|
The sun had gone down while I was doing battle. That did not necessarily mean anything, but it did expand the number of possibilities. It could be anything from the Sidhe to vampires. I sped down the road just absorbing the white flashes of the photo radar, weaving in and out of traffic in a fashion that was barely legal. Even in traffic it only took me ten minutes to get to my street. I parked the bike on the curb a hundred yards away, and armed myself. I threw the tweed into the sidecar and donned my gray warden's cloak. I strapped on my buckler, put on my helmet and strapped my scabbard to my belt. Thus armed and in my full armor I stalked toward my home.
If a home was a man's castle, mine was besieged. Surges of sorcerous power slammed against the inner wards, crawling across the now brightly illuminated sphere of energy that shielded my dwelling, runes and sigils of protection ebbed and flowed across the glowing dome. The air around the ward shimmered, letting off the energy it absorbed into the air, and the ground shook from similar discharges. The birds were silent and the neighbors were instinctively huddled behind what meager protection their thresholds provided.
As I approached I felt a cold wind that could only indicate one thing. Vampires. I could not tell which court. As I got closer, I saw the cadre of sorcerers. They pounded the battlements of Frostenschloß with everything from fire to electricity. One of them even drove a hand to the ground and tried to seismically shake down the house through the wards. I opened my Sight, and saw their power raking against the persistent spell.
It hit me then before I willed it closed that they lacked the raw power to brute force the wards. They were assaying them, pounding them with magic in the hopes of finding a weakness that would allow them to take it down with less brute strength, perhaps an amount they did possess.
I did not know of any such weakness in my defenses but I was only human. Their testing it was not something I could abide. I began to draw in power. Not from my own will, but from the air around me. The night was cool, but as I drew in energy in the form of heat my breath became mist before me. I sucked in the heat and converted into raw power with which to fuel my opening strikes. My body tingled, my fingers and toes burned and my vision began to constrict from the power I held.
I drew my sword with an intentionally loud sound of metal grinding on the steel bindings of its leather casing, set the butt of my staff on the ground and held my sword pointed forward in challenge.
“ Once I say to thee, as a Warden of the White Council, withdraw from this field and get thee hence, Or I shalt lay thee and thine low!” I used a tiny bit of will to cause my voice to boom through the night air. They did not speak. Instead they turned to face me and I could see them for what they were. Their flesh masks were gone and they no longer appeared as men or women. There were six of them, three males, three females. They were bat-things. Grey leathery skin stretched over a gaunt frame, the women with flabby breasts and heads that looked like those of an appropriately blood sucking central american bat. They moved faster than was humanly possible to array themselves to that I could not easy get all of them with a single spell and began to summon forth their own dark energies.
Vampire magic did not come from the same source that mind did. It was drawn partially from the blood they consumed, and partially from the pain and suffering of others, whereas mine came from the emotions, aspirations, and very life of every living thing. Theirs was a perversion.
They had to draw energy to them, while I had it already stored for use. I had the initiative, so I pointed my blade at one of the six and forced my will through it.
“Levitas!” I snarled, and brilliant azure lightning sprang from the blade of my sword with a deafening clap of thunder and struck one of the six vampires, one of the females. It threw her back and her charred corpse hit the ground. The other vampires sent power, fire and lightning lanced toward me from their outstretched fingers, but I was ready for them. With another effort I thrust the tip of my sword to the asphalt.
“Parietis ex terra!” The ground rose to meet their strikes in a chest high embankment that I ducked behind. The smell of burning sand and asphalt hit my nose in a wave as destructive energies licked across the surface of my earthen breast work, leaving me otherwise untouched. I did that because I was not sure my shield could defend me against that much magic. Earth magic on the other hand had the advantage of momentum. If one moves the earth, it stays where you put it with no need to maintain the spell. It did have the disadvantage of screening their movements though. Something moved in the hedges to my left, and a vampire in normal human form came at me with a machete. If I got up to defend myself properly I would be open to the spells of the sorcerers, but I had other tricks up my sleeve. I raised my buckler, showing the vampire the pentacle etched into its surface. It was the vessel of my faith. The symbol of the one thing I really believed in, Magic. The pentacle was the symbol for the powers of the universe bound in a circle of human thought. That faith erupted from the buckler like the light of the sun. The vampire threw itself backward, shield its eyes. Its flesh mask burned away leaving its true form. The ugly bat-thing hissed in a way that no human could imitate.
Then with a whistling sound an arrow struck it in the chest. It reeled back again, and another arrow slammed into its stomach, a few seconds later another in its throat. It hit the ground hard and I looked back to see Lucien standing in a lawn, his squad car parked on the curb. He was clad in armor. A hundskull helmet with its visor raised over its head, a coif of chain draping over his neck, he had on a combination of chain and plate armor that was popular in the mid 14th century. He had a buckler strapped to his left arm, a sword at his hip and longbow was in his right arm. He was drawing another arrow from a patch of them he set in front of him. He drew back the bow and sent the arrow downfield at one of the sorcerers who batted it out of the air with an effort of will.
I smiled broadly, very happy to see him, but he would be vulnerable there. I would have to cover him so he could get behind the safety of my embankment. I raised myself over the embankment and pointed my staff over it. The vampires were waiting for me to present them with a target, but I once again had the initiative. I forced much of the power I had gathered around me through my sword, and called fire with a loud shout.
“Incendia! Incendia ex abyssus!” A whirling vortex of blue flame materialized in front of me and with an effort of will I sent it down field. The vampires scrambled to shield themselves and little domes of energy wove around them and were engulfed in fire, but there were only four of them present. Where was the fifth?
A shield collapsed and the male vampire sheltered underneath it was consumed by fire, his inhumanly high pitched shrieks of pure agony carried through the air as flesh blackened and flaked away and bone charred. The fire died away as the fifth vampire exploded over my embankment. Darkness snaked from its hands and tendrils of shadow and I raised my shield against it. The energy sapped my shield, causing it to flicker.
My heart began to quicken, if something that could drain my shield like that touched my skin I was a dead man. I poured energy into the shield, unable to do much of anything while the attack was maintained. The earth began to shake as I heard shouts from where the other vampire sorcerers were located. My embankment began to disappear back into the earth, which would leave me fatally exposed.
Lucien hit the vampire at a full sprint, bowling into it and disrupting the concentration necessary for the vampire to maintain the spell. I had now used the power I had drawn to me before the battle started. I would have to be more judicious in rationing the use of my reserves of energy, which came purely from my own desires and willpower. I raised over what was left of my rampart and thrust my staff forward.
“Impetus” I screamed, sending a ball of kinetic energy toward the vampire earth-mage who was dismantling my defense. It slammed into his chest like a speeding car. Then I went to help Lucien. The surprise of his attack had been expended and the vampire had him pinned to the ground, its long tongue slathering over his armor trying to touch his skin. I brought back my sword and stabbed the abomination through the back of the skull, and helped Lucien get its skill corpse away from on top of him. We huddled behind the barrier for a second catching our breath as chanting reached a crescendo in the background.
“Thanks Lucien.” I told him breathlessly. “You really saved my ass.” He smiled and replied.
“Well I figured with all of the other things I have done to it, I owed it to you to save it just this once.” I snorted.
“That spell cant be good.” I told him. Then I felt the power gather, the heat sucked from the air and knew immediately what it was. I pulled Lucien's steel encased body close to me and a bubble of pressurized air around the both of us then extended my shield. A storm of fire washed over the ridge of earth and asphalt that shielded us and crashed against my shield. It was not the fire that was the problem. The flames were not supernaturally hot, and while it took a lot of energy to hold them back my shield and my willpower were up to the task, though I did not know for how much longer I could keep this up. My knees were starting to become weak.
The problem was suffocation. Magical fire behaved like normal fire once it was created. While its fuel source was the willpower of the person or thing casting the spell, it still required oxygen to continue burning and a fire this large would suck the air out of your lungs ans asphyxiate you even if the flames never actually touched your skin. I heard the dull roar as wind fueled the flames, and my shield's air supply started to leak.
“Hold your breath, we will have to outlast them.” I told him before sucking in a deep breath. He did the same. After about thirty seconds my lungs started to burn. I concentrated on maintaining the shield, telling my body and its pathetic need for oxygen to sit down and shut up. It was better to risk suffocation than allow immolation to become a certainty. I realized somewhere in there that they were taking turns. The inferno that engulfed us was not continuous, rather it started and stopped as each sorcerer was forced to stop by the expenditure of energy and another took up the slack. Of the three vampires I could account for only two distinct magical signatures in the spell, each time it stopped and started the fire felt slightly different against my shield and these distinct identities alternated. What was the third doing?
About fifteen seconds after that the flames died down. I was sweating bullets from the residual heat that had bypassed my shield, as air rushed in to replace that which the fire had consumed. I took in a shuddering breath and looked up. The vampires were gone, and a demon stood in their place.
“Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me?” I whined in exasperation. This one was not like the last one I had faced. It stood crouched on all fours, great clawed talons gripping the pavement. Massive bat-like wings extended into the air. Its head was like that of a giant toothed eagle, and it had no tail. What it did have was tough leathery skin.
It launched itself into the air and Lucien took up his bow and sent a goose-feathered shaft toward the demon, but his timing was wrong the downbeat of the wings sent the arrow off course. The creature flew over us and then swung around. I set my staff into the ground like a pike against a cavalry charge and drew upon my power.
“Impetus Valde!” I screamed slamming my will through the staff and sending a lance of kinetic force at the oncoming monster. It hit the flying beast square in the chest and did not seem to even effect it. It came screeching toward me with its rear talons outstretched, hitting me full in the chest. However demons were not the beings of hell that they are commonly thought of. With the exception of outsiders they were just beings from the nastier places in the Nevernever, and they were vulnerable to iron. It did not impale me like it thought it would. Instead its claws did not penetrate my steel mail. Its talons erupted into green flames that threatened to consume its legs.
The demon screeched a high pitched keening wail of pain, as did I as the impact hit my already broken ribs. I was sent flying backward and hit the pavement hard about five meters from my original position and scraped bodily against the street for another two before coming to a rest. My armor and arming coat had taken the worst of it, but I was experiencing truly exquisite levels of pain. I moaned on the ground stunned for a few seconds, unable to move.
The demon climbed again and came back around for another pass. Lucien knocked another arrow, drew the bowstring back between his cheek and ear and lined up his shot. The demon's wings came down, and then as they drew back up he released his arrow. The iron broadhead he let loose plunged like a hot knife through butter into the demon's iron-vulnerable flesh, and the arrow buried itself up to the knock. Green fire exploded from the entry wound and from the creature's mouth as it screamed in agony and plunged to the ground not six feet from me. As I struggled to get up It clawed at its own flesh, desperately trying and succeeding at ripping the barbed arrow from its body. It glanced at me and then to Lucien who had set aside his bow and drawn his sword. I too had gotten up and had picked my blade off the ground by the time it had removed the source of its torment.
It sucked in a breath and belched forth a gout of flame at the warrior, who shielded his eyes and dove to the ground. I charged, agonizingly limping forward with all my aching muscles and injuries would allow me and brought my iron blade down in the demon's hide, driving it in to the hilt. The demon shrieked as more fire erupted from its flesh and it batted me aside with a swipe of its claw. Lucien pulled himself up and charged its flank.
I had managed to keep my feet and as the demon whirled to deal with Lucien, I lept forward strained and attacked. Each time the demon turned to deal with its new attacker, the other would harass its flanks, allowing blow after blow to be struck. Eventually it weakened. Its turns came slower and more clumsily. Both of us were battered and bleeding from the attacks it had managed to land. One last time it turned to counter Lucien and I summoned the last bit of will I could muster without risking unconsciousness.
“VERITAS!” I screamed, thrusting my sword into its body and releasing blinding white lightning to liquify its internal organs. The combination of iron and gigajoules of energy were too much for it and its form dematerialized in an explosion of ectoplasm, banished back to the Nevernever.
A few minutes and a lot og ragged breaths later and every bit of evidence of their having been a pitched battle here were gone, save for changes to the landscape and the hedges and sections of lawn which had been char broiled. Even the bodies were so mangled and twisted by the heat that one could not distinguish them from bricks of charcoal.
Lucien and I stumbled toward eachother and fell into an embrace. Steel plate pressed against chain for a moment before before we both started laughing. Not the mirthful happy laughter you experience when you hear a funny joke at a bar either. No. This was the mad crazy laughter that people do when they make it through an ordeal that was beyond the ken of mortals. After a few minutes the adrenaline from the fight and the endorphin surge from surviving started to die down, and we slowed our laughter. My entire body ached as I released him from the hug.
“How did you know?” I asked. “And in full armor too. Do you keep your harness in your trunk or something?”
“I got a call about some sort of combat going on in Tempe Park, but you were not there when I arrived. I figured you were in trouble, then got another call about explosions and flashing lights from your neighborhood. And yes, I keep my armor in my trunk.” he said grinning.
We hobbled to my front gate. I did not even have the energy left to disable my wards. After a about a minute I felt them fall, and I was able to open the gate without risking myself against their power. The outer ward was just a warning and a mind admonishment, but I still did not feel like putting my hand in an electrical outlet. We staggered to the door and opened it. Duncan was standing by the door and I stepped aside, letting Lucien in.
Duncan was armed to the teeth. He held a crossbow resting on his shoulder that he must have gotten from my closet, and a halberd was resting against the corner by the easy chair. Power thrummed through the air around him. He had been siphoning power from the wards in case the wards were breached. The stress to the wards would have been negligible considering what he could draw at any given time, but he had the space of some twenty minutes to do it. He was now slowly releasing the energy back into the spell. He smiled, relieved to see us both. He walked over and gave us good solid hugs. Not the usual brotherly man-hugs either. This was the heartfelt hug of seeing friends and loved ones return from battle. We returned them, I put a little bit more than the usual emotional investment into it, my relief from knowing in my heart rather than just my head that he was unharmed.
“There is a weakness in the ward.” he said as he released me .”They didn't find it, it took being severely stressed for it to manifest.”
“Oh? It has been attacked before, but I suppose never that heavily. What is it?” I said, collapsing on the couch. Lucien followed after, snuggling up under my arm. Believe it or not, it is actually fairly normal for gay guys to cuddle like this, even if they were not together. None of us, Duncan included, thought much of it. Though I will admit it was rather nice, even if both people were in dirty, sweaty, beaten up armor. I put Lucien's visor down over his face so the pointy hundskull visor would not poke me in the eye.
“A seam. A place where the energies converge when the entire surface is strained. It is transitory, and moves around, but it is there.”
“Good work. You have a skill with defensive magics, it is uncanny. I did not see it even with my Sight.” He beamed at the praise. “Though I may not have been looking when it manifested. How bad was the weakness?”
“Had they found it, they may have been able to work in concert to tear the ward apart, though it would have taken time. It would take more than one sorcerer or wizard of considerable power to do it.”
“They seemed trained to do just that. You saw the fire storm?” I asked him.
“Yeah. That is why I started to draw power to defend myself. I was not confident they would not find the weakness before you got here. And I was not sure you would win either. That was not a problem though.” he smiled at Lucien. “Thanks to you Lucien, where have you been? I have not seen you for a while.”
“It has been an interesting few weeks. I would have been by sooner, but the cases have been piling up lately.” the man said leaning against me, his voice muffled through the helmet. He was banged to hell. His armor was dented and gouged in places and he was bleeding from a few spots that the demon had hit so hard that plate dented or collapses in, driving steel fragments and broken chain links through his skin. Nothing too bad, none of it would need stitches, but he needed to get himself cleaned up so we could get the metal out and get him patched up.
“And now we know why.” I said. “You want to get a shower so we can get your wounds looked at?” I asked. “My house is your house.”
“Yeah, I think I will do that.” he said, but didn't move. Duncan went into my bedroom and got my clean bathrobe and a spare towel, he handed them both to Lucien and offered him a hand up. Lucien accepted the hand with a mailed gauntlet and pulled himself up with a groan.
“See you both when I make myself all presentable again.” he told us and then headed to the bathroom. He turned on the shower and I could hear him stripping his armor, pieces of metal hitting the tiled floor.
“Aw damn it! It is going to be a bitch to repair this breastplate!” he yelled in frustration. Then he turned on the shower and a second later I heard him hoot due to the cold. We both laughed, long used to cold showers.
“You alright?” I asked Duncan.
“Yeah. I kept focused on watching the wards and gathering power to defend myself. It did not give me time to think about fear.”
“Good.” I told him. “Excellent work in fact.” I paused, considering for a second. “I think you are progressing very quickly. When I was in the business for a year, I could not have found and diagnosed a weakness in a defensive working like that.”
“To be fair” he said. “I had been accidentally using magic and seeing through the Sight on regular basis for years before you found me.”
True. But be that is it may it is time we started thinking about the construction of foci. Particularly with the events of the last few days. You will need at least three. One for defense, and the elemental magics should not be concentrated into less than two.”
He thought for a second before speaking.
“I want something I can more easily conceal than what you go with. I am thinking a set of vambraces for defensive spells, leather gauntlets for fire and wind, and a warhammer for force and earth.”
“Good choices. For the warhammer are you thinking the spiked fifteen century variety?”
“My thoughts exactly” he replied.
“You will need a staff for formal functions, but that does not necessarily have to be a working focus.” I told him.
“Of course” he replied.
...
A little while later Lucien came out of the bathroom in the robe and set of my boxer briefs I had left on the floor. They were a bit tight on him and thus left nothing to the imagination. He looked good. Well, except for the shallow gashes on his chest and arms. To say nothing of the bruising.
“You have been keeping yourself in shape.” I told him.
“What do you expect? I make all my own armor and use it, and the weapons regularly. Not all of it for non-sporting combat.”
“True enough” I told him as I heaved myself off the couch and went into the bathroom to take my own shower, after grabbing the robe I used for work in my lab, a towel and a set of clean shorts.
The water was cold, which helped sooth the wounds. I cleaned the dirt, grime and sweat off as best I could. Then got out of the shower. I looked at myself in the mirror. I kept myself in fairly good condition. Not anywhere near what Lucien managed, but I was an academic who moonlighted as a Wizard. Well no, it was the other way around, but still. I could fight and had a lot of stamina, but my frame was not built to carry as much muscle as his was. My entire abdomen was one massive blue-black bruise, and I had a few good sized gashes in my arms where the chain did not cover. I shook my head. Lucien was worse off than I was, triage dictated that he be treated first.
I opened the cabinet under the sink and found my medical kit and the rubbing alcohol, as well as the gloves. I sterilized everything in the kit, which included a scalpel and hemostat tongs, as well as the needles and thread needed for stitching, and went outside.
Duncan was a medic and made short work of removing the little bits of steel and cleaning the wound with minimal pain to both patients. Once that was done, he did not bother with the stitching. He placed his hand on each wound and rocked back and forth muttering in german.
“Fortschaffen die Schmerz des strikt.” he would chant those words three times over each wound. By the third repetition the pain of the gash would lessen and when he removed the hand a neat scar would be in its place. It did not take long to finish. He could only do it with surface wounds, but damn was it nice to not have to endure the stitching. OSirens started going outside and Lucien had to make himself scarce for a while when Duncan had finished cleaning him up, as he dealt with the mortal side of things. Of course to do that he had to change into a set of my clothes. This left Duncan to deal with my injuries.
Once he had finished, he looked up at me.
“Damn it Steven, you need to stop getting these ribs hit over and over again. Four of them are broken, at least. If you are not careful, bone fragments will puncture a lung.” he scolded me sternly.
“Yes Herr Doktor” I replied. “You know what I could use?”
“What?” he asked.
“A drink. Or eight.”
“I'll get behind that” Lucien concurred as he walked into the house again. “Gas explosion, is the official explanation.” he added.
So we cracked open the liquor cabinet. Lucien went out to his car and got a box that contained bags of steel rings and two sets of pliers and went about repairing his chainmail by firelight as he took shots of tequila. Several hours, all of the tequila and a bottle of scotch later, and Duncan was passed out on the other couch snoring loudly. I gently turned him over on his side, just in case, and sprawled clumsily across the couch, my head resting on Lucien's lap.
“Are you still 'knitting'?” I asked him. “You have to have finished your repairs.”
“Oh I have” he said, his voice slurred a little. “Now I am making you a set of sleeves” he specified. “I can get you a coif by next week if you want one.”
“You know, I think I may have to take you up on that.”
“Cool.” he replied, then looked over a Duncan's sleeping form while taking another sip of the scotch. “He's a good kid” he added.
“I know.” I replied, pride and pain warring for the tone of my voice. He looked down and saw the hint of sadness on my face.
“Oh honey.” he said, setting down a set of pliers to stroke my cheek. Despite the fact that he would seem at first glance like a hyper-masculine battle-junky, the reality was Lucien was more open with his gayness and more obvious about it than me. It made us a very strange pair. He also had a sharp mind and an observant eye.
“I deal with it by being parental.” I told him. He chuckled and went back to knitting steel like a bizarre old woman. Nothing more needed to be said. He knew what was going on in my head, and would be there if I needed to talk. It was not long after that that I drifted off to sleep.
GALE Force Biological Agent/
BOTM/Great Dolphin Conspiracy/
Herpetology and Evolutionary Biology Subdirector:SD.net Dept. of Biological Sciences
There is Grandeur in the View of Life; it fills me with a Deep Wonder, and Intense Cynicism.
Last edited by Alyrium Denryle on 2010-02-08 04:34am, edited 2 times in total.
|
FAQ
Search
Register
Login
