Prison of Hope by Steve McHugh

magic really was, let alone know how to use it. Tommy would never shut up about it.
    “This is pathetic,” Robert said from somewhere behind me. “Sarah said that sorcerers can’t fight for shit without their magic, but damn, boy, I figured you’d be able to put up a bit of a struggle .”
    I rolled onto my front and got back to my knees without anyone trying to fight me. I was hoping that in their own small victory, they’d gained a measure of confidence that I wasn’t someone to be concerned about. One of my attackers, the larger smoker, grabbed my jacket again and pulled me upright, shoving me back against the nearest car and punching me in the stomach.
    “This is fun,” the man said.
    “You smell awful,” I informed him.
    The man grabbed me by my hair and pulled my head back with enough force that I thought he was going to tear my hair out. “Not as big as you thought you were, are you?”
    “One thing,” I said softly. “You need to know one thing.”
    “And what’s that?” he asked, his tone mocking, as the stench of his breath filled my nostrils.
    I drove my cupped palms onto his head, one over each ear, with enormous force, possibly bursting an eardrum. Smoker released me and yelled out in pain. I whipped my head forward with speed and ferocity, driving my forehead into his nose with everything I had. The bridge of his nose crunched under the blow, and he staggered back as blood streamed down his face. I stepped forward, smashing my forearm into his face and then pushing him roughly onto the ground.
    I took a deep breath and then breathed out as one of the four remaining men rushed toward me. I deflected his punch, slamming my palm into his throat. He dropped to his knees like he’d been shot, gasping for breath. I grabbed his long dark hair and drove his face into the headlight of the nearest car. I sensed movement behind me and spun round, catching the third man in the jaw with a kick, and then whipped the same leg down onto the choking man, using my knee to bury his face into the remains of the headlight. His face was now a mass of tiny shards of safety glass and plastic.
    If you’re going to fight a group, you go in hard and fast. The same can be true for any fight, to be honest, but when you’re outnumbered, you want to drop those against you to a manageable level as quickly as possible. Of course, a big rule is also not to get taken off your feet, but I’d managed to fail that in the first ten seconds.
    After my initial weariness from Sarah’s spell, my energy had started to increase, and apart from the lack of magic, I felt okay. I was pretty sure the three injured men on the tarmac around me couldn’t say the same.
    “Are we done here?” I asked no one in particular.
    Their answer was immediate: the fourth man rushed forward and jabbed at my face, which I blocked, but he’d forced me to step back, directly into the path of another of Robert’s dangerous kicks. I moved to block the blow, but Robert saw it coming, and instead of catching me in the side of the head, he shifted his stance mid-kick and hit me in the chest.
    The power behind the kick was immense, and I was forced to take several steps back as my chest screamed in pain. Robert grinned and started bouncing from foot to foot, shifting his stance with every few bounces so I couldn’t tell which leg he was going to kick with.
    His friend decided my plan for me. He moved forward while my attention was on Robert and threw a vicious hook to my jaw. He knew that I would either dodge back, right into a waiting Robert’s path, or I’d block the blow, which would open me up to a second punch, this time to the gut. I stepped back, gaining Robert’s attention, his foot leaving the tarmac. I darted forward and grabbed the fourth man’s arm, immediately turning and dragging him off balance, forcing him to stagger into Robert’s line of fire. Robert’s leg was already moving faster than it had before—the trick of changing stances