Chapter 51.4: Playing With Magic

“Penny, it’s an admirable approach,” Jinkke said, looking around the scattering of golemite parts and pieces, “but there are only two remaining reservoirs we haven’t divested, and he’s already tapping one of them. Your theory likely necessitates a source large enough to guarantee…”

She trailed off, lilac eyes growing to saucers at the same moment the thought hit Penny. Their wide eyes met.

“No,” Jinkke argued preemptively. She shook her head vigorously. “Overkill doesn’t begin to describe what that would be. Just consider what he’s doing with these miniscule loads.” She waved an arm at the scattered lines of magic around them. “The golem’s reservoir is fifty-times their volume, and again, I remind you, we have no idea what may happen if its contents are released without proper control.”

Penny scowled. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to blow the thing up as a weapon a few minutes ago?” Remembering that sent a chill up her back.

Discomfort tugged at Jinkke’s mouth. “Yes—well, I suppose I’ve cleared my head.”

Penny grimaced, glancing uneasily over the crates. They’d been talking about this for too long already, and it sounded like Jinkke wanted to keep it up. On the other side of the barrier, the scene hadn’t changed much. Jindel still fought pistol-and-axe against the woman with the mace; the norn seemed hardly to stay on his feet, taking mad swings in the general direction of the bandit he pursued; and the leader of the highwaymen spat curses at the air as magic continued to gnaw through him.

One thing was different, though. Penny could now see the clear shape of a head with six illuminated eyes, peeking up from the top of the jade pile.

She swore and swung back to the asura, sweeping them aside. “We don’t have options at this point.”

Penny all but dove into the collection of golemite shells at her feet, quickly finding the one Jinkke had been prying at. She rotated it to find the exposed cylinder that should have still been untapped and raised it to the others. “This is the one he hasn’t gotten to?”

Jinkke eyed her uncertainly, silently, but the scholar spoke. “Yes, she was just working to extricate—”

“Good,” Penny said, reaching in and yanking out the tiny component. Noticing the prybar at her feet, she grabbed that too.

Jinkke stomped toward her. “What are you doing?”

“Field test.” Penny said, pressing back past her again. “We need to know if this’ll work.”

Jinkke prattled something at her, but Penny didn’t hear it, simultaneously committed to her course and absolutely petrified by it. Violet trails still curled through the air around them, and she was about to release another one—and then, if all went to plan, she’d release the biggest one of all, giving that guy all the juice he wanted on a big, fat silver platter. Gods, Penny had no clue what kind of torment she was about to unleash on them all. Minkus’ corpse tugged at her, though; nothing was the only thing Penny couldn’t do. And if she was going to do this, now was likely her only shot.

The trick with the little canister in her hand was that Penny would have no hope of shooting it at forty paces. This one she had to do by hand.

Brushing hair out of her face, Penny drew and held a breath—it didn’t make a lot of sense, but it did make her feel better. Pressing the cylinder against the top of a crate, she smashed its end with the prybar until a steel connector bent and split. A trickle of that purple haze spewed from the gap, and Penny wasted no time in hurling it across the distance between her and the bandits.

“Have you lost your bookah mind?!” Jinkke demanded. Penny realized her friend was tugging at her leather cuirass, and she let herself be pulled down to the asura’s level. 

Surprisingly the eyes that met her weren’t angry; they were fearful. “Do you feel alright?” Jinkke asked, inspecting Penny intently. “Are you hearing voices or seeing anything out of the ordinary?”

The inquisition was oddly warming, but Penny pulled herself free just the same. She had to see what became of the magic when brought into proximity of the spellcaster.

What she found brought a darkly hopeful grin to her face: a new trail of purple energy traced a course from that tiny cylinder to the bandit leader’s hands. And if she wasn’t mistaken, which she knew she wasn’t, the addition has added to the load on the man’s marred face.

“That’s it,” Penny nearly screamed. “That’s it!” She was already scrambling for Minkus’ backpack, at the same time she checked her pistol ammunition and threw demands at the two asura. “Get the others back here, now! We’re going to magic the hell out of that guy.”

There was a pause in which Penny could feel their gazes pressing against the back of her head, but whatever their complaints, she wasn’t about to hear it. A moment later she heard the sounds of Jinkke and Yissa’s feet slapping away. If there had been time for a flash of pride, Penny would have entertained it, but she had no such luxuries. Ripping open the pack’s flap, she grabbed the big canister and shook it free of the bag’s mouth.

Gods, she was really going to do this, wasn’t she? She stared down at the steel casing that probably held more malignance than any of them could imagine. Even Minkus hadn’t been able to handle whatever this stuff was, and he’d only been exposed to some unknown fraction of it. What kind of hubris made Penny think any of them would fare better?

She shook that line of thought away. Caution wouldn’t get them anywhere now.

Cylinder under arm and pistol in hand, the woman rose, jumping to the crates and awaiting the two asura’s return.

A moment passed, and then another, Penny’s heart threatening to thump out of her chest. How long could it possibly take to get the others back to cover?

She leaned out.

Yissa, it seemed, had managed to convince Jindel to retreat. The woman was backing toward Jinkke’s position several yards behind, though Yissa continued yelling something. Jindel took shots at the wounded bandit she’d been fighting, increasing the gap between them as the other woman assumed a more protective position alongside her spellcasting leader.

Ventyr, Penny realized, had not heeded the little asura, so Yissa grabbed hold of his staff, nearly toppling him as she and Jindel forced him back to cover. He tried to fight, but he no longer had it in him.

There was just one more person they had to get clear, and— Penny choked. She looked just in time to see the norn swipe an open hand at Jinkke, swatting her away behind him with force enough to break something. The little female shot away like a skipping stone across the ground, rising slowly only a few moments later, but with clear pain. She was still yelling at the norn to return.

He didn’t listen. Instead he turned on her to bellow something raw and animalistic before returning to his course. He pushed even more aggressively into the slender fighter, who drew him farther and farther from the real conflict, back toward the eastern cliffs. Penny could tell the bandit was slowing, but Yult’s attacks were so wild that it took less effort for the man to avoid them and retaliate, and— Gods, Penny suddenly understood what was happening. The big soldier had more than half a dozen pulsing, violet shards protruding from various parts of his body.

“The crystals,” Penny screamed, pointing. “He’s gone!”

Jinkke looked desperately between her and the norn, fighting the reality for a second before heeding Penny's admonition and hobbling back to shelter. Yissa returned with Jindel, who offered a stabilizing shoulder to Ventyr, and Penny felt the pounding in her chest again as she looked down at the cylinder in the crook of her arm.

Hands suddenly grabbed her shoulders. “Mother’s grace, Yissa was right?” Ventyr cried, inches from Penny’s face and already struggling to grasp the canister in her arm. Penny reeled a step, eluding him without much effort. “If I can’t countenance it,” he went on, “I can at least grasp a betrayal for profit, but this is insanity!”

“Back up, Carrot.” She pushed him away at the same time Jinkke and Yissa took hold and pulled him a step back, being careful to stay more or less in cover. His eyes never left her.

“Look, I get that this looks crazy, but it’s our best option. You’ve missed some things back here, so just trust me.” Penny winced as those words left her mouth. They were the exact wrong thing to say, and the hardening of Ventyr’s barky face echoed that realization.

Jinkke interjected before the sylvari could get a word out. “She’s not wrong. I can only hypothesize whether or not she’s right, but she’s not wrong. We have no more reasonable options at this juncture. That human, as far as we can observe, is drawing enough magical energy to reconstitute his construct, with or without us. You couldn’t reach him, and we couldn’t shoot him, so as much as I cringe at the thought of this solution, I do not see another one.”

“Solution?” Jindel demanded. “What are you talking—”

“This,” Penny said, dropping her pistol to the crates, taking the reservoir in two hands, and hurling it toward the pile of jade and its puppeteer.

It was an uneven throw at best, nearly spinning Penny off her feet as she flung the container oblong across the gap. It hit earth and toppled end-over-end a couple of paces before tottering and falling over, still yards shy of the jade. The nearest bandit, that injured woman, stared down at it, unimpressed. There was a similar expression on Crusader Jindel’s face.

Penny grabbed her gun off the crate. “It’ll work, OK? Just trust me: it’ll work.” She hoped it would, anyway.

Leaning an elbow on the crates, Penny sighted up on the big canister, noticing the shape of a jagged, crystal chin rising up out of the pile of jade beyond it. Those eyes flared brighter, and with a long exhale, Penny fired.

The shot was true, hitting the canister square in its side—and ricocheting right off it. The round disappeared somewhere in the distance, leaving hardly a dent in the metal.

Penny paused only to swear, then took aim and fired again. The second shot followed the first, twanging off harmlessly into the sky. Her heart fell into her feet.

Jindel stepped up beside her. Instead of the sarcasm Penny half expected, though, the woman only helped, ramming rounds into her pistol, snapping the loader shut, and unloading the weapon on the same target. She wasted no time, emptying the chambers and ducking to load again. Maybe half her shots hit, all ricocheting off the casing just like Penny’s had, but that didn’t stop her from going again.

As Jindel did, Penny noticed Jinkke line up at the outside of the crate barrier, adding shots of her own. Only, the asura’s projectiles weren’t physical; fluorescent red energy streaked through the air a few times before one of them hit, splashing and sizzling against the side of the canister. It didn’t puncture, but Penny did notice a change: the spot where the blast had hit glowed orange for a moment after the strike, softening the metal enough for one of Jindel’s following volleys to leave a larger pockmark in the overheated steel.

Penny stared over at the weapon in Jinkke’s hands, and it finally hit her. How in Torment had she forgotten already? The inquest rifles were unintentional, handheld grenades!

Her eyes shot wide open, and Jinkke turned to meet them, her eyes growing just as big when Penny pointed at the gun in the asura’s hands. If she hadn’t had the same idea, it couldn’t have been far off.

Penny made for the weapon, but a step in she was blown right off her feet.

A dozen somethings hit her in the back, followed closely by what felt like a brick wall in motion, knocking her face-first to the dirt. Dust kicked up around her, and splintered wood rained down.

Penny blinked sense into the world, gulping air back into her lungs and pushing herself to an elbow. Her heart pounded from the shock of—what the hell was that?

“Move!” Jindel yelled, scooping Penny from the side and aggressively rolling her before leaping clear herself.

A huge, stone fist slammed down through the upturned wagon, the dense wrist behind it splintering and shredding more the boards like a dull axe through kindling. The two of them barely tumbled clear.

Penny spat a curse—she didn’t even know which one. It was that damned golem. She’d known it was still coming, but it had moved so far to the back of her mind that she’d forgotten about it entirely. She cursed again, this time at herself, glancing up at the domed head peeking up over what was left of their shelter.

Penny scrambled out of the golem’s reach, with Jindel bouncing off in a different direction. The others scattered as most of the crate wall collapsed. Glowing violet tendrils of magic still flowed past them all, though now from new, golem-tossed locations, and Penny’s mind raced. She could only do one thing at a time.

As the fist rose up overhead again, it pulled the shredded wagon with it a few feet before gravity wrenched the barrier free, Penny heard Jinkke’s frantic voice calling at her, “Keep the golem busy!”

“No,” Penny argued, trying to keep clear of anywhere that stonework hand could fall again. Its twin rose to join it. “Your rifle,” she yelled, “the magic one. We need—”

“I comprehend,” Jinkke interrupted.

Penny stopped, unable to peel her gaze from the insistent asura. It made sense that they had to divide their attentions, and Jinkke probably did understand exactly what she’d been thinking—the little know-it-all was always a step ahead. But Penny’s mind flashed the image of Jinkke’s distant, callous eyes back inside the complex; they were the same color as her brother’s but so far from being like them in any other way. Whatever she said now, Jinkke had been the first to propose using the reservoir as a weapon. 

“Fine,” Penny finally agreed. “But we’re only doing this because—”

Jinkke flailed her arms in frustration, shutting Penny up. “I know.” She flung out a hand to point at the mechanical monster just feet away from Penny. “You solve the golem problem!”