Penult (The Liminality, Part Four)

Chapter 64: Demons

Georg released the clingy straps that secured the column to the beetle and let it slide off Rhino's back. It clanked like tone wood as it bounced and rolled into one of the shallow ditches that bordered the roadway. Ubaldo grabbed a U-shaped block from Rhino's back and leapt into the ditch, hammering it into the ground against the uphill side of the column. Georg attached one of the cables affixed to loops halfway up the column while the rest of us grabbed the other lines and hurried uphill until they went taut.

"Go easy now," said Olivier. "Equal tension. Keep it centered."

Slowly, we raised the column, like colonists hauling up the corner post of a barn. Loomis continued to clang its polyphonic alarm. The spectators had scattered and were fleeing back to the city on their scooters.

When the column was vertical, I dropped my line and rushed over and retracted the lowest ring of spikes, rotating the bottom segment until the nubs lined up with those just above it, just as I had seen Victoria do. As I worked my way up segment by segment, the cracker came to life. Air hissed through its myriad channels. The outer surface grew hot and began to shimmer and ripple, cycling through a complex series of textures. Spiky supports sprouted from the base and drilled their way deep into the dirt and chalk beneath.

I glanced up-slope half expecting to see an army of Cherubim charging down at us. The towers of Loomis had gone all gunmetal gray tinged with purple and veiled with mist. The mist swirled and grew until it shrouded the tallest of the buildings.

"This ain't right," said Olivier. "This cracker's not shaking nearly as much as it needs to. Did you do it the right way?"

"I ... I thought so."I stared at the segments, noticing one ring that wasn't quite perfectly aligned.

I grabbed onto the spikes and yanked. It wouldn't budge.

"It's ... stuck."

"That cloud! It's coming this way!" said Olivier.

There was a granularity to the mist now that told me that its individual components were much larger than I first thought. It was made not of water vapor but of objects. They looked like birds from afar, but they moved like bats, their bodies withered and spare like origami doves.

Several strands swirled up and converged into a huge clot of white that arced upward forming a parabolic trajectory that peaked and dove like a huge, white amorphous fist slamming towards us. I tried to ignore it as I fiddled with the cracker, twirling the control rings one by one.

Olivier tried to help but had not absorbed the lesson as clearly as me.The fist of doves accelerated, whistling like those screaming meemie fireworks that used to freak me out when I was a kid.

As the fringe of lone fliers preceding the main swarm was about to hurtle into us, Olivier thrust out his staff and conjured a spell. I suppose he had intended to raise a shield but diffuse field that sizzled out the splintered end of his stick, wiggled in the breeze like a giant soap bubble before popping and splattering bits of plasma on the ground.

I had no choice but to divert my attention from the column and stuck my sword out at the oncoming threat. Spells happened now without my having to think, which was good and bad. Spontaneity was nice but my instincts did not always make the best decisions.

The blast that issued forth from the tip of my blackened sword was plenty powerful, but much too concentrated, punching a hole through the center of the mass of paper doves, wadding a bunch together and dropping them out of the formation. I might as well have fired a bullet into a cloud of smoke. The vacated spot filled right back up and the mass kept on swarming towards us.