Arcana 99: Stage One

The night passed as most others do, quickly, leaving no memory of neither its passing nor its existence. When I awoke the next morning, the only evidence I had that time had even passed was the Sun sitting high in the sky. . .

High?

I looked again, sure enough, the position of the Sun clearly showed the time to be past noon. For the first time in my life, I had slept in. That shock removed the drowsiness that remained, and I bolted to my feet, knocking Etteilla’s pet off my side and onto the ground. I apologized to it as I put on my boots, and it responded with a little squeak [Fuck you. I was sleeping dammit!]

. . . . . . . . .

Right, Etteilla’s magic. Was it this vulgar last night?

After I put my shoes on, I glanced over to where Etteilla was sleeping to wake her, only to find that she was lounging against the tree and eating some freshly cooked meat. She had clearly been up for several hours, and had never thought to wake me, “Why are you just sitting there!? We’ve probably lost our lead by now!”

She waved her hand to waft both the smoke and my words away from her meal, “If we got the lead once we can get it again.”

“If we keep sleeping in this late, it won’t matter,” I said as I packed up my sleeping bag.

“Eh,” She waved a hand in a strange, circular motion and the fire doused itself, “I don’t think this will happen again. [If you get this angry about it, I won’t magic you to sleep tomorrow.]”

I stopped mid-fire-deconstruction to glare at her with as much fury as I could conjure, “What. Did. You. Just. Say? [If you used a spell to make me sleep in, I won’t kill you, but I’ll put you as close to that line as possible.]”

She gave a forced, faux smile, “Uhhh, yeah. . . I kind of used the second arcana to keep you asleep for a few hours.”

“WHAT! WHY?”

“Well, I woke up before you did and was really tired, and I knew you would be angry if I didn’t get up in the morning. So, I magicked you to sleep so I could rest for a few more hours.”

“Could you not have just magicked yourself to not be tired?”

“Uhhhhh, I could have. But I was tired! I couldn’t think straight.”

I sighed as I got onto my bike, “Just get up and come on. [We lost too much time already, and continuing this would only make that worse.]”

She mounted her horse and called out to her pet, “Vivian! Get on or I’m leaving you.” Vivian stared at her and laid down, clearly still angry over whatever slight Etteilla committed the previous night, “If I leave, you don’t get any more food from me.” Before I could blink, Vivian had stood up and crawled underneath Etteilla’s cloak. Its head popped out of the collar and demanded the food it was promised. Etteilla obliged and the two of us began our second day of the race.

After how Etteilla and my bike were pushed yesterday, I lowered our pace. Etteilla either didn’t notice or didn’t care because even with this slower pace we were still topping seventy-five miles per hour on good terrain. I wasn’t entirely sure where we were, but I knew that we had camped somewhere on the Kaibab plateau. That meant that Navajo Bridge was to our east. Within the hour we had arrived at the bridge which, oddly enough was empty save a car that had been traveling a distance behind us along the highway for most of our trip and a van of tourists setting up a camera on the other side of the canyon.

“So, Etteilla, how did you find that ermine?” The silence of the road had finally gotten bad enough to make me break it.

“Ermine?” She looked down at me from her horse. Even after riding for an hour faster than most cars neither she nor her horse looked tired. Meanwhile, my bike had used almost all of its first tank of gas, “You mean my stoat? Vivian, your ‘new best friend’ thinks you are an ermine.” She addressed her pet with an uncharacteristic sing-songy voice. Vivian’s head popped out of the hood of Etteilla’s cloak and nodded [Ermine is a much more elegant name. Use it from now on or I bite you, ok?]. I smiled at the snow-white creature and looked to the canyon on my right. It was less than five hundred feet deep at the bridge crossing, and on the opposite side was a magnificent wall of banded red mountains.

Weird. Why would those tourists take pictures of the bridge without those in the background?

This thought was probably just a needless worry, but years of living in constant danger had ingrained numerous habits into me. The chief of them is treating all of these intrusive thoughts as possible facts. I looked once more at the tourists and could clearly see that they were a trio of armed and armored soldiers and that their camera was actually an M2 browning machine gun mounted on a knee-high tripod.

Fuck, why was I right.

I returned my focus to Etteilla and shouted for her attention. Thanks to her communication spell, just saying her name was enough to explain to her everything I knew. She reacted soon after, putting her thumbs and index fingers together to form a small square that was filled with a subtle yellow glow and pulling both hands outwards to enlarge it. She finished her movements as we crossed the quarter-way point of the bridge, and, as I suspected, the gun opened fire upon us in that same instant. I ducked below the guardrail and believed Etteilla to have been shredded by the bullets, but the steady beat of her horse’s hooves remained by my side, interrupted only by the distant sound of the gun firing. I looked over to our assailants and saw where my prediction had gone wrong. The bullets that passed through Etteilla’s spell stopped midair and slowly squeezed through the yellow field and fell onto the ground.

She looked at my dumbfounded expression and clicked her foot against her stirrups, [This isn’t permanent. Do something!].

I didn’t have time to nod, so I acted. I twisted the left handlebar of my vehicle and pulled out the thin metal pole hidden inside. Pole in hand, I leaned backward and stuck it into the hubcap of my rear wheel. The pole latched onto the disc and the spinning wheel instantly unscrewed the hubcap from its specialized housing. I then pulled the pole along with the attached piece of my wheel and placed it into a hole on my left. On the newly made table sat eight cylinders arranged in a circle; each cylinder had a unique color corresponding to what was contained inside it. I grabbed the green one with my left hand and reached for the ring with my right. . .

Right.

. . .I put the ring in my mouth and aimed, but I was still too far from my target.

Etteilla clicked her stirrups again, and alongside that noise came an explanation on how this spell, the sixteenth arcana, worked. Put simply, the yellow field was applying a constant force away from us which was enough to stop the bullets and would be enough to lengthen my range by a few hundred feet. Armed with this new knowledge, I aimed the grenade, gripped the metal ring with my teeth, and pulled my head back as hard as I could. The ring snapped off of its string and the explosive interior of the cylinder launched out, through Etteilla’s spell, and towards the mounted gun. It exploded the instant it hit the ground and engulfed both gun and gunner.

I had aimed to hit their van, but I guess pulling with my mouth messed it up. Or Etteilla’s magic wall thing did that. Yeah, I’m going with blaming her, sure beats being responsible.

Not a moment later, one of the two remaining attackers readied their much less dangerous albeit still deadly weapon and resumed firing while the other fished their injured ally out of the blast zone. Of course, by then we had almost reached the edge of the bridge and the two of them were in the range of my pistol. Four shots and the shooter fell, three more shots and I nearly got the last one. I pulled the trigger one more time, and nothing happened.

I forgot to reload after shooting Dumont’s fuel line yesterday!

He noticed I was empty and pulled his own gun, and Etteilla lowered her arms.

Did she not notice that the other one’s still alive?

"Ett-"

She pointed her middle finger to the sky. [I noticed.]

She drew a circle on her palm and slid her finger up her arm just like she did last night to start the fire. When she let go, two small balls of fire appeared in her left hand and launched towards the gunman. One hit his gun’s barrel, slightly melting it, and the other, his chest.

With two of the three of them dead, and the last one lying on the ground unarmed, I decided that a quick interrogation was in order. I parked my bike and approached the van. With their arms and how they fought, I could tell that they were professionals so actually interrogating the injured one would take too long, but the van could have some valuable information. I reached for the van’s rear door and the injured man rolled over and showed me the two things I never want to see. One, a smiling face on a dying enemy. Two, an enemy pressing a button.

Wow, they are really professional.

That was the last thought I was able to have before I died. Except for this one. And that one. And. . .

Wait, I’m not dead.

In front of me was a flaming pile of shrapnel and detritus that until moments ago was a van that was also in front of me and also much closer. Beside me was Etteilla, still mounted on her horse. She waved.

“Did you?” I asked.

“Yeah. I saw him pull out the button and I moved you over here.”

“Oh, cool.” I said, nodding, “You can teleport people? [and you didn’t do it on the bridge?]”

“It’s not teleporting. [I just swap the places of two objects. Also, it only works over a few feet.]”

“Ah, ok. So, uh, what did you move over there instead of me?”

“Haha,” She casually non-casually scratched her head, “You see. . .” As if she were being interrupted by god, a series of explosions sounded off and several projectiles launched away from the area. Seconds later, these projectiles themselves exploded sending various forms of shrapnel, acid, smoke, and incendiary fluid raining down onto the ground.

Hey, weren’t those my. . .

My thoughts were interrupted as the charred and deformed remains of my grenade-carrying hubcap embedded itself six inches into the ground in front of me.

“Yeeeaaah, sorry about that. I didn’t have a lot of time to think and your bike was the first thing I saw.” She tilted her head to the side and shrugged her shoulders.

I yanked the disc from the ground. I knew that I shouldn’t be mad at her for saving my life, but knowing that didn’t help. I put the hubcap in Etteilla’s saddlebag, and she scooted forward, leaving me barely enough room to sit on the saddle. The next hours of riding were entirely silent save for the horse’s steady galloping. While awkwardness stopped me from speaking initially, after the first hour of our journey I was too preoccupied with running the list of people who would want me dead through my mind. We took out that hit squad, but given their weapons and discipline, they definitely come from a group with both funding and experience. That meant that there would certainly be more. Somehow, despite the threat of more attempts to kill Etteilla and me, I was slightly relieved. The people we fought were skilled and experienced but nowhere near enough to be Catalans, so I haven't been betrayed further. It was a minor detail in the grand scheme of having a hit on you, yet it gave me immense comfort.