I Transmigrated Into a Weak Body

Chapter 5

Veronica’s feet kicked wildly in the empty air. She hung three feet off the ground, her small hands clawing frantically at an invisible vice around her neck. Her pale face was rapidly turning a sickening shade of blue. She tried to cry out for her brother, but the magic gripping her throat was too tight. Only weak, choked gasps escaped her lips.

"Veronica!" Brandon roared, his voice cracking with panic. 

He lunged forward, raising the heavy iron hammer in his left hand. With all the strength he had left in his battered body, he swung the hammer directly at Inquisitor Voss's head. 

The hammer stopped dead in mid-air, a full foot away from Voss’s face. It felt as if Brandon had struck a solid wall of invisible steel. The shimmering dome of warped air around the Inquisitor rippled slightly like a puddle hit by a raindrop. The force of the rebound jarred Brandon’s arm so violently that the hammer slipped from his grip, clattering uselessly to the floor. 

Brandon scrambled backward, his mind racing. He grabbed a heavy bronze gear from the ruined worktable and hurled it with all his might. It bounced off the invisible shield and rolled away. He threw a heavy iron wrench, a handful of sharp nails, and a thick wooden stool. 

Everything bounced off. The kinetic shield surrounding Voss was impenetrable. It rejected physical mass with absolute perfection. 

Inquisitor Voss didn't even flinch. He stood perfectly still, his right hand still raised, slowly curling his fingers tighter to strangle the life out of the little girl. Underneath his silver mask, his eyes were cold and full of cruel amusement. 

"Do you know why the Empire rules, boy?" Voss asked, his smooth voice echoing in the damp basement. He spoke slowly, as if he were teaching a lesson to a slow child. "It is not because of our armies. It is because of the natural order of the world. The Sun-King is the head, and you... you are the dirt beneath his boots." 

Voss took a slow step forward. The shimmering shield moved with him, pushing the smoke and ash of the destroyed room out of his way. 

"You think you are clever," Voss continued, his tone dripping with arrogance. "You destroyed a pair of low-level Ward-Stones. You burned my hounds. You believe you have found a crack in the armor of the world. But magic—true magic—is a divine right. It cannot be fought with rusted tools and dirty peasant tricks. Look at your sister, Brandon. Watch her die, and know that it is your fault for trying to break the natural order."

Veronica’s kicking began to slow. Her eyes rolled back slightly. She was losing consciousness. 

“Think,” Brandon ordered himself, shoving down the blinding panic of the original scribe's emotions. “Panic is useless. Emotion is a distraction. Observe the variables. Analyze the problem.”

He stopped throwing things. He fell to his knees behind the long wooden table, breathing heavily, his eyes locked onto Voss’s shimmering shield. 

“How does a kinetic shield work?” Brandon’s engineering mind went to work, processing information at a frantic speed. “It stops the hammer. It stops the wrench. It stops solid mass. It stops things with high kinetic energy.” 

Brandon noticed something important. The shield was pushing away the heavy black smoke from the dead hounds. But Voss was still talking. Voss was still breathing. 

“If the shield stopped everything, it would stop the air. If it stopped the air, Voss would suffocate inside his own bubble. The shield displaces solid mass, but it does not filter gasses! It is porous to air!”

It was a brilliant, fatal design flaw. The magic was designed to stop swords, arrows, and bullets. It wasn't designed to stop a chemist. 

"You have ten seconds before her neck snaps," Voss whispered, savoring his victory. "Beg me, Brandon. Beg me to let her go, and I might just kill you quickly." 

Brandon didn't beg. He moved. 

He dragged his hand across the lower shelf of the worktable. His fingers brushed against a row of large, sealed glass jars. He remembered what they were from the scribe’s memories. They were filled with "Bitter-Water"—a highly volatile alchemical solvent used to clean dried ink off metal printing plates. In chemical terms, it was a heavy, highly flammable ether compound. 

Brandon grabbed the largest jar. It was heavy, filled with a thick, yellow liquid. 

He didn't throw it at Voss. He knew it would just bounce off the shield and break harmlessly away from the target. 

Instead, Brandon rolled the glass jar across the floor, aiming directly for Voss’s feet. 

The jar rolled smoothly over the stone floor. It hit the very bottom edge of the invisible shield and shattered. 

The thick, yellow solvent spilled everywhere, creating a large, rapidly evaporating puddle right at the edge of the Inquisitor’s kinetic bubble. 

The strong, sweet smell of ether instantly filled the air. Because the solvent was evaporating into a gas, and because Voss’s shield allowed air to pass through, the heavy, flammable fumes flowed straight into the protective bubble. 

Voss looked down at the broken glass and the yellow puddle, then looked back at Brandon and laughed. "Are you trying to make me slip, boy? Or did you just drop your toys?" 

"I'm trying to teach you chemistry," Brandon said, his voice cold. 

Brandon reached into his pocket. When the guard’s Ward-Stone had exploded in the alley, Brandon had kept a tiny, fractured piece of the blue crystal clutched in his left hand. The broken shard was no longer a stable circuit; it was leaking raw, unstable magic, sparking weakly like a dying lighter. 

Brandon struck the blue shard hard against the iron leg of the table. 

A shower of hot, blue magical sparks shot out, flying across the room and landing directly in the puddle of evaporating solvent. 

The solvent ignited instantly. But it did not explode like a bomb. It burned. It created a sudden, massive, roaring bonfire of thick, orange flames that completely encircled the bottom of Voss’s kinetic shield.