Mage Catalyst (27 page)

I took another deep breath and found it wasn’t so bad now that I was calmer. The little voice inside my head had been silenced and I completed my ascent. With a sigh of relief I gripped the side of the building and turned to look at Renee’s ghostly form standing across from me.
She made a slight saluting motion with her hand and with a delicate flip swung from the building roof over onto another building a block away.

“Well done,” Renee’s voice floated over. “Now let’s see if you can keep up.”
It was an impressive leap. She’d covered almost fifty metres with one leap and now appeared to be waiting for me. I’d have to figure out how she was projecting her voice like that. I could see that there was a slight mana element in the air. It was nebulous and hard to see through my invisibility field. I’d need to see it closer while I wasn’t invisible to try to figure out how she was doing it.
“Are you coming or not?” her voice demanded, disgruntled.
I took off into a running lope across the rooftops. Once I reached the end of the block, I threw out a thread and latched onto one of the skyscrapers several blocks away. It was fortunate that I’d already practiced this before when I was skating in the car park of my local shopping centre several weeks ago.
This would be a bad time to make a mistake. I could clearly see the street below me and realised that I was at least three or four storeys in the air. If I dropped to the ground now I’d create a large pizza-shaped splatter on the pavement. I couldn’t help grinning maniacally. This was quite a rush. I wish I’d thought to bring my skates. Now that would have brought back the old thrill.
I saw Renee launch herself from the side of her building to land gracefully on top of one of the buildings below us. She rolled into a tight loop and came to her feet instantly, taking off across the rooftops. I had the height advantage but Renee was closer to the target. It was a race. If I didn’t do something drastic I’d definitely lose. With callous disregard for my own safety I threw myself free from my thread and free fell onto the roof just directly in front of Renee.
I broke my fall at the last minute by throwing a thread directly at the ground beneath and using it to stop my descent. The impact was jarring and I was forced down onto one knee as I landed but I was surprised at how well this had worked.
“Nice,” Renee commented as I turned to block her from passing me.
“You’re changing the rules.” Renee chuckled as she attempted to circle around me. “You’re not supposed to block the other person’s path.”
I moved around to intercept her. I had no doubt that she could easily get past me but she seemed to be playing along.
“You never said there were any rules.” I grinned. “What are you going to do about it?”
Renee laughed as a thread lashed out from her hands. I was taken by surprise as Renee took out my feet from under me. I wasn’t hurt at all, but I was thrown to the ground and had the wind knocked out of me.
“Cheat.” Renee laughed as she vaulted over me.
I quickly rolled onto my side and desperately threw a mana thread at Renee. I grinned as I felt it connect. It wrapped around Renee’s waist and pulled her back down onto the roof. Renee let out a shriek of outrage but was back on her feet instantly. She lashed out with a mana thread at my torso which I intercepted with a flick of my own thread. I was pretty sure she was only toying with me, but it was fun nonetheless.

Renee sent a much harder swipe at head height. If this one connected I’m sure it would have taken my head off. I threw everything I had at it to deflect it away from me.

The impact of our mana threads caused a super nova effect in the mana particles within our threads and caused a loud explosion of noise and light.
“Hey! Play nice,” I gasped.
Renee just grinned.
“You started cheating,” Renee chucked as she launched her next attack.
Duelling with mana threads is nothing like fighting with swords. For one, unlike a sword, reach is not an issue. The mana thread can extend or decrease in length as required. The second factor is that mana threads can bend and weave as per the wielder’s direction. This made it difficult to predict where an attack was going to come from. Renee would launch a feint which would be easily blocked and then with the same swipe, curl the thread back to attack from another angle. It made for a nerve-racking duel as any movement made by your opponent could be an attack. Any motion, however slight, could be twisted to launch a thread in a new direction. It was lucky that Renee wasn’t trying to actively kill me, as I’m sure that she’d had the opportunity on several occasions.
“You’re not even thinking about the invisibility field anymore, are you?” Renee asked as we passed in a particularly explosive exchange.
“No,” I replied. I was surprised that I hadn’t realised it until it had been pointed out.

“Not bad, Twitch. Not bad,” Renee complimented as she launched a vicious swipe at my head.
I had already picked up on her habit of talking to act as a decoy for an attack so I wasn’t surprised when her strike came. I threw myself to one side to avoid her attack and sent my own attack at Renee’s exposed side. Renee cursed and had to throw herself onto the ground. My thread sailed harmlessly over her head.
“Okay,” she grunted as she launched an attack from the ground, “but let’s see what you do now.”
Renee swivelled forward aggressively and rose to her feet. A second thread lanced out from her left hand and I frantically stumbled back as she brought two threads to bear. There was no way I was going to be able to manage two threads and a field. I didn’t even try. I was amazed that I was doing as well as I was with a single thread, but it was now obvious that I was over-matched.
Renee had launched a particularly fast strike with her left hand, which I was amazed that I had managed to block. My mana thread had seemed to move of its own accord. Unfortunately this strike was only the beginning of my problems. As Renee spun around, her right hand came back around and her other mana thread swung around in an underarm arch towards my stomach. I don’t know how but it was again hastily and luckily blocked.
I actively retreated at high speed across the rooftop. The problem was Renee was slowly and inexorably pushing me towards the triangular skylight in the centre of the rooftop and there was very little I could do to stop her.

“Do you give up?” Renee hissed at me with a grin as she spun towards me on her next pass.
“Never, I’ll take anything…”

But I never got a chance to finish my sentence as with a vicious swipe Renee swept my mana thread out of the way and her second thread caught me just under the ribs. Time seemed to slow down for me. I could see her thread coming at me at high speed but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I attempted to drop the invisibility field and erect a shield at the last second, but I must have been too late. The impact of the mana thread drove my body backwards and through the skylight behind me.
This obviously wasn’t Renee’s intention as I heard her curse when I fell through the glass and down into the room below. I must have immediately gone into shock because I didn’t really feel the impact. I appeared to have dropped into a kitchen of some sort, but it was too dark to really see where I was. The only light in the room was from the broken window above me.
“Shit,” Renee called down. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”
“My shoulder hurts,” I called with a slight chuckle. For some reason I found this reply very funny.
“Don’t move,” Renee ordered as she prepared to jump down into the room.
I reached around and felt my left shoulder, which was stinging slightly. Strangely enough my side where Renee had struck me had gone cold but there was no pain. The only pain I felt was from my shoulder. I brought my hand back and I could see a dull red stain on my fingers.
It was clearly visible in the moonlight.
“Renee, I’m bleeding,” I called out.

Renee landed with a slight grunt. “There’s a lot of blood,” she commented darkly as she moved towards me.

“Does it look bad?”
“Don’t move,” she ordered as I tried to rise. Renee leaned over me. Her face became a mask of horror and guilt as she inspected the scene. “I need more light,” she muttered as she walked around to my right.
Renee raised her hand and built a small ball of mana into a sphere. She then flexed her fingers and launched it several metres into the air. When it reached the apex of its journey it exploded like fireworks. It may have been the blood loss or the shock, but the overall effect was breathtakingly beautiful. The mana cast a faint blue halo over everything. It was even casting shadows throughout the room… It was producing light!
Each mana particle was reacting with the air around it. I could see little droplets of mana igniting in the air and falling to the ground. It was like it was snowing mana. There was a faint sizzling noise as the mana wafted to the ground. The reaction repeated itself as each mana particle faded and fell to the ground.
I heard Renee gasp as she again looked down. I turned on my side and saw I’d basically splattered onto the side of a table in the centre of the kitchen.
There was so much blood, too much blood.

“Don’t move,” Renee ordered again calmly, but I could tell there was a degree of hysteria in her voice.
“Renee, it’s okay,” I murmured.
Renee rolled me onto my side and a choke escaped her lips. I couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a cry.
“Well, it’s a light cut,” Renee commented clinically.
“Light cut? That’s a lot of blood for a light cut.”
Renee swiped her finger along the edge of the table and brought it to my lips.
Tomato sauce.
“You must have landed on a bottle of tomato sauce.” Renee smiled, her eyes glittering with nervous amusement.
“I tried to raise a shield,” I explained tentatively.
“Yeah, I think I saw it as you were disappearing through the window,” Renee commented. “Your shield must have broken your fall and crushed the tomato sauce bottle”.
“Can I get up now?”
“I guess.” Renee shrugged. “Be careful though, there’s a lot of broken glass on the table, there must have been some glasses on the table too.”

I tentatively leaned forward to allow Renee to better see the table under me. 
“Your back looks like something out of a horror movie.” Renee chuckled. “Fortunately it appears to be mostly sauce.”
“I think you owe me a new shirt.” I grinned.
“Lean further forward,” Renee ordered. “There are bits of glass in your shirt.”
I leant forward and let Renee inspect my back.
“Neat trick with the light,” I commented.
“Quiet,” Renee ordered curtly.  “There’s quite a bit of glass in your back, doesn’t seem too bad though, it must have happened when you lowered the shield.”
“Small mercies eh?” I chuckled.
My back was beginning to sting a little.
“We should probably get out of here,” I commented, glancing around. “Someone may have heard the noise when I came through the ceiling.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve got most of the big pieces, but we should go,” Renee agreed. “We’ll head back to my place and I’ll patch you up properly.”
“Do we need to do anything about the light?”
Renee shook her head. “No, it’ll last about half an hour then it’ll go out by itself.”

She helped me off the table. I cringed slightly as my back began to tingle. I sent a mana thread up through the now gaping hole in the roof and pulled myself back onto the roof. Looking back through the smashed skylight I noticed with some degree of chagrin that we’d made one hell of a mess down there. The broken glass from the skylight was scattered across the floor and some of the pieces on the table were covered in tomato sauce. The whole kitchen had the feel of a particularly grisly murder scene. I had a brief moment of guilt and sympathy for the poor person who was to be greeted by that sight when they came into work tomorrow morning.
“It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Renee observed as she joined me on the rooftop.
My fall through the window had really done a number on this place.

“Come on. Let’s get you bandaged up,”Renee called.
I agreed wholeheartedly. My shoulder was really starting to ache.
I reactivated the mana field around me and made several small jumps across buildings. Renee led the way guiding me from building to building. She skilfully directed us towards the best places to land and to launch from. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d done this.

* * * *

Renee let us into her apartment from the balcony door and in a brisk manner went to the hallway cupboard and retrieved two towels and placed them over her coffee table.
“Okay, lose the shirt,” she ordered as she began to pour some water into a bowl.
“What? No flowers or chocolate first?” I quipped as I removed my shirt. Renee didn’t comment as she was busy directing a lamp to shine down on to the table. It was beginning to look like one of those scenes in the movies where someone is about to be interrogated. After I had removed my shirt I noticed with annoyance that the left side of the shirt was completely shredded.
“You definitely owe me a new shirt.” I grinned as I presented the shirt to her.
“I’ll lend you one,” Renee commented. “Now, lie flat.”
I lay flat on the table and let Renee get to work. It wasn’t the most comfortable of surfaces.
She had to adjust the light source several times before she was satisfied.
“Yeah, this doesn’t look too bad at all,” she murmured, dabbing my shoulder with a damp cloth.
I realised she was trying to pick up the small slivers of glass that still might be in or around the wound.