Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 07

Here, almost downstairs, my grasp upon the Leys of the outside world was fading rapidly, as if the strength of the negative world downstairs, where the portal was, was growing. I didn't have time to waste. Rather than try anything remotely subtle, I just blasted the damned thing with a spirit-bolt. You're taught in school expressly and specifically toneverdo this sort of thing. Spirit is for creative and constructive manipulation uses only and the backlash of using it for destructive violence can be overwhelming. It's probably one of the very top five "Don't do this moron!" lessons magicians are taught, and the ones with any sense at all never will... and I made a note to myself to never try it again, even here!

The magical result was more like the effect of a small bomb going off, with us very much right at the point of impact. Everyone and everything went flying, and the very stairs below us completely disintegrated, adding the insult of a fifteen foot fall to our other minor injuries. As the spirit bomb had quite knocked down my own shield too, the fall wasn't a pleasant one, but we all mostly landed upon our feet, or each other. Granted, if I had landed upon something harder, like my head, it might have hurt a lot less.

In any case, the mental feeling I had when all of the creatures upstairs were abruptly and rather rudely destroyed was utterly gratifying. Now, dealing with the maelstrom of their portal to their unspeakable world was going to be a rather different matter. There was just no way in hell that I was going to use anything with spirit against this! Mostly due to the fact that now that we were downstairs, we were all now as much in the aura of their world, as ours. I couldn't even feel the real world outside, let alone the Leys, no matter how strong they were near here. Like our visitors, now we were all in shadow; out of phase and out of the time or reality of our comforting world.

This meant banishment. One serious assed application of brute force against force, my will against theirs, to pinch off this portal to their existence and seal it (hopefully forever) from ours. Oh man... was this going to really suck!

"Aye lad, and get to it!" Sean whispered in my ear, as he was at the moment seated upon my left shoulder, quite visible. The 'reality' of this unearthly part of the multi-verse, was apparently affecting his own powers... or else he decided that he had no reason not to become visible. This was certainly a shock for Janice and Miranda, who were both too exhausted and nerve-wracked for any more bizarre surprises. "Tis simple for you, you've done this before... and it will be just like last time!" He added.

"The last time, about five hundred people ended up getting burned to a cinder by an ancient Fire God. Now granted, they'd all been possessed, but I'd rather not repeat that experience!" I replied, with perhaps a bit more alarm than I would have preferred. No, it wasn't a whine... but perhaps calling it a whimper wouldn't have been entirely inaccurate.

Before, in the movie theater in Austin, I'd had access to some decent Ley's and I was positively flush with recklessly eager enthusiasm. I'd also had help, from an old girlfriend and her twin sister that together when they merged their spirits had more power than was at all healthy to control. I'd also cooked into a melted puddle an artifact that I'd spent an inordinate amount of time and effort crafting that had significantly boosted my powers. This time I'd have to do all by myself, with my own innate powers only. This time, I just wasn't sure that I could handle the job.

"Aye lad, you can... so get along to it! Company is coming from the other side, a great deal of them and they're none too happy!"

I wasn't sure which was more demeaning, the fact that I had very little confidence in myself to do the right thing, or that my so-call magical familiar Sean had just slapped me hard on the side of my head, as if I were a petulant schoolboy. Well, I had been vaguely curious about how much innate magical talent I had after my accident, and now I was about to find out.

First, just to help with the concentration and give us a smidgeon of protection, I decided to first set up a Major Circle of Protection. I had the small sack of salt and the bags of various herbs and substances in the inside of my leather duster coat all ready to be grasped and utilized in but a moment. Sure, using raw magic is fun, but it's inefficient and dangerous. Starting first to constrain the portal with a circle would give me future leverage, like a jack lifting up a car to change a tire. I could build one in my sleep, which helped because I was already beyond just pretty tired already, but I could still make it well and more importantly - fast. Even Bel raised up an eye-brow at my working and faintly nodded her approval. No, it wasn't quite 'textbook'... but knew an added trick or two that would make it better and probably even stronger.

Keeping the portal blocked was not going to be enough however. This one used really nasty negative energy fields that I didn't pretend to understand, so I wasn't quite certain about how to go about weakening it, to reduce its projected power to something that I thought I could manage. Already I could see several shadowy figures starting to emerge and due to the extreme otherness of my foes, I was none too sure that they couldn't use their own powers or other magic against us, even if they were trapped behind the circle.

"Focus lad, just focus upon the edges of the horizons of the portal and peel its own energies back in against itself." Sean helpfully advised, and loudly enough that I could tell the wondrously magical creature was himself rather frightened. "Push it back in against itself, and hard! Do it Zak, for there is no time at all to waste!" Now Iknewhe was scared badly, because his faux Celtic accent quite disappeared and his speech now sounded 'normal'. I wasn't quite sure how I'd manage it, but it was the only idea any of us had, so I gave it my all.

I wouldn't say that it was easy. In fact, I'm not sure if imploding that inter-dimensional portal wasn't harder than closing the rogue magic portal inside of the theater, or banishing that Fire God. I ended up on the floor with my eyes closed chanting and exerting every ounce of power that I had left in my body. I had no Leys and no other source for external energies... it all had to come from within. Bel said later it was the single greatest application of magic she had ever seen done, and far beyond anything within her own powers.

I'm still not entirely sure where I found the strength to briefly and weakly shield and anchor ourselves from that last great final blast of raw magical force just as the portal had imploded inward against itself and its last faint marker was removed from our world. With luck, they'd never find another way back to us!

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The blast didn't take out too much more of the stone basement, but it shredded to toothpicks all of the upper stories of the house above. This fresh destruction made everything here now blend in quite nicely with the rest of the tornado damage to the other surrounding houses. With luck we could climb ourselves up upon the vast amount of timber wreckage and wander off before anyone took any notice of us, or could remember our descriptions.

It was pretty much a case of the wounded all stumbling together with each of us hanging on to each other just to stay upright. The idea of walking the two miles back to the park where our cars were was quite laughable. After staggering for just two blocks, we found a neighborhood speakeasy and we all planted ourselves inside. We asked the bartender to call us a cab and bring drinks for all and to keep them coming, including an extra bottle and glass tumbler for Sean, who once the portal was destroyed was back to being his own usual invisible and snarky self. We kept the cabbie waiting another ten minutes, but I gave him a Texan silver dollar as a bribe to keep waiting for us while we had another few quick rounds. We were all quite dead sober, but the drinks helped to take a little bit of the edge of weariness off of us.

After our ride back to the park, I gave the hack another silver dollar, with a very mild charm upon it so that he would forget us entirely, but Janice gave him another good tip in real US greenbacks that would make his day quite profitable, even if he didn't quite remember all of it.

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Picking up our cars once more from Lincoln Park, we all returned this time back to the restaurant, and hopefully an update from Sebestyen Dénes. Unfortunately, he still had nothing yet to report, so we all trooped back upstairs for an early dinner, which merged itself into an additional supper later on. Drained to exhaustion, I ate enough for three and Sean was slightly better behaved this time around.

The crime lord was more than delighted to discover that the perpetrators of the kidnappings had been indeed punished, and that no other children would suffer this fate. We supposed that somewhere inside the wreckage of the house, the decaying bodies and clothes of all of the victims would be found, and that if his organization really wanted to tweak some governmental noses, he could contact some of his normal police sources, telling them that at the wreckage of a certain former diplomatic residence (but now unoccupied), they might find the bodies and some interesting evidence of the crimes. At least this way the families would all have some closure, and the life-drained bodies could be given a proper burial.

Finally, when it was decided that it would still be some hours yet before all of our anticipated information would be received, the lot of us decided to get some shut eye. Downstairs, past the wine cellar down one of the tunnels, we were directed to a room with some comfortable cots and pillows, and quite possibly I was already soundly asleep even before I could kick off my boots.