AO 6 Ch 25

The two vampires regrouped and stood together, looking utterly relaxed as their wounds healed. They had the expression of someone who was playing with their food.

I was about to teach them a very important lesson about not seizing an opportunity. I continued to dump more and more magic into my soul; the new palace made of Ardenium could hold quite a lot. And to my surprise, the magic wasn't conflicting with each other like it should. Instead, everything that flowed through my new mystical metal was tranquil.

The flow was still a bit chaotic, but that was my own fault. I had yet to organize it at all. But the metal was a perfect conduit for magic, storing multiple elements seamlessly.

"Well, what now?" Saralyn asked. 

"I'm pretty sure this is the part where we make up and hug them," I added, my tone dripping with sarcasm. "They're going to die. If not for attacking me, then certainly for tearing out Maribelle's lovely hair."

My maid gave me a quick, smug grin before she refocused on the monsters in front of us. 

"Oh, he thinks he's a funny one," the male vampire said to the female. 

"Don't even bother, Adam," she said with a sigh. "He doesn't understand. None of them do. Even if he's some elder mage of Avente that snuck behind enemy lines to try and kill a few chancellors, he’s still naive," she shrugged. 

"He's not that dangerous to us, Sara. If you'll quit nagging me, perhaps I'll let you feed on the mage while I take the anchors." Adam's eyes roved over my anchors and he licked his lips. "After all, hasn't our lord told us we need to increase the mage population?"

"Can you even have children?" Sara asked.

I watched their little back and forth, frowning. I was not sure how I felt about being ignored while others bantered. That was definitely my thing, how dare they steal it.

"Uh, excuse me, hi, you two look like you're having a lot of fun, but I do think we're in a bit of a hurry." I gestured in the distance where, in theory, there should still be a northman horde ready to charge forward.

"Hurry for what?" Adam tilted his head. "The mongrels outside are gone, if that's your worry," he snorted. 

"Gone?" I raised an eyebrow. "And mongrels?" 

"The northmen and women," he added begrudgingly, "they're gone. We killed them before we stepped foot inside the fortress. Even though they eschew magic, some of them do have souls as tasty as an anchor's." He licked his lips, revealing his fangs.

"They are like Colin," Emlyn observed. 

"Duh, I think we all figured that out a minute ago, Emlyn. The real question is, why are all of them crazy? I mean, it's a different brand of crazy, I'll give you. Still. Definitely crazy." 

Adam and Sara's heads both snapped towards me. 

"Excuse me," Sara snorted. "I believe you have some manners to learn." 

"And I believe you're crazy, so forgive me if your opinion of me doesn’t hold the same weight." I shrugged. "If you want, we can just duke it out. How about this? Whoever wins was right all along."

“A comedian.” Adam's voice dripped. "Never mind. I say we share the mouthy mage. Take our time. Make him scream."

The female vampire licked her lips as her eyes raked me up and down, like a predator eyeing a piece of meat.

I knew how those pretty girls in the capital that attracted a little too much male noble attention must have felt. But this whole bantering between us had given me more time to gather magic within Soulgard.

The ground underneath us all rippled and swallowed the vampire's legs up to the knee. Or at least, that was the goal. I managed to get one leg of each of them. Their reactions were fast enough to free the other.

"I'll say," Adam scoffed, stomping hard and gritting his teeth as he ripped his leg out of the ground with enough force that he seemed to have left half of his skin.

But the injury didn’t slow him at all; his body healed over in a blink of my eyes.

Sara wasn't quite so skilled or willing to go through the pain as she struggled momentarily.

Aurelia jumped forward. A cape of fire wreathed around her back before she slammed into Adam, her axe alight with fire. Yet once again he defied expectations, directly catching the blade with his bare hands.

He growled and tried to backhand her. Aurelia swayed backwards, the palm rushing past her face only for her to snap her head forward as fiery horns blossomed, and she tried to pierce his head.

Adam caught the blow on the side of his head, Aurelia's horn of fire marring him badly, but he didn't even so much as flinch as he grabbed her by her vibrant red hair, and jerked her head back enough that he could stare her in the eyes.

"You're a feisty one, aren't you?" He growled and reached up to touch his cheek, feeling the damage done.

That horn had melted through to his cheekbone and sliced off his ear, yet it was coming back quickly.

I remembered that King Martin was stealing serpent mages for all of his experiments. It only made sense that these vampires, which were essentially some sort of messed-up serpent corrupted, could heal just as fast as Lord Valken.

As he stared at her, I watched as a small tail of fire curled out from Aurelia’s back. I stopped looking, not wanting to give it away. He had not yet noticed the spell.

Aurelia swiftly struck, whipping the tail over her shoulder and pressing the barbed tip into the other side of the vampire’s face.

Using the tip of the barb as a fulcrum, she pumped an enormous amount of fire straight into the idiot's skull. That hit finally got Adam to scream. He staggered back from Aurelia, pawing at his face and scowling at her. 

"How dare you," he said. The whole moment was eerie. His face was a mess, and only a few strings of muscle connected his lower jaw to the rest of his head. 

The other vampire at this point grabbed her leg and tugged. Emlyn, ever so helpful, jumped forward and with a swift stroke of her blade, she freed the woman from her entrapment by severing the limb.

It was apparent the woman had not been seeking that type of solution though. She began howling and attempting to attack Emlyn while hobbling. My anchor chuckled and danced around her wild swings while the other woman hopped around on a single leg. 

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you need a better leg to stand on?" Emlyn barked a laugh. 

"It wasn't that funny, Em. You've had better jokes," I shouted, pulling on my magic. I realized I would have to do something before the situation fell apart. We had just earned an advantage, but I knew better than to let it go to waste. 

While Emlyn and Aurelia kept the two vampires occupied, Zuri was far from idle. She had conjured a bow purely out of magic, a feat that made me do a double take and nod in respect.

Meanwhile, Maribelle had pressed herself against me, unwilling to move away. Eva, on the other hand, was unfortunately outmatched by this group. I hated to admit it, but she simply did not have the reaction time to fight with people who could move this quickly. I wasn't even sure how I was managing to keep up with them.

A small row of bluesteel daggers materialized in front of my feet, ready to stab the next vampire that thought a mage would be an easy target.

Really, it was offensive as a mage that we were considered the easy target. I could certainly admit that the way my anchors could flit around the battlefield was its own sort of magic, but we had our own power.

Emlyn and the female vampire were engaged in a sort of dance. Somehow while the female vampire was holding her own severed leg, she was actually trading blows with Emlyn.

The male vampire, although badly burned, was also holding his own and managing to stall Aurelia while he healed his body. 

It was time to end this fight. My anchors were incredible, but these were simply not enemies that would hold any sort of logic. Putting the vampires down would require powerful magic, the kind that I just so happened to have available.

I dug deep into my magical reserves, continuing to fill my soul with magic, and then pushed it into the bluesteel blades at my feet. All sticky, black death magic dribbled out of the bluesteel daggers, like the gathering of noxious fangs of some hideous monster. Once they filled, I shot them off. 

Aurelia kept Adam on his toes and Emlyn taunted Sara while hampering the severed leg’s healing. Zuri had actually held off firing an arrow, which seemed to make them forget about us for the moment.

I smiled, seizing the opportunity. The daggers swept along the ground, out of sight until it was too late. Once they neared their targets, they reared up and stabbed like the treacherous spiders in the Badlands that had caught our horses' legs on multiple occasions.

What came next was not ordinary death magic. No, I had opted for something far trickier. I had pumped my soul magic into my serpent sphere, unaware of the potential effect. However, I had a strong theory that making death magic more powerful was unlikely to end well for them. 

As the blades pierced their skin, my theory proved correct.

Adam froze after being struck, allowing Aurelia to hack one of his arms off and Zuri to pin his foot to the ground with an arrow of light.

I smirked at the sudden victory, only to seize up as something swelled inside of me. 

If it hadn't been for my previous encounter with Missy's soul juice and its minty goodness, I wouldn't have recognized the sensation. What came next was not that, though there was the barest hint of mint to it. Instead, it was a thick, bubbling, tar-like liquid that forced its way into my soul. It was volatile and sticky, something that made me shiver from head to toe as it oozed its way into my Soulgard. 

I felt like throwing up, like abandoning this fight and just running away to deal with whatever was invading my body.

Whatever this was, it was very wrong. I could tell that at an instinctual level. I faltered and covered my mouth. Even though it was a part of magic, it had a physical reaction that made me want to gag. 

But the effect on the enemy vampires was effective. I saw the female vampire hanging from a spike of shadow that I had stabbed into her neck, likely penetrating her skull. I didn't think she was going to survive that attack, especially not with the way that spear of shadows wiggled as if Eva was still exerting her control on it, trying to drive it further to ruin the inside of the other woman’s head, which was a cheery thought.

Meanwhile, Zuri and Aurelia had dismantled Adam. I pulled back the soul death magic that I had been injecting into both of them.

And then I bent over grabbing Maribelle’s shoulder to steady myself. 

"I did something very wrong, Maribelle," I coughed into my hand, blood flecks coating the inside of my palm. "Okay, for once in my life, I'm going to admit I may have just fucked up." 

Maribelle looked at the blood on my hands. "Use your life magic," she said quickly. I needed the reminder because the repulsiveness of whatever I had just taken on was overwhelming my senses and even my base logic. 

Tapping into my life magic, I let it pour through my body. But this magic seemed to do nothing to whatever gunk I had put in my system. While I could use the life magic to work on my physical body, that seemed to be doing nothing for whatever I had done to my soul.

This sticky, noxious substance was actively eating away at my Soulgard. Whether the structure was bluesteel or stone, it didn't matter. It dissolved it all like the world's most incredibly potent acid.

I continued to flow my life magic through my body, doing my best to stay conscious and sane while fighting whatever was happening. I worked through options, trying to figure out how to stop this acid from eating away everything I had worked to create.

Not to mention what would happen if my whole soul collapsed under this.

I clasped my hands together and muttered under my breath, "Oh, Mistress of the Night and Goddess of Victory, lend me a hand, for I have messed up."

The response was instantaneous. The blonde and dark-haired goddesses appeared next to me in a flash. Ditzy grabbed me by the shoulder to steady me. 

"What's wrong?" she said in a hurry.

Even Missy had a panicked look on her face. 

"I don't know," I groaned. The war between the damage being done to my soul and the life magic keeping my body from tearing apart was an excruciating tug of war.

"I did something with my magic, absorbed something from those two," I pointed at the dead vampires. 

Missy, with a flick of her wrist, teleported both bodies to her feet before her eyes glowed like stars as she stared down at them.

"You," she squinted, "ate half of their souls." 

I coughed up more blood. "I tried to mix soul magic and death magic in an attack on them."

She seemed to calm down and chuckled, "Maybe if you promise to call me 'Mistress of the Night or Hecate' going forward, I'll solve this little problem for you." She wagged a finger back and forth. 

Looking up at her, I could feel the blood on my lips. "Not a chance, Missy." I coughed again, this time a little bit of blood landing on her pristine purple dress.

All of the humor faded from her face. "Open your soul to me, don’t resist. I need access to fix this." she spoke in a tone that broke no argument. 

"Have your way with me," I gestured and she leaned forward, stabbing a finger in each of the vampires.

As she touched them, she drew something through their bodies and I realized she was personally doing what she normally did with a pendant. The effect was instantaneous.

What little was left of their souls was sucked out through their bodies and then from my own soul as well. With that touch, she drew them back through their bodies and through her. 

What came next was the familiar burst of mint and nothing else. Their soul juice poured down into Soulgard, stopping the volatile black tar and soothing the damage patches.

The pain faded and I glanced back up at the goddess. "Thanks, Missy," I said her name pointedly, and she just gave me a soft smile in return.

"Now you understand what it's like when King Martin and these vampyrs drain someone's soul completely. Though theirs is particularly nasty. They have the bubbling, the tortured souls of others roiling within them." 

I made a disgusted face as I looked down at the two bodies. "Yeah, I'll never say that you take the good parts, Missy." 

She shrugged. "Souls are my domain. It's not too much trouble for me to process them before they can do any actual harm. As for you, Ard, I would recommend you use that only as a last resort, or perhaps only on someone who's a living embodiment of a saintess. Otherwise, it's going to be rough."

"Yep, got it. So, where to now?" I asked, wanting to move on.