Sell you a Bridge chapter 139 (Patreon)

Arkham Asylum December 22nd 2010 12:00 AM EDT

There  are some times in life where you go into a situation perfectly  prepared. You execute a flawless strategy and demolish your enemy,  establishing a well deserved reputation for excellence and frightening  all your enemies into being way too scared to ever think of crossing you  again. This, sadly, was not one of those times. Mostly because in all  my planning and admittedly impressive training I had not considered that  Circe, who came to my attention through my phantom mentor and was in  Gotham knowing fighting him might be necessary, might have a way to  FUCKING HURT GHOSTS!

Which  spoiler, she did. Because of course she would. I felt like an idiot as  my spectral body was flung across the room, solidifying right before  impact with the stone. Luckily, though she was able to cancel my  intangibility, I was only HALF ghost, and the mixture of ectoplasm and  human cells that created my apparently unique durability was not one of  the powers she could invalidate.

I heard Jim's voice in my mind as he used the sending stone to contact me. "I'm  assuming you only recently acquired your new abilities and wanted to  surprise me with them after honing your skills for a while? Because I  can't think of another reason you wouldn't have asked me for tips on  spectral warfare." I mentally cursed. I was a moron. Jim had  never seriously fought me so using the Outer Body to mimic his style to  learn from was pretty much useless. He was right, I should have asked  for help.

Luckily  before the column of purple flames was able to hit me my mentor  appeared before me, human form abandoned in favor of his usual ghostly  white suit, and stopped the blaze with his cane. This time, he spoke  aloud. "You're a bit inexperienced in these matters to attack her head  on. I'll take primary, try to slip by her defenses. Even if you can't  the distraction may help." I turned to go and he added. "And obviously  don't use your ghostly form to perform your attacks. She's clearly  prepared counters."

Luckily  I had other options. I assumed, having met me before, she would be  aware of my shadow form, but being an idiot sometimes could be an  advantage. She probably figured I'd try that next, and was prepared to  deal with it. She was not however prepared to deal with my embodiment of  my Hole bloodline, what I liked to call my Devourer form. So that's the  form I took. I poured five hundred points into my body, shifting myself  into a form that made me one with the void.

I  circled around behind her, sneaking in close to attack, and as  expected, she was waiting for me. She didn't even look up as she  unleashed a volley of emerald lightning right in my direction, clearly  trying to exterminate my shadow form in a blazing torrent of arcane  energy. Which was just...fantastic. Nothing makes you feel better about a  stupid fuck up like the enemy falling into a trap hook line and sinker.  I felt a literal waterfall of energy flood me, thousands of points  worth of power added to me as I absorbed and digested her energy.

Sadly  I did not get to keep all of said energy. Hole, in reality, was not  just about absorbing power, it was also about spitting it back out, and  my Devourer form was more than capable of dishing out as well as taking.  So, regretting the loss of power, I sent about a thousand points of  that energy back out, approximately the force of one of those lightning  bolts she hurled at me. Circe, who had been distracted by Jim, was not  expecting one of her own attacks to smash into her back and cried out in  pain as she whirled to face me angrily.

Which  was, of course, what Jim meant when he asked me for a distraction. One  of the main benefits of battling the simulacrum in the Outer Body trance  was that even if I didn't know all his moves, I did know Jim's rhythm.  Being my teacher he mostly knew mine too, and it made collaborating  exponentially more effective for the two of us. When Circe wheeled to  attack me Jim was already casting, faster than I had ever seen, and the  massive skeletal hands that I'd seen him use before reached out to grip  her from behind, restraining her for a second.

I took that time to catch my breath. I somehow doubted it would hold her, so I contacted my mentor. "Ok  boss, you got a plan here? Because my big ace in the hole was my new  ghost powers, which, admittedly, was not the smartest choice given her  relationship with you, but live and learn. I still have all my other  abilities at least, maybe some devil magic or something? I'm drawing a  blank tactically, this is bad." I had monumentally fucked this up. I'd gotten so used to my new powers being a huge game changed I'd ignored the obvious.

Jim's voice was calm in my head as he responded via sending stone. "Calm  down lad. I can understand why you're worried, but haste makes waste.  We have her caught in a back and forth. There's no need to be impatient.  Time is on our side here, not hers. If we distract her long enough  she'll miss the crucial period of the ritual and the backlash will cook  her. Your tactic worked beautifully, notice she's stopped chanting. We  just need to keep her off balance."

That  was all the time we had to commune about the next steps we needed to  take before Circe, eyes literally glowing incandescent with rage flexed  as hard as she could and fucking blew the giant skeleton hand apart. The  limb was yanked back through the door, leaving behind several fingers,  and Circe's body steamed as she stepped out of the wreckage of her  undead prison. She narrowed he glowing eyes at both of us. "You are both  extremely annoying. No more games!"

She  brought her hands together in a clap that literally shook the space we  were in as a torrent of arcane energy pulsed out from the impact site. A  huge wave of force came hurtling toward me, and I barely had time to  shout "Block!" Through the sending stones before it  reached me. Luckily my reflexes were absurd and I'd been able to shield  in time, dumping three hundred points into a half dome shield of that  grey composite power made from shadow and ectoplasm.

The  shield held,deflection the force around me, though admittedly it  wavered a bit. I was down to ten thousand points now, I'd gotten three  thousand or so from the lightning attack and burned a thousand on the  counter then another three hundred on the shield. I turned to check on  my team to make sure they were ok and froze. Reggie had translocated  with an Amazon and avoided most of the damage and Zee had shielded, but  Artemis didn't really do much magic.

My  best friend had been thrown clear and smashed into the wall. Hard. She  was up, if dazed, but that wasn't what had me worried. On impact with  the stone her mask, which despite protection enchantments was made of  carved rock, had shattered and fallen off. She was standing there with  her face exposed, and that face was painted with an expression of horror  as she realized what had happened.

Wally,  who had fortunately been bought a bit of time because of the wave of  pure force that had hit literally everyone (Circe really didn't get the  concept of friendly fire) was staring at her in shock and hurt.  "Artemis?" I winced, narrowing my eyes at Circe and mentally promising  to kick her ass for this, but I shouted to Wally anyway. "Wally, not the  time man. You're going to get us all killed. Just focus on the job, we  can have the General Hospital moment later." His eyes widened, his aura  pulsing recognition, but that was unfortunately all I had time to see.

Circe  had taken the initiative to close with me, manifesting a burning purple  sword of light and lashing out at my throat as she resumed her  chanting. Fortunately for me, this bitch had made a bad call. I might be  kind of shitty at magical combat, but I was especially good at  eviscerating. I drew and swung at her guts in a single motion, and she  had to change direction mid swing to counter, losing out on a  substantial amount of power. The two blades, metal and energy, clashed,  and thankfully my King's Sword of Haste held up.

That  was where the good news ended however, because being a Greek goddess,  Circe had obviously gotten plenty of practice with her blade skills, and  she was WAY stronger than I was. Perfect technique was keeping me alive  (along with some cheatlike ghostly impact absorbing with my arms) but  she was weirdly good with her sword. Probably should have figured that  honestly but I hadn't really had time to think about her melee skills.

She  flicked my blade aside, abusing her overwhelming strength advantage,  and tried to cut my fucking head off, but was forced to divert by a thin  blade of softly glowing steel that came darting past her guard to try  to spear her in the eye. My eyes widened as I took in the sight of Jim,  my mentor who I had never known even owned a sword, standing in a  fencing position and holding the a blade with a very familiar hilt. I  blinked in dumbfounded amazement for a second. "Wait, it's a fucking  CANE SWORD? Why didn't you ever mention that?"

Jim  gave a dismissive snort. "My dear boy, I am the Gentleman Ghost.  Fencing is the art of Gentlemen. I'm naturally well versed. I simply  never bothered to instruct you in this discipline because you insist on  swinging around those oafish heavy weapons. It seemed much more  appropriate to let a barbarian like Blood teach you the ways of the  blade. You lack the sophistication for my method's in this particular  aspect of combat I'm afraid." With that statement he launched another  attack, and I adjusted swinging my own magically speed enhanced blade at  Circe's thigh to open an artery.

Circe  never stopped chanting once she regained her rhythm, but she was  clearly annoyed. She conjured a second glowing blade and proceeded to  single handedly fend off both myself and my ghostly mentor at the same  time. I winced, she was actually really good, which I realized should  have been obvious since she was millennia old and had met fucking  Odysseus, but still, I considered myself a hell of a sword master, no  pun intended, at this point, and Jim was fucking GOOD from what I could  see, and she was still holding us both off like chumps.

I  was starting to panic honestly. Admittedly this could be much worse.  Being forced to split her attention and attack with both blades was  preventing her from using either sword properly at the very least. No  one tells you but dual weilding blades is kind of a messy way to fight.  The need to remain balanced and functional with both swords prevents you  from putting the proper amount of follow through on swings with either,  or committing properly to an attack, and it was all that was saving us  right now.

Sadly,  it wasn't enough, because our little distraction had stopped working  about halfway through the fight and she'd resumed her spell work, which  gave all the time she needed to finish the last steps of the ritual. A  sound like tearing sheet metal ripped through the air and the blood pool  on the other side of the room started to flicker. The glow ramped up  and then turned into a vortex of cascading light as a massive  white...rip, in reality came into existence behind us. Jim and I  disengaged, turning in horror to look at the portal as Circe crowed with  triumph. We were too late.