Arawn751
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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 71
🕑 Added 2024-12-16 17:00:14 +0000 UTCAUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi guys, I am planning to take a short break from writing over the holidays. One and a half weeks, or three uploads worth. So my posting schedule will be looking like this:
Dec 16: Chapter 71
Dec 20: Chapter 72
Dec 23: NO CHAPTER
Dec 27: NO CHAPTER
Dec 30: NO CHAPTER
Jan 03: Chapter 73
Happy holidays in advance to you all!
*****
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IsTA7vOQQ5hfV1_qrAQuZFOtpsgl_ha3fxtr0bOoju0/edit?usp=sharing
*****
Carmilla didn’t think any force more complicated than the System and the vampiric ascension it brought out of her could enter her life. Now she was starting to doubt that. No, she had been doubting that for a while now.
‘Love’ was weird, and Carmilla still didn’t even know what it was supposed to be beyond the overly flowery descriptions of it shown in movies and romance books. She was pretty sure she wasn’t ‘in love’ or anything of the sort, what she felt was just a … care?
Glancing over at the pink-haired, overly energetic force of nature that was Mia, Carmilla sighed for what felt like the thousandth time. It should have been simple. Protect the Halvyr, get some of her blood in return. Easy win for both sides … so why did Mia have to pour a whole bucket of wrenches into that plan?
Carmilla chastised herself, it wasn’t entirely on Mia. Hell, it wasn’t at all. All Carmilla had to do was say ‘No’ like she’d planned, tell the hopeful little faeling that no, she was not going to date her. It was easy, wasn’t it? It sounded easy. All she had to do was to crush the hope in that precious gem of a girl’s eyes and she could have her transactional relationship back to how it was before, and how it should have stayed.
Carmilla’s will that had held up against the years of neglect, the loneliness and even the beast now dwelling in her blood was not prepared to face the type of pressure Mia’s hope put on her. After all those horrid things that happened to Carmilla, she let herself wonder; she let herself share that hope for just a brief instant.
She let herself hope that with Mia being so different from everyone Carmilla had known before, maybe she’d be different enough to care. That iron-hard will inside Carmilla was not so much bent as snapped like a twig under the force of that wishful hope.
So. Why was it that she was having so much trouble believing that the girl really did care now? Mia said it herself for god’s sake. She said it, and Carmilla’s instincts felt the sincerity in the girl’s voice and body language. It was infuriating. That she couldn’t bring herself to fully believe it. It felt like it would mean losing, somehow. It made her feel weak to believe, to care. Caring was a shackle, a weakness for her enemies to exploit, her vampiric instincts loathed it with a passion and it resonated with the Carmilla that died alone and afraid in a hospital bed. Caring opened you up for hurting, it was like inviting an emotional stab right into the heart. It was dumb.
The last time she cared, the people she called ‘mother’ and ‘father’ abandoned her, not even bothering to tell her why or what for. They just … stopped coming to visit her one day and changed their phone numbers so she couldn’t even call them. A week later they stopped paying her hospital bill, and she was transferred over from the private clinic she’d been at to the public, government funded hospital. A few weeks after that, while Carmilla was still hoping they would come back, she got a letter saying her official name had been changed back to her birth name: Carmilla Nacht.
Something broke inside Carmilla as she held that letter and that was the day she stopped caring, stopped letting anyone in.
She’d gone so without having to rely on anyone for emotional support ever since, so why should that change now?
“Whatcha thinking about?” Mia asked, glancing up at Carmilla with those honest, curious eyes that glimmered like the most beautiful sapphires under the summer sun. No fear, no hate, no scheming, no specific want. There was nothing in those eyes Carmilla had grown up seeing in the eyes of everyone around her.
Well, there was a few specific types of wants — hungry, lustful wants or adoring and gentle wants, all so syrupy and sweet that it was smothering Carmilla to death — in those eyes, but they were all oh so very different from what Carmilla had came to expect from others. Though, now with the System’s coming that was changing too.
Being a vampire wasn’t as much of a ‘thing’ as it was before, not with all sorts of weird stuff running around. It only took seeing a few elves serving as clerks in shops and dwarves in bakeries for one to become desensitised with the fantastical nature of a good third of the population. Still, most had instincts that told them to run and hide when they looked at Carmilla, instincts that were now boosted by the onset of magic.
It was a mixed bag, honestly. Having to drink was a mere dietary need now, but it was also entirely normal that a skittish rabbit beastkin would run screaming at the mere sight of a vampire as their survival instincts kicked the ‘flight’ part of their fight-or-flight instinct into overdrive.
“Stuff,” Carmilla answered, realising she’d been silent for all of … one second. Time was becoming really weird now that her own relative time was shifting around so much with her growing Cognity. “You mentioned there being that apartment block you lived in before, right? The one you got kicked out of?”
Her vampiric rage flared up at the mere thought. Some self-important, jumped-up demonspawn dared to treat her Mia like that, she wanted to rip them to shreds, turn them into a vampire spawn and have them serve as the girl’s slave for eternity … Carmilla shook her head softly. She had many wants like that she was never going to act upon. Then she stiffened a little and reflected on her thoughts. ‘My’ Mia? Oh, fuck me, this is getting bad.
Ever since that night in the bar, Carmilla felt like she was falling further and further into a sinkhole, unable to crawl out no matter how much she tried. Forces she didn’t know, nor understand pulled her down into the depths and she was helpless to do anything against them.
She could just leave, run away. It would fade with time, she was sure. Away from Mia, away from her caring smiles, little jokes, her hugs and laughs. Away from the cuddles and away from her seductive blood.
Fuck. Carmilla thought again, wanting to bash her head into a wall. Just a few weeks ago, the quality of her blood would have been firmly in first place among Mia’s qualities but now it was down at the bottom of the list. The feeling of helplessness was nagging at Carmilla, reminding her of so many terrible memories she couldn’t quite deal with them.
She knew Mia was trying to help, but the way her smiles made Carmilla feel only made everything all the worse. It wasn’t Mia’s fault; the girl was just too pure … maybe a bit airheaded and with questionable decision-making abilities, but she was pure, kind and Carmilla could hardly imagine how much it’d hurt to never see the little halvyr again. Just the thought twisted a knot in her stomach and sent her vampiric instincts into a frenzy.
They demanded her to grow a damned spine already, turn the girl into her Bride and accept that Mia was to be hers, body, mind and soul. Leaving, running away would be such a cowardly move that her vampiric part shuddered in self-disgust. It was so intense that it was causing Carmilla to doubt she could even make herself run and leave Mia behind.
“Yeah,” the girl in question said, spinning around to walk backwards to face Carmilla. “I wonder how they’re doing. Everything else in this part of the city is pretty fucked. What survived the rats and the goblins, the military demolished with prejudice. It’s going to take years to rebuild this city … if it’s ever even going to get a chance at that.”
“It will,” Carmilla said easily, looking around the beaten–up houses around them and then glanced back at the military van trudging by behind them and the platoon of soldiers spread out on the street before them. They were fanning out, scouting out any lingering monsters in the houses then drawing them out into the open for the two of them to finish off if they couldn’t handle it themselves. “Five Rifts. That Boarling Rift was a weird one, but the others shouldn’t be so … strange. I think we can handle them all pretty easily. Especially if we take a few others from those who fought on the wall to fill out our numbers.”
The Goblin Rift had been secured and its surroundings cleared of monsters. It proved to be little trouble with almost three hundred mages — around 70 of those being at level 10 — lining up and taking up position around the playground housing the Rift. The highest levelled Goblins were level tens and there were only a handful of them. They stood absolutely no chance when that many eager mages, many of them wanting revenge for having their houses destroyed or loved ones killed by the little green monsters, opened up on them.
There wasn’t a single casualty, and now an extensive military fortification was being built around the Rift by all the Earth mages working together. Really, Carmilla had to applaud the crafty Colonel that managed to endear himself to all the powerful mages here enough to have them all listen to him and his orders. Alone, none of them would have stood a chance against a horde the size of the one which crashed into the wall, but together …
It won’t last. The vampiress knew, she smelled the ambition and overconfidence in so many of them. Already, factions and cliques were forming around one charismatic mage or another. Soon enough, one of them was going to either break away from the Colonel’s command or try to replace him. Idiots. I just hope they wait until all the Rifts are gone. It’d be a shame if we had to run for Vienna after all this … it’d probably also break Mia’s heart to leave so many helpless people behind to the monsters.
*****
Mia played with her runic-model as they walked, disassembling and reassembling the spell circle of Bolt’s shockwave variant.
If her memory was serving her correctly, she was doing an atrocious job at it. She was getting better at it though, even though she no longer had the Spell Tome holding her hand while she did the assembly since this specific variant was one of the spell circles she ended up removing from the book.
Lesser Ward and even Phalanx were now inscribed in the book, with Mia already having started assimilating the runes she’d need for the next spell she’d chosen: Mage Armour.
I can still cast spells like this, if every rune needed and geometric shape is in my runic-model. Mia thought. Though the likelihood of this quite literally blowing up in my face is pretty high.
Still, her Control and Cognity would only grow, so there would come a time when she didn’t have to have spells as simple as Arcane Bolt taking up space in her Spell Tome. With how much she struggled with it though, Mia guessed the spells she would be able to cast this way would always be leagues below her strongest ones, maybe by an entire tier or even two.
That thought made her worry that she’d soon have to remove even more spell circles from her Tome. Surely, she’d be getting even more awesome, stronger spells she could learn once she managed to Rank Up and upgrade her Arcane Mage Class to Tier 2. From there, only runic theory and combat prowess would stand between her and being named a Junior Mage.
A handy little tool that might help her out some would have been Chanting, if she could actually speak whichever arcane language form synergized well with the ‘Imperial Standard’ runic language all of her runes were in.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Mia snapped out of her musings. After spending nearly three weeks without any electricity or technology at all beyond watching diesel trucks and tanks roll by, it still startled her when her phone reminded her of its presence.
Powerlines were still dead as can be, but Mark had found a bunch of ancient solar-powered USB ports so now, they could at least charge their phones. There still wasn’t any service or mobile network available though.
Pulling it out, she quickly stopped the alarm and looked over at Lieutenant Maher, who led the platoon Mia and Carmilla had been assigned to for the duration of the reclamation.
“Call them back,” Mia said to the man, who just nodded, used to asking the same thing every thirty minutes. “I need to reapply my spell.”
The man just nodded, the picture of professional stoicism and if Mia didn’t catch the minute twitches on his face, his hand hovering near his holstered firearm or didn’t take not of the fact he always had at least three of his men with him whenever he was near either her or Carmilla, she might have even believed it to be the reality.
Okay, that was a lie. Mia would have spent the rest of her time with the Lieutenant in blissful ignorance had Carmilla not pointed out those little tidbits she’d noticed. It was obvious in retrospect, but Mia still felt strange about it.
I thought he was cool. Mia thought, a little forlorn. He never did anything out of line and treated them respectfully … but coldly.
Soon, the man had the squads out doing scouting and survey work circling around to head over to Mia.
“You know the drill,” Maher said in a droll tone. “Head over to the mage, tell her of any trouble you’ve had with the spell and let her reapply it. If you don’t want it reapplied, stand to the side.”
Thankfully, out of the eight members of the first squad coming over, only two opted out of getting the magic applied to them.
“Hi, Missy,” the first man said, stepping forwards. A Sergeant, by the looks of his stripes. “I’ve had no great trouble and it saved me from a brick falling on my head so I’m happy enough. Though, the fact that it's pushing back against the kick of my rifle is throwing my aim off.”
The spell in question was, of course, Lesser Ward. She had one placed on every soldier that went out to scout or look through the houses, just to be safe.
It was straining on her mana to keep it up on almost twenty of them, even with her using the absolute minimum mana needed for the spell. The spell had a … dynamic, but limited intake of mana. At the minimum, it lasted for 30 minutes and, on the maximum, using five times as much mana, it lasted for an hour. The discrepancy came from the fact that the spell not only lasted longer, but also took many more blows to break.
For now though, she had to keep to using the minimum. Her mana pool wasn’t endless. Still, this was saving lives and giving her much needed practice with the spell circle, so it was more than worth her time and mana.
One of the first things she’d learned was that unlike her Amulet of Lesser Warding, the spells of the same name were not reactive. They were either there, or they weren’t and used up mana to exist for every second.
Also, they tried to defend against everything. Including bumps, a stronger breeze, the kick of a rifle and so on and so forth.
“Glad to hear that,” Mia said, holding out her arm, and the soldier placed his large, calloused hand into her own. She cast the spell, letting it activate and watched as the spell circle collapsed into a string of mana and leapt onto the soldier’s arm. “Alright, you’re good to go. Next!”
The man nodded and walked away, a faintly pinkish sheen already spreading over his body with the string-like bracelet snaking around his lower arm.
“Hello,” the next man stepped up and nodded easily. “No problems. Nothing new to report either, it is working as advertised.”
Nodding in thanks, Mia applied the spell to him too and sent him off. Then the next, and the next until only one man was remaining.
“Hello,” he said, nodding. “It was … mostly working fine, but it broke after just a dozen minutes and I don’t really know why.”
“Alright,” Mia said, nodding as she thoughtfully looked the man up and down. “Want a reapplication?”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “Could save my life in those next ten minutes.”
Mia just took his hand and cast the spell, then watched as he walked off … though it was more accurate to say he stomped off with the big, lumberings steps he walked with. Could that be it? Could the Ward be eaten up to absorb the shock of him smacking his feet into the ground with every step?
Another three squads came and went, getting their Lesser Wards refreshed and while most just noted tiny oddities with the spell, some thanked Mia profusely.
“Thank you!” One soldier said, looking like he was barely keeping himself from hugging her. “I wouldn’t have died from a shitty little goblin stabbing a rust-caked knife in my calf, but I really didn’t want to get tinnitus. So thank you.”
Apparently, the Lesser Ward not only survived a lunge from a level 7 goblin, but it also stayed active for another ten minutes afterwards.
With the ambush happening at about the five-minute mark, Mia estimated that a newly applied Lesser Ward could handle two ambushes from goblins.
It wasn’t much, honestly it was quite pathetic, but it could mean the difference between life and death. And if the life in question is Helene’s or Lina’s, Mia would never consider the spell a bad one.
Plus, with all the practice she’d gotten in, it was already much more deeply imbued into her Spell Tome than either Arcane Shackles or Spectral Blade. It also allowed her to learn all the kinks and tricks of the spell while not putting her own hide at risk, which was certainly a plus.
Apparently, the reactive function would have made the spell too complicated and mana intensive to be considered a Novice grade one according to the Runic Lexicon it was included in. Which was a damned shame. Alternatively, these dumb Lesser Wards her spell made also didn’t have glaring weaknesses like her Amulet’s reactive function did.
What weaknesses? Well, the reactive function decided whether an attack was lethal or not based on whether it had mana in it or if it was coming at terminal velocity. Which covered most things lethal to Mia, but not a knife slowly slitting her throat, for example.
Well, she was pretty much fucked if she let a melee fighter close enough to stab her anyway, so she wasn’t all that bothered.
More importantly, they were arriving back at the fortifications around the Goblin Rift. That meant she’d be getting her promised reward of contribution points.
She couldn’t spend them on anything beyond information packets yet, so it was a bit of a scam, but Mia enjoyed getting paid for doing stuff she already would have done.
Also, she could trade contribution points for favours with the Colonel.
Opening up the new System Tab that appeared on her Interface when Zeigler formally invited them after the defence of Andritz.
***
[Factions]
[Faction: Reborn Armies of Austria]
[Faction Information]
[Faction Market]
Contribution Points: 900
Your Current Rank in the Faction: Mage Auxiliary - Graz
***
She watched her contribution points jump up by a hundred, reaching a nice and round thousand. Then she opened up the Faction Information tab to see whether anything had changed.
***
[Faction Information: Reborn Armies of Austria]
Faction Leader: {Marshal} Sebastian Reinhardt
Faction Grade: Rare
Faction Members: 31224
Faction Associates: 550343
Faction Size: Medium
Faction Rank: Rank 2
Note: Based on Highest Ranked Member.
Faction Headquarters Location: —
Sub-Faction of: HIDDEN
Note: Your Rank in the Faction is too low for this to show.
***
Nothing. Mia mused, shrugging. Factions were strange beasts, and she’d made sure to actually research them before clicking the ‘Accept’ button on the dubious invitation window.
There wasn’t any danger that time, not with the Colonel only offering her the rank of an Auxiliary Mage in the Faction and not a proper Member rank. Since Mia was just an Associate, none of the Faction’s hierarchy and restrictions would hold sway over her.
The Faction Leader might have been able to fuck around with a proper Member’s stuff by fiddling with the Faction’s setting, but she was safe from that while she refrained from fully joining.
It was like part-timing at a job, getting paid by the day.
“Trouble,” Carmilla murmured, dragging Mia’s thoughts back into the present. True to her words, the fortification was in a bit of a buster she didn’t expect at this time.
“What kind?” Mia asked, prying her ears for any sign of an answer as she came to a stop to watch the not so distant mass of soldiers creating a wall of human bodies between the fortifications and … another group?
Her question was answered a moment later, but not by Carmilla but by the very source of the trouble itself.
A cold, detached voice spoke up, its voice reverberating with unnatural power and the emotional fluidity of a statue.
“We have come to offer our assistance for the purpose of Closing this Rift.”
The icy fingers of dread drew a line along her spine and Mia shuddered, then her mana flared up for but a single moment and most of the feeling was gone. The unnatural part of it at least, not the one she felt just as a result of hearing his voice again.
“You have to be kidding me,” Mia groused, eyes narrowing into a glare as she watched the muscular man standing in the distance, head and shoulders above the rest of his haphazard group. “Of all the people to not get eaten by monsters … “
Jeff, as if he felt her glare, glanced over in her directions. Mia saw recognition flash in those dark abyssal pits he called eyes, then he had the gall to give a nod in greeting before returning his gaze to one of the junior Colonels in command of the Rift fortification walking out to meet him.
Mia gritted her teeth, the helplessness and fear she’d felt when those same eyes stared her down back in the basement making a resentment that wasn’t entirely deserved flare up.
Taking a deep breath, she let it all out. Her gaze cooling to a simmering anger instead. She still hated him for throwing her out, for throwing god only knows how many helpless people out to the goblins just because they weren’t obediently following every order he spoke.
For every life his actions supposedly saved, how many more did he personally consign to death? And now he was out here, attempting to help and his first action is lacing his words with mind-bending dread?
Fuck him. Fuck him and everything he stands for.
Comments
Lisfer
Thanks for the chapter! Enjoying the story a lot- Just wanted you to know. And- No pressure. Have fun holidays!
