by Daniel Ruth
"Lamia has staves that are a direct conduit to her," Renora perked up hearing this. "Unfortunately, they are intended to be used by vampires to designate their priests. They were used to restore the vampires...er, souls. I think it would be bad if someone else were to wield them. But I can always get you in touch with their high priest. He's a bit undead though."
Renora looked a bit queasy at this. "Let's leave that for a backup plan. I had a difficult time getting the church behind this even though Lamia is not an undead god and they are simply one of her responsibilities. What about Maribel?"
"I think I have a bit of hair from her favorite unicorn," I said as I went into Beth's closet. She kept her saddle and bridle with the mount but I was pretty sure she had a file and brush that she used to pamper the unicorn in the box. Sure enough, the brush was there.
I arranged the hairs neatly and tied a ribbon around them. It was obvious it was not horse hair. It was far sturdier yet silky fine. The gaggle of priests was exclaiming in delight at my find. I shrugged. It's not like you couldn't find unicorn ingredients at any decent magic store.
"This should be enough to start the process," Renora stated. "We won't know how successful we are for a few weeks. Even months."
"I can always introduce you to the high priest..."
"Let's try it this way first," she nodded firmly in farewell as the clerics filed out of the apartment behind her. "Thank you for your support. With this ritual and divine focus, we have a chance to not only have a new god in this world but possibly two!"
I watched them leave and shook my head in wonder. If a bit of unicorn hair got them so excited maybe I should have given them a bucket of unicorn manure to put on their shrine.
Chapter 15
Beth came home an hour later. I could hear her shouting goodbyes to her friend Sentha a few minutes before she arrived.
Soon after, Jeremy came in. He looked a bit run down but satisfied. He probably was on a case or had saved someone. He always looks that way after one of his misadventures. At least when he wasn't beaten up or shot.
"Hey guys," I greeted them. "Have a seat. I want to bring something up."
"I was going to check inventory," Beth said. "Can it wait?"
"Not really," I replied. That got their attention. "I am going to be heading out soon to explore Diego's world. It occurred to me that this place can be a bit dangerous."
"They have regular flying patrols," Jeremy said. "I don't think it's any more dangerous than the Blight used to be."
I stared at him. Beth also stared at him. "That isn't a very strong statement. That's like saying its safe because I only got mugged twice this month."
"He's got a point," Beth said to her brother. "However, while Jeremy is out causing trouble, I think I am pretty safe on campus."
Ignoring Beth's blatantly false statement I focused on Jeremy. "I know you never liked weapons, however, now you have your inner potential activated you can justly say you're using your brain."
"You want to teach me an offensive skill?" Jeremy asked in surprise. "I can already use the force bubble to trap someone. Are you thinking of those glowing swords?"
"Oh! I want those," Beth cried out eagerly. "I totally feel unsafe in this dangerous world!" I glanced at her in exasperation. Her jokes might tip Jeremy in an odd direction.
"You two don't have deep enough reserves to use that yet," I said, directly rejecting Beth's whining. "I was thinking of a variant of telekinesis. Two of them actually."
"I have been getting the hang of telekinesis," Jeremy accepted cautiously.
"The first is to be able to turn a coin into a projectile. Get good enough and it can be like a railgun." Beth smiled, then looked confused.
"If you're just using the TK to throw it then wouldn't it be useless against vampires unless it's silver?" Beth asked.
"That's a good question," I smiled as she asked it. "The answer is that some residue energy stays with the object for a fraction of a second. It should have some effect. However, carrying silver coins may be a good idea. Make sure they are high purity."
Jeremy looked conflicted. It was obvious that he didn't want his little sister tossing out railgun level damage but he also wanted her safe. "Most supernaturals and mages will just get knocked down with a single hit. Railguns aren't that significant in those circles. You would have to repeatedly hit them just to drive them off."
Oddly enough that relaxed Jeremy. I didn't say any more on the subject. If he realized that a single coin shot from Beth could effortlessly bore a fist size hole through a dozen normal people, assuming they lined up, he might start to balk again.
"The next one is also a telekinetic variant," I explained. "It's basically pushing on the part of the brain that people use for motor skills. You can paralyze an arm or a leg. If you do it often enough you can induce total paralysis."
"I haven't seen you use that before," Jeremy said. "It seems pretty useful."
"So, can you crush someone's brain into jelly?" Beth asked, receiving a glare from her brother.
"No, you can't," I said to Beth. "Good job thinking outside the box though!" Now Jeremy was glaring at me for some reason.
"Living beings have auras," I explained. "These auras are really hard to get through and even I can't exert enough force to do more than paralyze someone. If they are psychic, like vampires, some shifters or have an appropriate defensive spell you'll most likely simply 'slide' off. You may exhaust yourself before you actually do anything."
"I like the railgun better," Beth whispered to herself. Both of us heard her without the need for any enhanced senses.
"The nice thing about it is that it's mostly a finesse skill," I clarified. "Not much power gets through but depending on your aim, not much needs to get through."
"I can't imagine how you can aim that well," Jeremy muttered thoughtfully. "Is the target really large?"
"No, it's ridiculously small. If your slightly off you can induce temporary deafness, blindness, insanity, and dry mouth."
"You made that last one up," Beth accused me. I ignored her. Again.
"The good news is that with practice you can do all that on purpose," I continued blithely. "Blinding someone can be more useful sometimes. It all wears off in a few minutes so no harm, no foul."
"Unless they fall off a cliff and die," cried out Beth. I nodded in encouragement. Jeremy seemed to be getting grouchy since he was glaring at me again.
"Anyway, targeting is tricky. Its takes a lot of practice with interpreting their aura. Switching to different races is rough too," I warned them. Truthfully, I had more hope for Jeremy to master this skill than Beth.
"How are we going to practice the brain manipulation thing," Jeremy asked. "It would seem that you need a practice dummy."
"Well, we have a unicorn in the stables..." I started.
"No!" Beth cried out. "No way are you making Cinnamon a test dummy."
"Fine! Fine!" I said waving my hands. "I was mostly kidding. You can use me. Your probes will slide off of me but it should give you the chance to practice. As for the projectiles..."
I fell silent. The wards were almost indestructible when powered up. They could shoot them but I am pretty sure the coins would bounce around the room. Or maybe bounce and then go through the wall and the wall behind that one etc.
"Would the fridge work?" Beth asked. A smile bloomed on my face as I looked over at my favorite appliance.
"I think it would," I said with a nod. "It places everything inanimate into stasis..."
"Because of the aura thing?" Beth asked.
"Yep," I nodded, pleased that she had made that connection. "Magic and psionics must actively overcome a person's aura. You can easily design something not intended to, especially when it doesn't generate a physical effect. In theory, as soon as the projectile enters the interior, it will be placed into stasis. I really want to figure out that ward. It's very cool. In a not so fridge way, I mean."
Beth sneered at my joke, apparently still
mad at me about the unicorn thing. "I thought you were practicing that in between your alchemy stuff."
"Well I have and I think I almost have it," I nodded as I walked to the cupboard. "However, since I am leaving and I am not completely sure when I getting back..."
"Can't you just jump back," Beth pointed to the ceiling. I had put one of the shards up on the roof's chimney. The logic was that if it suddenly ripped itself loose and went soaring away, hopefully, it would be above the height that its likely trajectory would not be through anyone I liked.
"It's very uncomfortable," I deflected.
"Yeah, but it's just a little..."
"Very, very, very uncomfortable," I said. The previous version, before I had been able to alter the runes balance a bit, used to burn away my flesh down to the muscles. Now it was merely horribly uncomfortable, debilitating and painful. "I'll come if I need to. Once the buoys are up, we should be able to communicate freely."
"Are you sure the portal between these worlds isn't blocked?" Jeremy asked.
"It may be underwater," I admitted. The map was still nowhere near complete. I was beginning to think it would be easier to map the worlds and then try to decipher the code the demons left behind. "But even if it is, the buoys should be able to route a signal through your world to this one, or even the dinosaur planet, to yours and back to this one."
"It should work," Beth chimed in. "We totally over specced the design. Unless the demons encased all the portals in lead, we should be able to get a signal through one of them to a world we have buoys or satellites."
"Anyway," I repeated in annoyance. "I'm leaving and have some things for you." I took a rack of vials from the shelf. Some had a liquid that glowed, some sparkled, others looked like mercury. There were a few that merely looked like muddy water.
"I was also having a bit of fun with the alchemy," I pointed to the vials. "These will give ten minutes of invisibility. Those will transform you into an eagle for an hour. Your clothes aren't included. Be warned."
"That could be awkward," Jeremy smirked.
"By a shape-changing wardrobe," I suggested. "Get the self-cleaning option unless you know the spell. These will make you invulnerable for ten seconds. These will negate most poisons...."
"That would have been handy at the party," Jeremy muttered. I nodded. I had been inspired to have a better solution the next time someone tried to poison me and got someone else instead. The ingredients were a bear to find though.
"This color will make you immune to fire for an hour, that one to acid. Again, your clothes are not affected. Be warned. This one will do that for lightning," I rattled on.
"Do you have something that will give you actual superpowers?" Beth asked eagerly. She was obviously greedily eying the potions.
"I do but I haven't figured out how to get rid of the side effects," I reluctantly replied. "The invulnerability potions were the closest I got and the duration went from a week to ten seconds."
"Geez, what kind of side effects are that bad," Beth asked. I pouted but stayed silent. Eventually, they stopped staring at the vials and I sat down to guide them through their first use of the two psionic skills.
That night they all trained in their new offensive psionic assaults while I leisurely researched. Sadly, the fridge was in use but I mixed a few extra potions up.
I stayed up and tried to spend some time understanding and recreating the stasis ward. Unfortunately, so did Jeremy and Beth. The sound of pellets whistling through the air, creating small sonic booms was distracting. The excitement caused by missing the fridge and the missile going through the wall was even more so. No cries of panic or rush of patrolmen followed so it was either a clear miss or an instant kill.
Naturally, this was easily managed with a silence spell. Casting this silence spell every ten minutes was not so easily managed. Finally, I snuck outside and walked over to Durmont's mansion. Everyone was either out or asleep so I went into the map room and used the desk to test a few iterations of wards.
I did this for a few hours and when I returned in the wee morning hours my roommates were asleep. I followed soon afterward.
I was woken the next day by pounding on the door. Yawning I waddled over to the door. Beth peeked out of her room, still wearing her robe.
Grumbling I opened the door. There stood Maribel. Thankfully she had washed off the blood since her activities and was back to wearing her typical face and clothes.
"Maribel, I was wondering when you'd stop by," I said with a smile. This smile was immediately interrupted by another yawn. "Why so early though?"
"It's almost noon," she shrugged. "Are you going nocturnal me? You just had a long nap, you should be good for at least a year."
"No, I'm good," I said waving a hand lazily. "I was just up late researching a neat ward. It..."
"We can talk about it later," she interrupted. "Would you be interested in another date? Normally I wouldn't be so pushy but I have this feeling that you're going somewhere."
She must have some minor precognitive abilities. I had been planning on leaving this week. I should have mastered the new ward by then.
"Sure, let me just eat some breakfast," I said as I headed towards the cabinet. Pushing the potions out of the way I started to gather the components for a sandwich.
"I wouldn't want to interrupt your time together," Beth called out from her room. "Jeremy and I will head out. He promised to take me into the city today."
"I did?" Jeremy's muffled voice came from his room.
"Yes, you did," Beth said nervously. "In fact, there's a sale I cannot miss. We need to leave right now!"
She raced over to her brother's room and barged in. I could hear the sound of rustling.
"Beth, I can dress myself! Calm down!"
"We can't miss the sale," she said her voice rising in pitch. I had paused in making my sandwich to pay attention to the little girl's antics. "We have to leave right now!"
Moments later Jeremy was dragged out of the room, looking confused and sleepy.
"Your humans certainly are lively today," Maribel said. She hadn't paid any real attention to their antics and was looking greedily at my food. Sighing I set out more for her.
"Yeah, she's a bit uptight this morning," I said as I assembled a couple of sandwiches. "I would have thought she would be relaxing after her examination."
"Hmm," she acknowledged uninterestedly. She obviously didn't care about my humans. This was understandable. They weren't her humans after all. "I had an odd experience a few weeks ago."
"After you finished the Dark Guild?" I said as I stuffed food in my mouth.
"Yes. I went back to my territory and just outside of it was Kregar."
"Was he doing anything interesting," I asked with a smile.
"I suppose you could call it that," she said with confusion. "It was floating in the air several hundred feet above the ground. Spinning in place."
"How bold of him," I exclaimed in mock outrage. This earned me a skeptical look.
"You seem unsurprised," she said flatly.
"What did you do to this audacious trespasser?"
"What I promised I would do the last time I drove that moron away," she spat in irritation. "I flew up to him and clawed him to pieces like a piñata."
I thought for a moment. "I don't think people do that to piñatas."
"They would if they could," she said dismissively. "Strangely enough, he just stayed in one place and spun around while I did the disemboweling thing."
"He didn't fight back?" I asked disbelievingly.
"Of course, he fought back," she snorted. "Ineffectively. Spinning like an idiot top, all he could really do was look like one of those human lawn sprinklers. Except with fire, acid and lightning."
"I wonder how he got up there," I said facetiously.
"Well once I disemboweled him he dropped like a rock to the ground and unfortunately teleported away."
"You didn't try to follow him," I asked in surprise. Most being
that could teleport, could also lock onto an enemy that was teleporting away if they were right there in front of them. It was a skill, or perhaps an art. "Do you have a soft spot for him?"
"Get real," she glared at me. "I was caught by surprise. I had literally been skinning him for thirty minutes and he chose right then to flop to the ground and escape?"
"So, what do you think happened," I asked innocently.
"The funny thing was that his intestines were still hanging there up in the sky. So, I flew up and vaporized them," she said with a disgusted curl of her lips. "Can't have hydra bowels littering the sky. Disgusting trash."
"So true."
"Once I got rid of them, I found a tiny stone just floating in the air," she glared at me. "It had a familiar rune on it."
"Alright, I admit it," I nodded in defeat. "It was me. I apologize for leaving trash floating around your airspace. He attacked me when I was visiting you and I had to leave him there."
"You can kill Vatai and left a hydra hanging around for me to kill?"
"I hope you didn't mind. The method I used is pretty dangerous. It can kill me as easily as the demon if I'm just a bit unlucky. And you know dragons don't self-resurrect."
"Its fine," she dismissed her frown. "It was kind of fun until I had to deal with the clean-up. You do need to pick up your rune rock eventually. It’s a flight hazard."
"It's only the size of my finger," I defended myself. "How can it be a flight hazard? Just don't swallow it!"
"It’s a rock with the equivalent power of an artifact. Please remove it the next time you visit. By the way, why did you visit?"
"I was escorting someone from beyond your gate through and thought I would see if you were in. You were still hunting the guild I suppose."
"That took longer than I liked," Mirabel said with a grimace. "And did you know that the council had a major artifact buried under the floor?"
"Yes, I noticed that a bit later," I perked up. "My shifting lock is almost completely broken."
"Oh my, that wonderful," she gushed. "Does that mean you can show me your true shape?"