Lesson 21
"You actually came here?" Tabitha demanded mockingly, "To my base, the center of my power? Can you imagine the defensive spells I have prepared here? Do you understand that if I wanted to, I could summon a dozen Kishin Eggs to assist me?"
"Then why don't you?" Eruka shot back, "Why take the risk, if you could just throw cannon fodder at us until we are too weak to fight back? Or were you not expecting us to call your bluff?"
Weasel twisted one hand, and thin sections of stone began to separate from the walls and floor. At the same time, she took her phone out and hit a button.
"Franklin, please send reinforcements to my lab," she said into the device with false sweetness. After waiting for a few seconds, Eruka laughed at her cousin.
"If Franklin was the name of the Kishin Larva who was in the office next door," Gus's voice echoed out of the metal and off the granite, "We already dealt with him."
"You've only been here for sixteen minutes," Tabitha frowned, estimating the time since the alarms reacted.
"Actually, we snuck in almost seventy minutes ago," Charlie said evenly, "We took out the guards upstairs, and then the Larva down here. We destroyed your wards so that your prisoners could escape."
"Larva…" Tabitha said the word as if tasting it, "That is a much better name for them than 'Mystically Constrained Proto-Kishin'. Shorter, too. I'll have to start using that."
The trio did not miss that she was shifting the subject. But it segued into their secondary mission, so Eruka took advantage of it.
"'Mystically Constrained Proto-Kishin'; that name is awfully clinical for you, cousin," the frog witch said in mock confusion, "Did your partners come up with that?"
"What makes you think I have any partners?" Weasel answered, somewhat off balance.
"Would you prefer benefactors? Or maybe just superiors?" Gus mused, nursing a dark suspicion. And Tabitha barely stopped herself from frowning at the last word.
"This conversation no longer amuses me," the elder witch said sharply, "But I think experimenting on you three will prove even more entertaining."
She snapped her fingers, and the half-dozen Doberman-sized weasel golems finished forming, and four charged the teens. Eruka sent two of her tadpole bombs swimming in front of Charlie, trying to destroy the constructs to give the Meister a clear path to Tabitha. The first golem dodged with far more agility than it had any right to possess. The second rodent did not dodge, to do so would have let Eruka's attack hit its mistress. Instead it bit into the spell. The explosion shattered the right side of its face, revealing its hollow interior. And the damage started to repair as the other weasels reached the trio.
"Frog snag," Eruka incanted, and a bulbous pink thread emerged from her hand, hitting one to the constructs and sticking. It started to retract and pull the stone creature toward her. The weasel dug its claws into the floor, instinctively resisting.
One of the remaining three attackers tried to slip by Charlie, but the girl's foot snapped into its midsection. Ice formed around it as the lighter golem was forced back into line with its comrades. Another of the rodents tried to bite Chapel, but she intercepted the attack with Aegis. The Shield's reflective power threw the weasel back and shattered its teeth. But the damage was less than what he had inflicted on the golems in their two previous fights.
"Do you like my new golems?" Tabitha asked, "They are lighter, so they are faster. And they have more give and recover faster."
"Frog slip," Eruka gestured with her free hand, and covered the floor with oil again. The moving statues began to slide as they moved, and the weasel the younger witch was trying to reel in lost its footing. Tabitha smirked mockingly at her cousin.
"Raise rock rodent," she intoned, and the stone floor created a three inch platform under her, preventing the thin layer of fluid from reaching her. The woman drew her hands together, and started gather mana between then.
The golem that had been playing tug of war with Frog suddenly stopped resisting and charged her. Eruka cancelled the spell connecting her to the statue, and stepped out of its path. Though the weasel had been able to gain forward momentum, when it tried to turn, its feet went out from under it again. It skidded past the witch, and slammed into the operating table. Then Eruka casually reached down, and sent some of her mana into the pentagram on the floor. The construct tried to attack her again, and crashed into the barrier instead.
"Cute," Tabitha remarked, halting the progress of the spell she was forming, "But that's not going to help you, cousin."
Weasel snapped her fingers, and the seal broke.
"Did you really think I would inscribe a pentagram that I could not cancel at will?"
"It wouldn't be the first time," Eruka answered as she tossed a pair of tadpole bombs at the golem, tearing two large holes in its body and knocking it into the table again. The older witch scowled at her cousin's memory, and resumed gathering lightning between her hands
Charlie bashed the partially frozen weasel with Gus's edge, and the construct broken in half. Then she ducked under another statue. She grabbed its leg as it passed over her, and put her shoulder into its side. Soul Frost poured into the rodent at both points of contact, and she redirected its momentum towards one of the two weasels guarding Tabitha. They collided and the chilled stone cracked heavily. The spell supporting it was also damaged, so the jagged edges of the granite did not smooth.
"I do like your new golems," Gus announced, "they are lighter, so they are easier for me to bounce and Charlie to throw. And since they are hollow, the spells maintaining them are not buried deep in the stone, so they are much easier to freeze."
"And despite that, you three have only destroyed one and done moderate damage to two more," Weasel countered, "If I wasn't having these two guard me while I get ready to capture you all in one spell, how much harder would it be for you? Should we find out?"
She clicked her tongue, and the three golems close to her stalked towards Charlie, their claws growing larger and sharper to give them purchase through the oil. The fourth rodent fell back slightly to join them, while the last and most damaged tried to get past Eruka. Then the four before Charlie suddenly rolled over, coating themselves in Frog's concoction. They charged the martial artist, two jumping at her head and two going for her legs. Chapel dropped until she was almost sitting. She interposed Gus between herself and the two grounded golems, sending them backwards with the dull screech as their nails gouged the floor. The other pair sailed over the girl, and her fist shot up at the damaged one. She expected the Soul Frost in her hand to cut through Eruka's oil like it did for her feet. But it did not, and her fist slipped off the statue without doing much damage.
Eruka finished off her opponent, a quick quintet of her exploding tadpoles reducing the golem into pieces too small to regenerate. She noticed that her spell was not hindering Tabitha's familiars' movement anymore, and saw Charlie's punch glance off the weasel. The Frog witch canceled her spell, but the oil on the golems did not vanish. Eruka started to prepare a spell to clean the golems and potentially weaken them, when she finally got a good look at the magic her cousin was working. She cancelled the scouring rain she had been preparing, and instead tossed three more of her tadpoles at Tabitha as quickly as she could. The golems leaped to intercept the bombs, deflecting the tadpoles with their slick bodies. While they did so, Eruka hurried back to Charlie's side.
"That is not a capture spell," Frog said quickly, "That's a lightning spell, more powerful than the one she hit you with last time, and more tightly focused."
"Captured dead is still captured," Tabitha smirked down at them.
Chapel bounced back one of the golems with Gus when it got to close, and watched Tabitha carefully. The Meister's eyes turned golden as she tensed for the magic to be released.
"All together now," Tabitha crooned to her creations, and the statues jumped at the teens again.
"Now," Charlie hissed crouching down and thrusting Gus in front of her. Eruka wrapped herself tightly to her friend's back, and placed both her hands on Shield. Both witch and Meister poured their energy into the Weapon. Even as Weasel's mana sphere exploded outward as a cone of electricity, a frosty blue dome expanded outwards from Gus's edge, encompassing both girls. Tabitha's blast swept over her weasels, scorching off the oil but also repairing the smaller cracks in their stone bodies. It hit Smithson and Frog's barrier and swept past them. Tabitha's lab table and shelves of knick-knacks were also struck by the lightning, but were not damaged by it.
Then the last of the spell passed, and the teens stood, ready to attack. But the golems were already on them, and Tabitha pulled a 0.50 Caliber Desert Eagle from her coat pocket. To Chapel's eyes the new gun was even more heavily enchanted than the pistols Weasel had used in their previous encounters.
"You're going to try to shoot me?" Charlie said blandly, "I thought we proved last time that I wasn't going to fall for that again. And that Gus can send the bullets right back at you."
Eruka dropped the magical barrier, and sent one tadpole at each of the weasels. The younger witch remained crouched behind her friend, sending out her default spell and trying to think of something to deal with statues.
"Maybe," Tabitha shrugged, "But you haven't seen what this gun can do. And either way, if you have to focus on blocking bullets, you won't be able to stop my pets."
Chapel stepped back, sweeping her free arm around Eruka to carry the witch with her. She managed to move far enough, fast enough, to avoid the golems' pounce. As they gathered to strike again, Tabitha pulled the trigger, firing a single bullet at the Meister. Aegis whispered to her in their shared soul space, and Charlie adjusted him to reflect the slug. Halfway back to the rodent witch, the bullet reverse direction, flying at Charlie again. This time Smithson suggested a different course, and they directed the bullet towards one of the weasels. It tried to dodge, but the round still clipped its ear, before aiming at Charlie again.
"Do you like my Seeker?" Tabitha asked, waving the gun casually, "It will never stop trying to hit you. Not so long as one of us lives."
With that she fired a second enchanted bullet at the girl.
"Now," Gus declared the timing this time, as the first bullet struck him for the third time. This time a shell of ice surrounded the bullet, and it dropped to the ground.
"Did you forget what I do to spells?" Charlie asked scathingly, as they bounced the second shot away.
"Of course not. But you have to time it just right," Weasel countered, having already figured out why they had not stopped both rounds, "Or, I suppose, you could waste the energy to keep your little freezing constantly active."
She fired a third time, and then took a casual skip to the right and shot again from a different angle. Charlie deflected all three shots, and reflected on the fact that Tabitha was trying to wear her out, just as she had done to the witch in their first meeting. And the witch was slowly succeeding.