Custody Battle - Round 1

On the day before he turned seventeen, Kir was in excruciating pain.

His wing buds had started growing weeks before, such that his back itched constantly as the bones and muscles grew.

His mothers had helped as best they could, even staying up late to keep towels of cold water on his swelling back. They also brought him outside when he asked and in the light of the two moons, Kir screamed as his magic went wild, shaking the very earth beneath him as it escaped his control. His mothers stood nearby, shielded by a lattice formed from magic that he'd taught to Brigit.

Kir didn't want to wreck the house, so he grit his teeth and held on, crying out every time he felt the sharpness of the bone trying to escape his flesh.

He was thinking that death would be preferable when suddenly he heard a tone.

The sound of an instrument drew his attention, and sitting nearby, he saw a man sitting on the grass, strumming a lyre.

Brigit and Darlae watched as the man, unheeding of the magical forces shredding the area, continued to play, until with a massive ripping sound, Kir's wings came free of his back and fanned out into the night.

"Perfect, perfect!" The man said, his voice sonorous and manly in a way Kir would come to envy. "You are far more than I imagined you would be." He put the lyre under his armpit and clapped.

Kir's mothers did not waste time. Brigit gathered water and cleaned off his bloody wings, and Darlae put up her fists.

"The hell are you?" Darlae challenged.

"Me?" The mysterious man chuckled. As the tears cleared from his eyes, Kir got his first clear look at him. "I'm that child's father. You may call me Maledict. That's what the humans call me after all."

He was huge. Darlae was two meters tall, but this man was almost three. He was a human dressed in traveler's clothes, a green tunic and black pants. The lyre and his roguish looks screamed "bard" in Kir's thoughts.

The man tilted his head to the side, peering at Kir. "Boy or-"

"He's our son," Darlae interrupted. "Now back off."

"Darlae," Brigit stood, helping Kir to his feet. "He helped Kir. I saw it. Let's let him speak."

Kir felt top-heavy like his body wanted to fall backward because of how his wings were positioned.

"Obliged, ma'am," the man mimed tilting a hat he didn't have. His hair was black.

"Sorry," Darlae said, keeping her fists up. "But I don't see the resemblance."

"Oh dear elfenin, did you think I would travel the land without a suitable disguise? But I suppose since you disbelieve me..."

The man's body tore his clothes apart as he grew. From his back spouted massive, bat-like wings, and his horns grew thick and pointed like a crown around his skull. His human face became even more chiseled, and pale skin turned red. His ears became pointed, as did his fingers as nails turned into claws. Behind him, a massive tail grew, bashing the earth with a dull thud that Kir could feel even at this distance. And his hair changed color, becoming night-black.

Kir couldn't even begin to imagine how, but the man before him had become the spitting image of a devil, like something out of a video game.

"Hmm... there. Is this more of a resemblance?" his sonorous voice boomed. "Now, give me what is mine. Hell demands its price."

"And what price is that?" Kir said in a hoarse rasp, challenging him with his purple gaze.

"Did your mother not tell you? Or them?" He held up a single finger, "One child, in exchange for learning the magic of a devil." He turned the gesture into an indication of himself with both hands.

"My birthmother abandoned me," Kir said. "I know nothing about her, and I know nothing about what sort of deal you had, but I want no part of it."

"Tragedy... To think an angel would abandon her own child... but I have a contract," Maledict reached into the empty air, and Kir watched as his hand disappeared, reappearing a moment later with a scroll. "Now, unless you have the power to break a contract forged in hell, I will be taking my boy-"

"My name is Kir!"

"-I will be taking Kir to where he rightfully belongs." Maledict crossed his arms, the contract flopping against his side.

Kir was about to protest when he heard a giggling laugh from Brigit. The laugh turned into a cackle, and she held out her arms as if in triumph.

"Why do you laugh, woman?" Maledict asked.

"Is that all? Break a devil's contract?" She held up her hands, and Kir's eyes widened as he recognized what she was about to do. "Hold out that contract. Let me show you the power our son has taught me!"

With an arrogant smirk, Maledict held the contract out at arm's length. Having learned to see magic himself, Kir knew that the initial stages of the spell Brigit was casting would look weak. A mere accumulation of air far below what was needed for even a basic gust of wind. Bit it wasn't simply air that she was gathering, it was hydrogen.

He looked at the contract with enhanced eyes and saw that layer after layer of spell circles protected it, so thick they seemed a unified whole.

The second stage was when the spell got interesting. Magnetic fields were accumulated from the earth below, not taken but bent, rather, to accumulate in a sphere above her.

Brigit was not yet at the level where she could silent-cast the spell, but she had shaped a poem into a chant that helped her through the process.

"First element, simple and pure,

Oh, hydrogen, break, and break again.

Neutrons escape, and electrons converge,

Protons confine, in fields of the heavens!"

She leveled the orb she'd produced toward the contract, and it was then that Maledict's eyes grew wide as saucers.

"This light..." he snarled.

"I unleash thee, NOVA BLAST!"

The beam went strait and true at the contract, and with a fracturing in the air like broken glass, Kir watched as layer after layer of protective magic failed, finally allowing the beam to pierce through. The contract burned away, and far behind, a mountaintop exploded in white-blue light.

Maledict turned, gasping as he saw the devastation wrought by her single spell, cast in under a minute.

"Impossible..." He held the iron scroll rod as he took in the devastation.

Kir, Brigit, and Darlae had a moment to enjoy their triumph before Maledict turned to them...