Spellhacke- M. K. England Page 0,8
maz. Then . . . CRACK! Its jagged mouth splits open, grows longer, longer, racing toward me, spilling raw maz into the air. My breath comes fast, too fast, and my head swims.
Stars, not again. After surviving this long, am I really going to die like my parents, surrounded by glowing poison and—
Ania drags me aside as the crack advances and, with the most intense focus I’ve ever seen from her, draws a sharp shielding ward around us. She dumps huge amounts of expensive nullaz, the maz nullifier, into the air and street around us, going for quantity over quality as the deadly maz from the fissure lashes against her hastily erected barrier. She mutters formulas and patterns to herself as she opens a second stream of terraz, its earthy scent and grounding power infusing the pavement under our feet. A trickle of bright golden magnaz kicks the mix into high gear, raw power to strengthen the whole thing. A ham-fisted technique, but—
Wait.
My gaze flies to the ware on her right hand. The flow of magnaz comes out in fits and starts, like she mentioned earlier, and gets worse with every passing second.
“Ania, you’re gonna break it!” I shout over the wail of more approaching sirens. The magnaz gives a worrying sputter, a flare of golden light.
“Yeah, well, you seem hell-bent on breaking yourself, and Remi and Jaesin aren’t here, so someone has to save you from your own death wish.”
“But that flow is—”
“—a lot harder to manage with you shouting in my ear. Shut. UP.”
I shut up. How the tables have turned. The shield flickers with the golden light of the magnaz as Ania holds the whole thing in place through sheer force of will. Sweat glitters on the bridge of her nose as she stands her ground, unfazed even when a van comes plummeting from the airborne traffic lanes for a hard landing mere feet away from us. Bodies in Maz Management Corporation uniforms spill out, wrapped from head to toe in faintly shimmering layers of nullaz and hauling portable maz containment equipment onto the road.
The earthquake, being the petty bitch that it is, gives one last lurching kick that sends the crew tripping over their own equipment.
Then it slows . . . and stops.
The city is silent for a long moment as, all around, people hold their breath and look to one another with the heavy and unspoken question: Is it over? For real?
The answer comes moments later as the all-clear siren blares, and all the weavers and witches in sight let their wards fall.
“Finally,” Ania grinds out, letting her own barrier fall too. The MMC workers tending to the fissure barely spare us a glance through the flickering haze of their containment field.
“Come on,” I say, dragging Ania by the wrist, my bloody hand still aching from the punch. Her half-hearted protests are nothing but background noise as the Cliffs take up my whole field of view, consuming all scents, all sounds.
The Cliffs are composed of seven towering buildings, and Remi, Jaesin, and I live in building three, right along the roadside. The dumping ground for the city’s plague orphans. Home shit home. The front door is partially blocked by a newly fallen chunk of stone railing that was part of the roof until ten minutes ago, but I slip through the narrow opening and into the mess of people and debris on the first floor.
The acrid scent of too many bodies in a building with terrible plumbing mixes with the burnt tang of dead structural maz in the air. Everyone’s doors are thrown open as they mill about in the halls. The more altruistic among them check on neighbors and ask about injuries, while others dig through the rubble for usable bits to scavenge. Shana, a girl I sometimes go dancing with, dabs at a bleeding cut on her roommate’s forehead, oblivious as the vultures circle her open apartment door, scouting for any valuables in view. The few weavers who could afford some small amount of maz had apparently set up a warding circle in the front common area and are now demanding money from everyone who availed themselves of their services. If the markup is a little high, well, they just saved everyone’s lives, didn’t they?
My deck buzzes as a notification pops up in my vision, and I nearly choke in my haste to open it. Remi or Jaesin finally getting back to me? Or calling for help?
1 missed vid call
(private) Davon: You okay?