Xangô POV: Day 52

Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper

I’d like to say I felt hope when Beam strode towards the vampire, standing tall and strong with magical plate armour covering every inch of him. But I felt nothing. Nothing but concern for our fallen friend, who, by then, had stopped convulsing and fallen rather still as he lay back, head gushing, eyes flitting, lips moving in silent, mumbled curses. I knelt besides Solitaire, hands hovering uselessly apart from him, throat tight. I needed to think. Always, I needed to think, and thought was never so important as in a situation bad enough to make it difficult.

Reluctantly, I forced my simpler impulses back, beating them away from the front of my mind like invading rotters, and considered the situation. I turned to Beam, turned to the vampire, examined them both.

[Appraisal]

* Class: Warrior

* Level: 4

* Condition: Worn

* Modifiers: Strength +1, Speed +1, Toughness +2

* Statistics: Strength 15, Speed 15(12), Dexterity 4, Stamina -, Toughness 16, Alertness 14, Charisma 6, Intelligence 4

The creature wasn’t more deadly than it had been, at least, but that wasn’t saying much. I flitted my eyes to Beam’s, quietly hopeful. As it turned out, I was right to be.

[Appraisal]

* Class: Dragonknight

* Level: 10

* Condition: Fine

* Modifiers: +3 Strength, +3 Speed, +3 Toughness

* Statistics: Strength 12, Speed 12, Dexterity 8, Stamina 9, Toughness 11, Alertness 8, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5

* Inventory: Jeans, flannel shirt, woollen fabrics

* Class abilities: Beloved III

* Current Experience Points: 10/360

* Unspent Skillpoints: 0

Not close, not close at all. I wasn’t sure Beam would’ve won with a two or one advantage, even with most of his improvement being to Speed he was barely equal with the foot-dragging vampire after Solitaire had opened a hole in its heel. On a statistical level alone, he was a toddler against a pitbull.

Which meant that everything hinged on that armour of his. I forced my eyes to remain on the battle, even as instinct told me to wince away.

Beam wasn’t slower anymore, his new gear didn’t seem to weigh him down at all, but his enemy’s reaction time was no less superhuman. The vampire danced back with all the easy grace I recalled describing myself, moving so instantly and preemptively that it seemed to be living a full second in the future from the rest of us. Beam chased it, of course, but he wasn’t getting anywhere near the bastard. All the world’s training couldn’t make up for that difference in speed.

Further ahead I caught the main barricade- the one keeping the rotters from crawling inside- straining further. How long did we have until it broke? I glanced at Solitaire. He could’ve estimated, I knew, and probably gotten within ten percent of the answer. But he was unconscious because I couldn’t so much as contribute to a serious fight even now. I bit the annoyance back, compartmentalised, focused.

Argar was standing, and Helena was moving, both reaching me almost at once. The Vittonian knelt down, placing her hands on Solitaire.

“I have battlefield training in medicine.” She snapped. “You go, help others, leave him to me.” I paused, and her eyes hardened like iron cooling in a cast. “Go!”

Swallowing, I did. Standing, raising a spear from the ground and reluctantly turning towards Beam’s fight. It was going no better than before, his weapon still as far from the enemy’s flitting feet as ever.

Except…The vampire seemed to be making fairly regular stepping motions, and it was moving in quite a consistent path. I weighed my options for a moment, then sighed, cocked my arm back and threw my spear like a javelin.

It wasn’t a good throw, even with my newfound magical strength. I might’ve hit the vampire directly only to watch the weapon bounce off with barely a cut to even prove it had landed. But I didn’t aim for the vampire, I aimed for that magic spot between its knees, where one leg moved into and the other out of.

The shaft of the spear caught its front leg in the backstep, delaying it and staggering the vampire for an instant as its balance broke. One instant, and no more. But an instant was just barely time enough for Beam to run his new glowing-orange spear through the thing’s shoulder.

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A scream cut through the air, satisfying as anything I’d ever heard, and Argar was interrupting it a few moments later with the mother of all shoulder-charges. Four hundred pounds of muscle and flab crunched into the vampire with more speed than most men could manage, actually throwing it to the ground in its unbalanced state, and Beam moved in quickly to press the attack.

My eyes were snapped across, falling back on our front barrier, which was now sporting no small number of gaps and crevices where the wood was finally starting to give in entirely. All our defenders had already had the sense to back off, thankfully, putting themselves behind the secondary barriers, now well practised in our brand of collapsing defence. The sight was still a fearsome one. How long had the wall held? Less than an hour, I thought. And we still had a vampire in our midst.

I couldn’t help with that, not really, so instead I took to the barricades and readied myself to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the other…With the other weaklings.

The door held, though, and the noise behind me only grew. I trembled, snarled, then turned and raced into the fight. This was the one that mattered, this was the one that gave us a chance. Kill the vampire and we’d kill them all- make it bleed enough and maybe the defenders could even close in to help.

My legs trembled, even while I used them to run, but I pushed the sensation aside along with everything else that might hinder me. I couldn’t afford anything at all in my head now, except thought.

Beam was holding his own, still, and Argar seemed to have fallen into a role of support. The vampire was keeping back, fighting from afar, wielding some giant piece of timber that looked to weigh about a quarter as much as me. Wielding it one-handed, of course, the fucking monster. I arrived just in time to see a particularly clean connection send Beam flying fully off his feet and half-flipping in the air before he crashed down hard a few metres away. Then I was in the thick of it.

My spear was in my hands, and I didn’t have many better ideas than a thrust, so I tried one. It was uneven and clumsy, stabbing for the vampire’s face from sidelong, just out of sight. The creature still dodged it, looking more offended than worried. A hand raised, red light grew, then Argar’s own weapon- a piece of timber almost as big as the vampire’s- dropped towards it and forced the enemy’s limb back into its body for protection. I tried to circle our foe, to attack from a blindspot again, but it took the opportunity to circle even better. Positioning me between Argar, and forcing the fight into a one on one before I could even react.

I raised my spear and felt it snap as my block successfully caught the enemy’s blow, then unsuccessfully stopped it. Fifteen kilos of wood glanced off my thigh, not a direct hit, not even close. Most of the energy was spent as it hit the ground below, snapping floorboards.

The muscle still went dead, though, all the way to my knee. Numbed into insensibility by the impact. I lurched back to avoid the followup swing, which came faster than I would’ve thought possible, and it whipped by my face so fast it felt like I’d just been missed by an archer.

Argar barged me aside, actually knocking me off my feet entirely with how violently he shoved me. I looked up to see his club bouncing off the vampire’s head, evidently they’d been just as surprised as me, but the creature recovered quickly enough. A shove threw Argar back, and I saw blood oozing down his side where he’d been stabbed. The wound, it seemed, was reopened. Beam barrelled into the undead before anything more could come of it.

The two of them were a whirlwind of flying limbs, Beam’s armour and weapon trailing streaks of light, the vampire’s trailing nothing but an afterimage as my sluggish eyes tried and failed to follow. Two blows caught my friend, cracking, then buckling his armour. He answered with a stab that slipped past the vampire’s head, then surprised it by releasing his spear and elbowing the thing across the face. Its nose bled, that much was something at least, but the blow barely even fazed it. A thrusting slap to the chest sent Beam sliding backwards a foot, then a following kick threw him down again.

I hadn’t actually noticed myself moving, certainly not drawing my knife, but I noticed it stabbing into the vampire’s exposed shoulder. Again, I seemed to surprise the monster more than anything. This time there was a fury behind the expression which chilled my blood.

I threw a wild punch, hoping to surprise it again. Instead my fist was caught, then squeezed. I might’ve gotten it caught in some vice, for all the pain, and the agony had me on my knees in an instant. Writhing and moaning, unable to even bring my blade around as my muscles spasmed. I could feel the bones creaking beneath my skin, a fascinating sensation, and a horrifying one. I found myself counting down the seconds until one of them gave. The sound of a barricade cracking open caught my ears distantly, and the terrified screams of our defenders rang out. Then boots hit the ground hard.

Helena’s spear didn’t hit the vampire, but it forced it back, and she turned the opening stab into a followup faster than any amateur could manage. She kept it at bay for an entire four moves before her weapon was wrenched from her grip, and an elbow cracked against her head. She dropped instantly, and didn’t move again. Without Argar’s resilience, there was no wonder.

But her move had bought us long enough. Beam rose in the corner of my vision, and I turned to him as I scrambled back. Saw him standing tall, back straight, armour still glowing. Something new in his hand. The rapier our vampire friend had attacked with. Beam’s fingers ran along the steel blade, dragging light across it, and the light started coalescing. First it was thick, then long, then thinning and sharpening down, its base spreading out, its tip thinning further.

By the time I realised what it was, his sword was already fully formed. A perfect olympic sabre, long, barely curved and wicked-sharp. He squatted down in the stance I’d seen him take a hundred times before, legs springy beneath him, eyes focused ahead.

“En garde.” He whispered. The vampire came at him without another word.