The Debt Collector (Patreon)

Just a warning, this one has a lot of curse words and a mention of drugs. Reader discretion is advised.

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A sharp pulse of abnegation mana struck Cora’s left arm, slipping through the table she was crouching behind a a shield. For a moment, the dull gray zero-steel that ran through it glowed brighter, blocking the foreign magic, but the Association agent’s grade-three spell was too strong. She was forced to watch as the carefully constructed enchanted arrays that ran through her arm were shut down, and the weight, normally offset by the power flowing through a lightening stone, reasserted itself. 

“Shit,” she muttered, then scrambled with her good arm, looking for a weapon. 

“Come out, Cora,” came the voice of the Association agent from across the now-empty food court. “This doesn’t need to end with your death. We’re going to give you ten seconds to surrender peacefully. Ten… Nine…”

Of course it didn’t. Death was inefficient. Better to use her spirit as a power generation core to further the Tower elites. Fuck, she hated her parents for leaving her to the mercy of these shitbags. 

She pulled the gun from her back pocket and scrambled for some ammo in her coat to load into it. People didn’t tend to rely on guns much, but Cora had always liked them. They didn’t trip most wards, and even if a bullet could be blocked by a grade-one protective spell, that still put it above the performance of a knife or arrow. 

And Cora’s bullets… 

Well, she carried a stock of ordinary bullets for when she needed to get past wards, but she also had some more… specialty… rounds. 

There! 

She loaded the bullet made out of zero-steel into the clip, quickly followed by her strongest, a bright red mineral she thought was called summerlead or something, then ordinary bullets. 

“Two,” the agent was calling out when Cora popped up from behind the table and fired onto him, sending her magic into the bullet, which fizzed blue-gray as it impacted the man’s shield. Sparks flew, and the man slashed out with his wand, releasing a crescent of force that rocketed toward her, but she’d already fired her second shot. 

The summerlead exploded into a bright ball of fire the size of a pumpkin, and the agent’s shield shattered. 

She unloaded the rest of her bullets into him, hoping to kill or at least injure him long enough that she could get away, but her one handed grip combined with the weight of her currently inactive arm shifting her position caused the shots to rush through the air on either side of the agent, who had already called up a shimmering force armor that would be able to block any further shots.

Cora turned and ran, fleeing down a hallway of the mall, passing by an illusory brothel and wyldcine parlor that released fumes that stained the world in shades of mauve. Behind her, she could hear the clipping sound of the agent’s shoes on the tile, and people were already scattering. 

Nobody wanted to get in between an Association debt collector and their prey, so they’d left the food court when he’d arrived, but a shootout was no reason for them to abandon their shopping. 

Even as the agent entered this hall, she could already see people heading back into the food court, ready to order their meals, as they cleared out of the hallway.

The agent aimed his wand and released a burst of spells at her, simple force missiles that curled in her direction, hammering against her coat. Her own protections were only grade-two magical defenses, so this left long gashes and tears, and she felt the hot stinging pain that lanced through her body. 

“Last chance, Cora,” the Association agent said. “Come with me, and this can all be resolved peacefully. You have defaulted on your debts and repayment is needed.” 

There! 

Cora flexed her hands and cast a pair of spells. Both were grade-one spells, and she was only newly a grade-three, so they were still far weaker than the agent’s, but it was still enough. 

The first spell conjured a massive cloud of swirling metallic sand, whipping through the hall and obscuring the vision of her and her opponent. Several force bolts ripped through space around her, and one even struck her prosthetic arm, but even disabled, it was still made of stern stuff, and it did little else.

The second spell lifted the sewer’s manhole cover up, and she desperately hoped that the agent hadn’t heard the screech of metal on metal over the roar of protests over the Metalcloud spell. 

Cora jumped down the hole, using the spell to lower it back into place, while directing a flow of mana into her arm…

Which was promptly eaten by the abnegation mana still disabling its functions. 

Fuck! How much power had he put into that thing? There was no way he’d just cast it himself like that, it had to come from his wand. 

But agents were always well equipped. 

Cora bit back a scream as she hit the stone of the sewer tunnel, and felt her ankle crunch. Pure willpower combined with the years of practice kept her leaning against the wall soundlessly as she pulled the amulet from around her neck and fed a spark of mana into the complex locking mechanism. It popped open to reveal her single greatest treasure. 

A bloodstone. 

The powerful stone hummed with energy, far stronger than what she could normally control. For all that her parents had fucked her over, at least they’d been too stupid to be able to open this locket. If they had, then the stone would have been sold to pay off some of their debts. 

The arcanist level natural treasure could have, maybe, covered a third of the debt they’d wracked up from the corporation. 

She studied the stone. The treasure had a lot of power, but she was too weak to replenish that power more than fractionally, even with her unloading everything she didn’t need for maintaining her arm and survival. There were maybe three good uses left in it before its energy would be drained too much to use.

As the manhole cover overhead began to shift, she slapped the stone against her foot and felt the powerful surge of healing. She stuffed it back into her locket and took off down the sewer again, loading bullets into her gun as she did.

The Tower-City of a Thousand Worlds, ostentatious name it may be, was one of the greatest feats of spatial magic engineering in history. Some even said it was the greatest. It was the only place in the world where public transit was done by portal, rather than flight or enchanted carriage.

And the sewers were the greatest public transit system in the city. 

Most people didn’t know about it, of course. Most people didn’t think about where their waste went. So what if nearly the entire country was made of demiplanes, astral planes, folded spaces, shadow planes, and more? Shit was shit. Nobody cared where it went, so long as it wasn’t near them. 

Cora wasn’t most people. 

Each demiplane had its own sewer system, but all of them were connected via portal to a single, massive demiplane. Her fellow streetrats and undegrounders affectionately referred to it as the shitplane.

Cora only slowed her sprint as she came near the portal that led to the shitplane and slapped her hand against the wardstone, drumming out the pattern of whirls and spirals in its ungated mana to unlock the wards. Tower officials changed the password every few weeks, in an attempt to stop exactly this from happening, but someone always managed to crack it before too long.

The wards vanished and Cora rushed through the portal. 

The other side wasn’t altogether that different, a low stone hall that ran alongside the river of sewage, angled slightly. Where it was differentiated was mainly the fact that there was an open entrance. She walked over to it and glanced around. 

Hundreds of halls floated in midair against the faint blue sheen of the Space King’s magic, each one of them unloading their sewage into the pit. At the bottom of the pit was, perhaps, the largest ooze in the world. The puddle of toxic yellow goop was easily bigger than a house – and Cora meant a rich person’s house, not a cramped apartment or sleep pod. It devoured all of the sewage, using its acid to break it down and transform it into more ooze. 

Then a pair of force bolts whizzed through the portal, and Cora realized something very important. She turned around and slapped the wardstone on this side, attempting to re-enable the wards, but it was too late. 

The Association agent stepped through and leveled his wand at her, the blue tip glowing menacingly. 

“Cora Catelyn,” the agent said. “You owe half a million kryts owed to the Arkstone Company in back rent and interest, two hundred thousand kryts to the Twenty-Story Gambling Corporation of unpaid bids, four hundred thousand to the theft of twenty pounds of allyiane dust from Shashire Providers, and five thousand for the hiring of me by the Association of Allied Corporations. How will you be paying?” 

A bitter taste rose up in Cora’s throat as she stared down the agent. In what world was it even remotely fair that she was able to inherit her parent’s debts? Why should she have a target on her back because her parents were awful?

“Nothing to say?” he said, a cruel smile on his face. “Well, I’ll take that as payment in service, then.” 

Cora felt a weight lifted off of her. 

Literally. 

The enchantments in her arm slowly returned to life, and the lightening stone she’d locked into the shoulder joint began to spread its magic through the arm. 

“Eat shit!” Cora said, her limp and heavy arm snapping out, enchantments glowing brightly as they sprung to life once again. She grabbed his metal wand, and the crackling blue lightning at her fingertips shot down the length, causing him to drop the wand. She shoved it into her pocket, but the Association agent slammed his hand into her chest, releasing a Force Pulse spell that sent her flying back.

He leapt off the stone as well, ready to catch her if she fell, so that she could work as a generation core for the companies. If she didn’t fall, he’d resume the battle. 

Her enchantments rerouted to the lightening stone, and then spread into her as she floated above the ooze far below. Cora couldn’t fly, not exactly, but she could hover, at least for a while. 

Seeing this, the agent raised his hands and a half dozen force bolts swept towards her, and Cora released her enchantment and plummeted towards the ooze far below, using an ungated spell meant to levitate small objects to push her, angling her fall. She reactivated the stone with less mana to stop her from and landed in the lowest of the tunnels. It led to one of the worst parts of the city, and she started swirling her ungated mana to get through. 

The agent was hot on her heels, though, his own force-based flight more than enough to catch up. As Cora dove through the portal, she pulled her gun free with her human hand and unloaded into the swirling energy. 

The agent barreled through a moment later, the bullets pinging off his omnidirectional shield, formed of overlapping force octagons. Cora cursed – she’d thought that had been from an enchantment, like how he’d used the abnegation spell. 

“Just surrender,” the agent said. “We don’t kill our enemies.” 

Cora rolled her eyes. Magically-reinforced slavery contracts weren’t exactly better than death. 

But there was a reason she’d chosen the lowest of the tunnels, and she could see it, while the agent couldn’t. Slowly, creeping through the portal, globs of yellow ooze began to appear. 

“Fine,” she said, stalling for time. “But I want to negotiate terms.” 

“Take off the arm and gu–ahk!” 

The ooze grabbed around his ankle with its acidic touch, having melted through his shield without the agent even noticing. 

That was the thing with acidslimes. Their acid ate through just about anything – magic included. 

It would also eat just about any form of biomass – waste, sure, but humans too.

As the ooze slowly subsumed the agent, Cora slapped her hand on the wardstone, and the ooze fell apart. She turned and ran towards the nearby metal ladder.

It would be able to eat through the wards, sure…

But not before she could climb out of the sewer.