She gave them a grand smile, “so Elijah,” she purred, “what do you covet in exchange for the Stone of the Morning Star?”
Emerald met turquoise.
“I…” he hedged, “I am sorry.”
She kept smiling.
Isla rested her hand on her knife, Lilith tightened her grip on her staff.
“I am going to have to kee–” he tried.
There was a pulse of rose-scented force and all three magi were sent flying in different directions from Aphrodite.
Eli hit the ground hard, tumbled, and skittered to a stop. He looked up.
Aphrodite stood in the setting sun. She tore off her sundress in a single right to left tear, the garments burned into rose-quartz flames as she did. The blaze surrounded her.
Her extended hand flashed a bar of copper sunlight. She twirled the bar of light once before snapping it into position. The sunlight subsided into the silhouette of a spear.
Eli became struck beneath the presence of Ishtar.
Her silhouetted form shimmered in the rose-quartz flame around her. Her stride, terrifying in its elegance.
Above the copper sunset floated Lucifer, bearing down dark blessing.
Little flickers of blue-white electricity began to blink into existence at the Goddess’ feet, her stunning hair rose into a plume.
Eli looked up and saw storm clouds form in a tight swirl, from his left he could hear Lilith. She was twirling her staff as if gathering candy while singing an accusatory note. She suddenly smote her staff.
The world exploded.
Eli’s vision went white and the roar threw him through the air. Crimson tears streaked his eyes as he extended his left hand.
A cushion of force came into existence just before Isla crashed head first into a curb, she came to a safe stop. Eli’s other hand came up to his own head, forming an invisible helmet.
He hit the ground, tumbled three times, and the force-helmet slammed against a fire hydrant, breaking it. No water erupted.
Eli stared at the sky, chest heaving.
“Get up, idiot!” Isla screamed. She came to him.
Ishtar stood with a shield above her head, steaming from the blast, but she stood beautifully all the same.
A cloud of onyx rocketed toward the sunset, it was deflected effortless by the spear.
Isla came to Eli, she pulled him to his feet. He extended his hand and his branch returned to him from where it had been thrown.
Flickers amethyst and onyx assaulted their peripheral vision as the two ancients argued.
Ishtar stopped the conversation. She twirled her spear once and smote it.
From their line of sight, the spear extended upwards infinitely into the sky. Rather than return its sunset-copper sheen, the extended spear became a rainbow.
The thin tear in reality suddenly deepened into a crevice. A beam of rainbows curved and rocketed into the earth from behind Ishtar and the ground shuddered.
There was a bullish huff that rumbled through the air.
Stomp.
Huff
Stomp.
Huff
Stomp.
Before them it stood. Two stories tall, and just as wide, golden hide and diamond horns.
The Bull of Heaven pawed the ground and huffed much fuller. The earth beneath it shattered into fine dust forming a hole that could swallow a hundred men.
“Holy f–,” Isla began
“What the–,” Eli started.
“Go!” Lilith commanded, “I will speak with the Bull, you two handle the Lady.”
“There is a joke in there somewhere,” Isla quipped.
She grabbed Eli’s hand and words passed silent between them. They turned and entered a Target.
Ishtar did not bother opening the long dead, automatic doors. She walked through them.
The glass parted around her like water around a ship's prow, the shards hanging suspended in the amber light of the dying afternoon before dissolving into petals of copper flame.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The dead fluorescent lights inside flickered once. Then again. Then all at once they came on. Rather than the cold white hum, they became something warmer, melted bronze. Shadows retreated to their proper corners and stayed there.
She stepped over the threshold. Her bare feet found the linoleum and where she walked she left no sound.
Ishtar moved through seasonal decor without acknowledging it. A rack of clearance Valentine's displays trembled as she passed. The little foil hearts swayed on their hooks as though caught in a wind.
The copper spear rested against her shoulder, easy and familiar, the way a shepherd carries a crook. Her shield on her other arm.
She paused at the end of an aisle.
Her head turned slowly, like a compass needle finding north.
The warmth in the light pulsed once.
She walked toward the back of the store.
Little flickers of blue-white electricity appeared from Ishtar’s left flank. The Goddess turned to her right where Isla was lining up the shot. Ishtar threw her shield like a copper frisbee.
Isla yelped. She ducked out of reflex but the world went blue-white anyway. The improperly separated charges sought immediate rebalance. The world thrummed as though it had been struck by a hammer. An electrical, buzzing arc ripped through the run-down store’s ceiling in a chorus of asbestos and drywall. She dropped knife, it hit the ground glowing like an angry carrot.
Lilith’s misty form, re-corporating, came into the retail store as Eli swung his branch from fifteen feet away.
His telekinetic force swiped out in a wide arc toward Ishtar. The Goddess responded with a wave of pink-champagne fire that mirrored the force’s arc but much thicker. When they collided the cherry blossom fire bloomed open and cascaded down upon Eli like a tsunami. His force slammed against her and she slid back, tearing linoleum as she went.
The opposite, reactive force sent Eli stumbling as his eyes became alight in pink-champagne.
The clenched branch came up in his right at an inward angle as he went, his left came up as if to catch a football. The fire hit Eli’s ward and spread like deadly strawberry-milk on glass.
The pink flames gave way to a soft soot in the air. Eli went to speak but then Ishtar moved again.
She extended her golden copper staff. Eli’s ward came back up, the tip of her staff erupted into ambrosial light. A beam of coppery light made itself known in the soot. It traveled in a straight, neat, three foot wide wide beam. The beam of copper sunlight passed through the invisible plane of force as though it were glass.
It seared into his left arm and he tumbled backward in a burned heap, screaming.
“Eli!” Isla screeched. The Goddess turned. Isla pressed the tips of her blackened fingers together. A ward of her own appeared.
A beam of coppery sunray appeared once more. When it passed through the spectral edges of Isla’s prism it changed directions once, twice, three times in consecutive refractive ricochets.
The sunray bore a hole into the side of the building, smoke erupted from Isla’s finger tips and her cuticles peeled back and bled.
The fully reformed Lilith twirled her staff and smote it in a smooth arc and a blaze of amethyst and onyx.
The amethyst eyes of the ancient witch bore into those mirrors of passion as she opened a dialogue with the Lady of the Dawn.
Lilith's black ink erupted forward, but Ishtar transmuted it into a sea of mimosa. A beam of copper lanced out; Lilith crystallized it into amethyst. Ishtar's butterscotch radiance dissolved by shadow, giving way to embers of orchid.
Then—from beyond Lilith's shadow—a glowing rose-quartz harbinger made itself known.
Parallel streaks of Ishtar’s amber clashed with spiraling mists of onyx. A wall of Lilith’s thunderous gray was torn asunder by a spear of molten honey. Ishtar’s disk of coppery-golden brilliance overwhelmed the obsidian night.
Lilith faltered, the mists of her form losing integrity once more.
Isla dropped down to the mangled form of what remained of Eli, hating what she saw. She cupped her hand around his chest where the Stone of the Morning Star rested.
Her head snapped back around her shoulders like an owl where Ishtar and Lilith were arguing. Her skin was ivory and cold, her eyes deep hollow pits. The lashes of her eyes had spiraled outward against her sockets.
“ASTARTE!,” Isla roared in three voices, “Kneel before the power of Lucifer!”
Grey hunger was burned away by fiery rage. Yellow resentment was made into bitter sweet love. Cobalt depression corroded iron will. Ruby of frustration shattered sapphire integrity. A cascading supernova of iridescent, shining hope collapsed into an abyssal, inescapable black hole.
Ishtar’s form burned away in scarlet and she screamed in agony.
A circle of emerald flames encircled the Goddess as she obeyed ablaze in hellfire. Lilith looked over to the wrecked form of Eli and twisted version of Isla before her and shook her head.
The ancient witch walked over to the emerald flames and pressed a finger into them. Her pale fingers revealed their misty onyx truth as she touched the edge of the circle. An invisible cylinder appeared above the circle and the green flames died away.
Astarte knelt, nearly nude, her fire had snuffed out. All she wore was a veil of copper around her waist. The Goddess put her head down.
Isla’s shoulders sagged and her head returned itself to its correct position. She looked down to see Eli’s blackened shoulder. His arm had been blown off impartially by the searing sunset light.
He lay there, breathing ragged. They reached for each other. Lilith walked up to them as Isla began to weep and Eli’s breathe slowed.
Lilith pushed Isla out of the way.
“Idiot, girl,” the ancient witch chided, reaching down to grab the Stone of the Morning Star.
Isla came up, enraged. She stomped toward the ancient one.
A warm, golden light erupted from underneath Lilith's hand. Her eyes became alight with amethyst flame.
Isla stopped midstep as she watched the hole and skin in Eli’s arm repair itself.
“Lucifer,” Lilith hissed with extra venom, “was an angel,” she extended her hand and Isla's athame flew through the air. Lilith caught it. Then she dragged Eli up to his feet just to push him right back down.
“And that, boy,” she pointed the angry carrot at Eli, “is why we use tools.”
Isla cried.
Behind Lilith knelt the submitted Goddess.
Venus wept there, trapped at the end of the aisle.
"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
There is no 'wrong' magical model in this system. Magic here is epistemological rather than ontological — a practitioner is never confidently incorrect, only shallow in their understanding.
Two things remain constant across every framework, every tradition, every argument about the nature of magic: there is a blood/life-force cost, and fire burns. Everyone agrees on that.
Thus we arrive at Shane’s Three Laws of Magic
- Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. There is a life-force cost.
- Entropy is always increasing. Fire always burns.
- The laws of physics are valid in all reference frames. You cannot simply ignore physics if you are acting in or on the physical world.
Finally: Isla is the pinnacle hard magic user in the system, a ‘ferromancer’. It is common for mixed magic systems to have an implicit hierarchy with, understandably, softer magic being more powerful than the harder connarrative system. Here I show this does not have to be the case. Isla’s physics is able to overcome Ishtar’s soft colors with emotional alchemy.
If there is outcry I will write the Bull fight.