Page 73 of Sigils & Spells

He crouched into the corner. He snarled, slimy ooze dripped from the sharp teeth in his mouth.

Merle pushed me behind him. Didn’t he know what I was, after all we had gone through?

Maybe he didn’t realize I could do more than keep my tights free from road dirt.

He began chanting, an incantation in a foreign tongue. It had to be the spell he had been working on for all these years. It felt fuzzy, and interfered with my powers. Maybe he was casting a protective layer around me before he—

Ramsey sprang forward. The elongated claws that were once his hands, left deep scratches in the wall paper and tore gouges into the plaster and lath walls.

I didn’t think, I acted. I shrugged off the wooly coating Merle’s magic wrapped around me and pushed my power at the thing that was Ramsey.

I thought ‘freeze.’ I probably should have pushed the concept of “stop,” or “hold.” Whatever, it worked, only I had intended on stopping his forward motion, freezing him in space. What I did was turn him into a Ramsey-demon-cicle. The drool crystallized, and he hit the floor, dropping straight down, with a heavy thunk.

I blinked a few times. I didn’t know if he would survive the thawing out process or not. And frankly, I didn’t want to be around. That creature was going to be cranky. I grabbed Merle’s arm, tugging him to come with me. He didn’t budge.

Fuck, had I accidentally zapped him with my intentions too?

I looked up at him. He wasn’t frozen. He was deep into his incantation. The sound coming from him was low. Not quiet low, but frequency low. It buzzed in my ears, and I almost couldn’t hear him. His eyes had started glowing an eerie pale blue. Slowly, as if he were doing tai-chi, his arms shifted positions. Almost as if the incantation and arm positions worked together to build his spell.

I did quick magic. Dirty drive-thru quality spells. What Merle was doing was the equivalent of a six Michelin star dining experience, compared to my ‘you want fries with that?’ instant gratification.

But my insta-freeze bought him the time he needed to do whatever it was he needed to do. I could feel the same fuzzy feeling coming from him again. I backed away because now I could see the shimmer surrounding him. Feathers, horns, ancient power.

As he chanted, he changed. His hands, moving slowly and smoothly through the thick air, turned into fur covered black clawed paws. No longer in jeans and a button down, his clothes had morphed as well into some kind of layered kilt, and an ornamental breastplate over bare skin. His lower legs thickened, grew short dense fur, he had hooves.

Oh. I backed away even more. He was channeling the powers that could control, defeat the demon that Ramsey had become. That meant Merle wasn’t simply channeling the necessary powers, he was trans-morphing into the deity, or mage who had ultimate control over the thing. That was some serious shit. So were the split wings that sprouted from his back.

I should know who-what he was drawing into him. For the past two years I had pulled the articles, helped to locate the ancient scripts he had wanted. I had read enough to understand what he was researching. I had copied enough cuneiform.

The Akkadian god that shimmered in front of me was either Anu or Enki. I should have known this stuff. What kind of Merle fan-girl was I if I didn’t know exactly who or what? He could have been an even older, unknown god. It didn’t matter, he was glorious, and frightening, and he was taking his time with whatever it was he was doing to Ramsey.

My freeze spell started wearing off. A puddle of ice-melt formed around the demon’s body. The creature’s legs started to twitch as he was no longer held against his will.

“Merle,” I sort of growled under my breath. I had no idea if he could hear me at all. Or if he even cared.

“Merle!” I hoped he could hear me through his intonations. Ramsey was thawing out fast, and Merle’s magic was cooking crock-pot slow.

The big spells, the really powerful ones, they took time. I didn’t know if we had enough. Breathing carefully, in through my nose and blowing long slow breaths out of pursed lips, I needed to think fast, needed to trap Ramsey again.

“Trap!” That was it.

I pushed the thought and all the visuals that went with the concept of “trap” in the direction of the thing that was Ramsey.

It twitched, and then stopped moving as a thick gooey coating of what looked like amber formed around the creature.

I let out a short, sharp breath. That worked. My heart pounded in my chest, but this time I felt stronger for it. I glanced over at Merle. An aura formed around him, and that thick fuzzy magic feeling took shape in heavy dark light around him.

I scrambled away from him. Dark light was serious shit. It took a practitioner of exception skills and ego to wield it. Dark light was next to impossible to explain. It was opposites. It still glowed, all while sucking in all the light.

The amber coating that surrounded Ramsey began rattling. It cracked and shook apart. Chunks fell away from him. He twitched and shuttered before rolling to his feet. His body hunched over as if it wanted to walk on all fours, but the front legs didn’t quite meet the ground. Amber shards flew off of him when he shook like a dog climbing out of a lake.

In my attempt to give Merle and the dark light a wide berth, I had put myself between him and Ramsey. Now I needed to get out of there, and fast. I scrambled backward, tripping in my panic. Fuck it, I was going to crawl if that’s what it took to get away from the smack down that was going to happen once Merle was finally powered up.

I heard the scream. I shouldn’t have turned, but, too late. It had my attention. I barely had enough time to throw my hands up over my head in a warding cross. Everything went dark.

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Merle

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