Here’s your Saturday Flash Fiction. It’s the 50th one posted in my Year of Flash Fiction! Please comment or share if you like it.
What the Shadows do
“Pardon me.” Leo gave the woman he was edging past a tight little smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
She looked up from where she had knelt to wipe a toddler’s face to see that her bags were in his way. With a thought, she made them float higher, clearing the path for Leo to get through. He felt, more than saw, the woman take in the bag hanging from his shoulder and the other in his hand, and give him a look of pity.
So Leo moved on briskly before she could say anything to which he would have to respond.
It had been a long day. His boss had set him to calling delinquent clients again, implying that he wasn’t useful for anything other than cleaning up messes, and that he should do that and free up others for real work. The shadows had whispered to Leo, telling him how easy it would be to wrap his boss up tightly with their arms, slither down his throat and suffocate him slowly.
But Leo had just smiled and accepted the task without giving any indication of what he was thinking, what he was very tempted to do. He was good at doing that, he had lots of practice.
Leo rounded the corner and headed across the plaza, head down, seemingly lost in thought. The voices of the shadows were growing stronger as twilight fell, filling his mind with whispers that made it hard to pay attention to mere humans.
The bolt of electricity that burst in front of him got his attention, though. And it was followed by loud, maniacal laughing which definitely came from outside his head. Another burst, and people fled the plaza as fast as they could.
That’s when Leo got a good look at the source of the laughter. It was a boy in his late teens, shooting the bolts of electricity from his fingertips in an orgy of random destruction.
An Electrical Mage. They were rare. Very rare, especially because they were even more rarely mentally stable. This boy must have been protected carefully, his parents hoping that he would be the exception. But he obviously wasn’t.
Leo looked around. There was only the low, orange rays of the setting sun, which meant that the large numbers of Light Mages around would be useless. Air Mages, the next most common, would be likewise helpless against an Electrical Mage.
Which left him.
He reached out to the shadows.
“Leoskodevrikchobel!” They joyfully greeted him with the full name they had given him. At his wordless urging, the shadows surged up and around the Electrical Mage, binding his hands, stopping his mouth. The bolts of electricity stopped as the boy struggled, helpless.
“Shadow Mage!” The whisper came from a human throat, and held a piercing note of fear.
“Shadow Mage!” Louder, and sounding even more afraid.
Leo kept silent, even though he wanted to shout at them that they were being stupid. He was saving them from a rogue Electrical Mage, they should be grateful, not cowering like he was more dangerous than the electrical bolts the boy had been throwing around a minute before.
A middle-aged couple raced into the plaza, immediately noticeable, going against the flow of all the people leaving. They would be the boy’s keepers, Leo realized. The ones who would ultimately pay for misplacing their charge.
Good. Leo unwrapped the shadows from the boy, and he fell limply to the paving stones. As the couple ran to their charge, Leo wrapped the shadows around himself where no one could see him, or see him leave. He should have known better than to get involved.
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