Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 121 – The Storm

Emily explodes into motion as her eyes fall on the last, tear-soaked diary entry, the reason for her sense of dread suddenly painfully obvious.

They caught her. That’s why they called me.

She bursts out of the room, rushing through the building and onto the street before making a break for the Mandrago estate. She races through the city at inhuman speed. Discarding The Covenant’s rule that dictates she shouldn’t reveal magic publicly, she casts lightning step as she moves, blazing a path through the city and ignoring the confused and panicked shouts of pedestrians as she flies past them.

Within a few minutes, she arrives at the noble’s district and charges towards the Mandrago estate’s gate. The moment it comes into view, she cancels her spell and digs her feet into the ground, deploying the spikes in her shoes and carving a channel into the neatly paved street as she grinds to a halt. Emily looks up at the gate and her breath catches in her throat.

Above the delicately woven metal roots and the proud crest of the Mandrago family, impaled on spikes of metal, are several heads. On either side are a man and woman she doesn’t recognise, and between them are Todd and Howard. In the centre, her expression frozen in an anguished scream of pain, is Anna.

She’s dead.

Emily’s hand instinctively reaches for The Clock’s pouch as Herber’s words echo in her head.

‘What have you done?’

They called me over twenty-four hours ago.

Her eyes run over the gnarled scar running from Anna’s left cheek to her right eyebrow.

‘What have you done?’

They called me here to rub it in.

The air around her starts to ionise with a dull hum.

‘What have you done?’

I can’t save her.

The guards by the gate approach her, calling out to deaf ears.

‘What have you done?’

I can’t apologise.

The clouds above rumble with thunder.

‘What have you done?’

She was terrified.

Her eyes light up with an otherworldly blue glow, sending shivers down the spines of the approaching guards.

‘What have you done?’

She died hating me.

Something inside Emily snaps as she lets out a scream of rage, the crackling buzz around her being overpowered by a crash of thunder that she doesn’t hear as the buzzing grows ever louder in her head. Lightning falls from the clouds above, landing on her and spreading outwards, tearing the approaching guards to shreds. Searing tendrils of electricity lash out from her, scorching the street and smashing into the gate, ripping it apart as Emily falls to her knees, tears forming in her eyes that instantly evaporate in the heat.

Her gaze lands on the large mansion in front of her where she sees mages and servants frantically rushing out to check on the commotion at the gate. Her eyes scan across them, every Mandrago family crest she sees adding fuel to the fires of her despair as more lighting falls from the sky, shredding the lush green estate and sending ripples across a large magical barrier that surrounds the buildings.

Her mana quickly drains, the large phenomena taking its toll on her and bringing a sense of exhaustion that dulls her emotions, allowing the seething anger and sadness within her to solidify into a cold resolution.

I’ll kill all of you.

She slips her hand into The Clock’s pouch, pressing its activation button as she sees the Patriarch rise into the air above his home, angrily glaring at her. Emily doesn’t even flinch as he raises his hand and sends an invisible blade of wind towards her, slicing her right arm clean off as time grinds to a halt.

You’ll be first.

***

Emily finds herself back on Calypso, lying on her back in a crawl space with a wrench in her hand, raised above her to change a rusted section of piping. The buzzing screech in her mind is still present, almost drowning out Podrick’s next words.

“What’s wrong?” he asks beside her as she suddenly stops mid-repair.

“Nothing,” she responds with a frigid tone that sends a shiver down the young boy’s spine.

She moves her scarf up to drape over her nose as she quickly finishes taking the pipe apart to replace it with a fresh one, hoping the calming floral scent will help to quiet her mind. The buzzing remains though, and with a quick inward glance, Emily sees her machina crackling away in her cortex doing something without her conscious command. A nagging feeling in her gut tells her to ignore it, so she does, lowering the scarf as she slides out of the narrow space, the smell only adding a bittersweet longing to her cold simmering fury.

She stands up and looks Podrick in the eye, pushing away thoughts of the activity in her head and the annoying, slightly painful, buzzing that is still making it hard to focus, but he takes a step back as a look of slight fear and confusion flashes across his face.

“Go find Ash. I have something to do,” Emily says, barely registering his reaction before she turns on her heels and marches towards the bridge.

I’m going to wipe out a noble family. Let’s see if Anton is willing to join me.

Arriving on the bridge, Emily approaches Anton’s seat.

“Hey, Anton. We need to talk,” she says, drawing his attention.

He turns in his seat, eyes widening in surprise the moment he sees her.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” he asks with a tone of concern.

Confused, Emily conjures a mirror with a small flex of metal mana, shocking the cabin’s inhabitants. In the reflective surface, she sees her face. Her eyes are alight with the glow of power as lightning flickers deep in her irises, reacting to the seething anger writhing in her chest.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she says with a shrug, dismissing the mirror and wrapping both of them in a soundproof barrier. “That just happens when I’m angry.”

“What the hell was that?” Anton asks, a mixture of curiosity and fear in his gaze as he looks back and notices he can’t hear Angela and Tony talking a few metres away from them.

“Magic. It’s real and nobles use it. It’s the reason they sent me to the capital, to train in it. Anyway, there’ll be time to talk about this in detail later. For now, I want to give you a choice to think about.”

Anton narrows his eyes, clearly struggling to process the new information, but he nods for her to continue nonetheless.

“The Mandrago family just killed my sister,” Emily starts, the lightning in her eyes pulsing and rippling out along her skin for a moment, making Anton and both crew members watching through the barrier flinch. “So, I’m going to kill them all.”

He starts in shock, opening his mouth to say something, but Emily keeps going before he can.

“I can do it, and nothing you say will change my mind. Your choice is simple, are you with me or not? Because once I’m done, I’ll be hunted. I quite like Calypso, and I’d like to escape on her. When I come back to the docks, there won’t be time to deliberate. If I can’t find a ship that wants to take me, I’ll have to take one by force.”

Fear twists Anton’s face as he slowly nods.

“Where will you go?”

“Dennari.”

Having said her peace, Emily turns on her heel without waiting for a response, dispelling the barrier around them and walking away. She hears Anton let out an anxious sigh, and Angela and Tony start asking him about the silent conversation and strange supernatural phenomena before she pauses and looks over her shoulder.

“Oh, and I expect you won’t say anything once we dock. I don’t take kindly to people who betray me.”

Anton gulps and nods, terror evident in his eyes as he watches Emily depart. She turns to return to her room, a plan to wipe out the Mandrago’s quickly coming together in her mind.

***

The next day, Emily leaves her backpack in her room and heads straight for the ship’s hatch as it slides into the docks, already masking her mana by wrapping her circles in machina. She stands by the exit silently, and the other crew members waiting with her keep their distance due to the unnatural, blazing light of anger in her eyes. The moment the ship stops, Emily opens the hatch and leaves without a word. She flips up the hood of her cloak and makes her way through the passage to the main hall.

As she walks, she reaches into her belt and pulls out a thin needle and a small vial of a clear, odourless liquid: delayed death, a simple potion made for usage against mortals that guarantees a painful death exactly six hours after a single drop enters the bloodstream unless the antidote is consumed. She takes off the cork and dips the needle inside before putting away the potion and holding the needle between two fingers as she enters the crowded hall and walks towards the exit.

With a flick of her wrist, Emily throws the needle into Gregory’s arm as she passes, sealing his fate for breaking their agreement without any care for what his excuse might be. She slips into an alley as the guards try to stop her again, escaping their sight before making her way towards the Mandrago estate.

Before she steps onto the open streets of the noble district, she takes out the Whisper with a new leather strap attached and slings it over her shoulder. She downs a vial of the brew of imperception, vanishing and breaking into a sprint, approaching the estate quickly. She leaps over the hedge around the grounds without attracting attention and runs towards the large main building, passing several servants tending to the garden and gritting her teeth, each crest she sees making it harder and harder to hold in her anger.

Emily cycles her machina as she approaches the large main building, using the cold energy to force her emotions into check as she walks through the open front doors flanked by guards. She follows the plush green carpet through the entrance hall, stepping onto the stairs leading up towards the imposing pressure of the Patriarch that she can already feel with her heightened senses.

She arrives before the ornate door to the Patriarch’s reception hall and stops, taking the Whisper from her shoulder and raising it to point at the door. Emily brings up the image of the hall, which is burned into her memory from her first visit, and angles her gun to point where the Patriarch’s heart should be.

She pours her machina into the weapon, sending arcs of rippling electricity across the gun as she uses Overdrive to the maximum. She flicks the firing selector into full and takes a deep breath before pulling the trigger. Her hand blurs to rack the bolt before dropping back to the handle again to pull the trigger. She fires over and over again until her magazine is empty, sending a stream of bullets enhanced by metal element engravings to improve their piercing power and impact force through the door.

The bullets punch a hole in the door, blowing a large chunk out of the wood and revealing the room behind to Emily. Her mind enters full assistive processing mode as she watches the four people in the room reacting to the sound of the door breaking. The three people standing before the Patriarch flinch and start turning around, and the Patriarch glances up, barely having time to register the attack before the first bullet reaches him.

The first bullet slams into an invisible barrier around his chair, sending visible cracks along its surface as if space itself is breaking, before the bullet crumples and falls. The second bullet shatters the barrier and falls to the floor to join the first as the third bullet reaches the Patriarch’s chest. It slams into a swirling layer of wind mana that bursts from the Patriarch’s body the moment he notices the attack, sending a ripple along it and pressing the man back into his chair, but the bullet crumples and drops to the floor without further effect.

The fourth and fifth bullets do the same, flying off at random angles after hitting the barrier, but the sixth disperses the protective winds before it’s deflected, causing the Patriarch’s eyes to open wide in shock and panic. The seventh bullet bores a hole clean through his chest, and the eighth, ninth, and tenth widen it as he flinches at the forceful impacts.

As the dust settles from the attack, blood gushes out of the Patriarch’s chest and the presence that Emily has felt since entering the building diminishes. The three people before him, two men and one woman, all cry out in distress. The two men rush forward to help him as the woman turns to confront his attacker. Emily sends the Whisper into her belt and kicks the door open, releasing her emotions as her face morphs into a vengeful glare that makes the woman pause in her step, watching lightning flickering out of Emily’s eyes and along her skin as she walks forwards.

“You!” the Patriarch spits in anger as he sees her, clasping a hand to his chest.

Emily doesn’t say anything as runes flow out of her, wrapping around her legs as she casts sky step to begin her slaughter.

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