Arawn751
patreon
Arcane Apocalypse ~ 52
🕑 Added 2024-10-23 16:00:10 +0000 UTC****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ewpArbluQ0CIBV7mwGguvCI-Uc248jpyoKTfan5JcwM/edit?usp=sharing
*****
Mia instinctively lurched forward, hand outstretched as she felt Avery’s mana flare up like an impending storm, crackling with raw, explosive power. Even the air blurred, shimmering from the mystical heat.
Carmilla wasn’t about to let her run out before a score of armed soldiers with a tendency to whack refugees over the head with the butt of their guns though. The vampire’s unforgiving grip grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her back behind cover.
Mia barely managed to stifle the yelp as the ground left her foot and she was slammed into the dirt. The air in her lung escaped through her mouth in a wheezing gasp, then the pain of her landing sent a grimace flashing over her face.
She tried to get up, but Carmilla’s hand on her shoulder pushed her back down. Looking up in askance at those incredulous ruby orbs, Mia managed to utter the question on her mind. “W-why?”
“You were going to run out there and what?” Carmilla asked, frowning. “Demand the group be let through? Protect them from the gunfire, or did you want to help the soldiers, since they are all going to end up deep-fried in a few minutes? Or did you just want to get shot in the face? You’re usually not this rash, what happened?”
Mia closed her mouth, blinked, then stopped trying to squirm out of Carmilla’s grasp. Carmilla was right, of course she was. ‘What happened?’, indeed. Mia felt ashamed for a moment, then thankful that the vampire stopped her in time. Did the power she now wielded addle her brain like she saw it did to others?
When she stepped forward just now, it was with the certainty in the belief that she could change the outcome. Just by being there, and while she still thought that was so, it might not be a change for the better.
“I’m good,” Mia murmured, glancing at the delicate hand that so easily kept her pinned to the ground with a smidge of wonder. Her higher body stats hadn’t turned Carmilla into some bulky mass of muscles, she was toned and lean sure, but she still looked entirely feminine. What was the word? Lithe?
The hand loosened and stopped above her, offering to help her up. Mia took the vampire up on the offer, grabbing her hand and let herself be hoisted up.
“We have to do something,” Mia said, which surprisingly earned a nod from the vampire who got back to peeking out at the showdown.
“Yes,” Carmilla said. “That Avery girl looks ready for murder, which is likely isn’t going to go down well with the army.”
“What if we just help them break through the barricade?” Mia asked, poking her head out under Carmilla’s arm to catch a glimpse. “We don’t show ourselves, just blow a hole into the barricade?”
“I doubt many people on this side of the barricade have explosive pink missiles, Mia.”
“Right,” Mia said, biting her lips in thought. Her magic was quite rare, bordering on unique in this small community so if any soldier saw her magic, everyone would know she was involved. “What about you? Could you grab some water from somewhere and use your Water Blades? Those have to be more common than my magic and you haven’t even shown them off yet so nobody will know you can do water magic aside from me.”
“Best would be if that dumb blonde just blew the hole herself,” Carmilla said, her voice sounding sour as she watched Avery stomp up to the lead guards like a pot ready to boil over. “But I think the only thing she wants to blow up right now is that guy’s head.”
“Shit,” Mia murmured, watching the fiery mana flow out of the girl’s hand and then back over her hands. Both of her arms were aflame up to the elbows which had half a dozen rifles come up and aim her way with shouts of ‘Stop the magic right now!’. “Double shit.”
“Can your cat change form?” Carmilla asked, glancing at the lazy pink feline draped across Mia’s shoulder like it had no bones — which it didn’t, actually. “Something that can be mistaken for a real animal? Preferably something that isn’t so … pink?”
“Can you?” Mia asked, nudging the Familiar awake. It yawned slowly, its azure eyes blinking open slowly before it gave a hesitant nod. It sent back a question, no, it was more like a request and it was for more mana. Mia’s eyebrows twitched, the damned thing already ate 70% of her entire pool when she summoned it, what more did it want? “You’ll get another 10% if you do this well.”
Her face twitched when it sent back something along the lines of ‘I need it now!!’
“Fine,” Mia grumbled, grabbed the cat by the scruff of its neck and then channeled another 10% of her mana pool into the arcane construct. It drank it all up, or rather, the elemental inside of the cat did.
It squirmed, and Mia let go of it. By the time it landed, it was twice the size of the pink cat it had been, its form was entirely opaque and white. It also looked just like that old teddy bear Mia had in her room, just in pure white.
“Well, that works,” Carmilla said, staring at the thing as it blinked up at the two girls dumbly. “Can you make it rush over there and distract the soldiers for a bit? Preferably, it should also blast through a weaker part of the barricade to give those knuckleheads an idea of what we want to do.”
The teddy bear shaped Familiar gave a nod once Mia repeated the request, then ran off. It looked goofy as it did, bounding forward on its stubby little legs and swinging its arms back and forth. The only thing that made its dash look somewhat scary was that it ran at least 40 KMPH.
What the hell. Mia thought, pulling up everything she’s ever read about elementals and their capabilities. She was sure the stunt the elemental controlling her Familiar pulled of this time — namely, using Illusion magic to change how it looked — was something only higher Rank Arcane Elementals could accomplish. Or Lesser Arcane Spirits.
Neither of which should have been inside her Familiar with the paltry amount of mana she offered in payment for their services. Also, the arcane construct housing them shouldn’t have been able to hold elementals that powerful, and neither should her Spirit have been capable of maintaining even a temporary Bond with a being like that.
Weird. Fucking weird. I’ll have to see whether the next Familiar I summon is similar or not.
After all, maybe this one was just a fluke, and she’d summoned a Lesser Arcane Elemental with some unique aptitude for Illusions. That sounded more likely than all the other options, since it was supposed to be possible according to her books. It was usually just highly unlikely that a summoner could pry out the specialities of a specific Elemental, since it was like trying to make a raven tell you whether it was better at cawing or dancing.
Maybe it’s that Arcane Influence ability that gives me more influence over Arcane creatures? Mia mused, watching as the goofy teddy bear pounced on a soldier and knocked its rifle out of his hand before delivering a spin kick to his temple.
Carmilla snorted next to her, the vampire’s mirth clear on her face as she watched the little teddy bear bounce between the trigger-happy guards first. The elemental seemed to be enjoying itself, spinning around and kicking legs out from under a man only to spin around and kick another right between the legs.
“Alright,” Carmilla murmured, an amused grin still tugging at the edge of her lips. “Give me a moment.”
The vampire closed her eyes and held out her glove-covered arm before her. Then she started mumbling in a language Mia couldn’t understand, speaking each syllable with a strange trill that sent tingles down Mia’s spine.
The young halvyr’s eyes focused in on the slender neck of the vampire and watched as it vibrated with each word. No, it wasn’t just the words. It was mana. Mia’s eyes widened as she remembered a section of her ‘On Mana and Magic’ book.
***
‘Chanting is the act of speaking the runic script aloud while simultaneously channeling just the right amounts of mana into the vocal cords. This greatly assists with free-casting spell circles, as the arcane languages of whichever runic language the mage uses work in tandem with the mage’s Control to shape the mana into the desired structure.’
‘It is highly discouraged that any fledgeling mage attempts Chanting, as even being slightly off tone, rhythm or in pitch can result in a rune or construct forming in the wrong way. Which in turn, has disastrous consequences for the mage themselves when the inevitable backlash strikes.’
‘Some species have an innate understanding of the spoken aspect of one of the runic languages. Members of these species are the only ones usually capable of Chanting at lower Ranks and in general.’
***
Mia tilted her head curiously, the chaos taking place only a few dozen metres away from her hiding place slipping from her mind for a few moments as she just stared at the softly murmuring — Chanting — Carmilla in wonder. Her ears tingled as she listened to what she now knew was some arcane language, probably unique to the girl’s vampiric lineage.
Her progenitor is really spoiling her. Mia thought, trying to memorise the words spoken, but failing. Each word seemed to be slippery, like eels coated in lube. She couldn’t recall even a single word Carmilla spoke no matter how much she focused or tried. One moment she heard the words, then they were gone and all that remained was a vague sense of her having almost grasped something, like waking from a dream and having all memory of it slip through her mental fingers.
The air stilled, an invisible power filling it around the vampire who opened her eyes and spoke a final two words. The ruby on the back of her hand glowed, a bluish light escaping its crimson depths and then a blue spell circle flashed in front of Carmilla’s palm.
Mia stared at it, noting that it only had around sixteen runes and only five geometric shapes to it. It was a rather simple spell, about the same complexity as her Arcane Blast.
The spell activated a beat later and Carmilla heaved a sigh of relief, then with a huff stepped up to the blue spell circle still floating in the air just like it had before. It spun languidly, rotating around its center as its blue glow already started dimming.
“Blow a way through the barricade, the plush toy will distract the soldiers and please, for the love of god, don’t kill anyone.” Carmilla barely managed to say the last word before the spell circle fully faded out of existence. “Well, now we just hope that the spell actually worked and that girl actually follows my suggestion.”
“What was that spell?” Mia asked, still finding herself more interested in Carmilla’s ‘Chanting’ and apparent use of a spell that she wasn’t supposed to have access to than whatever was happening out there. The Familiar would handle that, plus Mia couldn’t do anything anyway without exposing her involvement in this … wherever it was they were doing. Terrorism maybe, if only by definition? Obstruction of military operations?
“Water Whisper,” Carmilla said, squinting at the action happening beyond. “With as little mana as I was willing to spend on this, it has a maximum range of fifty metres and lasts only as long as you’ve seen. But I suppose you’d be more interested in how I used a spell I supposedly don’t know, right?”
Mia nodded unashamedly, blue eyes glimmering with curiosity that the vampire seemingly couldn’t resist saying no to.
“I know the spell circles of a bunch of spells I should eventually be able to cast,” Carmilla said. “If I had enough Control to manually shape the spell circle, I could cast all of those spells without even adding any of their runes into my runic model. But even with Chanting, I only barely managed to not blow my throat out with one of the simplest spell circles in existence. Which I only risked because I can recover from that pretty quickly.”
“Can you teach me that runic language?” Mia asked, her mouth once again flapping away before her brain caught up with it. She blushed, realising she’d asked the girl to practically give away the inheritance she’d gotten from some ancient vampire progenitor. Furthermore, that second part sounded like a pretty good reason not to try too, but Mia’s magic-addled brain went ‘Mia see fancy magic trick, Mia want fancy magic trick’. “Sorry. Never mind I asked.”
“It’s fine,” Carmilla said, her voice softening as she glanced at Mia. “I can’t teach you though. You’d need to be a pureblood vampire to speak it.”
“Oh,” Mia said, shoulders slumping in disappointment despite her earlier words. “Okay.”
Mia heard a crash that overpowered even the panicked shouts and gunfire. Glancing over, she saw a thinner part of the barricade now up in flames. A burning chair tumbled down from the top, then a couch and then a table too.
Behind the inferno, she caught Avery smashing her flaming fist down once more like it was a hammer and the power of it sent another piece of by-now unidentifiable furniture tumbling down.
“They are getting though!” A soldier shouted, barely finishing his sentence before a plush foot broke his jaw and sent him spinning through the air. The Familiar was still doing good work, bouncing between soldiers like a fuzzy white ball of pain and terror.
It didn’t let any of them fire at the refugees, either by keeping the confused soldier’s aim at itself or by breaking a wrist or a few fingers here and there. Mia felt the spike of fire mana. It reached an all-time high as it pulsed and quivered over Avery, now coating her entire body in a coat of angry orange flames.
The girl screamed, a high-pitched shriek that reminded Mia of an eagle’s cry. That sent the flaming girl’s mana into one final explosion as a pair of fiery wings sprung to life on her back for just a fraction of a second. Her fists came crashing down and pulverised the remaining two meters of haphazardly built barricade in an instant.
Not a second after that, the flames fizzled out and the girl’s presence in Mia’s Spirit Sense went from an inferno to a barely flickering ember. Avery wobbled, her form revealed with the departure of the flames and Mia saw just how beaten up she looked.
Her body was singed all over, parts of her pants were gone, her shirt barely held together by thin strips of burning fabric and her burgundy jacket lacked one of its sleeves from the elbow down.
Before the girl could plant her face right into the burning debris, a pair of refugees that looked vaguely familiar to Mia hoisted her up by the armpits and ran with her right towards Mia and Carmilla’s hiding place.
“COME! FOLLOW US!” One of the young men shouted over his shoulder and after some reluctance, the rest of the refugees climbed over the remains of the barricade. They cast wary glances at the soldiers and especially at the sadistic teddy bear that had five men writhing on the ground and foaming at the mouth while they held their family jewels. “RUN!!”
“We should go,” Carmilla whispered, tugging at Mia’s arms when the group was halfway over to the edge of the gardens. “We did what we could. If we stay here, there will be hundreds of eyewitnesses to us attacking the soldiers.”
“Yeah,” Mia said reluctantly. She wanted to check up on Avery, to make sure the girl was alright after no doubt wringing her mana pool dry with that stunt. Grimacing at the thought of how bad severe mana depravation could be, Mia turned to Carmilla and with a nod the two of them dashed off.
They retraced their steps, jumping over the wires serving as fences, zig-zagging between the trees and tiptoeing around the rows of vegetables. The two aimed leftwards by the end, exiting the gardens on the street running along the riverbank instead of where they entered it.
It proved to be the correct choice as Mia found the squad of soldiers that had been lately tailing them looking up and down the street further up. The two girls went around them and ran all the way back to the house.
Once there, Mia dismissed her Familiar with some reluctance. The most complicated order she could have sent over the bond would have been ‘get back here’ and Mia feared someone would be able to track down a living teddy bear running back to the house. She couldn’t risk it. She’d risked more than she should have already, but she refused to ever be that cold and purely logical person that Jeff was.
Avery was … not quite a friend, but she’d helped them and was nice. She was just trying to keep her community together, feed her neighborhood and protect people. Mia didn’t for a second think saving a person like that was stupid, or the wrong thing to do.
I just have to make sure that saving her doesn’t negatively impact me and my friends. Mia thought, then decided that was likely what she’d done. No one would know that she had a part to play in this and, with some luck, the refugees would disperse and Zeigler would only make a show of looking for them.
Right. Like anything is going to go so well. Mia mused. Still, a girl can hope.
Comments
Fi
TFTC ❤️
