Scattered Pieces
The three of them—Wanda, Vincent and Jasper—were cornered in the far corner of the abandoned barn. The doors were latched shut; Jasper, Wanda and Vince managed to barricade the door with leftover farm tools, plankings and empty drums. The heavy bar that Jasper had dropped across the center of the door seemed sturdy enough to earn them at least a couple of minutes.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” Wanda asked.
“They’re going to incapacitate us long-range,” Vincent advised. “Spellweavers are not known for being melee combatants, but they’re fucking annoying with their spells.”
“So, what?” Wanda retorted. “You don’t like being on the receiving end? And what are we gonna do? Wait for them to start torching the place?”
“No,” Jasper said, after snickering at Vincent’s affronted mien. “You and him are going to look for the trapdoor while I hold them off.”
“Huh?” Wanda asked, looking at him askance. “Mind running that by me again? What trapdoor?”
“There’s a trapdoor—or an underground tunnel—somewhere in this barn,” Jasper explained. “I read it from the telepath’s mind during our little tango earlier.” Pause. “Before you sat on her face, that is.” Jasper deadpanned darkly.
“I did not!” Wanda returned indignantly.
Vincent snickered at Jasper’s black humour. No help there.
“Fine,” Wanda huffed as she moved away, her leading left foot tapping once, twice on her every two steps. She spied an old crowbar lying on the floor and picked it up, making a face at the rust marks it left on her palms. “Well, don’t just stand there drawing flies, help me, dammit!” she directed an amused Vincent.
“Bossy little thing, ain’t she?” Vincent remarked to Jasper.
“Hey, you’re the one copping feels,” Jasper retorted. “Don’t blame me if you can’t take the heat.”
“You’re okay holding them off?”
Jasper’s dark eyes went vacant for a moment—sending his mind out of the barn to scan their immediate surroundings, and their approaching foes—then refocused. “Three spellweavers and four muscles,” he noted wryly. “This should be easy. Nikki taught me a scenario like this during one of our exercises.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Vincent warned.
“I’ll try not to,” Jasper answered flippantly.
Vincent snorted by way of reply and turned towards Wanda, who had gone on all fours and was working on one of the seams of the wooden flooring. “Found something?” he asked as he walked over to her.
“I think so,” she muttered. She looked up at him and asked, “Think you can use your powers and see if I’m right?”
“Sure,” Vincent said, even as his eyes took on a glazed momentarily. He saw empty space underneath, with beams supporting the roof and walls. “You got it.”
He picked up the rusty crowbar lying beside Wanda and fitted the narrow ends between the edges of the plank flooring. He started prying the rotting planking away and handed the crowbar to Wanda. “You keep prising them out, I’ll do the rest,” he said.
Jasper turned away from them once he saw the two had things in hand. He readied himself for the things that he knew he was about to do. Things he knew he had always been capable of.
Back when his empathic powers first manifested, it came as glimpses of visions, thoughts and words kept on bombarding him with unwanted sensations and pieces of another person’s mind. He haphazardly developed a basic mental shield after the first three weeks, and refined it into a mental filter where only certain impressions of a certain resonance is able to sift through into his consciousness. Sometimes, it’s a sensation of immense rage, or overwhelming love—and he nearly gagged on the cloying feel of that sensation—but often he came upon thoughts of despair, apathy that it began to corrode his own sense of self.
In some ways, he’s glad the one they’re with was Vincent and not Nikki. Nikki’s too shrewd, too cold for Jasper’s liking. Although he appreciated everything the older man had taught him, after he met Nikki, he gained a better understanding of his own powers and how to control them. Nikki also taught him discipline and the rigid structure that had formed the cornerstones of his own formidable telepathic prowess. Although he understood the necessity, Jasper couldn’t quell a small amount of resentment at the rigid discipline and his intractable, gruff mannerisms. His favourite time of their lessons was the mock duel they’ll have; telepath against empath. It was on their last duel that jasper gained the upper hand, to Nikki’s chagrin. And from that day onwards, Jasper sensed a certain distance forming between him and his mentor.
Let’s see if the student is now ready to step out of his teacher’s shadow …
He sent out a basic probe, looking for four non-powered thoughts. He found them, but certain images he managed to glimpsed—lush, verdant forests and stately towers, buildings that he could swear had never existed anywhere in the world—disturbed him and he pulled out, startled by how alien it all seemed.
That was weird …
He sent his thoughts out again, steeling himself against the alien feel of someone else’s mind. Nikki had taught him how to insinuate himself into another person’s thoughts and plant certain images or sensations for coercion, gentle manipulation or hypnotic effect. He opted for both coercion and hypnotic effect.
He dulled the sensations of the first two fighters—their nature made apparent by the crossbows and several wicked-looking knives strapped to their persons—and was satisfied to see them falling behind. In his mind’s eye, he could see the barn from their point of view. It’s roughly a thirty-degree incline, with a distance of a hundred feet. The two hypnotised men fell back and seemed to be confused as to where they are; with their mind at slack, Jasper exerted control over their motor functions. The two men reached for the crossbows strapped to their backs and slapped them to ready positions. Jasper could see that the bolts are already nocked and ready to fire. The two men thumbed away the trigger’s safety lock and let loose.
Jasper could sense the bolts hitting home, into the backs of one spellcaster—a woman—and one of the other fighters. He could sense the woman’s shock and dying throes. He felt the gurgle of blood purged from her lips as she cursed out a vile epithet before dying away in a strangled gasp.
The lead spellcaster—a man—howled in fury and gestured towards the two men Jasper had acquired as his mental puppets. He managed to pick out certain images and strong powerful mental images—a spell!—being casted even as he hurriedly unmeshed his own consciousness from those belonging to the two men. He barely managed to eject himself out of the two acquired consciousness before his mental puppets burst into flames. The jolt of pain and heat he could feel through his unwilling hosts’ bodies sent his consciousness rocketing, reeling towards his waiting body. Jasper realised just how narrow his brush with death was, for if a mind-controlling psychic couldn’t extricate himself from the dying host’s body, they’ll remain trapped within the dead mind and their own bodies in a vegetative state.
Jasper stumbled backwards from the force of being shocked out of his hosts’ bodies, almost losing his balance. A dull throb in the centre of his forehead seemed his just rewards with regards to his exercise of power.
“Any progress on the tunnel?” he snapped at Vincent and Wanda.
“Coming along wonderfully,” Vincent’s mockingly cheerful answer came back. A pause, then, “Jas, shield us now!”
Jasper barely managed to raise the mental shields in each of their minds before the spell washed over the three of them. He hissed as the spell washed over his consciousness. He had erected a barrier to guard himself, Wanda and Vincent against the spell unleashed from the lead spellcaster. In his mind’s eye, he could see the outward spiral of the magical energy—invisible to the naked eye—from the male witch advanced towards them. Mass sleep effect, he noted. They didn’t want us physically harmed, I suppose.
“Hurry up!” Jasper shouted. “I don’t think they’re here to kill us!”
“That should be a good thing, right?” Wanda asked, pausing in the middle of prying planking from the floor.
“Not really,” Vincent answered her. “It means they’re planning on taking us somewhere. Somewhere not very nice.”
Wanda didn’t manage to reply to him because it was at that moment the walls to the barn exploded inwards. Rain of wooden splinters, farm implements and empty drums flew everywhere. The source of the explosion was a massive ball of fire heading towards them.
From the angle it was coming, Wanda could see that Jasper stood right in its path. Time seemed to crawl as Wanda dropped the crowbar she was holding and ran towards her brother, hoping to drag, or at least, knock him out of the massive fireball’s path. She could feel the immense heat of the flames and as she reached Jasper’s side saw that it was too late to drag Jasper to safety—the fireball is so close!—she held up her hands, closing her eyes against the expected impact, knowing the flimsy barricade of cashmere covered limbs is useless in the face of …
… the flames that divided themselves around her and Jasper.
“Oh good golly junior juice,” Wanda breathed out, looking around her. “Are you seeing this?” she asked her brother.
The flames divided themselves neatly in a semicircle with a radius of five feet around Jasper and Wanda. Overhead, the flames flared over them into an arc that formed a dome.
“Are you doing this?” her voice was tremulous, filled with wonder.
“No,” Jasper answered, his voice hushed. “I think you are.”
