Gleipnir like a regular old cutting implement and slicking chunks out of the roof-back she was standing on.  Her hips and knees flexing like she was surfing a wild wave on the most effed up board ever.

“She’s cutting her way into the monster.”  It came to Alex as she realized what the air had to do.

“Why wouldn’t she just try to kill it?” Who was that?  Not Frank, so Alex didn’t look.

“Because there’s something in that monster fueling it and it will just keep regenerating until it’s removed.”  That was Frank.  And he sounded sadder than Alex had ever heard him.  Okay.  To be fair, she’d only just met him.  But still, it was a kind of awed sadness that meant he got what was happening.

“But whatever that thing is, it’s Prometheus Pink outside of it.  Inside will…does she even had a spell that can protect her from that?”  Again, it was another mage, not Frank, not the previous not-Frank.  Alex didn’t care. 

A disgusting numbness was welling up in her stomach.  Nausea was rising with it, and she couldn’t be horrified at what was happening.  She just felt a terrible sadness as she felt the stinging prick of tears welling in her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter.”  Her voice broke on the soft words, and she sniffed at the snot that was suddenly trying to run out of her nose.  Stupid nose.

“Why not?”  Alex didn’t bother responding and one glance at her told Frank that he might as well field that question for her.

“It doesn’t matter because it has to be done, and somebody has to do it.”  Frank glanced at the other agents then back to Alex before returning his focus to the outline of a warlock on the back of a giant monster manifestation.  “Either Sam and Gleipnir do it, or they fail, and we do it, or we fail and the people who come after us do it.”

Sam dropped from sight.

The monster gave up on trying to remove her from its back a few moments later.  Alex guessed that was because it couldn’t feel her hacking at it anymore.  Alex gripped her wand tightly and took a deep steadying breath.  Now that it wasn’t distracted by Sam and Gleipnir’s attack, the monster began its heavy stomping way towards them again.  Sam’s words echoed in her mind.

“It doesn’t matter who does it as long as it gets done.”  It was something Sam and Gleipnir always said.  Probably quoting Sam’s world-famous hero of a mom.  The sentiment had always annoyed Alex who felt that there should be clear lines of responsibility.  Not having agreed upon delegation meant that some people slacked off while others were taken advantage of.  But Sam had insisted that there was always a time when those words applied.

“Get ready, people.”  Frank hollered as he readied his wand and sidearm.  “I don’t think backup is going to get here in time.”  The monster started moving faster and faster, though it was still slow due to its size, it was doing its equivalent of a full-on sprint.

All of a sudden, it tripped and faltered.

Falling hard, the manifestation began crumbling as it skidded to a halt mere meters away.  Many of the other agents had already begun fleeing out of the way to attack it from the side and behind.  Now they were sheepishly avoiding eye contact with the agents who had stayed to face the monster head on.

Alex hadn’t fled.

And she didn’t quite believe the danger was over, so she stood there, wand at the ready, as she watched the carcass warily.  The remnants of the building were still holding together but also, they were coming apart from structural damage.  When the sound of moving rubble drew her attention to the sinking roof, she pointed her wand to the location she estimated whatever it was would enter her line of sight.

The gathered agents waited tensely as the noise became louder and louder.  Then a mop of frazzled light-brown hair surrounded by a halo of fire poked over the edge of the building.  Alex’s heart clenched tightly, as if it was squeezed in a vice.  While her shirt was torn and soaked with blood and false matter flesh, Sam was alright.  She was more than alright.  She was blazing, brilliantly beautiful beneath the dirt and bruises. 

This was…

This was amazing.  This was something that was going to live in the memories of the world centuries.  When one warlock and their pact item saved a city from a monster invasion by going inside a manifestation.  Someone pulled out a magically hardened camera they’d been using to document the crime scene earlier and snapped off a few quick shots of Sam as she clambered down with pained awkward movements.

Sam had never been arrogant.  But that was how Alex had interpreted it.  Because Alex had never bothered trying to understand what her partner was capable of.  In her overabundance of self-confidence, the younger agent had always assumed that Sam had an inflated ego because of who she was related to.  Alex had thought that all of Sam’s achievements had been easy due to favoritism and her mother’s fame paving the way.  And she had been wrong.

Alex was just realizing that Sam really was amazing.

For her part, Sam was shielding her eyes, squinting out over the heads of the assembled agents.  She had a quizzical look on her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.  She pointed out a spot in the sky and called out to her fellow agents down below.

“Hey… Is that a chariot, or did I hit my head at some point?”