Before, it was only two unprepared people against a wave of vampires. Right now, we had two sharpshooters (one of which was a skilled alchemist), a readied Senior Wizard, and a Wizard who finally decided to bring some goddammed equipment with him.

These vampires had no chance. They needed to come in big numbers if they wanted to cause any damage.

The number of vampires I could count with my fingers – and I only have nine!

I finally felt a little more alive than I used to. I was nervous, I had to admit. But I was feeling a lot surer of myself.

I let go of Misa’s hand that brought me security and held on to my staff.

“Let’s go, baby,” I spoke.

“You’re finally back to being yourself,” said Tedet. “I was worried you’d stay gloomy like that.”

I wanted to turn to see him, but the enemy before us would not hesitate to jump at that opportunity. I decided to answer differently to his exposition.

“That’s right, boys,” I began. “I’m back! Flamma!”

I sensed my fire gather inside my body. I felt the sensation of power and then the heat. This was the fire I was used to. Then the memories rushed in, and the fire that brought me so much joy suddenly gave me so much pain. My phantom finger gave me a pang of pain. My fire sizzled right before me.

“Or maybe not.”

The vampires ran towards us. Clapping erupted next to me as the railguns propelled the iron rods into the vampires, crashing rather than piercing. Their bodies popped and their chests were blown back. The laws of physics dictated that their bodies will be turned into ripped ragdolls the moment those projectiles impacted.

“Crush!” Yand-Una exclaimed.

And I responded equally: “Spada!”

Four down. Five to go.

“Where are the rest?” I asked. “They must have sent more.”

“Behind!” Misa answered.

I turned to see the demon being blasted by all kinds of magic from the hadtherads. They were five in total, but they were barely doing any damage to the demon, just like I remembered with my magic.

However, the real trouble was the other vampires that rose from above the canal from both sides.

That was more like it. I was beginning to think life was turning out to be a lot simpler.

Five. Ten. I counted in my head. There’s bound to be more.

“I count ten or eleven. But there has to be more.”

“Just ten?” asked Yand-Una. “That’s not so bad.”

“And here I thought you were smart,” said Tedet. “Just wait until another twenty appear.”

Pause, I told myself.

We’re here to kill the demon, but these vampires are here for me. They took this advantage to attack us with a demon pressing on from behind. The question here is whether the Knights can dispatch the demon fast enough before it becomes more troublesome to us than the vampires.

If this goes on for longer, the demon might get the scent that Misa is an easy picking. We need to somehow divide ourselves to concentrate on the demon, if possible, while the rest whittle down the vampires. The strategy isn’t that smart, since trying to do something to the demon would clearly put us at a disadvantage with the vampires and bring up the attention of the demon.

No decision is good or smart, but what matters is which has the highest probability of succeeding. To me, the answer seemed obvious. Vampires are not a big threat compared to a demon, no matter how many numbers.

“We just can’t let the Knights fight that demon by themselves,” I told Yand-Una. “Look at them.”

They were barely doing anything. Earth erupted and slammed on it, but it just knocked it or tripped it. No sort of wind spell could do anything. Fire was completely ineffective with that low strength. Only water seemed to do any sort of visible damage, but it was barely superficial.

“I don’t think I’d be of use to them,” I said. “It’s better that I fend off the vampires.”

“You want me to help them?” she asked.

“Maybe Tedet can give you a hand. Physical attacks in the mortal realm are more effective.”

“Do you think two of you can handle them all?”

“We won’t be two,” I said, and looked at Misa. “Ted!”

He turned around after shooting his gun.

“Give her a gun.”

Tedet looked at Misa. Yand-Una and I took turns, replacing Tedet while he was busy pulling a pistol, a short railgun, from his side-chest latch.

“You know how to use these?” he asked Misa.

She shook her head, but answered: “point and shoot?”

“Point and shoot; use the reticle, align these here with here. Firm hands. Firm arms. Firm posture. Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot – that’s us.” Tedet handed her the gun. “Pull the trigger with confidence.”

She nodded.

“Here,” he said while pulling a vial from his waist pouch. “If they get any close, open the vial and pour its contents on you. It’s a shield. Skin contact is enough.”

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She nodded again.

“Nervous?”

“Scared,” she agreed.

“You’re strong, aren’t you? I see why Ed likes you.”

Tedet patted her back and came over to me asking me what our plan was. I laid it out and he looked at me incredulously.

“All of this for that girl,” he concluded.

“She’s worth it,” I explained.

“Yes, I can see that.” Tedet’s face turned red. I didn’t feel like he was making fun of me.

Before, Tedet would’ve complained about my stupidity, about putting my life on the line for someone useless. I bet he would have said the same earlier this week if I had told him about it. What made him change his mind? Was the talk we had during the case with my nephew, weeks back, enough to change his mind?

I don’t want to change him in the wrong way. I see him as our logical compass. He sees me as our moral compass. We fit perfectly. If he decided to give in to morals, this would not end right.

I saw his eyes looking at me and I felt him reading my mind.

“I like her,” he said. “She’s good.”

With that, with those mythical words, Tedet turned to Yand-Una and signaled her to move, leaving us three – Misa, Grikhat, and I – behind to kill the rest of the vampires.

I prepared myself for more bloodshed. I had my staff and I was ready for the horde, unlike last time.

“Wait until they get close, Misa,” I said, imagining me uttering ‘wait until you see the whites of their eyes,’ but I didn’t feel like joking. “You’re our last line of defense. Don’t waste that ammo.”

I paired with Grikhat and she began giving me orders. She had far more battle awareness than I did.

Claps erupted from beside and behind me. Bodies of vampires began dropping dead with every shot from Grikhat, only missing rarely.

I used my Earth spell to produce lances. Vampire after vampire were impaled.

However, they weren’t dying faster than they approached, and they got closer.

Orders from Grikhat told me where to turn and what to kill.

I counted seven dead on my side, but the numbers on the scene weren’t reducing despite the bodies piling up.

“Three o’clock! Edwhite!”

I turned and saw a vampire launching with its arms and legs, like a predator, on all four. I failed my first spell, but the second one got him right in the stomach.

“One o’clock!”

I turned again and a vampire was approaching close. I managed to kill him in one go.

“Misa! Eight o’clock!”

When I turned to see, a vampire very close to us approached Misa and she pointed her gun at it. The shot missed, and the vampire leaped at her.

I wasn’t fast enough, but Grikhat was. She used the butt of his railgun to knock it enough to send it sideways. Two claps erupted in quick succession, faster than a railgun can shoot. Both of them shot at the vampire.

“Edwhite!” Grikhat commanded.

I turned to find another vampire coming at me. I was distracted by Misa.

“Concentrate! Twelve o’clock!”

Another spell. Another vampire was dead.

I put my hand inside my pocket and held on to my storage stone, siphoning magic from it. I was beginning to feel lightheaded from all those spells. Even with the control and facilitation of a magical tool, the use of power was taxing on the spirit regardless.

“Reloading!” Grikhat shouted.

I pointed my staff across her, and tried impaling a vampire. I failed. I tried again, and rushed to pull out my spell. I failed again. My head began hurting.

Before I could utter ‘oh no,’ Misa had pointed her gun at the approaching vampire and shot it in the shoulder. Its arm was ripped right off, sending it flying and the vampire tumbling to the ground.

Grikhat finished reloading, pointed the gun at the fallen vampire, and sent it on a direct flight to meet its maker. The vampire shrieked before dying. Economy class, I thought. I guess she wasn’t that merciful.

I turned to my right and powered a spell directly from the stone. The spell was chaotic, but the spear killed the vampire, nonetheless.

“Good job, Misa,” Grikhat congratulated her. “Keep it up. You too, Edwhite.”

She pointed her gun at the next vampire and gave more orders.

Whenever I could turn around to see, I caught a glimpse of the battle behind us. It wasn’t looking good. There was already one Knight on the ground, immobile. Tedet was further back than anyone, but every time his gun clapped, the demon flinched and roared.

Yand-Una was doing her best to give orders, but the Knights were not having it.

The whole ordeal was more of a mess than we had anticipated. If only I knew how to use the Faith.

Demons aren’t affected specifically by Christian chants and prayers – unlike ancient pop culture will have you believe – but by the power of the Faith. A belief so pure it acts directly from the soul. Any mortal with enough Faith can cast it, Wizard or not – it’s even theorized animals could as well, if they knew how. It’s a badly understood type of magic. If you’re used to videogame RPGs, you could classify this as light magic or the users as priests. In reality, any belief and any person – so long as their Faith is strong – can affect a demon and even several kinds of spirits or supernatural creatures, depending on corruption.

Along with demons, vampires and torviela are weak to this type of magic. However, to use it, one must have complete, unwavering trust in their beliefs – Faith.

Faith is so powerful and so mysterious, for all we know, with Faith, it is possible to move mountains. Anything is possible if you believe hard enough – that is, in essence, the source of magic, as well; however, Faith works on an entirely different level.

If only I could use the Faith.

But there was one reason I couldn’t. I can’t believe in anything when the world around me seems to conspire against everything I do. If there is an Almighty, or any other deity or deities, it surely has a sick sense of humor when it regularly makes my life a living hell.

Case and point, a wave of non-vampiric, humanoid shapes began flooding from beyond the canals.

Their shapes were clearly bipedal and anthropomorphic, but there was something wrong. Languid and pointy. And their skin was red and rugged, tough and opaque – it was bark from a tree.

These were Faery.

The Faery were in this place now. Vampires. Faery. Wizards. Knights. Alchemist. Humans. Radera. Mortals.

Sweet Mary. What in the Merlin is going on?

The large creatures approached the vampires from behind. The ones closest to them reacted and backed up, dodging the attacks.

Not a second later, from beyond the canal, exactly opposite from the treants, another group of humanoids flooded in. Shorter in size but slim and quick. They did not fly but moved through the floor like they were hovering.

The elves jumped in the action and began ripping into the treants, whose numbers increased rapidly.

Before we could react in any kind of form, mentally or verbally, an elf skillfully dashed towards us, dagger in hand.

Grikhat did not have to think too much about it, her gun traced the figure, warned it to stop, but almost immediately discharged her gun rapidly.

With the vampires, she would shoot slow and precise, but against this fast-moving target, she ripped into it in full automatic. Her gun clapped rapidly, it almost sounded like cracking.

For an instant, the elf looked fine, side-stepping, trying to avoid a hit by predicting where she’d aim and shoot.

It was all moot. I blinked and the elf was ripped in half with a single shot. The next four made sure to turn it into swiss cheese. That is, if swiss cheese also looked like ground meat done haphazardly.

We retreated away from the elves and vampires, leaving them to their vices. Behind us were the treants. For a moment we felt safe with the slow-moving trees that seem to be on our side, attacking both the vampires and elves, only to realize that they would swing at anything that got close to them.

The numbers behind us were staggering. I could not count fast enough. I did some quick math in my head, trying to come up with a number, and estimated, roughly, a boatload of treants, give or take a shit-ton.

“Sweet Mary! That’s a lot!” I communicated my analysis.

“We’re retreating!” Grikhat spoke.

As if to make our lives even more miserable, with the twilight, another group fell into the fray.

This time, I could tell they looked like radera. Friend or foe? I thought. More knights? And as if my question was partially answered, Grikhat interrupted my thoughts.

“What the hell is that?!”

I saw her pimples turn blue. She was angry or repulsed.

That was enough answer I needed. For a human, once a vampire shows a bit of their nature, they become disgustingly ugly, with pale-gray skin and fanged, their face disrupted inhumanly. I imagined that’s what she saw.

“Torviela,” I explained. “Sweet Mary.”

“They’re all here?” Misa asked.

“Everyone’s here.”

I felt like I was an announcer for a movie and or game trailer.