“Niles, are you alright?” Ophelia’s shout reminded me that I didn’t have the time to think this through. Now that I was injured, I had just put this hunt on a time limit. Ophelia wasn’t quite fast enough to pin the creature down on her own, and I was too slow to dodge its attacks and deal damage.
“I’m alive. I’ll cover you, give it everything you have!” Now that I was aware of the beast, I wouldn’t let it get the drop on me again. I had barriers, I could keep it at bay until my mana ran dry or my blood ran out of my body. Either way would mean death of course, but if I could give Ophelia enough defense to let her focus on all out offense, then we could win this.
Despite being the same level as us, the wolf clearly out-stripped us in both speed and agility. It was huge, heavy, and had a bestial intelligence. I’d even guess that it could move quicker than Roquain, albeit not by much. But that wasn’t my main worry. Roquain had broken through the barrier and continued his attack, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of the level difference, or because he simply packed that much power in his attacks. If the wolf could bite through the barrier as well, then my ability to defend Ophelia would become much more limited.
But we had to do something. I used the thick tree I had come up near as cover, keeping it between myself and the wolf at all times, just peeking out far enough to see the fight going on ahead of me.
Ophelia had given up on defense entirely, trusting in her and my abilities to keep her from harm. She dove through claw strikes and bite attempts, each one blocked by my barrier ability. I tossed them out like candy on halloween, trusting my vision and hoping my mana pool would keep up. So long as I only had to use one at a time, they were very efficient though, and Ophelia seemed more than happy to press her advantage.
There was a problem however. Each strike Ophelia landed was minor. Her weapon, granted through an ability like my own, took the shape of a mid-length rapier. A long, springy blade with two cutting edges that came to a sharp point, it was an excellent weapon for human-sized targets, and for piercing through weak points on armor. It could cut flesh easily if it was unprotected as well, giving it additional versatility to be sure. The issue was that the dire wolf was so large that the rapier was proving ineffective.
She couldn’t land a fatal or even debilitating blow. She could cut the fur and skin, or skewer the muscle in its legs, but the blade was too small to cause truly dangerous damage to the creature. If she was going to win, it looked like it would have to be with a thousand cuts. I made sure she could attack unimpeded, but the violence wasn’t ending, and with each passing second, the two circled closer and closer to my own position.
Then a moment came. It was a small thing, but the wolf had started to favor one of its front legs. I watched as it stopped putting as much weight on it, using it more and more to attack, but the blows were slower, weaker.
“Ready?” I called out, my tome glowing as I channeled mana into it.
“Ready!” Ophelia replied, dodging out of the way of a bite that would have ripped off an arm. It was a godsend that she was a speedy type, even if her weapon couldn’t cause the huge damage spikes we needed.
I waited a half second more for the wolf to put its weight on its worsening leg, stepped out from behind the tree to make sure my aim was true, and loosed the force bolt at its joint. The white-blue sphere of energy shot out like a cannonball from my outstretched hand, heading perfectly on target.
And then the wolf was gone. It disappeared completely from sight, and the bolt of energy harmlessly struck the ground.
“Shit, where did it g-” I nearly froze in fear as its destination became apparent. The dire wolf had figured us out. It reappeared right in front of me and lunged forward with a ferocious bite. I fell back, tossing a barrier out in front of its muzzle at the last moment. It shattered silently, and the wolf’s maw bounced back. It had been so close that I had gotten a good whiff of its fetid breath, and came up gagging as I regained my feet.
Ophelia started running for us, but the dire wolf was cunning. I was too slow, injured as I was, and the wolf kept circling around me, lunging out with teeth or claws that I blocked off with my barriers. As long as it kept circling, it could keep us both in the same place, and launch attacks at either of us. But it didn’t shadowstep again, instead just using its bulk to keep us from separating.
Any time Ophelia went to try and attack, the wolf would use its enormous bulk to simply crash into her, trusting its tough hide and size to keep the rapier from penetrating anything vital. So far that had been working, and once it had knocked Ophelia away, it would instead attack me. I could block both attacks, but the effect was still the same, as the barrier wasn’t selective. Ophelia couldn’t attack the wolf with the barrier between them both either.
Additionally, the larger barriers required to block the wolf’s huge frame were sucking up immense amounts of mana. If they were too small, the wolf’s bulk would simply crush them through, like trying to stop a bus with a dinner plate.
“Ophelia… We can’t keep this up. I’m running out of gas.” I panted after the last exchange.
I’m guessing she understood what I was saying from context clues, because I knew the idiom would have earned me a series of questions if we weren’t in danger. She flicked her rapier out, the blade a deep, bloody crimson. “We need to bait out that shadowstep again, then I can finish it.”
That's right, she had that one attack she had used against the jailer back in the castle. That would make three abilities I had seen from her. Was that what everyone got from a focus core?
“Alright, stay between it and me.”
The next time the wolf attacked, I dumped an enormous amount of mana into my barrier ability. Three huge hexagonal barriers appeared in front of it, each one positioned so that the wolf would bounce off one and into the others if it hit any of them. When it hit them, they all shattered, causing the air to fill with brilliant light, and blocking the wolf from our sight.
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I turned and ran like a frightened rabbit, my bloodied back causing me to scream in pain as I pumped my legs for all they were worth. Ophelia did what she said, and tried to keep the wolf from chasing after the obviously wounded prey, but the wolf disappeared the moment the shattered barriers fell.
“Niles!” I heard the shout from Ophelia, could hear her feet pounding into the ground a few dozen feet behind me as I booked it.
Then the air popped. It was a faint sound, something I had missed the other times the wolf had used shadowstep. But I was listening for it now. The sound that just had to accompany any kind of intangibility or teleportation. The sound of displacing air as an object suddenly occupied the space the air had been in. As soon as I heard that sound, I created a barrier directly behind me, large enough to stop the wolf, and turned. It crashed into the barrier and bounced off, but seemed ready for the recoil this time, as it kept its feet and charged me again.
I didn’t have enough mana for another barrier of that size, so I jumped forward between the wolf’s front legs, and rolled, coming up behind it. The pain was enough to nearly cause me to pass out as my back hit the ground, but I had enough adrenaline running through my body to keep me going.
The wolf turned, quick as a cobra, and started to lunge at me again. But Ophelia had made it. 10 crimson blades, seemingly made of blood, all stabbed forward at the same time, each one piercing the wolf in a different place. Eyes, chest, neck, legs. Nothing was safe from the crimson replicas of the rapier. Ophelia had managed to land the attack just as the wolf turned, and it didn’t have the time to pull away or put its bulk between the two.
It fell over as the blades dissipated, and Ophelia dismissed her now crystal clear rapier. I groaned, laying on my side on the earth, exhausted and bloody. And the stupid elf was without a single injury. Unfair. “Why do I always get beat up, and you look fine?” I grumbled, staring up at her.
“Because you are the backline, and everyone always wants to kill the backline first.” She said simply, reaching down and pulling me up by an arm. “Now, let's get you bandaged up before you bleed out on me. I can’t have my future butler dying on me, that just isn’t allowed.”
----------------------------------------
It took a bit of time, but eventually, we had my wounds cleaned and bandaged with the few supplies we had gathered before going on this expedition. It was just some clean water and old clothes, but it was enough to keep me from bleeding out on the way home at least. I was just hoping I didn’t get an infection.
“Was first aid part of your training too?” I asked as we walked back to the village. We were taking it slow to keep my back from opening back up, and we had plenty of time to talk on the way. Especially since we were both eager to make it back before nightfall.
“Training? Oh, no. That's something every member of my family learns.” The question seemed to put her in a more contemplative mood, so I thought now might be a good time to try and figure out more about her.
“Ophelia, what exactly is a demi-vampire?” I asked, glancing over at her with a raised eyebrow.
She let out a soft sigh. “That device of yours told you about it?”
“Yes. It listed your race as Elf, but also as a Sanguinis Demi-vampire. I’ve been curious since then, but where I am from, both of those things are myths, and vampires are seen as evil.” I didn’t quite know where I was going with this really, but I wanted to know more before I stepped into the lions… or rather, vampires den of her home.
She didn’t answer right away, and we continued to walk in silence. I wasn’t about to broach the subject again if she didn’t want to tell me, so I just kept my mouth shut, but eventually she spoke again. “Niles, do you think I am evil?” She asked, no longer walking, but facing me directly.
I stopped, and gave her my full attention as well. “Of course not. I don’t know what kind of reputation vampires or demi-vampires have here, but you’ve been nothing but kind with me at least.”
She nodded, and pursed her lips, considering her next words carefully. “Demi-vampires are living vampires. You could say we are living beings with vampire characteristics. It's not much more than others of our species, but we are shaped by the disease from birth. Sanguinis is my bloodline. We are blood drinkers, and can control blood to a small extent. We often get focus cores with a blood centered ability set.”
“Okay?” I wasn’t sure what exactly she was getting at. It all sounded pretty typically fantasy, about as far fetched as elves with long ears, or direwolves the size of cargo vans. “What would that matter? You’ve been walking around this a bit in our previous conversations, without telling me anything. Is it something you need to hide?”
Okay, so I was playing a little stupid here. I could guess why demi-vampires might be seen as just as bad as true vampires, but I wanted her to explain more fully, and just asking outright ‘do people think you are evil’ seemed a bit rude.
I don’t think my ruse worked very well though. She just gave me an exasperated look. But she explained anyway. “Demi-vampires love blood, almost as much as our undead counterparts. Some of us have gone crazy in the past from blood-lust. We don’t have weaknesses to sunlight or silver and we can enter holy places and homes uninvited, so we can travel freely through towns and cities without giving ourselves away.”
Now that made sense. What was scarier than a vampire? A vampire that could get you anywhere at any time. “Ah. I think I get it now.”
For whatever reason, this just wasn’t bothering me. Perhaps because it seemed so far fetched from what I considered normal, even in this world so far, that I just couldn’t quite grasp the concept.
“Do you drink blood?”
She shook her head, “I… ah no, I don’t.” And even in the fading light, I caught a bit of a blush on her cheeks.
“Can drinking blood heal you?” I asked, curious how close vampires here were to earth’s version.
“Yes, to an extent. It depends on the tier of the blood in comparison to my own. If I drink the same or higher tier blood, it can close wounds, but it won’t restore stamina or mana. Undead vampires can heal almost everything instantly by draining someone though, and they can do it in moments.”
Well that was terrifying. Vampires might have just hit the top of my ‘shit I don’t want to deal with’ list.
“Okay, so, I know now. What about your family, are they all demi-vampires too?” I asked, trying to get the last bit of information I was really curious about.
“They are. The staff aren’t though, and my family doesn’t allow long term visitors that aren’t in the know. So you are either family, staff, or just a dinner guest.”
“As in, a guest staying for dinner right?” I asked, chuckling just a little.
She just gave me an inscrutable look. We didn’t talk much else before making it back to the village and claiming our spoils. We visited the town healer as well and got my back properly cared for, before heading to bed at the tavern once more.
The next day, we would head out of this village, and onto Nightfrost city.