Live and Let Drood

silver sides, falling away forever. And while Drood armour can do many marvellous things, flying isn’t one of them. Luckily, I was blessed with really good reflexes. Even as the hole appeared and I started to fall, I was already throwing myself forward. I grabbed onto the edge of the hole as I fell past it. My metal fingers sank deep into the wooden floor, crunching and splintering the floorboards. My fall stopped abruptly, my whole weight hanging from the single handhold.
    I looked down and immediately wished I hadn’t. The terrible endless drop seemed to grab hold of my gaze, hypnotising me. It took a realeffort of will to jerk my gaze away and look up at my handhold. Hollis was standing right over me, grinning. He stamped down hard on my golden hand and hurt his foot. He fell back from the hole, cursing loudly. Molly leaned over the hole from the other side.
    “I don’t like to intrude…but do you by any chance need a hand?”
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I can manage.”
    I hauled myself up by brute strength, until I could get a second handhold, and then pulled myself up and out of the hole. The moment I had my feet back on the floor again, the hole disappeared. Inside the armour I was shaking just a bit, but no one else could tell. I nodded quickly to Molly and then looked over at Hollis. He scowled at me and plucked something out of the air. He held it up triumphantly before him, a shiny sparkling thing I couldn’t seem to look at properly, even with all the filters and amplifications built into my mask. The thing seemed to twist and turn in Hollis’s hand, as though its shape and nature were constantly changing. Hollis laughed aloud.
    “The answer to Drood armour: a supernatural can opener! I don’t know why no one’s ever thought of it before!”
    And before I could tell him why, he came surging forward to slam the shining thing against the side of my neck. It shattered immediately in Hollis’s hand, falling apart into a hundred shiny pieces. Hollis cried out, as much in shock and rage as pain, and darted backwards, shaking his stunned hand. I was grinning easily behind my mask.
    “People did think of it before,” I said. “Lots and lots of them. But this…is Drood armour. Why settle for less?”
    “Oh, well,” said Hollis, between gritted teeth as he shook his hand to get the feeling back into it, “Worth a try…Tell you what: Why don’t we try this sneaky little thing I’ve been saving for a rainy day? Specially designed to blast strange matter out of this world and back where it came from!”
    He raised his left hand again, and strange energies curled and whorled around it, twisting and turning in complex patterns. Hollis threw them at me, and the energies shot forward and splashed across my armour, only to sputter out and fade away almost immediately,unable to get a grip. Hollis just stood there and stared at me, blinking dazedly. I could have told him I was wearing rogue armour without a speck of strange matter in it, but why spoil the fun? Hollis said a few baby swear words that you wouldn’t expect from a hardened ex-SAS officer, and actually stamped his foot on the floor in frustration.
    “Bastard sold me a pup! Last time I buy anything from a Nightside street trader!”
    “Hell,” I said. “I could have told you that.”
    He looked at me. “Don’t you laugh at me, Drood. Don’t you do that.”
    Molly came forward to stand beside me, and fixed Hollis with a cold, considering stare. “You’ve been ignoring me, soldier boy. And that is never a good idea.”
    She threw a whole series of fireballs at him, one after the other. Big balls of yellow sulphurous flames, crackling fiercely on the still air. Hollis threw one arm up and the fireballs slammed up against an invisible barrier, stopping dead in their tracks. Molly sniffed briefly and switched to throwing balls of spitting and sizzling energies. Hollis didn’t stick around to find out whether his barrier would stop them; he was already off and moving, ducking and dodging. He jumped up onto the nearest wall and ran along it, and then switched to running upside down on the ceiling, laughing breathlessly. Molly pursued him with her energy balls, but he was moving so fast she couldn’t keep up with him. The energy balls just ran out of steam before they could reach him, and fell apart. Hollis jumped down onto the other wall and I was right there, matching his speed with my own. I grabbed one ankle with a golden hand and