You can't rip someone's life away with magic, like some kind of mad medbot in a horror vid. Conjuring magic is like drawing up water. It's fragile and vanishes easily. And you're holding your mind in the water. Anything living in it will bite you.

  You can channel force along a magical conduit, though. That's what mages do, they conjure force, then apply it to the world directly, funneling it through their minds. It's a very powerful way of manipulating magic.

  It's also a very easy way of frying your brain. Which is the reason you don't see many dirt mages around. Anyone can stumble onto the ability to conjure. Doing it safely requires training and skill.

  I didn't have that sort of skill. I could ward with the best of them, but weaving threads and infusing wards was clean, stable, and headache-inducing. The one time I'd tried conjuring directly, boiling a small drop of water, I'd ended up with a three-day migraine, a massive nose-bleed, and a floor covered in vomit.

  But all living beings can feel magic. Tap someone and they get the shivers, that feeling of someone staring at you, a snake crawling down your back, a gun about to go off. Tap someone hard enough, and it's like hitting their funny bone. Everything jerks. Best distraction ever.

  When it works.

  I tapped the four alert Syndic grunts, all at once. It felt like ramming my face into a steel wall while on fire, hot, ringing, and extremely painful all at once. My eyes flashed with black and grey spots, momentarily obscuring my vision.

  But I was already rolling to the side, drawing my gun.

  Everything went voidmucking crazy.

  I fired from the hip, two, three, four times, letting the recoil raise my aim. My first bullet hit between a jerking Syndic's legs. My second went higher, just beneath his groin. My third hit his pelvis, ripping him backward, the fourth cracked shards of concrete from the wall between him and the next grunt.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Hao reacted, badly, yelling and grabbing for her crowbar. Talain froze, started turning. But Gier dropped to one knee, his Chimer up and flashing.

  A bullet cracked into my wards, shattering one, the break drilling a cold nail into my head. I adjusted my aim, got the second grunt in the chest with little effect. His carbine shattered another of my wards.

  The sergeant fell, blood spraying from beneath his chin. Geir'd gotten a lucky shot. My next bullet hit the grunt in the shoulder, beneath the armor, ripping it open and throwing him backward.

  His pal fired a grenade.

  The bunker burst, everything going up in flames. The air was suddenly flaying, ripping from my lungs, everything bright, everything flashing.

  My wards cracked, buckled, shattered, the burning incendiary parting for me like a waterfall of white fire. The heat rolled against me, shattering another ward, my hair crisping. Someone screamed.

  I grabbed for Hao, pushing myself away from a stream of molten metal, thermite, white phosphorous, uranium, something I didn't know. It flowed over the floor, hotter than a nova, spewing thick, white smoke. My hand found Hao's leg, and I pushed.

  She jerked, kicked. A massive blow drove me back to my knees, another ward shattering. Her crowbar flashed upward for another strike, her too-blue eyes wild.

  "Not me!" I yelled, getting to my feet, grabbing Gier and hauling him forward. Hao got the message, her flailing crowbar turning at the last moment, and she took over, moving toward the bunker opening, Geir in tow.

  Where was Talain?

  Someone shot, the bullet cracking into concrete. I fired two more rounds into the smoke, searching for Talain.

  I found the Syndic sniper, his head a black, charred mess, half-off his neck, his back on fire.

  Instinctively, I jerked back, fear and revulsion stabbing through my gut. I needed to breathe, but there was no air. Out, I had to get out.

  No. Talain. She'd been on the other side of the sniper.

  I forced myself onward, my lungs burning. My mageshield kept me alive, but it wouldn't filter out an entire fire.

  I found something soft. An arm, in black armor, not the Syndics' green-and-tan. Talain. I pulled. Maybe she pushed. I couldn't tell. We made our way toward the door.

  Someone stumbled into us, grappling me. I fired the M3. Nothing. Empty.

  Drop it. Pull the flameblade.

  Stupid. The whole bunker was on fire. Trip the grunt, get out.

  We got. By the door, Hao helped us, pulling.

  Gier was on the ground, coughing and crawling on all fours, his rifle butt sticking up above his shoulder. A Syndic grunt lay beside him, blood seeping from a crack beneath the half-melted polymer of his helmet. Another grunt stumbled out, his arm on fire, and Hao whipped her crowbar around, shattering his visor, splattering his face.

  He stumbled back into the fire, and didn't come out.

  Talain collapsed, unmoving.