Page 62 of Hex and the City
I tilted into a full sprint, quicker on my feet, but Max kept up well enough with his longer strides.
Wait. Why were we running again? Didn’t we just close the distance with the anomalist? Where were the two diamond daggers that Max had conjured, and where was the gob of saliva and blood that he’d spat on the ground?
The horrible, familiar sound of three sets of footsteps running all at once filled my ears. Beside me, Max muttered “Penetrate” once again, calling on a fresh pair of daggers. Heat and flame coursed through my body as Tiamat’s fires began to rush through my veins. And all the while, the two of us ran headlong into the anomalist.
This time, a fist to the side of my head, hard enough to make me see stars. A punch to the side of Max’s jaw. Jesus, this guy was good. I kneaded my temple, wiped something wet and warm from the corner of my mouth. Was that drool? I tasted metal. Oh. Of course. It was blood.
“You’re,” I started to say, head still spinning. “You’re going to regret that.”
Light flashed as the anomalist’s crystal goggles swept across our faces. A momentary tightening in posture, the muscles tensed, a black cat caught in the middle of something nefarious. Without warning, the anomalist took off running.
Not this again. No. I tried to throw my arm against Max’s chest, stop him from running, but he was already ahead of me.
“Loop,” I choked out through tears of pain and the building taste of blood in my mouth. “Stuck in time loop.”
Whether through what was left of the quickening sand or their own innate command of time magic, this fucker had reserved enough juice to lock us in a time loop. One that rewound everything, too, except for our injuries. No wonder they hadn’t used any of that deadly crystal magic, saving up all their essence for this dirty trick.
It took me and Max out of commission, preventing us from lending support to the Masques in dispelling the greater anomaly that had shifted day to night. The anomalist could pick us off at their leisure. One or two more loops and they’d wear us down for sure.
The worst part? There was nothing we could do to stop this.
Or wasn’t there? It was all a matter of timing, wasn’t it? I couldn’t keep making the same mistakes, never learning from them. I always came too close to pulling off my own magic before the anomalist did something else to kick the tar out of me. No. I couldn’t give up, couldn’t succumb to this downward spiral. I needed to act faster, release the flames first.
I needed to stop running.
I sprinted hard enough to barely catch up with Max, to catch the sound of him muttering and conjuring his twin diamond blades. I stopped just short of our three-way collision this time, my soles scraping on grit and gravel as I came to a screeching halt, just out of range of the anomalist’s fists and feet.
One leg went out again, a lightning-quick blur. But my face wasn’t there to receive its unceremonious kicking. The anomalist wobbled off balance. I couldn’t see through those goggles, through the mask, but I could smell their panic. The anomalist hesitated, then leapt toward me, readying another strike.
I raised my fist in the air, giving the anomalist a shit-eating grin. Upward spirals only.
“Emanate.”
I released the full fury of all the dragonfire begging to escape from my body. It began as a bluish-green reflection in the anomalist’s crystal goggles. A torrent of flame twisted around my body, snaking in an actual spiral as the fire worked its way from my toes to the crown of my head, surrounding me in a mantle of protection and utter destruction.
Tiamat was right. The joy of Emanation was nothing short of ecstatic, the sheer expulsion of raw, unadulterated power. The flames roared as they spilled from my skin, but the sound I heard clearest of all was Tiamat’s unbridled laughter.
And then a pained scream, the first we’d heard of the anomalist’s voice, followed by the shattering of those damned crystal goggles. The fires died away as the anomalist beat at their clothes, at their face. The reek of burning cloth filled my nostrils, followed by the unmistakable scent of Diablo 69.
The enchantments woven into the fabric must have guarded them from the worst of the heat. Part of the garment on the torso had been singed away, and most of the face, too. Lean muscle, a broad chest, strong arms. And the face, soot-covered from Tiamat’s fire, bloodied from broken crystal, was handsome, proud. But most of all, afraid.
I’d never felt so powerful.
“You’re the Quartz Spider,” I breathed.
“Not anymore,” the man muttered. His voice and his eyes seemed so hollow. I was expecting hostility and anger, not this emptiness, this abiding sadness.
The anomalist’s features seemed youthful enough, no older than thirty, but his hair was streaked with white, his new growth of beard speckled with gray. The beard wasn’t cultivated or groomed, just something that was there, like he’d forgotten to shave. His sunken eyes, the hollows of his cheeks — he’d forgotten many things.
Max spat another mouthful of blood on the ground. “Enough with the anomalies, already, and enough with winding back time. You could have killed so many civilians by now. I’m surprised you weren’t more direct about it, the tree in Lunata Park, all that shit at Naranja Plaza.”
The man’s lips pursed, a flash of fury in his eyes. “Those were tests. Experiments. To see if I could take this magic far enough, to correct the mistakes of the past.” The anger passed, his eyes deadening again, slipping into sorrow. “To see if I can erase it.”
I held my hands up, trying to reason with him, preempt any sudden moves. “My dude, there’s got to be more productive ways to do this. Whatever it is, you didn’t have to make your magic so damn public. Why are you rewinding time, anyway? It’s a wonder none of the normals got hurt.”
He shook his head. “I never meant to hurt anybody.” A pause, a moment of consideration. “Except, perhaps, the two of you.”
A glimpse of red. My heart clenched. The velveteen bag. The Quartz Spider moved so quickly, casting a final handful of quickening sand at us — at Max. The bag fell to the ground, forgotten, its contents spent.
