Selena crawled out using her hands and elbows. Her hip was in place, but she didn’t know how complete it was yet, so better to let the healing work as long as she could let it. The manor house was a war zone now, with blood, broken furniture and fires everywhere she looked. She headed for a giant hole in the wall nearest her, and had to crawl over the dismembered pieces of the walking dead. Cardual probably cleared them out of here first so she could leave more easily. ‘He’s so fast. I didn’t even notice,’ she thought. The body parts she crawled over were bloodless, and smelled musty instead of rotten. These were old corpses, which usually meant they were slower, but stronger. She didn’t know a lot about necromancy, but reanimating the dead was magic intensive, so they were dealing with someone powerful.Her elbow sunk deep inside a torso. ‘I need a bath after this.’She made it outside without any trouble, and saw a large group of armed skeletons heading to the main entranc
The armoured monster looked like a Mage Knight, except it was half again as big as most men, standing at least 8 feet tall. The armour was a swirled black and blue, with hints of silver shining through near the edges. The effect was like a painting of a galaxy… or a tarnished silver tea pot. It swung a 6 foot long broadsword through the air in front of it, as if testing its weight. Impressive, because it held it in one hand. The other hand held a small bronze rod, covered in dense runes. A dark velvet cape fluttered from its shoulders, obviously of high quality, but covered in the dirt of battles and the grave. ‘You could almost think it was just a regular knight,’ Selena thought, but then she looked into the visor of the Knight’s helm, and shuddered. ‘Those burning coal eyes are not human. Malevolent magic seeps out of them.’ If she focused her vision, she could partially see the weaves and auras that encircled the demon. Vampires lost the ability to work with magic the wa
Shinra awoke on a small cot in a nearly empty room, a faint glow coming from a spelled globe beside the bed. [Shinra gets up, practices Shadow strike, and notices that he can tell someone is outside with Vampire vision!] ‘I must be in one of the overnight rooms in the station,’ he thought. Shinra was a little embarrassed, ‘I really did pass out in front of the Captain. Maybe I’m still dealing with the effects of Selena’s attack.’ He needed to stop making a habit of dying. ‘I went through a lot. Just using Shadow Strike may have drained me.’ Thinking about his new ability made him sit up. He wanted to try it again. After all, he was all but unarmed. He didn’t know where the katana had gone, so he only had his folding knife. He looked at the dark windowless room and thought it was the perfect place to try it again. The globe casted more shadows than light here! “Shadow Strike,” he said quietly. The system flashed in his periphery, but he didn’t even notice it anymore. He wa
Eyes are immensely important, and do complicated things. The eyes of Vampires are even more impressive than the human equivalent, because they see in several spectrums. For all that, their structure is simple, the magic happens in the signal processing in the nerves and brain. Selena pulled her fingernails from her eyes, the jelly a little sticky on her fingertips. She squeezed her eyelids shut tight, and listened for the Death Knight, but it hadn’t moved. ‘Was it shocked by my self blinding, or is it preparing a finishing blow?’ she wondered. She could feel her eyes inflating under her eyelids. ‘Should be healed in a moment, I need to prepare.’ She tried not to imagine the Knight’s greatsword silently arcing towards her neck. Instead, she bit her lip, and, with the blood that welled out, she drew a rune on her forehead. She directed all of her attention to the rune, and felt her power concentrate there. Then the rune seeped into her skin, and the power penetrated her min
‘Come on, come on!’ She struggled and strained, but her body didn’t move. ‘This must be how someone with spinal cord damage feels. Mentally fighting, but their body doing nothing.’ She knew Selena was out there fighting close by, and it was maddening to be unable to help. The effect of Cardual’s blood was energising and paralysing. ‘How strong is he? You think I, of all people, would know.’ Cardual was a mystery to everyone, except maybe Selena who had known him for centuries. Mimi was in her 20s, and a born vampire. Born Vampires were extremely rare, and so they needed a lot of protection and care. Even now, Mimi still hadn’t grown into many of her gifts, but she had some advantages that regular vampires did not as well. For one, she had awakened several new gifts that were unknown to vampire kind before, and she felt, deep in her soul, that she had many more waiting to be unlocked. She was singularly focused as well. Some in their society said she was cold and emoti
Selena was suddenly frozen, as if she’d dipped into a nitrogen bath. Was that the icy touch of death chilling her down to her very soul? She didn’t know, but the oppressive pressure of that massive sword was splitting her scalp.Then it was gone, leaving a healing slice and a gout of blood that had frozen in her hair. ‘What the hell?’ she thought. Her mind and soul had not quite caught up to the fact that she was alive. Luckily her hands knew how to kill without her input, and they continued the deadly sweep of the blood scythe. It bit deep into the Necromancer, and sliced from the collar bone down past his solar plexus. It stopped there, impeded, finally by the spells and bone armour he’d used to stop her Katana so easily. She didn’t try to pull the scythe out of the pre-dead mage. Instead she let go, and made a weaving motion with both hands, and the scythe unknit itself and flowed back to her as a surge of red power. Selena looked noticeably healthier and stronger as she
Shinra had to figure out a lot of things. His new powers, how to deal with Crews, find Sardi and the vampires, and figure out if his dad was a mage murdering rebel. 'And when I find Sardi and the vampires, how do I mention that one of them killed me?'. Shinra wasn't totally sure how he felt about it himself. At the time, it seemed just like a sparring match that went too far, but that usually meant a black eye, or a minor fracture. She drained a lot of his blood, and poisoned him. Even now, his HP was still low.The important thing was, he was alive, and had to figure these powers out.‘Could I really see Crews through the wall? That is crazy!’ He remembered though, that he didn’t just get Shadow Strike, his Night Vision was upgraded to Vampire Vision. ‘So Vampires can do more than see in the dark, we are like giant glowing targets to them. What an amazing skill for a hunter… or an Assassin.’ He was starting to think about all the ways this enhanced vision could help, and his
Balaam fired two point blank pulses from his phased field shifter, and it seemed like the very air cracked around the young angel hybrid. She looked surprised as Balaam's spear easily pierced her armour, where her central regulator should be. Blue fluid spurted from the wound as her eyes rolled back and an electric discharge seemed to flee from them.'Fucking Angels, and their kin, harder to get rid of than [cockroaches]', Balaam thought. He surveyed the devasted battle ground, noting that both sides had pulled back to their bases to regroup. The Fallen had been on this forsaken rock for generations, guarding the Zero Well for the hope that it would bring to the Metaverse. Until a few weeks ago, Balaam would have said the Angels didn't even know about the prophecy.For sure it had been the most boring 10,000 years of his existence. He'd watched his Legion of Fallen carve out a life here, have families, grow old, die, and repeat the cycle. He actually commanded more troops now,