Power

Rufus and the beast stalked around in a wide circle. Their gazes were connected all the while, each waiting for the other to move.

The beast clearly grew impatient first.

It lunged at Rufus, and he stepped to the side of it. He hurled a punch with the force and weight of a cannon at it as it passed, but with a flick of its barbed tail, it pushed itself aside.

The air around Rufus’s fist rattled with the force of his punch, and Beren could swear he felt a breeze from the sheer force.

“It feels like when we play pretend…” Beren muttered. He glanced down at his own hands. What power will I have?

“He won’t last long,” Loxi noted offhandedly.

“What?” Toma asked. “Why not? He did well enough just a second ago.”

The fox didn’t respond.

Syl leaned her head toward Toma, though her eyes were trained on the battle. “That was with the element of surprise!” she hissed.

“And that one’s the mother,” Loxi added, who was far too calm given the situation.

The behemoth hound lunged at Rufus again, using its tail to accelerate forward by punching it into the ground and debris behind it. .

Rufus easily dodged it, leaping out of the way.

But Beren noticed something odd: Rufus’s face bore a freshly bloody gash across his cheek. One which wasn’t there just before the creature leapt past.

He tugged his brother’s sleeve. “Toma,” he muttered, “fresh blood.”

Toma didn’t respond. He just continued watching.

The beast gave Rufus no opportunity to rest—or even to land. With another flick of its long tail, it flung itself his way.

He deflected its paw. His empowered hands batted it away, allowing him to land safely—

His side erupted in a spray of blood that fell onto the wood-littered ground. The pain set him keeling over, and his counterattack sailed beneath the creature’s barrel shaped body.

“What the hell happened?” Toma asked. “He blocked!”

“He blocked its paw,” replied Loxi. “But that isn’t its only weapon. Far from it, in fact.”

It lunged again. It flared the spines on its back as it flew, but Rufus dodged it again even in spite of his new injury. The pale spikes shivered into the air above it, and snapped against its back as it passed him by.

Though barely, Beren caught it this time: a flash of movement beginning from the creature’s rear.

Another cut appeared on Rufus’s thigh. He fell to a knee.

“I don’t get it!” Toma cried. “We have to help him!”

At last, Beren had seen what Toma hadn’t: in the moment the creature passed him by, it flicked the spines on its tail to Rufus’s leg so fast that the strike was nearly invisible.

Rufus groaned, blood now staining the front of his pants.

“Fox,” Syl said, calling Loxi’s attention. She snatched the bottle at her hip, holding it up. “What is this, really?”

Loxi cocked its head. “You don’t have that where you come from, then?”

She didn’t respond; just shook the bottle, raising her eyebrows.

Loxi sighed. “It is known as Provenant Water. The source of mana: magical power. One cannot use magic without it. Your friend was smart enough to—”

Without any further questions, Syl downed the contents in one great gulp. Toma and Grace both glanced back and forth from her to Rufus’s battle. He was still taking hits, new gashes appearing from nowhere after each failed attack on the part of the beast.

Syl closed her eyes, dropping the bottle to the ground. She shook out her hands and jumped back and forth as Rufus had.

But from her hands, no magic emerged. And neither did any from any other place on her body. “Nothing’s happening!” she cried.

Rufus hadn’t moved from the spot at which he’d started the fight. That was just what Beren could have expected, he realized: Rufus would never back down, even through the pain.

Though, seeing the amount of blood on him… Beren figured his magic must have been keeping him standing. Nothing else made sense. A normal person would have given up ages ago and turned tail, but not Rufus.

He sidestepped another swing of a creature’s monstrous paw, and then lunged in for a quick but thunderous jab against its side. Spines shattered under the force, shards falling as dust to the ground beneath, but the punch carried less force than the ones from before. Rufus was faltering.

It carried on, landing gracefully and dropping to a crouch to strike again.

Rufus faltered, knees nearly buckling. Another gash opened on his other thigh.

Toma drank his too, though he left about half in the bottle. He tossed Beren the remains. “Here!”

Beren fumbled it in his grip as he caught it, nearly dropping it into the grass. But after it settled between his palms, he swirled it around. It shined, sparkling brightly even through the misty glass from which the bottle was made. Was that the magical quality Loxi claimed of it?

One thing was clear: this was what gave Rufus his power.

So Beren, too, drank. It tasted bland—like nothing at all; somehow not even like water itself.

He closed his eyes. He heard Grace drinking hers, as well. He heard the pounding of Rufus’s fists against the enemies’ thorned hides. He felt the grass tickling his legs, exposed beneath his shorts. He even smelled the scent of the oaken forest: clean and earthy, with the musk of recent rain, amplified by the spray of fresh shrapnel peppering the clearing knocking free fresh dirt.

But he did not feel anything new, or anything different. No magic.

He opened his eyes. “I don’t… feel…” He trailed off as his eyes refocused.

Syl’s eyes were wide, and her mouth hung open. Arcs of vibrant golden energy leapt between her fingers, and streaked from hand to hand. Her Provenant Water, drained thoroughly, now sat on the ground at her feet.

Toma, on the other hand, was flying.

He soared a few feet from the ground, and hurtled through the air, straight toward Rufus.

The creature dropped to a crouch, then reared up high above Rufus. He raised his hands weakly, but even Beren could see that it was futile. He was too beat up, and too tired. He simply crossed his arms and braced, ready to take the incoming impact in full.

Its exposed belly thrummed with mana that coursed to its paws. All was still for the briefest moment.

With a mighty snarl, the creature bore down on him, the rumbling sound shaking the trees and earth surrounding them.

A blur of gray and pink rushed across the open field, too fast for the eye. The blur flashed between its outstretched arms, just feet from Rufus’s skull. A foot fired out like a bullet and met with its jaw. The force of the impact, though drastically less than Rufus’s own, pushed the monster’s head back a short way.

But it was enough.

It careened back, its momentum inverted. It stumbled a couple feet, then missed the both of them completely as its front paws crashed down. It scrambled to maintain its balance when it landed.

Grace landed in a crouch next to Rufus, her now coral-tinted hair waving behind her. Her eyes shone with a bright pink glow that subsided as she stopped channeling her powers.

The monster, though wounded and stunned, wheeled around, growling as it turned to them.

Toma flew low to the ground, peeling across the field to Grace and Rufus, each blade of grass he passed parting in a wavy wake. Syl wasn’t far behind, though she was slower: she ran across the open field, her hands extended out at her sides as white arcs leapt between her fingers, some striking against the ground behind her like miniature lightning bolts.

Without thinking, Beren too found himself sprinting across the field back the way they came, while Loxi remained where they’d stood across the field. He shook his hands, shutting his eyes for a moment now and again, trying desperately to feel anything that could be construed as magic.

He didn’t. Yet he still ran.

The beast straightened up, having regained its composure. It growled with the ferocity of a tiger in hunt. Its eyes were feral; narrow. Its gaze flicked to the two that stood a few steps away, then to the three approaching it, but it remained still.

From the ground beneath Toma, a large rock about the size of a human head lifted free. It trailed him as he flew toward it.

It seemed most intrigued by the boy hurtling through the air. With a flick of its tail, it too was flying, on a course to collide head-on with Toma.

Beren slid to a halt.

Its maw snapped open, fangs shimmering.

Toma cried out, straining his arms and back as he and the rock lifted higher. With a heave, the rock slammed the monster’s chin in a ferocious uppercut. Its jaw slammed back shut from the force and its head and shoulders were knocked skyward, though its momentum continued carrying it forward through the air.

Forward straight toward Beren.

He might have dodged, or at least taken cover. But instead, he held up his hands. He reached into the depths of his soul for magic. He tried to remember a single power from their playing pretend that he could call upon.

But, he realized with dread, he’d always been more of a watcher.

“Beren!” Syl cried, reaching out to him. She would be too slow to reach him. Her face turned to a grimace, and her eyes turned up. She thrust her own hands toward the beast.

A wave of force like that from the flower before slammed into Beren as Syl channeled her mana. A golden shimmer hugged the skin of her fingers, and it stretched down onto her hands like magical gloves.

A cylinder of golden light fired from each of her hands.

The yet-conscious creature’s form wheeled around in the air, its limbs flaring out wildly with each revolution in desperate attempts to regain its stability.

The golden beam slammed its belly. A wide hole opened in its gut, singed around the edges. Mana leaked from its thick blue veins, evaporating as it made contact with the air.

It would die. That much was easy to figure.

But its course didn’t change.

One final time, Beren threw forward his hands, with such force that his sleeves popped back from his wrists and slid up his arms. “Come on!” he muttered.

Between gasps, Syl called, “Beren! Move!”

He searched his soul again. His memories. His mother flashed forward to his mind. The shadow of his father. The flowers. The clearing.

Nothing.

The creature hit the dirt first, and then connected with his outstretched hands—