Rise of the Night Witch

Chapter 3.7 - Wet Grave

Recap: Last time, Marissa accidentally let the Nuckelavee (an undead centaur) manifest in the real world and now they have to fight it in the PPE Library.

No way we could fight this beast. Had the Nuckelavee's rider stopped rocking back and forth like a corpse and sat straight on its skinless horse, it'd have crushed through the library's ceiling. Being big didn't make it slow either. That fin-legged horse outpaced vehicles if it wanted. When the monster struck, it did so in an instant.

Joints cracked as the rider spun its body 360 degrees and swung its arms at every bookshelf in reach. Dominoes after dominoes toppled over around me. Half-a-dozen paperbacks hit me in the chest while a crackling tome punched my skull before the wooden frame holding them collapsed on top of me. I'd have died had Siris not pushed me away from the books and below an empty shelf space (thanks for that, man).

I lived, but I couldn't see anything, not even with the night vision potion, and those heavy books hurt my chest. I could barely breathe. Every time I tried to inhale, my lungs felt like my ribs were stabbing them, though it wasn't just the books. Didn't I also breathe in the Nuckelavee's poison? If I got the mortasheen now, nodular lesions would form in my lungs before I painfully suffocated as Mrs. Turner did.

I didn't want to die. Unfortunately, without the right breathing technique, I couldn't focus on channeling enough aether. Sorry, but my inner Zen needs fresh air!

Luckily, my fingers found my plastic bag, my Magia Phone, and my rod while touching around in this dark coffin of a toppled-over wooden frame. Once I grabbed my rod, Siris came closer.

"Things aren't looking good, boss," he said.

"No, they don't. But my necklace looks pretty!"

I clutched my rod and despite my lack of breath, I got in enough concentration that I made my mother's necklace shine for a brief moment. White ripples of aether poured over every nook and cranny of the toppled-over bookshelf, stroking it like a doctor searching for a patient's weak spots. There was a small hole in its side. I got my arm under it and, through a mix of muscle power and aether channeling, I lifted it a crack up so that I saw Darcy fight the monster.

She stood two shelves away from me, her feet apart shoulder-wide, one hand on her bracelet and the other forming a white line reaching to her staff. Her staff wasn't held in her hands. Instead, a white aether line connected to her familiar Lyfa pressed the staff's iron end into the Nuckelavee's exposed flesh.

The monster screamed, yet twitching muscles showed that its paralysis wouldn't last.

Darcy, seeing me from the corner of her eye, made a gesture, and part of her life energy cloud flew over to me and gave me the strength to lift the wooden frame off my neck. I stood up.

"How can I help?" I yelled.

Darcy closed her eyes and focused her mind on the staff pressed against the Nuckelavee, but just as I asked the question, her white aether line disappeared and her weapon dropped to the ground. Lyfa disappeared, too, and Darcy's eyes widened. She punched her bracelet, but the owl familiar didn't return."What are you trying to do, young Miss?"

A man with holes in his pants and stains on his plaid suit stood in the doorway. He greeted us with a toothless smile that disappeared when he saw the Nuckelavee.

The homeless man from before was back. No idea how he got past the police tape, but when I tried to remove it, the Veil activated itself as he watched me. Now, his presence blocked Darcy's magic.

Which meant we were going to die!

The Nuckelavee was the only one of us not restrained by the Veil. Normally, monsters had to wear a glamour where mundanes might see them and only affect them in ways that could be explained otherwise. The Nuckelavee had no such restrictions now. The gigantic undead centaur and the tiny mortal man eyed each other with mutual curiosity as the monster slowly approached its victim.