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All it took was a tug and a click, and the thing inside the black ball oozed out like dark smoke. Lucien opened the ball fully, allowing the horrible, swirling mass to unleash itself upon the world. I could hear it whispering incoherently, hissing against my ear, as it encircled us both; probing our minds for any weakness it could exploit.

“Lucien?” I asked, unable to keep the worry out of my voice.

Lucien’s eyes flashed red, and the demon swirling around us began to slow down, seeming almost curious. In a flash, tendrils of crimson energy lashed out from Lucien toward the immaterial shape, hooking into it and restraining it. Tendril by tendril, the demon screamed, the ungodly sound reverberating around the small room in echoes that seemed impossible for the size of it. A seventh hook embedded itself in the creature, and finally it fell still, docile.

Whatever clash of wills had just occurred, Lucien had clearly won. I felt his power surge once more, and when he opened his mouth to command the creature, the sound that came from his throat wasn’t his own; it definitely wasn’t English, but something else entirely. Something ancient, and horrible; something demonic.

At his word, the swirling dark smoke stretched itself toward the ceiling, several perversions of limbs extending from its center and forming claws at the end of unreasonably long arms. It leapt in front of us, and bull-rushed the Recondite.

The wooden pews splintered as the creature barreled through them, the light fixtures exploding one after the other as it made its way toward its prey. It roared, shattering the windows above us and raining glass on our heads.

The Recondite put his hands up, and a glowing field of brilliant, blue magic surrounded him. I watched the demon throw itself at it, lashing out at it, screaming like a feral beast at the magic field.

“Foul creature!” yelled the Recondite as he prepared to whip up a glowing sword of magic. “Go back to the shadows!”

“Lucien…” I said, in awe of everything that was happening. “You did it, that was amazing!”

“This isn’t the time,” said Lucien. “Get us out of here!”

“Right,” I said, only I didn’t know how to transition from the state we were in, to one where we could phase through the wall. I panicked for a moment, considering all our options, before an idea hit me.

I grabbed Lucien’s hand and pulled him toward the door and the adjoining hallway, skirting past the demon’s swipes and mage’s counter attacks carefully. As soon as we entered the hallway, and I could let out the breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding, my magic dropped, turning us visible right in front of two rapidly approaching Recondite reinforcements.

“Fuck!” I cursed.

“Alright,” said Lucien, rolling up his sleeves “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“We can’t fight our way out of this! If they’re human, our magic won’t work.”

Lucien’s eyebrow raised, “Is that what your parents told you?”

“What… what do you mean?!”

Lucien turned to face the newcomers, and as soon as he did, the two men yelled at him to put his hands up. They had drawn their pistols and were aiming them at Lucien. He looked down at me. I shook my head, viciously. He grinned. “You take the one on the left, I’ll take the one on the right.”

As soon as he spoke, gunshots erupted. From behind Lucien’s back, erupted several, thick tendril-like shadows, formed of the same crimson magic he had used on the demon earlier. They extended out, filling most of the hallway space before they folded themselves around him, deflecting every bullet before it struck him. The bullets fell to the floor, only not in solid form, but as clouds of smoldering ash.

My eyes widened.

What the fuck?

He looked toward me again, his eyes glowing crimson, sweat forming on his brow from the effort of maintaining the spell. “Go!” he said.

The other man aimed his gun at me, and I had to admit, I was terrified. This was the first time I had found myself staring down a gun. Seeing what Lucien had just done, though, I quickly swallowed my fear and resigned to do my best. Instead of waiting for the man to open fire, I instantly made my body phase, and I rushed him.

His eyes went wide, he started firing at me, but the bullets went straight through me. One round, two round, three rounds; his gun was useless, here, only the message hadn’t sunk in yet.

When I reached him, I didn’t stop, I phased right through him, coming to a stop behind him before settling into the physical world again. The man didn’t seem to understand what had happened, or where’d I’d gone—he was touching his chest like a ghost had just ran through him. Before he could figure it out, I pushed my arm through his back, grabbed the gun from him, and thwacked him in the face with it. He crumpled to the floor with a sigh, knocked out by his own gun.

I stared at my own hand, impressed by the level of control over the Ether that I’d achieved in such a short time. For once, I felt truly powerful. Any fear I’d felt was gone now, replaced with an insatiable urge to draw more magic and push all my limits.

Lucien, on the other side of the hallway, moved like shadow. The guy who had been shooting at him couldn’t get a single shot to hit its mark. When Lucien reached him, one of the shadowy tentacles smacked the gun out of his hands, whilst the rest began wrapping themselves around his neck and arms. Lucien calmly drew a small red and black knife, holding it gently against the man’s throat.

“Don’t fight,” he said, “Or I’ll use this.”

Coming in, we had no idea whether the humans in this temple knew about mages or not, but the look of horror in this man’s face confirmed they didn’t. I could see the same thought crossing Lucien’s face as he stared into the bulging, panicked eyes of the man he was holding. He sighed, pulled the knife away and waited a few moments until the man passed out, before slowly lowering him to the ground.

We hadn’t had a moment to process this before we heard the loud crunch of splintering wood behind us. We turned in time to watch the door to the temple room bursting off its hinges under the weight of the demon pushing the Recondite mage through it and slamming him into the opposite wall in a weird wall-Recondite-door, sandwich.