It was not particularly fun, rebuilding a city, not at the best of times. Ado liked to think she’d gotten rather good at it, on account of having inherited one that was more smouldering crater than building just a few short weeks ago. All the same, that did not make the process easy.
What made it vastly, exponentially more unpleasant, of course, was that for reasons she could only flailingly guess at, Silenos Shaiagrazni had paired her up alongside Collin Baird for its duration.
He was useless, of course. That much had been well within her expectations. He was a Baird, with as much sewage flowing through his veins as blood, and the art of building and repairing nations was a thing done by Kings and Queens. Ado supposed she ought to have been grateful not to find him recreationally killing wounded citizens of their new territory.
“From behind.” She breathed, seeing the latest of many dead Knights. His arms were jutting out, clearly flailing in the moments before his death, throat torn open by motions more crude and savage than skillful. She’d learned to recognise the sight of a man whose throat had been cut from behind, and it still sickened her.
“Problem, sweetheart?” Baird asked, looking over with those empty, corpse-like eyes and letting his voice carry a quiet challenge. Ado swallowed her disgust, and let the anger come.
“Not too fond of murderers.” She replied, eying the Knight sympathetically. Baird only grinned.
“Funny, so it’s noble heroics when they wrap themselves in protection a hundred times more expensive than their enemies can afford, but dirty murder when one of those enemies learns how to sneak well and puts a knife in the gaps.”
Ado just ignored him, finding herself in no mood for the savage bastard’s grunting politics anymore.
She tried to focus back on her work, but the day had been long, and her attention was slipping. Baird was by no means helping, sat there grinning away like he just knew for a fact he was better than her.
Well he damned well wasn’t, and if he thought she was some dull peasant girl to be drawn into a rut by that arrogant smirk or those veins twisting along his arms he had another thing-
Movement, fast movement. Almost faster than she even knew movement could get.
Ado had studied magic, and she’d studied it well. She had that same, deeply ingrained reflex that all who walked the path of a magus eventually learned. Cast first, think later. Her hands were up, and her power was building before the sluggish muscles under her skin could even begin twitching. By the time her fingers flexed the air was already seized and conducted to her will.
Water built, froze, solidified into a wall of ice then hardened as magic infused it. It all took so little time that Ado wagered a trained man could not have seen it happen had he been studying the entire process. It was barely fast enough.
She’d seen arrows move slower than that, she’d seen ballista bolts and trebuchet stones soar more sluggishly through the air. Ado felt her heart leap as the blade dug into the ice, smashed through, then finally stopped just inches from Baird’s face.
The Ranger was already moving by the time it did.
Ado had not actually seen Collin Baird fight, only heard stories of it. He proved to her in an instant how true those ghost tales were as he vaulted the ten-foot wall of ice she’d made with a single motion, nocking and drawing an arrow within the same move, then had his iron projectile soaring out the very instant he had line of sight to his attacker.
It was a woman attacking him, bizarrely, and more bizarrely still- she seemed just as quick as he was. The arrow barely grazed her shoulder as she twisted to one side, then rushed back in as Baird landed to attack again.
Before Ado could help, more movement caught her. A new wall of ice was all that kept her from being crushed as another attacker came, this one close enough for her to make out more than just sex and speed. He was pale, tall, with dark hair and eyes as red as pooling blood. The man wore clothes of grey, brown and black, and seemed a part of the dusk around them.
There was an unnatural grace to his every motion, and it was that that finally had Ado’s heart sinking with realisation. The Vampire twisted back, landed a dozen feet farther away, and snarled as more of its kind emerged from crevices and crannies around them.
One, three, five. Six in total, including the one attacking Baird, three more pulled away to charge at him while two focused on Ado. Any other time she might have taken offence at the disparity, but nothing could have made her regret having less enemies then. She concentrated her magic, shoving out and letting her wall shatter into a spray of jagged death as the shards of ice lanced into undead flesh.
Vampires were durable, incredibly so. Unlike most undead they bore human-like intelligence as well, but there were few things able to match a magus for destructive power. Ado watched one of her two enemies drop down, shielding itself futilely with arms that were growing more badly mangled with every moment the ice continued cutting deep. Stripes of flesh fell down from its torso as bloody ribbons, ichor mixing with the dirt to make it clotted sludge underfoot.
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But the second had avoided the attack, and closed in faster by the moment.
Ado didn’t have time for another wall, and her physicality was to the Vampire’s as a toddler’s was to an adult, so she focused on something smaller. She let a long lance of ice protrude from the air and braced it against the ground, forcing the Vampire to twist aside, then turning to put the construct between them. It took precious moments clawing through- Ado used them to liquefy the lance, blast it over the Vampire as a covering and freeze it with a touch.
She watched the slowness take her enemy in an instant as every motion was suddenly restricted by close to a finger of ice encrusting its joints and body. The state bought her precious moments, and Ado used them well. By the time the Vampire had reached her again she’d conjured well over a tonne more high above it, and watched as the mass crunched down atop the creature with force enough to drive it a hand-span deep into the ruined cobbles of the road.
The first Vampire she’d wounded was stumbling up, still gushing out the contents of its veins, while the second twitched and groaned in the newly-made crater. Ado took a moment to conjure more ice, great javelins of it this time, and let them loose. The pounds of material hit with all the speed of an arrow, running through both of the monsters and ending things in an instant. Finally she turned to Baird.
It was no surprise to see him struggling, but Ado found herself jarred to see a Vampire already dead on the floor with a head hacked almost completely off. Baird had forsaken his bow for the long knives he carried, and both were bloodied. Minor and larger cuts ran across the full length of his body as he danced one way and the other, somehow keeping ahead of even the supernatural speed his enemies were bringing to bear.
For one, ludicrous moment she considered running. Saw the ridiculous velocities the fight was taking place at, the way the enemy seemed to cross entire fathoms of space within the blink of an eye and barely even move at all before they were upon her. Then Ado recalled Silenos Shaiagrazni, and the consequences of his displeasure. She steeled herself, raised her hands, and searched for her moment.
Thankfully, it came soon enough. A swing at Baird which looked dangerously close to landing, blocked as the prepared wall of ice emerged in the weapon’s way. The Ranger did not hesitate in taking advantage of the opening; with one slash of a dagger the Vampire’s arm was opened up, its hand opening as the ligaments all frayed apart. The next dagger was a thrust, and it found one crimson eye with unerring accuracy. The metal tip did not fully penetrate its skull, but Ado swore she saw something bulging up under the creature’s scalp at the back of its head. It fell, not spasming like she’d learned living things did when their brains were ruined. Just still.
Baird didn’t waste any time after that, and neither did the Vampires. Ado had exposed her presence by providing aid, drawing in one of the two remaining ones. This one seemed faster, faster by far, and it was almost on her before she’d even moved her magic outwards. Baird’s knife caught it right in the neck before it reached her, thrown so fast and hard Ado actually heard the wind of its motion just one moment later as a shaking, rushing thing. The Vampire stumbled, righted itself, then flew back as she sent a frozen stalagmite to lance clean into its belly.
This one, though, really was made of different stuff. Ado broke skin, drew blood, but she did not impale it, and once the Vampire finished flipping overhead it came to land perfectly upon its feet, crouched and not even seeming to notice the wound at its gut. Baird sighed.
“You know, my dad always hated you lot.” He grunted, nodding towards the Vampire. “Had uh…A phobia, it’s called. Used to set traps up in his room to keep one of yez from doing him in his sleep. All came back to this one fight, see. You’ve probably heard of it. The Skirmish on Rosar Hill.”
Evidently, the Vampire had. Its eyes narrowed, posture stiffened. If Baird noticed he was not affected, simply continuing to speak as if chatting away to friends.
“A dozen of you against almost half a thousand men, and he was one of the only survivors. It was fire, wasn’t it, that did them? Well, my dad learned that lesson well. Never let a Vampire go unburned when he-”
It moved like death, like a whisper, like an arrow. Baird moved more quickly and explosively even than that. Just as the Vampire was on him, he was low and rising, his dagger cutting a bloody chunk out of its neck, then coming down to take another. The severed fell and rolled at his feet, then the body was burning all on its own. Baird grinned.
“...Actually, what he taught me was Vampires have a persecution complex…And that they get predictable when they’re angry.”
Ado just stared.
***
The ambushers came on like a swarm of flies; irritating in their speed, tedious in their ferocity, and it was all Silenos could do to keep from cursing aloud as he had his grotesquery tear them to pieces. The fight was not long, but it had been well organised and dangerously planned. It told him something more.
Silenos hurried to the King’s chamber, hoping rather hard that he was wrong.
It was not a long journey, his flight and native speed made it rather trivial, and Silenos was there within minutes. He forced open the grand doors, stormed inside and found the chamber…A ruin. There had been guards, and now there were numerous pieces of those guards scattered every which way. There had been locks, which were crumbled and rent apart, and of course there had been King Alfonso.
There was no King Alfonso anymore, just an exsanguinated corpse with a woman standing over it. She was pale, crimson-eyed and altogether too smug as she turned to look at Silenos, grinning and flashing him a gesture so total in its impudence as to demand satisfaction on the spot. He raised his cannon to destroy her, cursing as she turned and surged back for the far wall.
A moment of confusion touched him, for the wall was many feet of solid stone, then Silenos watched as something congealed at her hands. It was familiar- shadestuff- and she made herself an opening with only a single arc of it. She disappeared out into the night just as his cannon cut the air, and Silenos stormed after.
By the time he reached the exit, there was no sight of the creature.