A human body was a collection of unified parts, bone connected by cartilage and powered by muscle. He’d spent a lot of time studying human bodies. He knew how they moved, how they were put together, and how to break and tear them apart. There were several muscles that connected the legs to the rest of the body and enabled bipedal motion. When humans walked, these muscles tugged on the torso, causing a slight turn. If you attached a light to a person’s breastbone, the light would shift side to side with each step. It was a minute movement, but crucial to evaluating one’s gait.
Woodward’s torso didn’t shift. It remained perfectly straight, as if set atop his legs yet still separate from them. And now he stood with unnatural stillness. Even disciplined, focused soldiers locked into the position of attention couldn’t stay perfectly still. The human body constantly made minor adjustments to balance. Human chests rose and fell. Blood pulsed through veins, and muscles contracted and twitched.
The implications sank in. Alarm struck him in a flash, as if someone injected ice straight into his bones, and then he was calm. Fear, anger, and doubt vanished. He dropped into a familiar empty space, where only he and the target existed.
In a prolonged fight, Woodward would have the advantage. He wouldn’t get tired. This would have to be done fast. And it would take everything he had. There would be no do-overs.
Every mage saw their magic differently. For Augustine, it was a translucent flame. A nearly invisible fire that coated his form, constrained by his will into a uniform sheath and constantly fueled by his body. If he didn’t bleed some of it off by maintaining a constant illusion, it would grow too dense and break its cage. When he activated his field, that phantom fire swelled, and he punched the ground with it, detonating his power like a grenade, with illusions sprouting in the wake of the blast.
But right now, he gathered it all and sent it inward, a torrent of ghostly flames swirling into his chest, through his body, and down his back, into the seal branded there.
The scars ignited.
Agony.
Familiar. Welcome. The price he paid. It hurt the same every time, never less than the first moment the brand had sizzled as the white-hot wires burned their way into his flesh.
Woodward’s words skimmed the surface of Augustine’s awareness. He was insulting Diana, an obvious baiting tactic. Augustine glanced at her. Her eyes glowed with magic, brimming with power so bright, the entirety of her irises and sclera were pools of gold. Somehow he saw understanding in that radiance. They didn’t need to talk. They were perfectly in sync.
His back was a pit of pain, so intense his vision wavered. He called up the complex lines of the Phantom House spell in his mind, channeling the magic through the seal in a specific pattern to recreate it.
Diana stepped forward. That same otherworldly predatory grace he saw on the hill suffused her movements. Her voice was low and steady. She spoke with the absolute authority of a Prime.
“You think you’ve improved on nature with your imitations.”
“I know I have.” Woodward’s voice rang with arrogance.
She swung her sword, and there was something shockingly feline in the movement. It was as if she’d shed her human skin and become a predatory cat without shifting a single muscle.
He’d pumped so much power into the seal, he no longer felt his body, just a swirling mass of magic and pain. In a moment, it would break past his control and erupt. His fingers squeezed the metal spheres of thebouncersin his pocket.
One more breath. Hold.
“Today I will teach you the difference,” the human panther promised.
The constructs lunged forward in unison. She had given him a clear shot at Woodward.
Augustine hurled thebouncersinto the space between them and Woodward. The walnut-sized spheres bounced and exploded in fans and pulses of sound, light, and heat, spinning and rolling in random directions.
Woodward flinched, clamping a hand over his left eye.
Augustine grasped the scalding current of magic emanating from the seal on his back and slammed it into the chaos of heat and light. In an instant, he was a shadow, a faceless dark phantom in the shape of his body. Pools of darkness spawned across the floor, birthing shadowy doppelgangers, one after another, all charging in random directions.
Augustine sprinted left, reached again for the searing magic still streaming from the seal, and pulled it around himself. It sank into his skin.
He vanished.
“How thrilling!” Woodward screamed into the cacophony. “I feel honored. You showed me your power. I will show you mine!”
Augustine was almost to him.
“See what all of this was for. Witness it. Understand it, and despair!”
Woodward ripped off his clothes. They came free like they were tissue paper. His legs, the left half of his torso all the way to the collarbone, and his arms were an amalgam of metal and high-performance plastic, woven together with sick artistry and bright blue magic. His right half was still mostly human but protected by ornate skin-tight armor. Long scars cleaved Woodward’s neck.
It was exactly as Augustine feared. The moment Woodward walked in, the wrongness of his posture, the oddness of hisstance, combined with his obsession with animals and bodies, all pointed to this conclusion. Woodward had found a way to fuse a construct to himself.
It shouldn’t have been possible. And yet here it was.
