Ch.35
Once on the roof, I checked Chris, but there was nothing for me to do. Both my Heal skill and the fact that Qi Regeneration just wouldn’t work told me that he was dead.
“Dammit. I’m so sorry, bud. This is all my fault.” I genuinely lost it for a second there, hugging his dead body, but the sound of someone coming up the nearby stairs in a rush interrupted me. I hefted both bodies and headed west.
I still had something to do, after all. No way I let this vampire bitch get away... me not fucking up might have been able to stop this, but SHE’S still the one who decided Chris and I would make a good meal for her little psycho vampire coterie!
I sprinted along the rooftops to the east bank of the Willamette River. Once there, I gently sat Chris down, then carried the vampire’s body so I was right next to the water.
Running water is lethal to vampires, you see, just like the legends say. The hose in your yard is a better weapon against them most of the time than a shotgun, unless it’s a really bad-ass enchanted shotgun!
I pushed the formerly hot Goth vampire chick under water and jerked the stake out of her chest. Her eyes snapped open, and she struggled wildly for about thirty or so seconds... but I was stronger than she was. Way better at grappling, too.
It wasn’t much of a challenge, really; she'd basically had no chance from the start. If I’d thought she did, I would have pinned her under something heavy at the bottom of the river, THEN pulled the stake.
But I wanted to be able to see the look on her face when she died; to be able to look her in the eyes the moment she realized her immortal unlife was coming to its end. Yeah, I was still FURIOUS!
So, I hold her underwater by her ankles as she struggled, as her undead skin pealed, bubbled, and boiled away like I’d submerged her in acid. I watched her expression go from desperate and angry to hatred and then acceptance... and I enjoyed it.
Even more so, I had zero regrets about enjoying it.
Then she turned to ash and those ashes drifted away.
It felt cathartic, but I was still really mad.
Actually, mad wasn’t nearly a strong enough term. I was positively seething with wrath!
My mind was busily weighing the options of what I should do, next.
This isn’t over. Monster hunting sounds like a really damned good idea. How many fucking different kinds of monsters are there? How many people do they kill every year? Was this just bad luck, bad timing?
Fuck that shit. These monsters need to die. The Federovs might be more than I think I can handle... but 3 months from now?
Being a Dreamer is cheatier than hell! Fuck these things! Ray Ramirez, professional monster hunter?
YOUR GOD DAMNED RIGHT! RAY RAMIREZ, MONSTER HUNTER EXTRAORDINAIRE! LOOK OUT YOU FUCKERS!
Even when Dimi Federov had me gunned down in my own home, I’ve never been so furious!
Behind me, I could hear a cough followed by a low moan.
I spun to look and was both shocked and incredibly happy with what I saw!
Chris was alive!
I ran over to him, immediately pumping some more Qi into him to heal him.
I was getting pretty low on Qi at this point, but I didn’t really give a crap.
My friend was ALIVE! “Oh my god, Chris! Are you ok?!” Even as I said it, I knew it was a fucking stupid thing to ask, but I couldn’t see to help myself. Of course, he wasn’t ok!
He pushed me away, coughing up funky phlegm laced with a LOT of blood. “I’m... well, shit, man. I’m not ok, but I’m not dying, either...”
I won’t lie, I was crying my eyes out. “How are you...” I paused for a moment while my brain went through some mental gymnastics and came up with the only logical answer to him being alive. “What happened? Are you an Awakener, now?”
Chris nodded. “Yeah, I am. Help me up, ya big mook.” he said, reaching out his hand.
I gladly helped him up. He looked at me and smiled. A couple of words and hand gestures made him glow and he healed.
Chris never plays clerics. “White Mage Arcanist?” I asked him.
Chris grinned at me. “Yup! White Mage Arcanist primary at 4th, Kensai and Bladebound Paths for the Magus Class, and Edge Lord and Crimson Count for the Harbinger Class... both at level 3.” He was grinning at me as a black hooded trenchcoat materialized around him and a sheathed black katana, its hilt and scabbard trimmed in gold, appeared in his hand.
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“Huh. You’re almost as cheaty as I am!” I told him, grinning.
“Of course, I am. Do you know how much time I spent min/maxxing this build?!” he told me, clipping his magic sword’s scabbard to his belt.
I was just so damned glad he was alive! I noticed him noticing the tears openly running down my face.
“Huh. There must be some onion chopping ninjas hiding around here somewhere, eh?” he asked me with a grin.
I grabbed him in a big ol’ bear hug. “Sure, rub it in!” I told him, then pushed him away. “You say you spent a lot of time min/maxxing, but it looks like you spent a lot of time trying to be as edgy as you could!”
Chris chuckled. “Puh-lease! Edgy? Edge lord? Those guys WISH they were as cool as I’m gonna be!”
“What took you so long, you jerk?” I asked. “It seemed... faster, maybe? Yeah, faster than when it happened to me. I was sure you were dead!”
Chris nodded. “I think it took more time than you thought. The Grand Method didn’t even offer me the option to Cheat Death until after you picked me up and had me on the roof. Then before I had the chance to do anything you picked me up and started running. It wouldn’t let me accept until you put me down over there.” he said, nodding to where I had laid him down.
I held up my hand, gesturing for him to stop talking. “Did you hear that? Something – no, several somethings are coming.”
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Deputy Constable Hiram Lockwood was not happy at the knock on his door at a little after one am on a Friday night. After all, he’d found himself an absolutely delightful little distraction that he and his pet were having oh, so much fun with!
Unfortunately, it was his night to handle any emergencies and if someone was knocking on his door, it probably was an actual emergency.
Hiram was a Master of the Illuminati, though a relatively low ranking one. Dealing with such things were beneath him – or at least they should have been. He was stuck in his current situation in order to make up for a slight miscalculation on his part. How was I supposed to know that apprentice was the great, great, great, great grandniece of one of the Old Masters?! That’s like seven degrees of separation, dammit!
The only good part about it for him was the fact that the Old Master was only annoyed about him deflowering the girl instead of really angry. Still, twenty years of this as punishment? It's damned excessive! It's not like the girl was complaining! All of this because her mother was pissed that I took both her AND her daughter’s virginity? How mad would she be if she knew I took her grandmother’s, too?
“If the damned apprentices got into the demon summoning rooms and called up a succubi again, I absolutely WILL turn them into mice and give them to a company that will use them for lab experiments!” he told his pet.
Kar’avixez, his bound succubi, giggled wickedly. “Hurry back, master. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your toy for you!”
He stared at her. “Her flower’s MINE Kara! Do you know how hard it is to find an eighteen-year-old Catholic school girl who’s both beautiful AND still a virgin? I’ll bind and seal you into a truly penitent nun for a year, leaving you able to do nothing but watch as she’s a sweet, innocent little thing the whole time!”
Kara looked like he’d just threatened her with the worst torture imaginable. “Yes, master.” she told him.
Once he was sure she’d acquiesced, Hiram answered his door. “What is it!?”
One of the adepts from the Constable’s office was standing there, obviously not pleased to be where he was. “Near downtown, there’s been a red alert between at least two groups and an unknown individual, sir.”
Hiram rolled his eyes. “Which two groups, you waste of oxygen!”
The adept swallowed and answered. “The vampires and fey, deputy. The unknown assailant was using some kind of hybrid of energies according to witnesses, probably Qi and Psi.”
Hiram groaned. “Why are you wasting my time over some Templar reject? Who’s on duty in the area?”
Hiram really wanted to get back to his evening’s entertainment.
The adept checked a tablet device. It looked like some kind of strange hybrid between a slate chalkboard and an iPad, scrolling through it quickly. “It looks like Morden is on that side of town right now.”
Hiram nodded. “Fine. Send Morden to clean things up. Him and his pack should be able to handle 1 Templar reject who got his feelings hurt easily enough. You know the deal. One warning, blah, blah, blah. No mercy if they refuse, etc.”
The adept nodded. “Yes, sir!”
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Chris nodded, and Mage Armor, looking like a suit of elaborate black Gothic full plate, and a Shield spell popped into place. Of course, his black hooded trench coat was still there, just worn over the armor.
Sense Supernatural, active since I’d unmasked Bruno, was still running. It let me see right through the illusions concealing the pack of ghouls headed towards us along with their controller? Maybe their Boss?
It was a damned lot of ghouls, too. Twenty of them? Twenty-five, maybe? Several of them were bigger, too, probably ghasts?
Whatever the relation was, the leader was an older man of African-American descent. He was riding a skeletal steed wreathed in green and black flames. To say the look on his face was one of utter arrogance, annoyance, and dismissal is not an understatement.
My Perception roll is at a +27; even when he was a quarter mile away, I could easily make out his expressions. I couldn’t help but snort a little at his bowler hat, it made him almost look like a cowboy riding herd on a pack of ghouls, like some kind of necromantic cowboy!
A necro cowboy? Necroboy? I’ll figure it out.
As they got closer, my mind gauntlets and mind armor deployed themselves, configured for fighting undead. There’s really no such thing as a good undead or a good necromancer, after all.
Well, for this definition of necromancer, at least. Being able to speak with the spirits of the dead or call on them to ask for aid was technically necromancy, but people who only do that are referred to as White necromancers. The difference is that White necromancers ask the dead for their help politely, and get told no pretty often, often in a violent and dangerous manner. They also focus on putting the unquiet dead to rest by helping them to say goodbye to their loved ones and completing unfinished tasks that would otherwise bind the dead to this plane.
The other kind of necromancer forces the undead to obey, binding them to their service, and outright creates more undead intentionally. For every one White necromancer, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of the other kind of necromancer... because that kind of necromancy is a VERY quick and effective path to power. Truly great power, too. A necromancer can build an army of the dead in a tiny fraction of the time it takes to make a regular army... and the more battles that army gets in, the stronger and larger the army gets.
Not everyone who uses Necromantic magic is evil, either... but if you’re creating or controlling undead against their will, you’ve probably crossed the line.
A necromancer's personal power also advances incredibly quickly, too. Only mortals who sell their souls to evil advance as quickly.
Technically, he might be merely Chaotic Neutral, you know, the kind who does what he wants, when he wants, and only cares about himself... which, while not technically Evil, sure is REALLY damned close to it.
Anyone running around with a pack of ghouls and ghasts is that kind of necromancer! And without the possibility of doubt or exception, that kind of necromancer needs to die.
The rider pulled to a halt the moment I did that, and so did the ghouls. A Bane weapon enchantment targeted at your species/race feels incredibly uncomfortable to even be around. It literally is the antithesis of your existence, and you can feel it hungering for the chance to end your existence!
The broader Nemesis enchant does similar things to bane, granting +2 to hit and +2d6 damage, but is more expensive because it applies to larger groups. Nemesis has six overarching settings, being the four alignments, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, as well as mortal and Outsiders, aka the Spiritbound.
A Nemesis weapon that can affect you is also REALLY uncomfortable to even approach. Heading towards someone carrying a weapon with both of those enchants aimed at you was like an ice elemental walking into a bonfire! Maybe you can do it, but it sure feels bad, man!
The guy, who was pretty obviously a necromancer, as much from the kind of mana around him as from the pack of undead following him around, had lost all traces of arrogance from his face. He now looked a bit more like he was constipated.
He approached to about fifty feet away and stopped, keeping his minions back. As he stood there, I focused, charging my Halo. Unless he was a psion himself, or at least familiar with them, he probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what specifically the Red and Gold rings now circling my mind gauntlets were, but I was okay with that.
He could certainly tell it was more pain getting ready to be applied.
Then Mr. Necro Cowboy decided to talk. Imagine that?
“In the name of the Constable of Portland, you are ordered to stand down and surrender yourselves!” he yelled out.
I looked at Chris. Chris looked at me and sighed. We’d gamed together often enough for him to know my thoughts on being taken captive... especially by obviously evil guys. If they’d rolled up to us looking and acting like knights-in-shining-armor coming to our emotional rescues, I might have been willing to talk.
Surrender to a spell caster, riding a fiery undead horse, surrounded by two dozen or so undead?
Nope! Not gonna do it... wouldn’t be prudent!
“Look, I’ll only say this once, necromancer. Take your little pack of undead buddies and your skeleton horse and get outta here. Otherwise, someone’s gonna be coming out here to collect YOUR corpses. Leave. NOW.”
Chris looked at me oddly when I said that, and the Necro Cowboy looked offended... I wasn’t gonna give him the chance to try anything else.
I admit, I’d pretty much decided to kick his ass the moment I saw him headed this way.