Chapter 14 - Between a rock and an undead place.

  After a score of seconds we hear running steps outside. I tense up and ready myself for combat, but soon the many footsteps start to fade in the distance. Score one for the wizard and his concealment spell. I’m pretty good with those, part of concealing yourself is hiding your magic, and abjuration is pretty good on blocking magic, even my own.

“Liz, keep an eye on the door, I got check on West.” I ask the sidhe lady as I turn to pick up Hendrickson from where I dropped him and put him in the corner with West. Pyralis position herself facing the door as I do so.

Hendrickson is still out cold, the back of his head seems swollen, but he is breathing fine. I grab a piece of cloth from one of the crafting tables on the room and freeze it, and put against the swollen spot. I know it’s not much, but it’s the best I can do. Abjuration specialist here, not a field medic.

I turn to West and check her vitals, they seemed fine. The puncture wounds on her neck are bleeding slowly. I conjure extreme cold on the point of my fingers and do a quick press against the wounds. The blood coagulates and the wound stop bleeding, but she is left with two small spots of frost burn on her neck.

I focus my vision on the magical spectre. Like using a night vision goggles everything turns to grey forms with only magic shining strongly. I can see the enchantments on the room and crafting tables, Lis is like a beacon of magic and my enchantment at the door is like a mirror that reflects magic energies back in to the room.

I turn to the detective and I can see the magic protections of her guard uniform and the combat rod she carries on her belt. Focusing on the wound I see a small spark of a dark red magic that is starting to crawl from her neck to her heart. Damn, I thought the vampire didn’t have time to infect her. Fuck, time to get serious.

I focus my vision on it and will my magic to form in a way to counter the spark. I form the dispeling magic on my mind and hold it there. Keeping the spell in place I take a small part of the power of winter I still have and focus on the intent of cleansing the vampirism from West. I touch her neck and mash the two spells together.

A burst of light blue sparks leave my hand and travel through her neck until they reach the red spark and after a few seconds stinguish it. Ha, score two for the wizard who just performed a sorcerer trick.

What I just did seems simple, but as far as I know there is nobody else who can do it. You see, Wizards cast spells from studying and understanding their own magic. We basically create constructs in our mind on what the spell should do and fill it with magic activating it. With time a wizard can imagine any kind of construct, and if he has enough power and affinity, he can cast the spell. But it’s a time consuming and demanding act. So what we do is study and memorize a bunch of these constructs, that are basically the spells, and so we can quickly cast them by using a trigger to fill them with magic. That's why most wizards use somatic when casting. And like all trigger is best to use something your not going to say by mistake. That's why I named all my spells in Irish and say Balla Sioc instead of Ice/frost wall. It avoids casting the spell without the intention. A wizard can still use his or main language to cast his spells, but those who do have to be carefull everytime they say the trigger words to not cast it.

Now, sorcerers are mages who cast their spells with intuition and feelings only. There is no construct or trigger, they will the magic to do as they bid. It makes their spell usually more powerful in general, but much less efficient. As the sorcerer has no construct to help him there is a lot of wasted magic on their spells and they tend to run out of power a lot faster than wizards. Lilian for example, was basically out of magic after two spells against the Barghast. Also as their casting is all intuition and feelings, they rarely manage to cast outside their affinity.

It means that if Lilian for example, who has a big affinity to raw arcane power, were to try cast an ice wall spell she would run out of magic before managing to form the wall. But if she had infinity power for example, she would be able to get magic do almost anything she could think about just by willing it, while a wizard with infinity power would still need to design the construct for the spell.

What I did to remove the vampirism from west was a mix of wizardry and sorcery. I say I’m the only person I knew who could do it because of my connection to the well of winter, the source of the power for Mab and the Unseelie. It’s a long story for another time, but basically I touched it once and now I got a connection that I can draw power from it. And since Fae magic works like much more like sorcery than wizardry, when I use the power of winter as fuel I can cast with intent only, instead of using a spell form. The downside of it, is that by being able to tap the well of winter also made me Mab subject. And she grabbed this chance by the balls to sink her hooks on me.. Bitch.

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But this connection is the only reason that I could take a dispel magic construct and morph in to a spell that was capable of removing and extinguishing the vampirism curse from West. Now if we survive the night, she only has to deal with the undead virus..

I get up and go stand with Pyralis. She gives me one eyebrow raised look as if to ask now what? Dammit, why did I teach her that trick. “Now we wait and hope we are not found.” She nods and sits in one of the tables that for us are just a little higher than a regular chair. I follow suit and to the same.

Time pass by. I had no way of measuring it, but I think half an hour passed when Hendrickson woke up. “Rise and shine detective! Welcome to the land of the living, or at least their last bastion on the land of the dead!” What can I say, I love being dramatic…

Hendrickson takes a few seconds to familiarize with his surroundings and immediately checks on West when he notices her. “What happened to Natasha?” He asks as he notices the wounds of her neck.

“Miss West decided to play hero when you got tossed against the wall and tried to save you. While she was successful she got bitten for it.” His eyes go wide when he hears it. “Does it means she is going to become one of them?” He asks after a few seconds putting his thoughts on order. “Relax, I managed to remove the curse from her wound, fortunately the vampire didn’t have enough time to infect her with more than a spark of it.”

Hendrickson shoulders visible relax when he listen to this. “Now if we survive this she only has to deal with the virus.” I say nonchalantly. He quickly turn his face to me, eyes once again wide with worry. “Calm down detective, the Fae on the enclave, or one of the few man of faith we have can cure her as long as she doesn't die here and turn first..”

After I’m done scaring the detective the next hour passes with me explaining our situation to the detective. I was about to ask if anyone had a set of cards when someone tried to open the door. As soon it noticed the door was locked it tried pushing against it, than it struck with force against the door but the table held it in place. Shit, score one for the undead.

I prepared a quick icicle spell and released it just as a fist broke through thick wooden door like it was drywall. I hit the arm as it retracted and a keen yell full of pain rewards me. Hendrickson brakes the leg of a table and hold it’s as an improvised stake in one hand, his guard baton on the other. Lis takes a few steps back and assumes a combat stance, flames on her right hand and a small dagger on her left.

But the strikes against the door stopped. Than the vampire started screaming and hitting the walls on the corridor. I was perplexed for a moment, but then understood what he was doing. The son of a bitch was trying to draw the ghouls. Considering that he also wasn’t charging the door to get to us it must have fed recently enough to be really dangerous.

Soon we hear more shrikes and screams coming down the corridor and soon after there are multiple strikes against the door, all lower than the hole the vampire made on the door.

“Lis, I don’t suppose you got enough power to torch them?” I ask her knowing that burning the vampires on the room probably took a big part of her magic. She didn’t just threw fireballs and set the room on fire, she had to use her magic as fuel to keep the flames burning, non magical fire would have gone out once the oxygen of the room burned out. Add the concentrated beams of fire and I doubt she has that much left, even with the short rest we had.

“I’m afraid not Artharian, it seems we will have to this the hard way.” She answer with a predatory smile on her face. The crazy lady was actually looking forward to this. I look to Hendrickson and notice that he was all business now, the anger for West injure burning on his eyes

Seriously? I’m the only sane one here who doesn't look forward to fighting an overwhelming number of undead? Time to get serious again, I pass my staff to my right hand and push my left forward, my beads bracelet shimmer with magic as I form a kinetic shield just as the gnomes ghouls managed to rip the door out of it’s hinges and top it over the table. The shield block the the doorway just as 5 ghouls were about to rush through it The shield stops the ghouls hard, but as soon as they see us they go into a frenzy and start hitting it non stop. The white beads on my bracers start getting warm and turning red. The ghouls keep striking the shield and after a minute or so all the beads are a deep red.

I drop my staff against a table and remove the bracer from my wrist. As I do so the shield vanish and the ghouls topple forward on the ground. Those behind started trying to run over those on the front and I see at least 3 tall figures on the back. I grim at them and toss the bracers outside the room. A vampire dodges it and hit the corridor wall. The creature looks back at me with a smug smile on it’s dead face. It quickly turns in to doubt as I have an even bigger smile on mine. There is a loud explosion noise of air being dislocated as all the kinetic energy the beads on my bracer absorbed is released. Score three for the wizard asshole.

The vampire and a bunch of the ghouls are thrown inside the room. Lis quickly stab his heart with her dagger while it’s still stunned by the detonation. I grab my staff back and smash one of the ghouls skulls. Hendrickson finishes another. The other three are getting up already, being undead means they didn’t get stunned too long.

I move to strike another one, but it tried to dodge and lung at me at the same time, making me hit it’s shoulder instead of bashing it’s head. As it rolls on the ground I look at the door and see that more ghouls getting ready to rush inside. I quickly cast another force shield, this one actually fed by my own magic to stop more of them rushing inside.

I take bearing of my surroundings and see Lis blowing the head of another ghoul that charged her with a fiery open palm strike. Hendrickson tackles one from behind who had fallen closer to West and was going for her unconscious form.

I turn back to the Ghoul I hitted. It was getting up and ready to lunge at me again, I take a small step back to better use the range of the staff and thrust it forward as I summon the ice blade at the point again. I pierce the charging ghoul skulls and it falls to the ground as soon as it’s moments is over.

Hendrickson is standing up after bashing the ghouls head against the floor. While resistant and attuned to magic, gnomes aren’t really physically strong, so the boost they get from their new ghoulish existence isn’t that significant. If these were all dwarves, for example we would be even more fucked up.

“Get ready, I can’t keep the shield anymore”. I yell to them as I remove my staff from the ghouls head. Hendrickson forms on my right and Pyralis on my left. As I drop the shield, a dozen or so of ghouls rush the room.