Chapter 15: Inferno

  The angered brigadier alternated between looking at Erik and his captain with furious eyes, though each time he looked towards his fellow soldier his eyes darted down to the cement covering the man.

  “I’m proving a point,” Erik responded. He seemed unconcerned about how the brigadier and the major were reacting. “Don’t worry, it’s temporary.”

  “The fuck is this?” the captain screamed, straining against the concrete-like substance.

  Erik placed the stick on the desks in front of them, and it turned to fine sawdust as everyone stared at it. A few tense moments later, Bumley sat down, eyeing the captured captain with worry. The major followed suit in the same manner.

  “Magic is real. I realise how that sounds, but that doesn’t argue the fact. What’s important for you to understand, is that magic is what can kill those monsters.”

  The discussion stopped after this, at least temporarily. The brigadier wanted to show Erik’s group something, but demanded that the captain be released before that. Erik rose for the first time since sitting down, He walked closer to the captain, and everyone, even his own group, tensed up.

  Erik lifted a finger to his ear and the room somehow turned even more quiet. The concrete surrounding the captain soon made a slight cracking sound and Erik clenched his fist. He punched the concrete at the base near the captain’s legs.

  The material violently broke apart near the area of impact, and the captain could move his legs once again. He then struggled more, breaking out of the rest of it. Erik rather stopped the telegraphed fist flying straight at his face with his own hand.

  “Easy, Captain. If nothing else, he’s proven that he has some means that we don’t. Whether that be technology or magic doesn’t matter right now,” the major said, clenching the captain’s shoulder tightly with his hand.

  Eventually, the captain ceased struggling.

  “Take five, Captain. Meet us in hangar 3,” the major said, then led the rest of the group out of the room and out of the hangar.

  As the group, Colson excluded, wandered the base towards hangar three, the major walked alongside Erik, obviously struggling to find some words to say to the man. Behind them, Angela and Emma were making acquaintances with Sophie and Jessie. The brigadier walked further behind them, deep in thought.

  “Out with it, major,” Erik said. Anything was better than the tense silence.

  “Was that real?” MacLeod eventually asked.

  “Which part? Also, yes.”

  “That was magic? It looked like a stick?” The last sentence was stated more like a question.

  “It was. See?” Erik answered, pulling out another stick from his ever-present bag, handing it to the major who took it into his clutches without a moment’s hesitation.

  “It’s a stick…”

  “Yeah,” Erik answered. It was.

  “And you can do that with this? Is it like a wand?” the major asked, staring at the stick he kept rotating in his hands, trying to figure out the trick. Erik chuckled at that.

  “Not a wand, no. I can do weird things with weird stuff,” Erik explained in his own mysterious way.

  “Can you do it now?” the major asked.

  “Quite a few people around, but… I can show you another trick?” Erik suggested.

  “Of course!”

  The major gave the stick back to Erik with enthusiasm, but was disappointed when the man put it back in his backpack. The maybe-magician pulled out a frisbee in its place, gaining him a confused stare.

  “This one’s less flashy and shouldn’t cause too much of a commotion in the evening dark.” Erik tossed the frisbee in front of them. The frisbee stopped in mid-air, rotating to an upright position.

  “It hovers?” the major asked, walking faster to reach the magic frisbee.

  “Among other things. Sophie, Jessie, check it out,” Erik said, getting the girls’ attention and pointing towards the frisbee.

  “Oh, that’s the shield?” Sophie asked, running past Erik and towards the frisbee.

  Just then, the major looked at it closely, attempting to walk around it to look at the other side. He bumped into the invisible wall it projected with a thump.

  “What?” he asked no one in particular.

  Sophie approached, touching the empty air all around the frisbee. “Woah! How far does it go?” she asked, also to no one in particular, as she ran to the side of the frisbee, her hand touching the wall along the way. She got three metres away from the centre before her hand slipped past the edge. The major did the same thing, only in the opposite direction.

  “Woah…” was all he said as he reached the end of the wall, walking around it and towards the centre again. “Why a frisbee?” he asked, just as the frisbee fell to the ground in front of him. Coulson checked the wall again, but it was gone.

  He then, with all the gentleness he could muster, tapped the plastic frisbee with his foot. He looked up at Erik when nothing more happened. Erik snatched the frisbee from the ground, drawing a cross on the front and back with a marker from his bag, then returned both to the sack.

  “I ask myself that every single time, mate. Every time!”

  The major, now much more enthusiastic with his questions, couldn’t keep his mouth shut until the group reached hangar 3. The people in the front waited a short while for the brigadier, who had also seen the frisbee-wall, but hadn’t been able to touch it himself. He looked even more deep in thought after that and he had inadvertently walked a bit slower since then.

  “So what’s in here?” Sophie asked, looking at the major and brigadier both.

  “Let’s wait for Captain Colson,” the major said without haste.

  After a few minutes, the group was all together again, not everyone as happy about that as they could have been.

  “Ease up, Captain. I think you’ll regret antagonising these people,” the major told the still-flustered captain.

  “Yes, sir,” Colson answered, but didn’t seem genuine.

  The major sighed, then showed the group in. This hangar was locked tight with both physical locks and digital ones. It seemed to require two different hand-prints, which the major and the captain gave by placing their hands on a medium-sized screen on the side of the gate. It was far more complex a lock than the previous hangar’s.

  The personnel in the vicinity stared in their direction when the gate opened, though no one came closer. Erik wasn’t sure if they knew what was in here, or if they weren’t allowed near.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The answer to that came quickly as the group entered to a loud roar and thumping, the ruckus easily overheard by most of the base. It rapidly became obvious what they were keeping in there. The light gradually lit the inside of the hangar as it turned on, revealing a large steel cage with a lone Hellbeast inside.

  “You captured one?” Jessie asked with a grimace.

  “Yes. We’ve been experimenting with ways to kill them. I’m guessing most bases have one captured by now, as that isn’t the most difficult to do,” the brigadier started to explain.

  “The troublesome part is, as you know, killing them. We’ve tried everything from fire, to acid, to bombs shoved down their throats, but nothing works. Even radiation is ineffective, making us wonder if even nukes will be enough.”

  “What they want you to do, is kill it with your tricks,” the captain intruded into their conversation. A few seconds of silence followed the statement, only interrupted by the brigadier’s throat clearing up.

  “Well, yes. You claim to have proved yourself to General Mathisen and while I don’t want to doubt her words… I would want irrefutable proof before acting on her request. I trust you can give us this, Mr Fried?” Bumley said, clearly interested in what Erik would say next.

  “Why?” Erik asked, meeting only confused silence from both his own group and the UB officers.

  “I’m sorry?”.

  “I mean, why would we show you? What’s in it for us? Will you agree to help? Keep in mind that we don’t want this to be a big thing. We’re not military, nor will we be. Mathisen has promised all the help she can give with resources she isn’t technically allowed to give. Will you do the same?” Erik said.

  “You have shown us enough that I can answer that quite clearly, Mr Fried,” Bumley started, but was interrupted by Erik’s next words.

  “Please, call me Erik.”

  “Of course, Erik… In short, yes. If you can show us that you are, in fact, the real deal, my regiment is yours. We’ll-”

  “What? You can’t be serious?” Colson exclaimed.

  “Shut up!” the major cut in, having finally had enough. He pulled the captain back a few steps.

  The brigadier took the opportunity to finish, saying, “We will, of course, keep to Mathisen’s plan. You will all be kept strictly off the books, until such a time as you feel it is okay to enter the military and the public’s eye. We’ll strive to keep everyone else off your backs, though I can sadly make no guarantees that it’ll work for long.”

  “That’s acceptable, Bumley. Jessie, would you do the honours?” Erik said, turning to Jessie. “We still don’t know if you can kill them, so two proverbial beasts with one spell, right?”

  “I’d be honoured,” she grinned furiously as she stepped forward. She carefully inched closer to the massive cage keeping the monster separated from the rest of the group, having never been even close to a Hellbeast before.

  Bumley seemed surprised that another person would claim to be able to kill the beasts as well. Erik stepped up to her side as he was as interested in seeing this as the rest, though the rest didn’t step any closer, keeping their eyes firm on the cage and the Witch.

  “I’ve got two offensive spells, earth, and fire. Anything you want to test first?” Jessie asked with a grin.

  “They did say fire didn’t work right? How about we prove them wrong?” Erik said, giving the captain an obnoxious smile.

  Jessie’s hoodie lit up from the inside, giving off a rich red light. The light flickered and moved like a lit candle in the wind, but it didn’t go out. When Jessie finally cast the spell, Erik was more interested in her than the beast and was surprised by the red glow in her eyes, similar to the light from her Core.

  “Inferno!” she said in a deep voice, reaching her hand out towards the beast.

  Suddenly, weirdly crimson flames spun around the monster’s body, covering it in a moment. Erik lost control of his breath as he watched the magical flame dance.

  The flames started melting the thick steel bars of the cage and it would be easy for the beast to knock the bars away from the rest of the cage at that moment. Still, it didn’t do anything but howl in pain as its own flesh melted faster still than the surrounding steel.

  The smell of barbequed meat filled the hangar in an instant, before turning to that of blackened protein. After three full seconds of bright flames and intense heat, everything went dark. The intense light the flames gave off disappeared and while the lights lined on the ceiling were still lit, no one could see much of anything for the next few seconds as they had all stared wide-eyed at the bright flames.

  “What the fuck was that? You have four spells like as your Core power?” Erik yelled at Jessie in a high-pitched tone. “I make frisbees float in the air!”

  Everyone except Jessie and Sophie stared at the melted cage with the ashen remains of a monster within with gaping mouths. Everyone was in awe, including Erik. That spell was way more powerful than any item he could use. And she had four of them!

  It wasn’t impossible that Erik could find a thingamajig with the same potential power, but he hadn’t yet. A task for his new friends, perhaps?

  “I thought it was named ‘Scorch’?” Erik asked in a slight whisper before turning away from the cage.

  “I added a bit of flair, sue me,” Jessie blinked with a grin before also turning.

  Erik looked back at the people they were proving themselves to and Jessie did the same, her eyes having returned to normal again. Bumley and MacLeod had no words, but their expressions could write entire novels. Colson fell to the floor, landing on his knees and hands. He sobbed, with tears dripping to the floor beneath him.

  “We’re saved… We’re saved,” he repeated over and over until he instead cried harder and louder.

  Everyone turned to him but were just as speechless at the sight of the crying man as they were the magical inferno they witnessed a moment earlier. The exception was Sophie, who bent her knees down in front of him, placing her hand on the crying man’s shoulder. She said nothing for the first dozen seconds, but the man seemed to calm down.

  “They’ll win. I know they will. But they need us as well, you understand?” she eventually said as the man had returned to only sobbing and heavy breaths.

  Colson looked up at the angelic face of the young girl and nodded in agreement. Sophie returned the gesture with a smile and helped the man up to his feet.

  “I need to apologise-” he started, but Erik stopped him.

  “You don’t. Have you lost anyone, Captain? Lost anything? In this war, I mean?” Erik asked.

  The man only nodded in response.

  “The captain’s brother and sister, both exceptional officers, were among the first to die as defenders of the shoreline of England,” said Bumley, getting the captain’s grateful gaze in return. “Many have suffered terrible losses these past few months. Like Captain Colson, I suspect many have already given up and will prove resistant to the hope you will eventually bring. As agreed, you will have our full cooperation and discretion. I will personally talk to the men stationed here and root out the ones who won’t be part of this… desertion. They will be reassigned elsewhere. I hope you will trust the men and women who remain with the truth, so we can better assist your endeavours?”

  “Of course, Brigadier,” Erik said, translating Jessie’s affirmative nod. “We’ll trust your judgement.”

  “Excellent. Give us a few days. In the meantime, you should lay low and you should probably stay away from the base. I’ll take care of your accommodations until then,” Bumley said.

  “Sounds good. We have some stuff to take care of as well. A few days will do us some good,” Erik said. The brigadier nodded and turned to leave the hangar, the major following suit.

  Colson remained, and the brigadier turned around a dozen steps later to see what was keeping him. The captain walked up to Erik and Jessie, his red, moistened eyes showing a determination Erik hadn’t previously seen from the man.

  He stopped a few steps in front of them, raising his hand to his head in salute. A good distance behind him, Erik saw the brigadier and the major replicating this action. Erik acknowledged this with a nod and stretched out his own hand towards the captain.

  “Happy to have you on our side,” Erik said, giving the captain a genuine smile.

  Colson looked down at Erik’s hand a moment, not wanting to break the salute off. He eventually did, clasping the given hand. Without another word, the captain joined his superior officers as they left the hangar.

  Minutes later, Erik and his gang were ready to move out, having been given transport back into Leicester proper. MacLeod returned to them, informing them of their accommodations at a hotel, three rooms booked in Erik’s name. They drove off in their transport a moment later.

  “Who’s up for drinks?” Angela burst as they had crossed the gate of the air base.

  “We should be ready early tomorrow morning. Drinks can wait till the war is over,” Emma responded.

  “Don’t be a spoilsport,” Sophie complained, Angela nodding in agreement to her words.

  “I’ll gladly join,” Jessie said with a grin.

  Emma looked to Erik for a fraction of a second until she realised how doomed she really was.

  “Bed at midnight, at the latest! I’ll personally rouse you all at 0600 hours sharp!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Angela saluted with a devious grin.

  “Are we sleeping at the hotel as well?” Sophie asked her older sister with puppy-dog eyes.

  “If Angela and Emma are okay sharing a room, then there’s a third room available, right?” Jessie asked the group.

  Angela and Emma confirmed. It would make it easier for Emma to get them all out of bed that way.