Terrestrial Magic

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

EVERYTHING I KNEW ABOUT chimeras came from articles, blurry photos, and ancient manuscripts with questionable documentation practices. Mostly the latter. The ancient sources were how we knew legimals had been more plentiful before, a long time ago—because of the similar descriptions littered throughout literature. Their authors had been living in a world alongside these animals for far longer than the thirty years we’d had.

I raised the binoculars, using them to get a decent look at the chimera. The animal was feline, with a slight resemblance to a lion. Homer’s Iliad described it with three heads: one lion, one goat, and one snake. Personally, I only saw the one. A misshaped hump of some sort protruded from its back, but I couldn’t imagine it resembling a goat’s head even if I squinted. The chimera’s long and dexterous tail more plausibly reminded me of a snake, but still clearly wasn’t one. I chalked it up to creative embellishment.

That was the problem with going back too far, looking for sources of information. There had been times when a good story mattered more than the truth. I scribbled my observations in my notepad. For a while, nothing existed except for me, the chimera, and all of the information floating about in my head. It was pleasant and peaceful.

Luca, the guy I thought of as a placeholder instead of an actual member of my team, interrupted it by calling my name. Since I was technically in charge of him, I tried not to show frustration at being pulled out of a nice mental work zone.

“Anything else in the area I should focus on, Jordan?” he asked, pointing to his camera, eyes fixed over my shoulder so he wouldn’t have to risk meeting mine. I blinked at him, confused. Why would he come to me for that stuff? When I didn’t answer, he made a small, annoyed grunt. “The link with Hayley cut off.”

Ah. Hayley was my coworker, roommate, and best friend all in one. Not a field person herself, she still liked to join us remotely. That was the rationale behind hiring someone like Luca in the first place. He’d be her eyes, and she’d direct him—if there was a nearby pack of crocotta, she’d tell him which members to focus on. If she noticed a carcass, she’d tell him to zoom in on it so she could identify the prey for our animal of interest. If he inadvertently spooked an animal, she’d tell him what to do. For some reason, Hayley hadn’t backed out of this responsibility yet, despite the sheer number of times she’d had to train new people.

Mostly, I didn’t have to care that much. Except for moments like this, when technology failed and the guy operating the camera turned to me for instruction.

“No,” I told him. “Just keep shooting its behavior. Did you get enough of a close up to determine gender?” I wasn’t hopeful. The chimera was far away, and we’d need to look at Carter’s pictures later to figure it out. I doubted the video feed would have good enough quality.

“No. But we’re going to go with female.”

“Why?”

“Carter flipped a coin.”

I must have been more absorbed than I’d thought, if I’d missed them doing that not three feet away from me. On the bright side, that meant they weren’t distracting me from the chimera. Giving Luca a quick shrug, I shifted my gaze back towards the animal. True to our unspoken agreement to deal with each other as little as possible, he turned around and left me alone.

Over the next little while, the chimera gradually shifted closer to us. Not enough to worry me yet, but enough for me to pay attention. Eventually, I decided it was time to back up a bit. We could pull out a little further, then set up again. Better safe than sorry.

Once we all found positions that wouldn’t have us or any expensive equipment tumbling out the back of the car, I put myself back in the passenger seat. Tony gleefully turned on the ignition and drove us back down the dirt road, though I wasn’t sure why he was so happy about it. We were relocating literally within eyesight of where we were now.

From the missing back window, I just barely heard Carter, eagerly explaining to Luca which biohazard suits and wraps would protect against basilisk fumes. Between Tony grinning next to me and Carter’s excited voice, there was this moment of contentment, as the vehicle rolled down the road and we shared this adventure together.

I turned my head to gauge how far we were from the chimera, when a sudden jolt pitched me forward against the dash, the car stopped into place. My shoulder throbbed from the impact, and just like that, the contentment dissipated. Ow. What had Tony managed to crash into? We’d barely been going twenty miles an hour.

I raised my head, looking for some explanation of how Tony had missed whatever was in front of us—and there wasn’t anything there.

“Did we hit a ditch?” Carter asked.

Tony hit the gas, and the car rumbled but didn’t move forward. Okay, weird. Darting a glance my way, Tony snapped, “Get my car moving. Now.”

That was about as kind as he ever was, to any of us. I didn’t think that he actually disliked us personally—instead, it was the combination of a naturally surly personality on his part, and a lack of common ground on all of ours. Neither the scientists in our lab nor the non-scientists like Carter, hired to help with particular tasks, were his people. We were here for the legimals, or for the adventure. For Tony, this was a means to an end, a way to access our boss’ connections to several legendary Houses for his own anthropological research. He didn’t understand what we were passionate about, and vice versa.

So I let out a tired sigh at Tony’s unsurprising curtness, then proceeded to ignore his attitude. My eyes shifted to the chimera. She obviously knew we were there, but she hadn’t paid us any real attention yet. We’d notice any threatening moves from this distance. It was safe enough, for the moment, and we needed to get our car moving.

I got out, followed by Luca and Carter. The wheels on my side of the vehicle were on solid ground. Nothing to explain why the car stopped. Backing up a bit to get a better vantage point didn’t reveal anything out of place, either.

Keeping an eye out for any kind of obstruction, I started circling the front of the vehicle. My foot slammed into something hard as I came level with the hood, and my momentum kept my body pushing forward for another half-second—before the rest of me smacked into a firm surface, face first. The impact left my nose stinging, as water collected in my eyes. But as I blinked away the moisture to look at whatever was in front of me, all I saw was empty air.

There was a moment, for just one heartbeat, when I didn’t understand. I had felt myself crash into some sort of barrier, so why couldn’t I see it before me?

As I slowly came to accept the reality—that I couldn’t see something which was plainly there—I started freaking out. Because there were not a lot of possible explanations here. I knew what this had to be, even as an instinctive part of me rose up in denial.

The single good thing about losing my home was that I didn’t have to run into dangerous magic anymore. Dangerous creatures maybe, but nothing worked by people. The legends in this region of Italy had an unofficial non-interference policy with the human populations. They’d been doing their own thing for centuries already, so it seemed like a natural continuation. (Although, considering they’d settled lands that human communities had lost during the Boom, most people also figured they didn’t want to press their luck.)

“Holy s**t,” Tony exclaimed, from his vantage point in the driver’s seat.

“What?” Luca asked.

“Did we find the problem?” came Carter’s voice. He and Luca must have been too busy examining the car to see what happened, because that was the only explanation for the lack of total panic in their voices. I put my hand out, and felt a rough texture scraping across my palm. With that, my fears were pretty much confirmed.

“Are you doing a mime impression?” Carter asked. Yeah, not funny.

Tony reached over to the seat next to him—my seat—and grabbed one of my pencils. He leaned out of the car and threw it. It flew forward for barely a second, before bouncing off of nothing and landing in the dirt.

“Whoa,” Carter said, his tone a bit more respectful this time.

Not good. Not good at all. This was plainly magic, which meant that a legend of some sort had to be behind it. That was worrisome, but I had to push that thought aside for later. For now, I needed to think positively, to believe we could handle this.

I didn’t really know the technicalities of magical things like these—most people didn’t—but we humans prioritized scientific and technological research for a reason. We absolutely wanted to make sure we weren’t helpless, at the mercy of the powerful. Or even at the mercy of nature. If I’d learned anything from growing up in America’s frontier, it was that magic wasn’t omnipotent or unbeatable.

Although running into it was really freaky.

Okay. I hadn’t encountered something like this in a while. I had hoped I never would again. But here I was. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on how my home community had dealt with magical situations before.

Call for back up first. It was a nice, obvious step to take, and I felt myself relax as I took out my cell phone. Getting that backup would be complicated, because it wasn’t part of the military police’s job to go after people who left the safety zone. But our boss, Dr. Berti, might be able to figure something out. She counted several local legends among her associates, and they were our best bet at getting around whoever had done this.

It never even occurred to me that we wouldn’t be able to contact anyone. Given the tumultuousness of our post-Boom age, satellite phones were the norm. By my understanding, they weren’t that easy to disrupt. That had made me feel safe. It meant I never had to imagine being cut off from the rest of the world, unable to call for help or advice.

Until I realized my phone’s signal was being jammed. I remembered then, that Luca had asked for my direction because he couldn’t contact Hayley on whatever frequency they used to communicate. Which meant something was preventing us from contacting anyone on the outside. We were on our own. A chill swept over me, as I realized this had to be deliberate. The invisible structure we’d run into, the inability to reach anyone—this had to be some kind of trap. And that didn’t make any sense.

“No way,” Tony said, his hands clenching the steering wheel. “Jordan. Tell me you have a way to get us out of here.”

Since I was the one in charge, there was nothing for it but to feign confidence. I turned to Carter, but thought better of it when I realized he was poking at the invisible wall in awe. Luca, then. My only option for any kind of assistance was the inexperienced guy I tried to pretend didn’t exist. Great. I really hoped I was wrong about him.

Luca regarded me dubiously, but he wasn’t freaking out like Tony. Time to find out what he was made of. “We need to check if this wall has us completely closed in or not,” I told him.

Carter, proving that he was still listening, moved away from the wall, picked up a rock, and threw it as high as he could towards the wall—which was really damn high. The rock soared through the air, not meeting any resistance.

“I meant horizontally,” I muttered. But my brain latched onto the new information and began running through how we could use it. For now, we knew we weren’t sealed in, and that was a start.

Tony snorted. “So what are we going to do, fly?”

I reached out slowly, feeling for the wall in front of me. Awkwardly, not knowing when I would make contact. “No, we’re going to check if the wall has us enclosed on all sides or not.” There were ruins nearby. If the wall passed close to them, we might be able to use them to climb over it.

My fingers grazed against the rough surface. We’d find a way out of here. And then we’d have the luxury of worrying about how an invisible wall had appeared out of nowhere.

#

IT CHAFFED AT ME TO admit it, but what happened next depended solely on the chimera. She could while the day away, oblivious to anything going on around her. Unaware that she might be as trapped as we were. If that kept on until we’d figured out how to get out, all our nerves would be for nothing. But if it didn’t...

Maybe she wasn’t even trapped. Maybe the invisible barrier was just a tiny segment we could easily get around, some benign thing a local legend had left lying around. That had appeared directly in our path. While we were near a chimera. At the same time that someone jammed our communications.

Still, no matter how this had happened, it wasn’t actually dangerous unless the chimera made it so.

I wasn’t planning on getting close enough to the legimal that the sound of the engine might disturb her, so I had Tony drive alongside while I gently dragged my hand along that wall, trying not to lose too much skin. My fingers trailed over regular indentations. Carter was in charge of watching the chimera, since he was going to do that anyway. Luca decided to ride in the car and videotape the whole thing. I was trying to decide whether that was a coping mechanism or a complete denial of reality.

“Uh, guys?” Carter said. “The chimera just found the wall.”

Damn. I slowed enough that the front of the pick-up wasn’t obstructing my view. There she was, pawing at something in front of her. Muscles rippled under her skin with every shift of her flank, and the power of this animal struck me. It should have been glorious, but I wasn’t observing her from a safe distance anymore. I’d lost control of the situation. And all I could think of was how helpless I’d be if all that strength was directed at me.

The chimera stalked forward, stopped short, and strained against something we couldn’t see. A pit of nervousness opened up in my stomach as she backed up, hesitating. A few tense moments passed, as we waited to see what she’d do next. Her paw reached out in front of her, in a gesture eerily similar to how I’d first felt for the wall.

The best we could hope for was that she’d back away and forget about it. I held my breath, waiting for it, hoping for it—but then she roared, long and loud, with a force that reached inside of me and shook my bones. With a sudden burst of motion, she reared and rammed herself against the invisible wall.

A jolt of alarm thrummed through me, at the display of aggression. It seemed like such an extreme reaction. Was that normal behavior for a chimera, in the face of a challenge the powerful animal wasn’t accustomed to? Or was something else going on?

“As a side note, now we know the wall reaches all the way over there, too,” Carter pointed out, trying to muster his usual levity in the face of danger. And not quite managing it, which didn’t compute in my mind. Carter was never rattled.

We needed to get out or find cover. The chimera was clearly distressed, and I didn’t know what she’d do. “We’re almost at the ruins,” I told my team, as we neared the two stories of cracked red bricks. “Worst comes to worst, we’ll be out of the open there.”

But as we got closer, I realized the problem with my plan. The invisible barrier started slanting away from the ruins. With every step, doubt grew that the ruins fell inside the wall at all. Until I finally gave up hope and resigned myself to reality. There was nothing we could potentially use to climb out.

“s**t,” Carter said, with a strain that made me turn in his direction—to find a spray of fire shooting out of the chimera’s mouth towards the wall. It stopped short only a few feet out, billowing out along the unseen surface and singeing the surrounding grass. With that, the danger level skyrocketed.

“Get in the car,” I told Carter firmly, picking up a few rocks before doing so myself. “Tony, if the chimera gets near us, get us away.”

“Yeah, because I was planning on just sitting here and being eaten,” he replied with some totally-not-helpful sarcasm.

Instead of responding to him, I threw rocks out the window to gauge the height of the wall. My estimate came to about twelve feet. Before I could think much further, though, I felt myself get slammed back into my seat as the car started moving. Fast. I turned to see scorched grass behind us.

Directly behind us. Everything in me froze for a second, unable to process it. The chimera hadn’t even been looking in this direction the last I’d checked. Shifting my gaze towards the legimal, I caught sight of another spray of fire. I’d known the chimera could shoot flames from an impressive range, but seeing it was different. Seeing it when I was inside that range was unbelievable.

The chimera wailed, then sent a burst of flames into a random direction. A ball of fire danced through the air, orange giving way to black smoke. The next moment, she was in motion, those powerful muscles propelling her to a troubling speed—thankfully not towards us. She slammed into the invisible barrier with an impact that made me flinch. Roaring and spitting fire, the animal turned again, before breaking into another run.

I didn’t know if she was furious or panicking, but either way, it resulted in the same thing. One of the most dangerous creatures in the world, openly rampaging. And we were trapped with her.

She could kill us. She could kill us easily, if it came down to it. Had there been much else here besides grass for her to burn, she wouldn’t even have to get near us. The whole place would go up in smoke, and we’d burn along with it.

I tried to reassure myself that there wasn’t enough potential fuel for that here, but the image of fire closing in around us nested in my mind. If she hit any of us with her flame breath, it could still happen. A rising terror clawed up the back of my throat, and I fought to keep it down. Unlike Tony, I didn’t function well in a state of sheer panic.

“Jordan, I’d love to hear that plan any time now,” Tony managed to voice.

Taking a deep breath, I forced my thoughts on achievable goals instead of worst case scenarios. I had to get my team out of there as fast as possible. There needed to be something we could do.

“Jordan?” he questioned, anxiously, when I didn’t reply. Damn it, Tony, I was working on it.

Just breathe, dad would have told me, if he were here. Just take a moment to think.

I’d always turned to my family for advice, whenever I ran up against something I didn’t know how to handle. I used to freeze up with indecision when they weren’t around to help me, until one day, I started imagining what they’d tell me instead. Now, the memory of dad’s calm tone echoed in the back of my mind, bringing with it a sense of comfort and agency.

And suddenly, an idea hit me. One so obvious I didn’t know why it’d taken me so long to see it. “We have to climb on top of the pick-up. Use it to get over the wall, one by one.”

Tony would have loved to be the first one out—I didn’t even need to see the glance he threw my way to know that—but no one else could pull off the wild driving that was keeping us from being burned alive. Not unless the new guy was holding out on us, and there was no way we were that lucky.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Luca got there first. “You should be the first one out,” he told me.

Okay. Not that I was adverse to living or anything—now that he’d suggested it, I could picture myself safe on the other side of the wall, and I wanted it so badly. But seeing as how I was the one with the most field experience aside from maybe Carter, I wasn’t getting where he was coming from. “That’s ridiculous. And we don’t have time to debate this.”

“You can fire a g*n,” he argued anyway.

Wasn’t that counter-intuitive? Shouldn’t that mean I should stay on the field the longest? I wasn’t going to abandon my team, even if that meant risking death via rampaging legimal for a little longer.

And thinking about it only made me want out all the more. Damn it, I had to muster a little courage. People were counting on me. I straightened my back, as if looking more confident might make me feel it, too.

Luca let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s harder for you to cover us from the pick-up. But if you can get on top of those ruins, you’ll have a clear shot over the wall. And you won’t have to worry about running away from the chimera while doing it.”

I blinked at him. “You want me to snipe a chimera with a shotgun?”

What exactly was the guy imagining? This was a short-range weapon. One that we’d brought along to scare off legimals, or if it really came down to it, slow them down while we escaped. Both of which would have been totally feasible plans, under normal circumstances, when all our pathways for escape weren’t mysteriously blocked off.

Luca glanced between the chimera and the ruins, eyeballing the space. “That’s hardly sniping distance.”

“Less chatting, more getting a workable plan together!” yelled Tony, unhelpful with the thinking part of the problem as ever.

Believe it or not, Carter was still taking pictures of the chimera, even though he’d already demonstrated that he was scared too. Well, at least he wasn’t likely to curl up in a ball and start crying anytime soon, which was more than I could say for myself or Tony.

“Okay, look,” Luca said, reaching into his backpack—a real one, like those huge ones used for backpacking. And pulling out a rifle, of all things. “You can use one of these, right?”

I didn’t even know he’d stored any weapons in the holding station, which held your guns for you while you were in the safety zone. The fact that someone had let him have one, even out here, seemed like a serious case of negligence. I mean, he clearly didn’t know how to handle it.

“I am going to pick a better time to question you on why you have a rifle at all, let alone inside your backpack,” I informed him. “At least tell me it isn’t loaded.”

“It’s not.”

Despite my disbelief that anyone would do something as senseless as stuffing a firearm in a backpack—how did the people at the holding station not catch that?—I felt a bit of hope at the sight of the weapon. We could work with this.

“Yes, I can use it.” Basic proficiency with an assortment of firearms was an educational requirement, where I came from.

Carter put down his camera and stared at the rifle. It seemed the sight of an actual g*n could get through to him in a way that a rampaging chimera didn’t. “Whoa, wait. We’re going to shoot her?”

Luca and I just stared at him. Tony couldn’t, but his jaw definitely dropped.

“What I mean is, that should be a last resort, right?”

“Did you notice the part where we’re surrounded by an inferno?” Tony snapped.

“Hey, I don’t want to die either, but killing her isn’t the best way to deal with this situation. She doesn’t deserve it, and it’s a bad idea anyway. If we can just get away from her—”

“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” Tony interrupted, just shy of screaming.

“Agitating legimals makes things worse,” Carter tried again.

And in most situations, he’d be right. Getting away was the priority, and attacking a wild animal came with its own set of dangers. But there was magic involved, magic worked by people. In the back of my mind, there was this dawning realization that someone was trying to hurt us, maybe even kill us. And whatever plan that someone had come up with, it’d seriously limited our options, leaving behind only bad ones.

“She can’t get much more agitated than this,” I told him, trying to sound sympathetic. “And we need to do whatever it takes to get ourselves out of here. If that means providing cover or a distraction using a weapon, then we have to. This isn’t just an encounter, Carter. We’re trapped.”

Those words echoed a little in my mind after I spoke them, and seemed to hit the others hard, too. We’re trapped. So much for keeping morale up. I sucked at this leadership thing.

Carter took a moment, then nodded. “I don’t like it. The chimera is just as trapped as we are, and this isn’t standard procedure for dealing with dangerous animals in the wild. But I guess I can’t deny that this isn’t a standard situation anymore. If you have a plan, Jor, I’m in.” It was strangely disheartening to hear that from Carter.

But then all eyes were on me, and I didn’t have time to dwell on it.