followed his nemesis over the edge of a cliff. There was a long second in which nothing moved and there was no sound but the tolling of the alarm bell.
Then a dozen gangbangers unloaded on me.
I was just a little faster. I hit my jump spell and leaped to the tower, grabbing onto the superstructure about twenty feet above the ground. The hail of bullets and offensive magic turned the factory floor where Iâd been standing into a smoking crater in the concrete. If the tower had been protected by a second barrier ward, Iâd have continued with the cartoon theme, slamming into it and sliding to the ground.
There was no barrier, though, and I started climbing as soon as I landed in the gridwork. The gunfire and spellslinging ended abruptly when I made the tower. The gangbangers were well trained and disciplined, and their instructions were probably pretty simple. âShoot intruders. Donât shoot the tower.â
I climbed quickly, and I was about halfway up the tower when the first group of thugs started climbing up behind me. I didnât have the same concerns for the tower, so I paused long enough to lob a force spell down at them. It was hard to find the juice, even for the simple spell. I had to reach all the way down below the building and pull the juice from the ley line, before it was drawn up into the ring.
The force spell knocked all three of the gangbangers off the tower. They didnât fall far enough to suffer proper injuries,but no one rushed forward to take their place. I grinned and kept climbing.
When I finally got to the factory ceiling, I discovered metal spikes like lightning rods extending from the tower, and I thought my image of the Tesla machine hadnât been far off. I squeezed between two of the spikes and continued climbing through the hole in the factory roof.
Once outside the building, I kept right on climbing. I could have run across the roof to the edge of the building, and from there made my escape, but I wanted to see what was at the top of the tower.
I climbed another twenty feet and arrived at a circular platform ringing the tower that allowed me a more secure perch. Like the ring below, it was made of silver, and there were arcane runes and glyphs engraved in its surface. They were the old-school equivalent of the graffiti tags and served much the same purpose.
A silver bezel was anchored into the center of the platform, and a crystal about the size of a beach ball was set into the bezel. When I looked closer, I could see that the crystal wasnât actually set in anythingâit was suspended in midair. The bezel was charged with enough juice to keep the crystal in place, but the crystal itself was dormant. It didnât take a theoretical genius to figure out that the crystal would be charged by the juice coursing through the ring below. The juice would arc into the lightning rods extending from the tower, flow up into the bezel and be drawn into the crystal. Then something bad would happen.
It also didnât take a genius to recognize Godâs own magic wand. The tower was clearly an arcane weapon of some kind. It was a weapon that could draw a hell of a lot of juice, notjust from the magic contained in the ring but from the ley line and the graffiti network that fed it.
I had a few options, and my first choice was to knock the whole tower down. The problem with that option was that I couldnât reach enough juice. My second choice was to circumcise it. I didnât know much about magic wands, but the big crystal on the tip had to be pretty important.
I do a better job of learning from mistakes than the average cartoon character, so I took a good look at the contraption with my witch sight before blasting it. There was plenty of juice in the bezel, but I could get a good enough sense of its pattern to be sure it was just holding the crystal in place. No ward. I shrugged, placed my right palm against the cool surface of the crystal and blasted
Then a dozen gangbangers unloaded on me.
I was just a little faster. I hit my jump spell and leaped to the tower, grabbing onto the superstructure about twenty feet above the ground. The hail of bullets and offensive magic turned the factory floor where Iâd been standing into a smoking crater in the concrete. If the tower had been protected by a second barrier ward, Iâd have continued with the cartoon theme, slamming into it and sliding to the ground.
There was no barrier, though, and I started climbing as soon as I landed in the gridwork. The gunfire and spellslinging ended abruptly when I made the tower. The gangbangers were well trained and disciplined, and their instructions were probably pretty simple. âShoot intruders. Donât shoot the tower.â
I climbed quickly, and I was about halfway up the tower when the first group of thugs started climbing up behind me. I didnât have the same concerns for the tower, so I paused long enough to lob a force spell down at them. It was hard to find the juice, even for the simple spell. I had to reach all the way down below the building and pull the juice from the ley line, before it was drawn up into the ring.
The force spell knocked all three of the gangbangers off the tower. They didnât fall far enough to suffer proper injuries,but no one rushed forward to take their place. I grinned and kept climbing.
When I finally got to the factory ceiling, I discovered metal spikes like lightning rods extending from the tower, and I thought my image of the Tesla machine hadnât been far off. I squeezed between two of the spikes and continued climbing through the hole in the factory roof.
Once outside the building, I kept right on climbing. I could have run across the roof to the edge of the building, and from there made my escape, but I wanted to see what was at the top of the tower.
I climbed another twenty feet and arrived at a circular platform ringing the tower that allowed me a more secure perch. Like the ring below, it was made of silver, and there were arcane runes and glyphs engraved in its surface. They were the old-school equivalent of the graffiti tags and served much the same purpose.
A silver bezel was anchored into the center of the platform, and a crystal about the size of a beach ball was set into the bezel. When I looked closer, I could see that the crystal wasnât actually set in anythingâit was suspended in midair. The bezel was charged with enough juice to keep the crystal in place, but the crystal itself was dormant. It didnât take a theoretical genius to figure out that the crystal would be charged by the juice coursing through the ring below. The juice would arc into the lightning rods extending from the tower, flow up into the bezel and be drawn into the crystal. Then something bad would happen.
It also didnât take a genius to recognize Godâs own magic wand. The tower was clearly an arcane weapon of some kind. It was a weapon that could draw a hell of a lot of juice, notjust from the magic contained in the ring but from the ley line and the graffiti network that fed it.
I had a few options, and my first choice was to knock the whole tower down. The problem with that option was that I couldnât reach enough juice. My second choice was to circumcise it. I didnât know much about magic wands, but the big crystal on the tip had to be pretty important.
I do a better job of learning from mistakes than the average cartoon character, so I took a good look at the contraption with my witch sight before blasting it. There was plenty of juice in the bezel, but I could get a good enough sense of its pattern to be sure it was just holding the crystal in place. No ward. I shrugged, placed my right palm against the cool surface of the crystal and blasted
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