Reflexes, conditioned by long hours of training with Mrs Wu, took over, making me twist to the side and back, even as my hands came up to guide my assailant. Without thought, I gripped his collar, pulling him forward, even as my other hand pushed, sending him stumbling past me, further into the hallway. What improvements he seemed to have made in speed, and strength judging by the destroyed door, hadn’t greatly improved the mental side or his balance. He stumbled, crashing to the floor, unable to catch himself.
Before I could consciously decide what to do, he moved in a way I would have thought impossible, pushing himself off the ground with only his arms, as if he was making a push-up, only that he pushed himself up into the air, legs straight, without any extra preparations. He even managed to turn around and swipe at me, his hands twisting into rather ugly claws.
I could feel time slow down around me and easily watch the attack coming towards me. Trying to move aside was akin to moving through molasses, slow and cumbersome, but I recognised the sensation, it was one I had felt hundreds of times on Mundus. Bullet Time.
Going with the flow of sensation, I focused on my magic and channelled Ice Magic through the Darkness of the hallway. The result was far from what I had expected, instead of turning my foe into a frozen guysicle, all he got was a bit of rime in his hair and he might have slowed down a little but otherwise, he seemed to be unharmed. While I felt the drain, my breath catching for a second. Not a winning move, not in the slightest.
Wanting to move as quickly as possible, I twisted around the next attack, pushing him back into his apartment and slamming the door behind him. I had no illusion that the door would stop him for more than a second or two, but given that I was in a burning building I didn’t plan to stick around anyway.
Dashing down the hallway, the sounds from the apartments around me made my heart pound in my chest, fearing that any second the next horrifyingly mangled person would crash through a door, trying to tear me apart. Behind me, I could hear the noise of breaking wood, but given that I didn’t hear footfalls, or any other noise indicating pursuit, I kept going, pushing open the fire door and flying down the stairs.
It was a small miracle that I managed to get down the dark stairs without falling, there were a few close calls, but I made it to the ground floor without running into any further trouble, be it man, fire or monster.
Finally, when I got to the lobby, I almost ran into another person, even two of them. I had seen them before, a couple living in the building, and we had even exchanged greetings, but didn’t know their names. They looked as frightened and confused as I felt, not wanting to run out, into the burning streets but also not wanting to stay inside, even if the lobby looked relatively fire-free.
“What’s going on?!” the woman asked me, her eyes wide and her voice almost hysterical.
“Fuck if I know,” I replied, the curse slipping out unbidden, “But I want to out and away from anything that might burn me from above,” I added, heading for the door, not caring that there might be more of the strange monsters out there. I just wanted to get away from the fire.
“Wait,” the guy called, reaching for my arm to stop me, “There’s something out there!” he added when I dodged, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Stopping for a second, I peered outside, trying to see what he might mean. And then I saw it, not that it was terribly hard to see, now that I was looking. The form looked very similar to the one I had seen upstairs, the same empty eyes field with flames, only that this one was a little more toasty. I couldn’t tell if it used to be a female or male, either way, it used to be a motorist and one of the cars burning in the streets had been theirs, leaving their body a charred husk, still flickering with flames.
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For a few moments, I froze, staring at the monster outside. Shaking my head, I turned around, trying to remember the layout of the ground floor and where the emergency exits were located. There had to be a better way out, than through the monster, that was what fire safety measures were for. Sure, I doubted that anyone had planned those for a combination of ‘World covered in magical fire’ and ‘Zombie Apocalypse’, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be useful.
“We need to get out of here,” I looked at the two people who had been staring outside, trying to jolt them into action, “Do you remember the other exits?”
My words must have shaken something loose in the woman and she nodded, looking into the merrily burning hallway. Luckily, the flames were mostly of the faint, blue variety. So far, they had been harmless to me, to the point that I ignored them when one flared up on my body, but the two people apparently hadn’t caught on just yet.
“Through the utility room in the back,” she explained and I turned, not planning to waste any more time, before realising that there might be strength in numbers.
“You coming?” I asked and for a moment, they looked at each other, indecision visible on their faces. The deciding factor came from above, when the lights in the stairwell flickered on for a moment, only to explode in a colourful shower of sparks, spreading shards of glass everywhere and causing a few new fires to flare up.
Leading the way, I rushed through yet another dark hallway, sliding to a halt when I heard a noise inside one of the ground-floor apartments. My stop was just in them, if I had kept going, the door would have hit me, possibly sending me to the ground and what stared at me was just about what I expected, another of the fiery-eyed monsters, only that this one was female and covered in blood.
Letting out a curse, I managed to evade the bloody, swiping claw, the strength again far more than a normal human had any right to have, As I was pedalling back, the bloody monster followed after me, only to get the door slammed into it, courtesy of the guy that had been following me. Not waiting for the monster to get back on its feet, I continued running, hoping that the few seconds we had would be enough.
We all made it past the door, before it crashed open again and the monster started to come after us, luckily, it didn’t seem to be overly fast on foot, just deadly with its lunges and we made it to the end of the hallway, where I tried to open the utility-door. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if it was locked or stuck, but I didn’t manage to open it, when the guy moved me aside, frantically trying to rip it open.
The monster behind us was still coming and given that the third member of our group didn’t seem to be a fighter, I acted on reflex and focused on my magic. It had been a part of me on Mundus and while the Runes I had used for those two years were fuzzy and indistinct in my mind, I still remembered a few of them. Hail was one of them and while I was far from what Morgana had been, it was enough to launch a hailstone in the monster’s face.
It wasn’t enough to destroy it, but I managed to stagger it, buying the guy enough time to open the door with a crack, maybe causing it to become unstuck, maybe just breaking it. Either way, we now had a way out and all three of us ran out, past the burning, sparking fuse-box, getting a few, nastily stinging burns in the process, but we made it to the backdoor.
None of us was willing to wait, not with a burning, sparking fuse-box nearby and a monster following after us, so after the barest of glances outside, the guy simply shouldered open the door and booked it, his girlfriend hot on his heels, after giving me a look that was very much akin to the look she had given the monster before.
For a moment, I considered running after them but given that they seemed to be running along the street, towards the city centre, I decided against it. Sure, there was strength in numbers but I wasn’t about to trust numbers, not when my biggest ability was one that might see me burned at the stake. After all, now there were witches to burn, even if I considered myself to be a Sorceress. Or had considered myself to be?
I needed some space and quiet to process everything, hopefully somewhere that wasn’t on fire, or with monsters nearby, or with suspicious people.
Shaking my head, I turned in the other direction, following a narrow footpath that I knew headed towards a nearby park. As I moved, I instinctively tried to minimise my footfalls and tried drawing on the Darkness around me, to keep myself concealed. Whether it worked or not, I wasn’t sure, but what I knew was that I had magic, it was just far from what I had commanded on Mundus. But what this all meant, I had no real idea.