Alden was killing time practicing magic. They were waiting in a clearing they'd set up to look like a fake ritual site. The trio of Greycloaks were further out, trying to act as an early warning system. Alden couldn't see a single one of them. Spencer had sprinkled out a circle of chalk that Rachel provided, and Natalie was roaming around it impatiently while her wolf sat on its haunches and watched. Ryan was tossing a pinecone in the air repeatedly with a bored expression.
Alden decided to catch it first. He hurled out his mental grip and snatched it out of midair. The cone sailed neatly into his own hand, while Ryan's was suddenly grasping at thin air.
"Nice pull," said Ryan. He picked out another cone, tossing it up again. "You a Movement guy?"
"Maybe." Alden tried to adopt his casual tone, tossing the cone up in the air himself. Ryan grinned. A second later, he hurled his pinecone straight at Alden's head.
Alden only had a split-second to react, but he managed to throw up his mental grasp fast enough to slow the cone. He couldn't stop it entirely with the velocity it was moving at, but he managed to deflect it off-course. It sailed past his ear and struck the tree trunk with a loud thwack.
"Good call, not trying to stop it entirely. I put a bit extra behind that throw, so you'd probably just exhaust yourself." Ryan nodded approvingly. "Better to just avoid the hit with the minimum effort."
"What about you? What's your affinity?" Alden asked.
Instead of answering, Ryan lifted up his fist. His arm bulged out with thick corded muscles, as if he'd suddenly become a bodybuilder overnight. "Beating people up." He grinned, then let it lapse back into his normal physique.
"Wouldn't that just throw you off? Like, being unbalanced or not being used to the muscles?"
Ryan shrugged. "Magic takes care of it, I guess. I don't feel unbalanced, and it just feels like normal me—'cept I'm way stronger."
"Can you tell me how to do it?" Alden asked eagerly.
"I guess, but without the affinity you won't be able to hold it for long. Not really worth it in a fight."
"I just want to know more magic, and you seem like the expert on that."
"Nice to see someone's still excited by this shit," Ryan smiled. "All right." He walked over and sat down next to Alden. "Hold out your arm like this. Okay. Did Rika teach you how to move your mind out into your body?"
"Kinda. She taught me how to summon fire on my fingertip. Is it similar?"
"Same general area, but you're staying inside your skin this time, not on top of it. You want to find your way to the muscle layer, then you kinda fold it in on itself. It's hard to describe."
Alden tried what Ryan had said. It didn't seem to accomplish much. He could feel out the muscle group with surprising detail thanks to his practice with telekinesis, but he wasn't able to affect it. He tried to push energy into it, but all he succeeded in doing was moving his arm slightly to the left.
"No, you're still doing Movement. You gotta enlarge it. Modify it."
"I'm trying," Alden muttered. He felt back into it with his mind, tracing the contours of the muscle layer. Normally, his mental projection was like a hand—gripping objects just like he would with his real fingers. This time, he dismissed the hand image and simply pushed inside the muscles instead of gripping the surface. Once inside, he just fed energy directly into the entire region, without any sort of grip or even any purpose at all.
Immediately, his arm muscles seized up and his elbow went rigid. Alden could see a kind of growth in the muscle layer. He could feel how much stronger it was, but he also couldn't actually make use of it. His entire arm was locked in place, and it felt painful to try and move it.
Ryan snickered.
Alden released the magic and his arm thankfully returned to normal. He stretched it out to relieve the discomfort, glaring at Ryan. "Could have warned me."
"Well, to be honest, I didn't expect you to get anything out of that at all. You're going about it all wrong though. Just shooting stuff into your arm like you're doping up is gonna do fuck-all." He shrugged. "How am I supposed to explain a magic thought process to someone who's never done it? It's like explaining to someone what a tail feels like, or to a girl what having a dick feels like."
"Thanks for that image," Alden muttered. He glanced over at Natalie, who hadn't appeared to have heard Ryan. In fact, she was staring out into the woods with a concerned expression. "Natalie?"
"Gwen heard something," Natalie said. She rushed to her wolf's side. Gwen was issuing a low growl from her bared jaws, and Natalie patted her on the head trying to soothe her. They didn't want to make too much noise and give away the trap.
"Could just be one of those cult morons moving around too much," Ryan said dismissively.
Alden's phone buzzed. He tapped the screen on. Rachel had sent them a message—minutes earlier. "Crap. Rachel sent the message five minutes ago."
"The fuck?" Ryan snapped, leaping to his feet.
"Bad signal."
He let out a stream of curses.
"Is it time?" Natalie asked.
"Yeah. Do your thing," said Ryan. Natalie clapped her hands together eagerly, and a moment later a set of fireballs burst forth. The wave of heat washed over all of them as she sent them spinning up into the air above the trees—a perfect circle of bright pink flames.
"When did you learn to make it colored?" asked Ryan.
"I saw someone else do it. I thought it looked nice." Natalie smiled. "I learned how to color stuff from the lightning Scrap, so I just combined it. They're pretty, aren't they?"
"Beautiful," he deadpanned. "Anyway, show's on. He should have sensed that, if Rachel's not crazy. One minute, then we go."
The minute seemed to take hours. Alden was counting it down mentally in his head, but every second was another bead of sweat forming on the back of his neck. Flashes of the monsters kept hurtling through his mind, while Jackson's low voice echoed just beyond the tips of his ears. For all his bravado in talking to Hailey, or to Rika, Alden was still terrified of what they were up against. Who wouldn't be?
His companions didn't seem nearly as concerned. Ryan looked as bored as he ever did, while Natalie was intensely focused on the trees. Spencer was stamping out his cigarette. Only Jerry seemed as nervous as Alden, his eyes flicking back and forth rapidly while his hands seemed to never quite settle on a particular position.
He's going to come for us, Alden reminded himself. That's the whole point. We time it so that he sees our burst of magic before the ritual starts, and he goes for the first one. He's fast so he should be here any second. Then we just run. Right?
There was a loud thump and the sound of liquid splattering across the leaves. Alden looked around.
One of the golems erupted from the ground, faceless and covered in underbrush. Its thick, featureless arm was already extended, with a crimson-splattered fist protruding through Spencer's torso.
The man looked down with glazed-over, disbelieving eyes. "Shit," he muttered.
The golem whipped its arm back, flinging Spencer's body off like a wet rag. He hit the nearest tree and tumbled to the forest floor. His eyes were totally empty, like there wasn't a person inside anymore.
Alden's heart skipped a beat.
He looked around in a panic, but there wasn't anyone there. Jackson was nowhere to be seen. There was only the golem, with a second one starting to grow a few feet behind the first. Natalie lifted up balled fists and Gwen growled deep and loud, while Ryan's arms bulged out and Jerry summoned up his own set of flickering yellow-orange flames.