by Daniel Ruth
As I exited the complex, I was buffeted by a muddy and mussed unicorn. She was prancing nervously around and started nudging me as soon as I exited. From her appearance, she was present when Beth was taken. I was a bit surprised that it was smart enough to recognize that I could help.
“Did Timmy fall down the well?” I grimaced at my own humor. “Looks like you know where Beth is. Lead the way.”
Cinnamon still wouldn’t let me on her back but stepped lively in front of me. I was just happy to have some guidance. Once I actually got to the sewers I could use the map. Actually finding the right entrance was a service I was hoping the unicorn could provide.
It was early morning in the city and the crowds were well on their way to filling the streets with human bodies. Ironically, the only real time the roads were clear was in the wake of the various carriages. Cinnamon chose one such coach and stayed in its shadow until our paths diverged and then hopped in behind another. In this fashion, we made fair time, though the guards gave me suspicious looks as I jogged behind the disguised unicorn, which was, in turn, tailing various vehicles.
I was starting to wonder how Cinnamon had actually gotten back to the academy grounds on her own, without someone trying to take advantage of an unclaimed horse. She was a magical beast and could easily overpower pickpockets and street beggars but I am not sure how she would do against any half competent mage.
Even with the beast’s, frankly amazing, homing abilities it still took over an hour to weave through the streets. The neighborhoods started to look more and more dilapidated. Although I had wandered the city streets, I had mostly stayed within the merchant quarters. I was not looking for a cheap meal among entire streets lined with beggars or run down inns; I had enough of that in the Blight before Sulayman rebuilt it.
We finally turned down one street that looked more like a war zone than a city. Gang members in rags sat at the entrance of the buildings. Several looked at me, obviously seeing the silk I wore. A few started towards me but several others stopped them. I heard them whisper and point at Cinnamon. A closer look evidenced dirty bandages and bruises. Apparently, she had more of a reputation than me.
Turning down one last alley, Cinnamon paused and rather than a sewer grate, I actually saw a hole in the ground with an extremely steep slope. I had my doubts but the unicorn must have been half goat. She nimbly skipped from one surface to another, as she made her way down.
Our pace slowed enough that I was able to comfortably unfold the map and examine it as we traveled into the dark. Unicorns must either have had sonar or been able to see in the dark like me because we unerringly made our way through the filthy corridors. At the third junction of the tunnels, it finally became clear where I was on the map. I could also hear creatures, possibly people, perhaps undead, shuffling and splashing behind me.
By my calculations, we were approaching the ominous ‘x’ on the map when we entered a large open room. Obviously not a natural cavern, its ceiling was over a hundred feet above us and the room was the size of a respectable amphitheater. Torches dotted the walls, but I really doubted that a human would have been able to see more than twenty feet. Sebastian stood, looking smug, on a raised dais in the center of the room. He was holding some sort of rope pulley dangling from the ceiling. Next to him was a sullen Beth, sitting in a wooden chair. Massive chains circled her tiny eight-year-old frame. A massive stone hung over her, supported by rope and knot work. I did a double take, as I realized she was also sitting on a trapdoor.
“I’m speechless,” I said shaking my head in disbelief. “Beth has been kidnapped by Wile E. Coyote.”
Chapter 35
“Very amusing,” Sebastian drawled. “You had me at a disadvantage last time we met.”
“I had you at a disadvantage? I was expecting the pizza boy and I ended up with Jack the Ripper.”
“Nonsense, you know I can’t kill you. We need your blood. Your elf friend was a surprise too. I had no idea she was so formidable.”
I stared at him. He was at the fight we had at the warehouse during Jeremy’s rescue. There Stella had, with a hand wave and word, canceled the elemental abilities of her foes and turned one of her opponent’s stone form into mud.
“Then you need to pay more attention to something else, besides your fancy suit and hair. I assume you wish to trade Beth’s life for my blood and then go on your merry way?”
“You understand.”
“I think you overestimate yourself.” With a bit of concentration, I grabbed the chair Beth was sitting in with my telekinesis and pulled it towards me. At the same time, I pointed and spat the mnemonic that pulled the Binding spell from the firmament. This I cast on the vampire himself. Beth was on the ball because she started to glow a dim blue as her force field activated.
Sebastian shouted in anger and reflexively pulled on the rope. This opened the trapdoor and sent the stone hurling down into the hole. A pointless waste of time, since Beth was no longer there. I raced over to the assassin. Seeing me coming he sneered and attempted to dodge to the side. Since he had a binding spell on him, he failed.
Overbalancing, he fell on his back. Every surface of his body was now acting as if it had the most insanely advanced glue on it. His eyes widened, as he realized this. Standing over him I smiled.
“Like my new trick?” I mocked him. “It appears a third-year student can take out a master assassin.” I leisurely reached into my bag to grab one of the staves Lamia had given me.
“Not likely,” he snapped back. Grimacing in distaste he heaved upward and I heard a tearing sound as his shirt pants and boots all shredded under his supernatural strength. Grabbing his dagger, he leaped towards me.
Still, in the act of pulling one of the staves out, I staggered back to avoid his runic blade. I had felt how effective that dagger was and certainly did not want to experience it again. I activated my force field.
The vampire was now wearing only his underwear. Boxers, not briefs, by the way. Since the hilt of his dagger was one of the surfaces I had affixed the Bind spell to, I could take some comfort that his hand was now stuck to the hilt. Considering he was in the process of stabbing me in the face with it, I was feeling it to be a pyrrhic victory.
I fell backward steadily, towards the far wall. As I did, I raised the stone from the pit Beth was supposed to fall into and sent it on a course to the back of the vampire’s head. At the same time, I finally got the staff out of the bag and began to flail it wildly at the undead.
I didn’t know a thing about how to use a staff. I think I accidentally used a few maneuvers I had seen in a couple movies. Those were still ineffective but looked better than the rest of my flailing. Still, it was a six-foot staff being wielded by someone whose strength was still greater than even a boosted vampire. It wasn’t something he could afford to ignore.
Indeed, he didn’t ignore it. He showed off his excellent martial arts skills by parrying the darn thing with his enchanted dagger. I growled a bit in frustration. Since when could a damn dagger parry a staff? Both objects were highly magical and sparked brightly when they contacted one another.
I paused a moment and held out my palm. He looked puzzled but moved forward to take advantage of my defenseless position. At that moment the stone, large enough to crush a small child, slammed into the back of his head and sent him catapulting into me.
The boulder, of course, did no damage. Vampires were immune to almost everything except silver, wood, and magic. It shattered, but had achieved my goal. Sebastian’s face was firmly Bound to my palm.
I took some damage too. The dagger impacted my force field and the blade dispelled it in an energetic crackle of visible light. I smiled and dropped the staff while reaching my other hand out and grabbed the back of his hand. His hands and head were both the only surfaces on his person still affected by my spell.
His body bound to mine at two points and his weapon effectively countered, I immediately started to kick him in the chest. I even slightly enhanced these b
lows by forming talons on my toes, destroying my poor shoes in the process.
He wriggled and squirmed, even trying to gnaw at my palm and twist the dagger to stab my body. It was pointless. His sole claim to combat superiority was his martial arts, his dagger and his agility. In the past, I simply could not hit him and except when I had my swords out, he could strike me with impunity.
With a grim smile, I worked away methodically, brutalizing his form. Within a short amount of time, his chest looked more like bloody mulch than a human’s form. Then I worked on breaking his limbs. Only once his mobility was destroyed did I cancel the Bind spell.
I bent down and retrieved my staff. Kicking the vampire’s body over, I brought the end of the staff with the snake symbol down and pierced his heart with Lamia’s symbol of office. The stave completely passed through his body and firmly embedded itself into the stone ground. Immediately billows of mist erupted from his body and it swiftly began to dissolve into nothing.
I frowned to myself. Usually, if you stab a vampire through the heart with a stake they simply go into a torpor. This must have been an effect of the staff. I was somewhat concerned since I did not actually know why it was doing it.
“You defeated my minion,” a deep reverberating voice rang through the room.
“Ah, the ‘master’ finally shows himself. Now I can... whoa. Damn, you’re ugly.” I had started my repartee but as Sebastian’s master finally showed himself, I was taken aback.
Walking towards me was a literal monster bat. Twenty feet tall, it was a massively oversized bat head on a roughly humanoid body, large talons and extensive wings spreading out behind him. The room looked distinctly smaller with this thing in the room.
“Vanth, I presume,” I nodded to him while reaching for the staff again. Sebastian’s body had boiled completely away, though a thick mist obscuring the room showed he may be temporarily dead but he definitely was not gone.
“You are not afraid. Let me teach you why you should fear me,” he stomped towards me, the earth trembling at every step. “I am not as pitiful as my minion. I feel no need to throw away my advantages.”
Around the other entrances of the room, I heard rustling and dozens of vampires scurried into the room. I glanced nervously towards Beth, who was blindly staring into the dim room around her. I placed a force bubble around her.
Tugging the staff out of the ground I nodded. “Sure. Teach me.”
I met the creatures advance, increasing my mass as much as I could. It was still huge. The impact knocked me back ten feet; however, I kept my feet with some difficulty and returned with a decent staff strike. I used it more like a baseball bat, yet unlike Sebastian, it did not dodge. Smoke rose up where the pole struck and the smell of burning fur filled the air.
“Ah, I recognize Lamia’s influence,” the creature bellowed angrily. “I thought I was rid of her when the walls went up and trapped me. It was almost worth being stuck in a single dimension to be rid of the witch.”
“Right, fear the serpent woman,” I said, as I moved forward again to hit him with the staff. It definitely had an extra effect on the thing.
“Bah, Lamia is nothing,” the creature scoffed, as we exchanged blows. Hordes of vampires crowded around, but again unlike Sebastian, they could not approach the staff. If we moved too close in our struggle and they were slow backing up, they almost instantly boiled away to smoke, leaving a thin sprinkling of ashes on the ground.
Seeing this, I moved towards Beth, unfortunately leading Vanth as well. Once I got to the edge of the weakening protective bubble, I stabbed the staff into the ground.
“Hah, throwing away your only weapon to save a human. How pathetic!”
“I wouldn’t say it was my only weapon,” I said as I grew to my limit to match his size and formed my own talons. My first bull rush pushed him out of the immediate vicinity of Beth. Unfortunately, it was also out of the range of the repelling effect of the staff. As vampires started to close in, I cast Bind on the floor around us. The advance temporarily stopped.
“Do you think a pathetic cantrip can stop lord Vanth?” the creature shouted and waved his hand. A wave of magic expanded out and I felt my spell dissipate. My smile dropped off my face. Sure, I knew most gods knew magic but I was hoping this guy was minor enough not to be an effective caster.
The vampire horde closed in again. I raised my hand and spat out another mnemonic trigger. Wind gushed through the chamber, blowing the vampires around me like tumbleweeds. It wasn’t as effective as when paired with the Bind spell, however, instantaneous spells were much harder to counter.
As the creatures got to their feet, I took the time to pull out another staff from the pouch. Vanth himself had not been pushed back by the wind at all; his sheer mass made that an impossibility. He closed with me just as I pulled the staff out. With a growl, he swiped out with his clawed fist and knocked the weapon from my hand. As it flew off into the room, the vampires around its trajectory burst into ashes.
I could work with that. I gripped the staff with my telekinesis and set it spinning through the room, swiftly creating swathes of billowing smoke and ash. At that point, the vampires all abandoned any attempt to approach me or Beth and fled towards the exit.
“Damn Lamia,” the abomination shouted in frustration. “And damn Hecate.”
“Feeling a little bereft of companionship? Let me send you to join them.” I charged in again and we grappled talon to talon for a few moments. Controlling the simple movement of the staff only took a minute portion of my attention. It wasn’t hard to wrestle with the little god at the same time but I wasn’t up to using other spells or psionics that required any concentration.
As the staff spun around us like a tiny whirlwind of death, Vanth and I tottered this way and that around the room. He was a bit heavier but I was a tiny bit stronger. To be honest, we both had the hand to hand skill of a pair of dancing walruses.
I finally got an edge on leverage and pushed him away for a moment. Stretching my arms out, I called forth my psionic energy blades. I grinned as they sprang forth and I prepared to thoroughly destroy this undead godling.
Then he snarled and his talons began to glow. I was puzzled for a moment before I realized he was using an almost identical psionic talent on his claws. I stood there in surprise for an instant. I had been mostly okay with the Rakshasa pulling out psionic blades. Anyone that studied a little bit of demonology knew they were experts of illusion, trickery and ‘mind magic’. However, some piddling undead god stealing my tricks really irked me.
By changing my focus, my flying staff had lost most of its accuracy. It was soaring around more like a drunken sailor than a guided weapon. That was acceptable; the undead horde had been mostly destroyed. The few survivors fled like rats leaving a sinking ship. I stopped controlling it to devote my full attention to my swordsmanship.
With a renewed effort, I advanced on the pathetic bat god imitator and laid into him with my swords. His talons danced around to catch or parry my strikes. After several minutes of this, I was beginning to get frustrated. I was having a difficult time breaking through his defense. I did have the range advantage, so he was not able to get through my guard either. Our regeneration seemed on par with one another and we were each healing as fast as we delivered wounds. I was starting to think I would be here all day.
Then the bat creature’s arm fell off. I looked at it stupidly for a moment, wondering what sort of odd attack this was. Images of old robot toy commercials, where arms detached and shot out like missiles appeared in my mind.
“Stop standing there, looking stupid and fight,” a familiar voice snapped disdainfully at me. Looking behind Vanth’s oversized body, I saw a recovered Sebastian, wielding his rune dagger of death. Apparently fighting his master.
“Argh! Betrayer! I will eat your soul and burn it for all eternity for this!”
“Alright, I’ll flow with this, but if you stab me in the throat again we’ll have words,” I replied, as I moved forwar
d to strike the disabled god beast. Now that I had two swords and he only had one talon to defend with, I was getting strikes in, eliciting screams and cries of anger and pain. Behind him, keeping on his wounded side, was Sebastian and his dagger. He darted forward with his wicked blade strikes every time he attempted to guard against me.
Within minutes, the tide had turned and a stalemate had turned into a rout. The assassin struck a final blow deep in the creature’s back and I followed up one last time to remove its head from its trunk of a neck.
I sat down heavily on the dais, resting and recovering energy. Slowly shrinking to a normal human size. I looked over in suspicion at the vampire. “So, no longer Vanth’s sock puppet?”
“I don’t know what you did, but I seem to have free will again.”
“I got another god to back us and kick out Vanth’s influence.”
“Sounds like there’s a story behind that.”
“Eh, nothing interesting,” I shrugged dismissively. “How do you feel about being a high priest of Lamia now that Vanth is dead?”
“Dead?” He looked at me oddly. “Vanth isn’t dead.”
“Oh, crud.” I looked dejectedly at the ground. “Is he like a demon? Is he going to reform in ten years or a century or some rot? It can’t be too soon, he was a pretty weak god.”
“That wasn’t Vanth,” he paused for a moment. “Or rather it was but it wasn’t.”
“You mean that thing was just an avatar?” What a pain. I thought that only greater gods could create avatars of themselves. I made a note to myself in regards to future gods.
“I have no idea what you call it, but that was just a projection of some sort. I’m not even sure he is in this world. I am pretty sure his idea was that he wanted your blood so he could move freely.”
“Yeah, I got that part. You really weren’t subtle. Are you sure you’re an assassin?”
“I kill people, I’m not a ninja.”
“You have that whole martial arts thing going for you, though.”