I sip from my pipping cup of coffee, the flavour and aroma calming and soothing my caffeine craving. The light background chatter of the cafe is lovely white noise as I savour my drink.
My coffee break is the best part of my day, a moment to relax and reflect on my day. The little chats I have here keep me in touch with the local community, making sure I know what's going on in my acquaintances' lives. It's the only thing that prevents me from turning into a total shut-in, focused too much on my experiments and spells.
So I am not happy when a loud crashing sound disturbs my little moment. I open my eyes and focus towards where the noise is coming from, maybe someone crashed a car and needs help or something. Maybe the Driving AI fucked up, it is pretty bad at new things.
But as I look across the street I feel my blood run cold.
There is a small park across the street, a little island of greenery in a sea of plastic and metal. It's a favourite of local children and the elderly to relax and enjoy nature.
But that's not what terrifies me. In the middle of the park is an orb of pure darkness, a hole in the world where nothing exists.
"INCURSION" I shout, a touch of magic in my throat letting my voice carry across the entire block "GET TO THE SHELTERS."
I know what's coming but it doesn't prepare me for the reality as droplets of viscous glistening liquid start dripping onto the ground.
I take out my staff from my bag, cursing myself for leaving the rest of my equipment in my lab. The white staff is about 160 cm of carved and shaped wood, where my mandalas and runic matrices glow with the green glow of my magic.
In the second it has taken me to draw the staff, the liquid begins to coalesce into pools of dark scintillating liquid. From the pool a clawed alabaster hand emerges, attached to a skeletal arm. The rest of the body pulls itself out like a puppet being pulled out of a box, all limp arms and disjointed movement.
I feel fear bubble inside me, the primal fear that kept our ancestors alive in the plains of Africa, the fear of being in the sights of a predator. I pull my magic from my soul, channelling it through my mind, the energy of creation helps buffer me against the psychic assault of the Type 1.
I shape the magic in my mind, Aaron's Mind Ward's matric almost instinctive at this point. I invoke the spell matrice and the glowing runic circle forms in front of me, a verdant green shedding an unearthly light to my features.
As I am casting the spell I notice the panic that is beginning to form around me, people's eyes dilating as the psychic aura of hunter-killer envelops the cafe.
The Type 1 steps fully out of the pool, a bone-white psychic flame burning throughout the skeleton frame made of nano-machines and alien alloys. Its focus is instantly on us, the fear of the crowd drawing the metallic serrated abomination towards us, as a shark attracted to chum.
I am panicking now, I haven't cast combat spells in nigh-on a decade, it's a difficult task at the best of times but especially with the pressure of knowing I am the only person standing between these people and the Incursion before reinforcements arrive.
I add amplification and abjuration array to the Mind Ward Spell, with a pulse of magic the protective spell's glow settles on the entire crowd and they calm down to just normal panic instead of the mind-breaking psychic fear.
The Hunter Killer notices, my spells glow and a perverse smile forms out of the psychic flames shrouding its robotic body. It abandons its previous leisurely approach, merely a breakneck rush to create maximum terror, and taps into its psychic reserves. It vanishes from my sight as the psychic enhancement pushes its superhuman speed into overdrive.
I dodge backwards after seeing it vanish, instinct rather than thought guiding me to stumble back. Barely in the nick of time, it seems, a razor-sharp claw whistling through where my heart was a few second ago. I look at the thing and a bit of hope fills me, its psychic shroud is burning low, that dash had taken most of its meagre reserves.
I draw upon my magic again, but this time I channel my magic through a pendant I wear. An inscribed spell matric burns for a second before Petr's Protective Panoply settles onto my form. An armour made of conjured gold and bronze alloy, inscribed with protective spells and warding schema. It wouldn't hold up for more than a few swipes of the Type 1 but that's not why I conjured it. Petr is a very smart archmage, he understands that a mage isn't a front-line combatant so he designed his spell with a powerful teleport beacon built into the panoply.
It wouldn't normally cut through the passive interference caused by an Incursion but this one was only getting started and it hadn't even built itself any hyperspatial anchors, so the effect on teleportation was only crippling instead of the normally impossible one it is in most incursions.
All that means is that I channel as much magic as my soul can muster into the teleport beacon and just like I hoped, the Atlas Co soldiers teleport into the cafe.
I pass out from the magical exertion, my last sight is of the Type 1 getting obliterated. I hope they can stop the breach before more come through, wouldn't want to be here if they decide to Glass the Colony.
