#magic~~~~

“Yeah,” he muttered, glancing at the doors. They were a massive, heavy pair of carved wooden slabs, but despite the decreased activity around the cathedral in recent decades, they had opened easily for Sheisha and K’lohei, and he supposed they’d do the same for these people. K’lohei rubbed a thumb along a circular tattoo on his arm, one of several similar, simpler patterns that gleamed a bright, pale blue on his brown skin. He mentally flicked the spell up against the doors, and a bright blue, semitransparent barrier appeared, holding the doors closed. K’lohei took a moment to anchor the spell to the stone floor and walls, before turning to see Sheisha still prying precious stones out of a false god’s altar.

“Sheisha,” he groaned, and she shot him a dirty glare.

“This one’s stuck,” she complained. There was a thud on the other side of the doors, held shut by K’lohei’s spell. Hissing between his teeth, he stepped back and stared very hard at the front quarter of the cathedral, memorizing the scene, and trying to remember what the altar had looked like with all of its stones, and then mentally subtracting Sheisha from the background.

He only had one illusion spell; he’d gotten rid of the others to make room for his shields. Incantations were not required at all for inkmagic, but K’lohei muttered them under his breath anyway as he activated a spell on his shoulder. He couldn’t afford to mess this one up, and the chanting helped him focus anyway. Light trailed his fingers as he gestured through the air, just as unnecessarily as he chanted.

By the time his shield against the doors shattered from the impact of another mage’s spell, the altar end of the cathedral was hidden behind an illusion that made it look just as it had before, hiding Sheisha from view as she hurried to finish up her job. He didn’t to tell her to keep quiet; he just hoped that he could make enough noise himself to prevent the newcomers from hearing her work.

He turned as the blue shield dissipated into nothing, with a crackling noise like the tail end of a firework. A corresponding pain slashed through his arm, but he just gritted his teeth through it. At least that spell wasn’t leaking ink all over his new orange sleeveless shirt.

The doors slammed open a second later, the far sides looking a little blackened and burned as three people strode through. The first had green fire flickering around his hands, and he looked furious. K’lohei didn’t know much about religions outside of Kamea in general, and even less about fake Lyanni religions, but judging by the fairly generic white and red robes the fire-fisted man wore, K’lohei was willing to bet he was some kind of priest.

The other two people, a man and a woman that were nearly indistinguishable from each other under some kind of black security uniform, carried more conventional weapons - guns, and he was willing to bet that the batons hanging from their belts were electric.

K’lohei promptly put up his hands.

The priest barked something at him, presumably in whatever language the now-tiny country of Linyan chose as their national tongue. K’lohei didn’t need to fake his incomprehension, and he took a couple steps backwards as the three people bore down on him.

“Who are you?” demanded the Lyanni woman, in surprisingly fluent, albeit heavily accented, Kamean. K’lohei blinked at her in surprise, and then gave them all an easy grin, and bobbed his head to the lady.

“Just a tourist,” he said, and stopped moving backwards. The cathedral was vast enough that there was plenty of room between Sheisha and the three interlopers; he was midway between them all, and hoped Sheisha had some kind of escape plan in mind. “What, uh, what’s with all the guns?”

“You’re trespassing,” the woman snapped, and at K’lohei’s question, she dropped a hand onto the gun in question. He kept the anxious smile on his face.

“No, the - the sign said it was open for visitors until six -”

“It’s seven-thirty,” the woman said flatly. K’lohei pretended he didn’t know that and angled his wrist to glance at his watch.

“Oh, auwe, is it really?” he wondered. “Time difference. I forgot to set my watch, ha -”

The priest interrupted with an angry comment, and the woman translated for him, “You magicked the doors.”

K’lohei looked blank. “I - what? No, I wouldn’t do that. This is a church, isn’t it?”

There was a short pause as the woman and the priest murmured back and forth. She sounded uncertain, but then the male guard, hanging behind the other two, interjected a derisive comment. The lady sighed.

“We know who you are,” she told K’lohei. “We were told two Kamean thieves would try to rob the cathedral.”

K’lohei was not a good enough actor to talk off the accusation. “Aw, crap,” he said, dropping his hands. “They sold us out.”

He slipped one hand under the edge of his shirt. The priest, who had never doused the green flames engulfing his hands, let out a shout and flung a globe of fire at K’lohei.

It hit a brilliant blue shield, one that arced from the floor to just over K’lohei’s head, and was wide enough to reach the pews on either side of the aisle. The altar was centered; he hoped it would be enough to keep Sheisha from getting caught in any of the crossfire. 

As the priest wound up for another throw, and the two guards drew their guns, K’lohei scratched his fingers across the extensive inkspell tattooed on his stomach. Unlike the others, this didn’t burn, but fizzed instead. It was a rather comfortable feeling as his ‘aumakua slipped into being.

In between the time the second fireball hit his shield, and the first bullet slammed into it a second later, his ‘aumakua had gone from the size of a small cat to a very, very large dog.

It walked through his shield as if the barrier didn’t exist, despite looking a little battered from fire and bullets. The ‘aumakua, in the form of a skyherder and the same aquamarine color of K’lohei’s shield, reared back up on its hind legs and bared its teeth in a silent snarl. Four wings flared out from its back, and a long, thick tail whipped against the shield before it barreled forward.

It was a long, lithe creature, something like an otter or a weasel, but with long, long ears. Skyherders were incredibly rare, and generally pacifists; however, the one K’lohei had summoned had absolutely no compunctions about lunging for the man with the gun.

He shouted what K’lohei assumed were swear words, slamming the ‘aumakua with bullets. They stuck in the semiopaque creature like its was made of ballistics jelly, and in a second, the man went down underneath the ‘aumakua’s weight. The woman, who had been more reluctant that her companions to engage, yelled and went to help her fellow guard.

The priest was forming a new spell.

K’lohei clenched his jaw and pushed forward, the shield moving with each step. He took three before a sharp, green light lanced from the priest and smashed into his shield spell. It shattered.

Shields had always been K’lohei’s specialty. He had one for car crashes, for weather, for fistfights and shootouts and remotely protecting royals (and thieves). They were generally a single-step affair: you made a shield and it held until it was broken or dismissed.

This one was a little more complex.

It was faceted, rather than the usual smooth shell most mages used, and when the priest’s spell slammed into it, the impact broke the entire thing into small, diamond-shaped shards. K’lohei hadn’t gotten a chance to try this one out under stress; he almost lost his grip on it, and was forced to dismiss the illusion spell, and then his ‘aumakua. The pieces of the shield that had been hit by the priest’s green light dissipated into nothing, but that still left K’lohei with tens of shards that glistened in the air.

It was K’lohei’s turn to go on the offensive.

He mentally collected a group of the shards and, with a wave of his hand, threw them at the priest. The robed man had to drop whatever spell he was preparing next and throw himself into the pews. A few shards tore through his clothes; K’lohei thought he saw a little bit of blood before the pieces of his former shield smashed into nothing against the stone floor and wooden pews.

A bullet zipped past his ear, shattering a couple shards along the way. K’lohei swore and ducked instinctively; his lapse of concentration resulted in a few more of the shield pieces disappearing into thin air. The woman stood over her fellow guard, and she shot at him again as K’lohei retreated. He collected a few more shards in front of them; they barely deflected the bullet off to the side. He grabbed the rest and sped them at the woman, just as someone behind him shouted, “Boost!”

He dropped to one knee, hearing rapid footsteps behind him. Sheisha hopped up onto his back a moment later, using him for a springboard to launch herself into the air.

He got shot a split second later.

K’lohei spilled backwards with a yelp; he heard the woman screech and two people hit the floor. Another bullet ricocheted off the floor near his hand as he pushed himself back up, blood pouring from his arm. He hissed between his teeth, tears running down his cheeks. Sheisha was going toe-to-toe with the male guard; the woman was stretched out on the floor with a handful of thin, long needles prickled from her arm. Sheisha usually coated those with a sedative.