And now for something completely different

This is not Witch Bloom. This is not even the sequel. This is just something I wrote out for kicks. No idea where it's going though, or if it'll ever get finished (doubtful). Enjoy!

My lungs were burning in stark contrast to the bitter cold outside. I took another drag on my cigarette, since years of smoking and drinking and general bad habits weren’t doing anything to help in my current predicament, I might as well enjoy my vices. I was holed up, on the run for my life from the bloody guard dog that was hunting me down. I damned well deserved to get some comfort for that. I mean, sure he had his reasons to want me dead and sure, I probably deserved it, but since it was my head he was after I was hoping he’d fuck up just this once.

It wasn’t freaking likely though. I’d screwed over the Dark Lady, the goddamn banshee queen of the northwest. I had debts to pay and in order to get the other various people who were hunting me down off my back, I’d struck up a deal with the Lady. She’d given me asylum and sent Byleth’s demons packing back to Panama. I had originally planned to skip town and skip out on another debt I owed. It’s what I usually did. And it had worked like a bloody charm in Singapore against Wakaun, the naga king there. But the difference between Wakaun and the Dark Lady was something I hadn’t thought of. The Dark Lady had the one thing that had made the past six months of my life a constant hell of running and hiding: the Reaver.

Hanging out in mage circles, I’d always thought the Reaver was a boogeyman, something other sorcerers told you so you didn’t fuck their wives and steal their grimoires. Not that it would have ever stopped me from either. The idea of a big bad knight in bloody armor coming after bad warlocks and witches was too elementary to be real. So, you can imagine my surprise when I found out not only did he exist, but he worked for the banshee queen who was howling for my head.

In six weeks I’d travelled across the U.S. twice and the man still hadn’t lost my trail. I’d tried Mexico and Canada even to no avail. I didn’t have enough money to hop a plane somewhere else. Even if I did have the money, I didn’t have a clean passport. Little Mr. Byleth had made sure that my last identity was too royally fucked to use again.

That had left me stuck in Flint, Michigan, holed up in a condemned house, boards nailed to the windows, no electricity or heat, with a foot of snow outside and temperatures in the twenties. I almost wanted the damn guy to find me just so I’d be able to know what warmth was like for a split second again. Except that meant the Dark Lady would get a hold of me and that was something to avoid. At all costs.

I almost wished I’d stayed in Panama. Byleth would probably only flay me alive and be done with it. But the Lady was more…creative. She liked to torture her debtors, slowly using torture to drive them insane. Then, once they died, which they always did, she liked to reanimate them just for kicks. She had a whole army of mindless thralls, testament to how no one who tried to break their deal with her got away with it for long. At six weeks, I was pushing my luck past its breaking point.

I was a sorcerer. Not only that, but I was pretty famous in the right circles. Or wrong, depending on how you looked at it. There was no spell too black, no risk too great, no rule too sacred for Nicky Skinner. I’d made more deals with demons than I could even remember, cheated more necromancers out of their sigils than strictly necessary, and stolen more grimoires from hapless warlocks than any other sorcerer out there. Course, that meant just about everyone was gunning for my head, but I’d always relied on quick wit and some raw talent to get me through.

None of that had worked on the Reaver. I’d doubled back on my trail in Ohio, reanimated a look alike in Nebraska, and faked my death in California. None of it had even bought me so much as an extra week. The guy was like a terminator, and I was his John Connor of choice. In Michigan I’d finally said screw it and decided if running wasn’t working, then I’d give fighting a try. Maybe if I got really lucky, I’d die in the attempt and save myself the thrill of being turned into a mindless thrall for the banshee queen.

I’d mostly picked the town at random, but it’d been a pretty good guess. There was a lot of death and depression here, a lot of restless souls. If it came down to it, I could use them to give me an edge fighting against the Reaver. And hell, if the cold was affecting me so much, maybe it’d slow him down a bit too. Somehow, I didn’t think that was something I could count on.

The night went still, not the usual still of a condemned building in a snowstorm but the still that came from the presence of one very pissed off magical being. I could feel the air around me heat up, then freeze. Great. The bastard had made it even colder. He wasn’t even going to give me the satisfaction of getting my ass kicked in above freezing temperatures. That pissed me off.

I didn’t give him a chance to open the door. I slammed my leg into it, feeling the shock rush all the way up my body, hitting me with recoil. I was getting old damnit. But the door was rotting away and gave, coming off rusty hinges to fall out with a bang.

There was a curse on my lips and the black slickness of magic welling up in my palms before the door had even finished crushing the man. I flung it at my target, shattering the wood into unrecognizable splinters. At least now I had a look at what I was dealing with.

Full metal armor. Black. Like a freaking medieval knight. If that knight also happened to be from hell. There wasn’t a damn inch of the stuff that was decked out with spikes, runes, or skulls. There was a whole series of lines cut crudely into the breastplate; I was guessing it’d be the exact number of strays brought back by the Reaver. I couldn’t see any gaps in the plate, any hinges, any possible way anyone could wear that getup and still move. I watched, dumbfounded, as it bent and molded, more organic than metal, as the thing got to its feet. It didn’t occur to me that maybe I should do something else until metal fingers were gripping my by the throat and tossing me back into the house, hard enough to hit the back wall.

I fell to the ground gasping, pain shooting through my chest with every ragged breath. Shit. Now I’d have to fight with broken ribs because I’d pulled a dumbass rookie move and hadn’t kicked him while he was down. I wasn’t going to let that happen to me twice. I whipped out my jackknife and slashed the back of my left hand without so much as a wince. The scars on it stood testament to how much I’d done it before.

I needed about three heartbeats to draw the sigil I needed. I got two before a metal foot connected with my jaw, sending my neck snapping back with a lovely crunching sound and reducing my vision to black for a split second. My jaw was hanging loose, and out of habit I swiveled it to check to see if everything was alright. It popped back into place painfully, but at least it wasn’t broken. If he knocked any of my teeth out, I was really going to get mad.

I finished scrawling the sigil and poured my magic into it, igniting it in a burst of black flame. Instantly, the shadows crawled out of the cracks in the floor, the holes in the wall, from the very air itself. They wrapped around the Reaver, forming inky black claws to tie him down and try to drag the bastard back to hell. That pretty little number had cost me sixteen stitches and a pretty new scar on my neck when I’d stolen it from a rather unwilling necromancer. He wasn’t unwilling anymore though, he was dead. Just like all the poor bastards he’d sacrificed to work into the sigil. Sick bit of work, that. Worth it though, since it was holding the Reaver down now.

I wasn’t going to give him another chance. I pulled on my magic, forming the slippery energy with my will. Filled with power, I slammed my palms down onto the ground and directed all of it into a circle around the Reaver. I watched, satisfied, as a dim black bubble closed over the Reaver, my magic turning him into a glorified snow globe.

“Take that ya fucker.” All I had to do now was pick which spell I wanted to end him with. Fire maybe, burn the whole damn house down and be done with it. Bit tricky in snow though. Poison maybe. Would leave a body though. I always hated leaving a trail behind. Maybe I’d just cause him to bleed to death and summon up a corpse eater to take care of the evidence. Corpse eaters were a messy lot though, and always a hassle to send back to Hell once you dredged them up.

All my plans didn’t mean shit though, because he was getting up. Shit, there was no way he should be able to get up. I’d called up all the horrible sacrifices made by a dead necromancer, bound them to my will, forced them to take form and hold that fucker down. And he was getting up still.

He still had to break through my circle. I’d done the same thing to pissed off mages and it’d taken them hours to break through my circle. If you couldn’t cast a damn near perfect circle every time, you didn’t live long as a sorcerer. I’d just have to settle for burning the house down, fast, while it was still trapped.

Calling up an invocation of flame isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. Getting a candle to light, that shit’s easy. Getting a flame hot enough to burn down a house in minutes? Not so easy. I needed time to scribe the right symbols, time to invoke the right words, and time to get the hell out of the inferno once I started it. I didn’t have any of that because what I got, was the Reaver standing up and bursting through my circle as if it didn’t even exist.

“How-” I also needed to learn to stop freaking talking during a fight because it was not helping. Faster than I could even ask my dumb question, the guy had cross the room towards me and rammed me through the wall. The foot of snow cushioned my fall with about as much efficiency as using a squirt gun against a tank. I spit blood onto the white ground and scrambled to my feet. The Reaver was already walking out the nice me sized hole in the wall to join me in the winter wonderland of Flint.

I got treated to another nice fist to the stomach, doubling me over and knocking my ass back onto the ground. I was wheezing, blood and spit pouring out of my mouth and down my jacket freely, legs scrambling to get enough strength to pick my body up and run. I didn’t care where I ran to, just away from here. Away from him. Fighting had obviously been the stupidest goddamn decision of my life and I was completely willing to go back to our little game of hide and seek if only I could just stand up and run, damnit.

Another swift kick to my ribs shot that plan to hell. It knocked me on my side, curled up into the fetal position, snot and blood and spit covering my face now. So this was how I was going to die. Curled up like a bitch, bleeding in the snow? That was the end of Nick fucking Skinner? Not if I had anything to do with it.

I held up my hands in what I hoped was the universal sign for please stop beating me I’ll go easy now officer. It worked apparently, because I didn’t get any new punches to the face. I motioned the Reaver closer to me, and the damn guy got right down on the ground, straddling me in his black suit of armor and holding one very wicked looking gauntlet spike to my throat. Well, since we were going to be all nice and civilized about it…

“Let’s make a deal.”