Where is he hiding…

Down on the ground, I can see our ragtag army of emergency aid breaking into inns and taverns, dragging out the few people that have managed to stay alive towards the Hydromel. Rum’s lightning bought us time, but if I can’t find Gregor soon, it’ll have been for nothing.

I can feel my stamina depleting, but fortunately, the gaps between buildings continue to shrink as I approach the center of Scélére. The insect magus might’ve been hiding up until now, but that bolt of lightning is impossible for him to ignore. After all, Gregor has no idea of Rum’s circumstances – I’m almost certain he’ll be looking for the magus responsible, since electricity is such a dangerous counter to his magick.

And then, I see him. A hooded figure in the far-off distance, skipping across rooftops towards the Hydromel. On instinct, I start moving in to cut the magus off half-way. Gregor seems to be hyper-focused with reaching the exact spot where the lightning struck, which lets me get that much closer before he spots me. His look of shock only amplifies once he realizes who I am.

“Tattoo?! What the hell are you wearing?”

I’m too out-of-breath to quip back. Out from the corner of my eye, I can see a dark cloud of flying insects filing back in, slowly replenishing the numbers Rum fried away. It’s very fortunate that Gregor’s running in the opposite direction, but he still hasn’t given up on using his own supply of bugs.

The leaps between each rooftop become larger, draining energy from both of us. Every few jumps, Gregor sics little flying demons out from his beard to go after me, but the veil and armor prepared by Esmé makes it impossible for them to hurt me. At a certain point, the insect magus seems to realize what’s going on, but his efforts to focus on keeping a good running pace come far too late. I’ve finally gotten close enough to give the doctor’s plan a shot. In a single motion, I grab hold of a large pouch from my hip, and catapult it straight at the insect magus. The brown bag zips through the air, crashing into the rooftop we were jumping towards, and erupting into a thin, white cloud. With the immediate view around us obscured, both Gregor and I are forced to stop running, lest we jump to our deaths prematurely. Vigilantly, I stand my ground, hoping that Esmé’s assumptions were right.

“What was it you called yourself, boy? A tick?”

Gregor’s silhouette began to form in the hazy, white plume ahead – a torso of inhuman proportions, and what look like tiny hooks digging out from his heels. Step by step, the magus continues his monologue.  

“A tick… I think that’s apt. Come – why don’t I show you what it’s like to be a tick?”

Gregor is standing right in front of me now; we’re both sizing each other up, looking for optimal opening move. I swear to God, Esmé, if you were wrong about this…

Then, suddenly, the magus’ pupils shrink. I can faintly see the nebulous, fine powder surrounding both of us flow into Gregor. This was it!

“GAH!”

The insect magus stumbled backwards, clearly shocked. One look could tell you that he was suddenly in unbearable pain, keeling over while clutching his stomach as though he were stabbed. The sight was uncannily similar to the first mercenary Gregor killed – writhing in pain on the ground from causes he did not understand.

“You know, Gregor, I heard something pretty interesting from a friend of mine.”

*crack*

My foot smashes into the magus’ head, flipping him over to the other side. Even through my shoe, I could feel some of his teeth push inwards.

“She told me that beetles don’t breathe quite like humans… I’m sure you’re aware, but beetles actually let air in through holes in their torso! Incredible, right?!”

*thud*

Another kick, this one, aimed right at the scrotum. Reflexively, Gregor folds over, shielding his nether regions from any other attacks.

“So, this friend had an epiphany. You have this beetle shell, but your insides? They’re still the same as us, no? Hard to visualize your organs turning into a beetle’s.”

The magus twists onto his back. Quickly, I unsheathe the gutting knife I picked up all the way back in Cupram, and plunge it straight down into Gregor’s head. Despite his clear agony, the man manages to block my stab at the last second.

“And then, I thought: ‘what would happen if a human pumped in salt straight onto their organs?’ Macabre, I know… but I think it was a necessary evil.”

Gregor didn’t utter a single word. Both of us were now locked in a battle for survival – if I can’t kill the magus here, this salt cloud won’t stay suspended in the air much longer. Muscles clamp as my arms push down the blade with all of their might.

“Die, damn it!”

And then, a sharp pain. I snap out of my tunnel vision, and see a pink bug digging its claws, and fangs into my hand. Gregor’s pet catches me completely off-guard, and for a second, I ease off some pressure from the knife. The insect magus doesn’t waste the window of opportunity.

When the hell did he…?!

In slow-motion, I watch as Gregor shimmies his left arm directly beneath my face, pointing upwards. This was no longer a human hand. The magus’ appendage resembled the body of a beetle, but with what looked like a nozzle on the tip. Faintly, I could feel heat radiating from the transmogrified extremity. Instinct took over.

Every sinew in the back of my neck pulled my head away from certain death. A scalding acid suddenly shot out from the tip of Gregor’s appendage at a tremendous speed – dispersing the air enough to have completely split apart the cloud of salt hanging overhead. I was alive, but not unscathed. The attack didn’t damage my eye, but the right edge of my face felt like it was liquifying. My body couldn’t seem to decide whether the heat, or the acid was the biggest cause for concern.

Gregor! Where’s Gregor?!

My left eye re-adjusts, blinking out the salt and smoke. The insect magus was still here, and although he survived, his already deformed right hand was mangled beyond recognition. Whatever insect he tried emulating just now, he must not have done it perfectly. Slowly, the man gets up from the floor, finally able to breathe.

“Really? What kind of sixth-sense bullshit was that? Do you have any idea how powerful bombardier beetle ejections are?”

Gregor’s sputters in between each word, pushing out what looks like blood out from the back of his throat. Given the fact that his insides were, put simply, pickled, it’s amazing he’s able to stay lucid.

“Whatever,” he limps towards me, “something tells me you don’t have a second bag of salt with you, eh?”

“…Want to find out?”

“Hmm… I suppose I don’t. I’ll just have to get you from here.”

We both move at the same time. In one fell swoop, the magus runs his fingers through his beard, and throws an assortment of insects directly at my face. I try running straight through, gradually opening my right eye, and suddenly, I realize – I can see clearly. In other words, there’s a gaping hole in the veil.

I immediately tear the see-through cloth off, but it’s too late. The stinging pain increases exponentially as tiny ants dig their venomous stingers around my face, and near the top of my chest. I manage to smash several of them thanks to the chainmail’s heft, but before I can shake all of them off of my mug, another body charges right into my stomach. I slam my fists against Gregor’s back, but to no avail – the magus’s momentum knocks me to the ground, and in a matter of seconds, I’m pinned against the edge of the rooftop. I can still feel the wooden handle of my gutting knife, but both my hands are being pinned down by the old man.

“Alright smartass, end of the line.”

Think, think! Before he kills you!

…

Why is he trying to kill me?

This whole fight was brought about because I was able to pick him out from the crowd, but he doesn’t need to fight me. Hell, wouldn’t it have been easier to just use those bottles I smashed up at the very beginning? Even now, at any point during our chase, why didn’t he just hide amongst the literal sea of bloodthirsty insects crawling around on the ground? He’d be untouchable, and his magick, impossible to dispel. In fact, he hasn’t even tried to use…

*click*

Holy shit.

Visualization.

His magick isn’t the ability to control bugs – it’s only controlling bugs that he can see. No wonder he hasn’t gotten near that swarm; from here, it just looks like black water. That’s why he needed to be so far away from the clinic! That’s why he needed pheromones in the first place! And that means…

Without fighting against Gregor, I quickly move both my legs, and lock them together, linking myself, and the insect magus as one. His expression shifts.

“…The hell’re you doing?”

“Breaking you out of your cocoon, you little butterfly, you.”

Our position makes it impossible to resist. I fling all of my weight backwards, but by the time Gregor realizes what I’m trying to do, it’s too late. Our combined weight proves to be too much, and to the magus’ horror, he’s suddenly free-falling towards an army of flesh-eating insects. My death was guaranteed if I stayed up there, but now that you’ve come with me, Gregor, I have a feeling you’ll show me something truly special.

Right?

RIGHT?!

At the last second, a tremendous gust of wind blows up from above me – the force nearly shakes me off of the insect magus entirely. Below, I can see pillars of ants forming, trying desperately to get a taste of our blood… but we’ve stopped falling.

The view above me was horrific. On pure instinct, Gregor managed to force out a pair of wings to grow out of his spine. Mysterious patterns which I can only assume come from butterflies have been perverted with viscera, and winding blood vessels. The flesh making up the sinewy wings resembled a baby mouse more than they did an insect, and with each flap, the see-through appendages spread an odor of copper, and… salt?

“YOU!” The magus’ voice bellowed out. “YOU DID THIS TO ME!”

Worryingly, Gregor looks on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“It was perfect, I conjured it perfectly! But you had to mess with my insides, you WRETCH!”

Then, a gust of wind. The whiplash is intense – Gregor takes off at an absurd speed, zipping through the alleyways of Scélére, and trying to shake me off. I’m still desperately holding on to his body, and thankfully, he seems to be too blinded with rage to think about transmogrification right now. The bigger problem now is–

DUCK!

One second later, and my head would’ve come clean off. The magus keeps trying to slam me into oncoming walls and signposts, but it’s clear he doesn’t have the best control over his new wings. If I can just get a good grip on one…

*smash*

All the air is ejected out from my lungs. Gregor is crushing me against the wall of one of the buildings… but that also means there’s solid ground I can push off of.

Without overthinking it, I let my legs explode off of the stone wall behind me, preparing my knife in the process. The dulled blade finally finds its mark, tearing right into the magus’ left wing. His scream is inhuman, and as I start getting pulled towards the ground, it only grows louder as the gutting knife tears down the whole length of the wing.

Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall!

Both of us plummet to the ground, but thanks to the momentum from pushing off of a wall, I’m barely able to grab a hold of a windowsill. I’m too preoccupied with holding on for dear life to turn around, but I can hear as Gregor’s shrieks start to drown out, eaten alive by the very insects he brought here. I guess that means I was right…

It takes a while, but eventually, I push my way through the window, and into an abandoned inn. With the insect magus dead, and no more of those bottles of his to go around, the bugs should disperse by themselves, hopefully soon.

The room I fell into is sparse, but there’s a bed, a latrine, and, to my surprise, a mirror. I wonder if my face got puffed up from the–

Huh?

I pinch myself. Then, I pinch myself a second time.

Then, I pinch a translucent wing, peeking out from the bottom of my shirt.

I feel all three of them.

“Crap.”

                                                          Thank you for reading Jinxed, Marked, & Severed!

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