Seventeen
The world was turned upside down. There were worldwide reports of mass breakouts from high security prisons. There were attacks on MMC headquarters and strongholds. The general public were driven into fear at the orchestrated and sudden violence, they struggled to explain it, grasping wildly at terrorism, or even more wildly, witchcraft as inexplicable occurrences happened in every town and city in the British Isles.
Hunter and James were dragged from sleep by an emergency phone call. The witch-hunter on the other end could hardly remain calm enough to pass on the message - the impossible had happened, a witch had managed to get into and destroyed the MMC headquarters and now all bound witches in the UK were re-empowered. They acted in an organised manner, which meant they must have been planning this for a while.
Hunter and James raced to reinforce the nearest prison for witchkind. James drove, as Hunter’s senses violently sparked with the strength of magic that almost deafened him. Both were nervously aware of the enormity of what lay ahead.
The big grey compound was alight with fires and the glow of spells and illusions. The injured witch-hunters were being pulled back to relative safety, while the survivors fought desperately to keep the witches contained.
Hunter and James ran into the fray without a second thought. All about them, witch-hunters were firing into a half-illusion crowd of witches. Magic was flying erratically in every direction, spells to distract, spells to burn, spells to kill.
A burning block of stone suddenly flew into a dense area of witch-hunters, and there was screaming mixed with the thunder of collision. Hunter pulled James out of the way of flying debris.
“Get the injured to safety.” Hunter shouted over the noise.
James nodded and headed into the bloody and broken mess. He wasn’t a coward, but all 1st gens had their uses away from the actual battle.
Hunter turned back to the front. A black shadow was rippling and spreading over the ground towards them with an incredible speed. Hunter’s sharp eyes broke through the haze to see hundreds of oversized spiders scuttling towards them.
“Spiders. Knives.” Hunter shouted down the line.
The other witch-hunters didn’t hesitate but pulled out long knives (and one or two swords). The wave of arachnids hit. Hunter slashed through the first wave with quick and deadly accuracy, no time to feel fear of the dog-sized spiders.
To his right he could see a witch-hunter fall to the powerful venom, and the spiders broke through to the second line. But he didn’t have time to think about it, as more and more of the creatures scuttled on and Hunter fought to keep cutting them down.
More gun-shots rang out from the far wing of the witch-hunters, and the plague of spiders began to abate as their creators were killed. They had a brief chance to catch their breath, but Hunter noticed the thinning of the witch-hunter lines as casualties were pulled back.
They needed a miracle.
Everything got quieter, stifled and slowed. The world got darker, a darkness that even Hunter’s eyes couldn’t pierce. Hunter’s heart pounded with fear as he felt a familiar rhythm to the blanket of magic. The Shadow Witch, it had to be.
There was a voice, muffled and just beyond hearing. Then everything switched back to normal.
The noise and the cold returned. Hunter looked about, trying to find an answer for what just happened, but the other witch-hunters appeared not to have noticed, or even affected by the odd period.
A drop of cold water hit Hunter’s face and he looked up. The previously clear night sky now rolled with thick, ominous clouds, tinged with colour. A storm was coming unnaturally fast.
Shouts rose up from the witch-hunters, bringing Hunter’s attention back to the fight. Like an organised force, the witches threw out a thousand vicious illusions that swooped towards the witch-hunters.
There was a crack of thunder across the sky just as the wave of illusions hit. The line of tired witch-hunters wavered, and lesser gens attempted to fight the incorporeal monsters. With his highly trained senses, Hunter saw through the mass of illusion and saw the witches run away into a growing black shadow. His heart pounded again as they just vanished. That was impossible, witches couldn’t physically disappear or transport themselves. The Shadow Witch. It was the only explanation.
Hunter snapped to as screams and shouts rose again from the ranks. He went to move but suddenly felt a stinging pain across his shoulder. He saw blood start to trickle from a shallow cut. Hunter looked up briefly. The storm clouds seethed and boiled and suddenly thousands of shards of ice were pelting down into the witch-hunters, cutting, slicing, blinding. The wind picked up, driving the sharp pieces harder against them as they started to run in every direction, slipping on the ground as it turned white beneath their feet, chased by the ice.