Live and Let Drood

every direction, striking like solid things with solid blows and supernatural strength. Suddenly they all had huge brutal fists and clawed hands…and a lot of good that did them against my armour. Jagged claws clattered loudly across my golden face and neck and raised showers of sparks as they skidded across my armoured chest; doing no damage at all. I actually relaxed a little. I hadn’t been entirely sure the rogue armour would be as strong and secure as the strange matter I’d grown used to. Shadows smashed and slammed into me from every direction at once, and one dark force hammered into my chest like a battering ram, making my armour sound like a great bell. But they couldn’t even rock me back on my feet.
    The shadows retreated for a moment, shaken.
    Molly filled the chamber with all manner of fierce and dangerous light, throwing mystic attacks at every moving shadow. Terrible energies flared around her hands, and the close air trembled with the impact of the Words she spoke. Dark leaping things exploded as her energies overpowered them, but most of the shadows just opened up holes inside them so that her magics flashed right through them without touching or affecting them at all. They came at her again and again, but she’d already surrounded herself with a shimmering screen that kept them back. The shadows beat at it with their dark fists and cut at the screen with their barbed claws, and none of them even came close to breaking it. I could feel the presence of the protective screen even through my armour. A tingling, not unpleasant sensation.
    The shadow shapes seemed only to have a physical presence whenthey chose to. I lashed out at them and my golden gauntlets passed right through them, as though they were just the shadows they seemed. I couldn’t touch them, couldn’t hurt them, and when I tried to grab them in my golden hands, they squeezed out like inky tar. And all the time they were hitting me again and again, harder and harder. And I couldn’t help noticing that Molly’s protective field was slowly shrinking under the outside pressure, closing gradually but inexorably in on her.
    “Eddie! This is not going well!” said Molly. “I say we use the Merlin Glass and get the hell out of here! We’ve got what we came for!”
    “Already ahead of you,” I said, thrashing wildly around me. “But, unfortunately, some outside force is interfering with my access to the pocket dimension I keep the Glass in. I can’t reach the damn thing!”
    “Typical! I told you to leave it open in case we needed to make a sudden exit!”
    “No, you didn’t!”
    “Well, you should have thought that I would!” said Molly.
    “That makes no sense!”
    “Can we argue about this later? Only I’m just a bit busy at the moment.”
    The shadows lunged forward, falling on us both from all sides at once, wrapping themselves around us like huge shadowy snakes. They lashed our arms to our sides before we even realised what they were doing, and both of us staggered back and forth around the chamber, crashing into the walls and each other, struggling to break free. I set all the strength of my armour against the shadow snakes, but they didn’t give an inch. I could see them tightening remorselessly around Molly’s shimmering screen, forcing it right back against her body, so she had no room to move or manoeuvre. If not for the screen, the sheer pressure of the shadow snakes would have killed her. They tightened even further about me like constrictors. I heard my armour creak and even groan under the inhuman pressure, and I felt the touch of real danger. Because while physical force has limits, magic has none. The rogue armour was good, but it wasn’t the impenetrable strange matter I was used to.
    My mind flashed back to the half-melted Drood armour I’d found at the entrance doors of the ruined Hall. He probably thought his armour would save him, right up to the moment when it didn’t.
    “Sorry, Eddie,” said Molly, just a bit breathlessly. “Normally I’d leave it to you to save the day with some last-minute miracle.…I know how much you love to do that.…But I don’t think my shields will last much longer. I’m going to have to try something.…”
    “Go for it!” I said. “I’ve got nothing. If you’ve got something, hit them with it, with my blessing!”
    “You’re so sweet. Okay, here’s an old trick Walker taught me,” said Molly. “And no one knows the darkness like Henry. Fiat Lux!