Richter Ch. 02

The beast bellowed when it noticed Judecca's presence and started moving towards her, but it suddenly stopped as pale, translucent skeletal figures started emerging from the shadows. One of the figures touched the giant and it suddenly roared and punched the specter, throwing it to the other side of the warehouse.

Richter noticed that the place where the monster had been touched now looked frostbitten, while the apparition that had been so violently attacked just bounced off the wall and started walking again to its target, though it seemed that now it glowed a bit brighter than before.

The beast tried to defend itself from the specters that surrounded it, but they seemed to get stronger each time they got to touch their target. The fight didn't last much longer; when the specters became strong enough to immobilize their prey, Judecca summoned several shard of dark purple energy around her raised hand, and made them grow into spears before throwing them into the beast's chest and face.

The monster fell to the ground without emitting any noise aside from that of the raw flesh hitting the paved ground.

Richter started walking towards Judd. When he was about to ask her what the hell was all that and what had happened with her appearance, another unnatural scream sounded in the warehouse, this one sharper and more penetrating.

Judecca reached out a hand to Richter. "Rich, come here by my side, quick! I didn't think the would be another faceless here. This one is a green mask, so it's specialty is moving unnoticed and attacking from the shadows".

Rich started running towards her, a part of his mind noticing how her voice had changed too, and now it sounded like that of a female ghost or a witch from a horror movie.

Richter was about to reach her when one of Judecca's specters lifted an arm and pointed behind him, but he had no time to react. Something hit him from behind. He looked down and he saw the tip of a crude spear made of bone poking out of his chest. He thought he must have been living his last instants, as time seemed to have frozen.

Nothing moved; even the blood that came out of his wound seemed to stay static in midair. Rich looked at Judd, and tried to reach a hand out to her. He could move normally, but the spray blood stayed still, as if it was frozen in time and space. Rich thought it must have been a trick of his dying mind.

Then the blood started to change. First it began darkening until it became a deep, shiny black, and after that the drops of blackened blood started moving on their own, rearranging themselves into a pattern hard to discern at first. That's when Rich noticed that some of the drops had a bit of a purplish shine to them; the black drops where forming a rectangle, and the purple ones formed some kind of symbol.

Rich touched the alien shape and pure darkness exploded from it. He felt reinvigorated. No, he felt powerful. The projectile in his chest was expelled and the hole was filled with more darkness. The fog of pure black faded and Rich found himself holding a thin black book, no more than a paperback notebook. The symbol from before seemed to be engraved in the cover in some kind of purple glowing metal thread he didn't recognize.

The beast screamed again from behind Rich. He turned around without thinking, his will focused on the book in his hand. Two masses of darkness erupted from his back and wriggled like tentacles. They gained in consistency and the tips expanded, they finally turned into long, sleek arms with huge hands.

Rich saw his enemy, dark green flesh in an agile body. Arms and legs finished in bone claws that allowed it to walk over walls or even ceilings. The dark green mask on its face didn't cover its jaws, and Rich saw it open its mouth. Another bone projectile started showing between its teeth, and the creature started having spams, as if it was going to puke.

The new arms in Richter's back moved unconsciously, as if they had always been a part of his body. One of his hands grabbed at the shoulder of the Faceless, holding it in place, the other grabbed at its small head, which disappeared between the long, clawed fingers.

With a sharp twist and a brutal pull, Richter first broke the neck of the creature and then tore away its head. The now headless monster fell to the floor, blood gushing out of the tremendous wound.

While he was looking down in horror, he absentmindedly heard Judecca taking out her phone and making a call. "Father, read my position and order the Nightwatch to send a clean-up team". She stopped to listen to her father's rushed questions before answering, with a wide smile and without being able to prevent her emotions from showing in her voice, "What has happened? I was right all this time: he is one of us".

When the call ended, Judecca walked up to Richter and he turned to look at her. He noticed that she was back to her usual self, at least externally. He looked at his own hands and saw that his nails were back to their normal color, and that there was no trace of the additional arms he had growing from his back a minute ago.

Looking at Judecca in the eyes, Richter asked. "What are you? Or better said, what are we?"

She lifted her chin and answered with pride, "We are the frontlines. We are the guardians of this world. We are Magius".

**********

The office was wide and was decorated a little bit too luxuriously to be in an educational center: Ebony furniture with leather and gold decorations, a glass chandelier... between all of those things, a woman moved carrying out several duties: approving time schedules, reviewing dormitory distributions, confirming class rosters...

She had to work doubly hard to demonstrate that she deserved her position. She was a thirty one year old woman, and a declining bloodline to boot.

She was very attractive: her tight pantsuit left clear that her breasts were nothing out of the ordinary, but she had wide hips, a fleshy but tight butt and plump thighs, all of it in the perfect proportion. She had Asiatic features, though her jaw was markedly sharp. Her hair was deep black with a little of a blue shine to it, and it was cut short in an outright masculine way. The only thing that could be considered a drawback to her beauty was that, behind her half-frame oval glasses her eyes were of different colors: the right one was blue and the other was brown.

A ring attracted her attention, and she moved to the laptop that was open on the table. She had just received an e-mail informing her about the addition of a new student to the first year of the American West-coast University of Arcane Arts and Occultism.

She read the file and wondered aloud, "Richter Talbot... so this is my little sister's discovery, huh?" Kazumi Curwin looked to the bookshelves without really seeing them while she absentmindedly tapped the steel-covered book with a polished nail.

With a wry smile, she started rearranging the first-year class roster. "This is going to be fun".