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Chapter 1: The Bridge
Part 3
The scratchy pressure swelled on his left side, and knocked Frix off balance. He saw his projectile careen away from the girl, then his world spun and he fell inwards towards the floor. He pushed off the blocker and managed to get a sense of body position before he crashed in a heap. A clumsy tuck and roll spared him serious damage.
“Turner!” the girl yelled. The pink orb flickered, sputtered and sank into the bridge itself. The wood under and around Frix now emitted a pallid, rosy glow.
He rose in a crouch, put the slinger away and drew both his shortsharp and cudgel. Somewhere in his mind a crazy voice remarked that he was about to fight a witch. Two of them it seemed, since the boy had reappeared and now advanced on him, eyes flickering red just like the horror stories.
“Turner, no!”
The kid was scared. That much was clear. Frix wasn’t exactly in a calm mood either, but he now knew his biggest problem was the girl. Could he kill them though? He had never killed anything bigger than a bog hog before. He imagined it was probably similar. And after all, these were witches.
That odd pressure ballooned again, that eerie scratchiness along with it, this time in his gut area. It pushed on him, in a struggling, unsure way. Frix realized that this was the boy, attempting to somehow attack him: his look of concentration was unmistakable. Unfortunately for the little witch, it was also useless. Frix spun around the pressure as if it were a weird stump in his path, his feet deft with years of forest-running. He spun again, low and towards the kid, his blade and club whirling to intimidate and confuse.
Frix twirled, as the probing pressure pawed at him, maybe trying to slow him. It wouldn’t work. One more half turn and he’d extend his arm, crushing the side of the witch’s skull with—
Something slammed into his side and his back hit the floor. He coughed, the wind knocked out of him. Knees dug into both his elbows.
He tried to breathe, and couldn’t. Frix fought panic, clinging to the security of his two weapons, still clasped in his hands. Golden green eyes stared down at him, flashing red every half second, streaming tears down a thin face. Her knees widened to pin him down past the elbows.
“Don’t hurt him! Please!” she cried.
He struggled, but couldn’t find any strength—he needed air. Was she choking him? He could rotate his wrist hard enough to smash her ribs with the club, or slice her leg with the sharp. But he did none of these things; he needed air before all these things could happen.
Then his lungs unlocked and he heaved. The situation re-dawned on him: there was a witch sitting on him.
Head clearing, it also occurred to him that she wasn’t even that strong or heavy. Instead of slicing or clubbing her he pushed up from his elbows and locked his feet, managing an awkward but aggressive sit up that flung her backwards. She landed on her backside and they sat staring at each other for a second. All he could make out in the gloomy bridge-glow were her saucer like eyes and a tangled mess of hair. Was it also gold-green?
As he stared, a sharp white light angled in from Dreff’s side of the bridge, sweeping the area. The escort was back.
“Don’t hurt him,” the girlwitch said, weaker.
The escort’s light flashed across her face. She was so strange to him, a fascinating creature, like a fish with feathers. Her eyes were so big, and her hair odd and… full. The dress-hood had slipped half away, revealing some kind of shiny red decoration, a band or—
“Frix!” hissed Mossa. She peered up from around the edge of the bridge. The search beam began to move in more focused arcs.
He raised his shortsharp and pointed it at the girlwitch. He risked a quick glance around and spotted the boywitch to his right, standing in the middle of the luminous bridge, staring at them, unmoving.
“Frix!” Mossa called again.
He scrambled to his feet, keeping the weapon raised. The girl tracked him with her eyes, but made no move to get up. No scratching sensations flew out at him.
“Get off the bridge,” he murmured.
“What?” said the witch.
“It’s going to blow. Get your friend and run or it won't be me that hurts him.”
She blinked, and her eyes widened even further, if that was possible. She looked at the boy, then back up to Frix, and gave the smallest of nods.
Frix ran to the side, scrambled through the blocker and jumped down along the edge with Mossalea.
“You idiot,” she said, smirking. Her free hand held a rope.
“We had some spectators,” he said.
“Mhm, will they be sticking around for the finale?”
“I may have offended them.” He grinned, as the rush of the fight gave way to giddy feelings. He looked back at the bridge and saw the witch gathering up her friend and bolting towards the town. He was vaguely glad they would be running past Swinn and not Dreff.
Mossa kicked at his thigh. “Ready?”
“Wait ‘til the little freaks are off the bridge,” he said, watching.
“That floater is almost here.”
“And we don’t want a witch army crawling all over the land thanks to the murder of two of their people, right?”
Mossa huffed. “I bet they can swim just fine.”
“Two seconds and we jump, look.” Indeed, the two witches had made it off the bridge.
“‘K, you first, honeysuckle.”
Her leg was a snake, slithering up between his chest and the bridge. Before he could redouble his grip, she’d pried him away. She sounded a sirenfly’s wail a moment before the cold water exploded around him.
He tumbled in icy darkness, concentrating on being embarrassed so that he might not panic. Frix recognized the dull vibration of Mossa hitting the river, pinwheeled to orient himself and found the direction of the current.
Then the underwater world lit up, followed by three near simultaneous thuds of muted thunder: WH-W-WHUMP! He saw Mossalea’s athletic form slicing her way through the water above him. Dark hunks of wood came rushing and sinking in, and he made his way upstream to avoid getting crushed. He broke the surface and turned around. Only the ends of the bridge remained above water. They were on fire, and tilting into the river. The escort hovered at the south edge, its beam scanning the water.
“So much for a clean getaway!”
He turned to see Mossa bobbing beside him, laughing. There was a creak, a series of snaps, then an avalanche of splashes as one of the ends collapsed.
“Your friends would not have been in good shape on that bridge, Frix. They’ll sing songs of your mercy in the villages for years to come, I’m sure,” she said, still laughing. “From now on, you are no longer Frix of Bit All-bit-tel, but Frix Ladytackled, the Witchlover.”
Just great, he thought, as she cackled and swam away.
He turned away from the destruction and dove back underwater, lest the spotlight get lucky. In the dark river, the fire’s afterimage lingered in bright, streaky spots that danced and dodged, and he couldn’t help but think of those huge, flashing eyes.
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