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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 48
🕑 Added 2024-10-14 16:00:16 +0000 UTC*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uF92qEEXVU9pp5RHUXlKS2otjdRqagB7aFd4jvOxNlY/edit?usp=sharing
*****
“No,” Carmilla said confidently. “Lars knows I have his scent. He won’t have the guts to run, he’s just a slow lumbering oaf. Being a werebear doesn’t mean he can run as fast as the real deal.”
Right. Brown bears should be able to comfortably run at 50 kmph. I doubt I’d been going fast enough to lose a real one if it really wanted to eat me.
Then again, Mia wouldn’t have even had to run from a regular brown bear. Her Familiar could have probably taken one down. Speaking of, the Familiar was there too, sitting next to Mia’s feet with its wispy tail swinging back and forth.
Unfortunate that it can’t understand normal human speech. Or that it couldn’t even report back to me what it heard if I did send it out to eavesdrop on them.
“Also, let’s leave you going out to fight them in the clear as a last, last resort,” Mia said, imagining the consequences of beating up or killing more than a dozen soldiers just because they were here when the jumpy pair of them left the forest. That would be a surefire way to burn down all bridges with Zeigler, who’d been nothing but helpful and friendly up until this point. “Plan Z, okay? Also, if you are going out to fight them, I am sending the Familiar out first to disarm them.”
Literally. This sadistic cat would probably bite all of their arms off if I gave that order.
Mia’s reluctance to confront them herself stemmed from a healthy paranoia coupled with a clear understanding of her own weaknesses.
Mainly, that she couldn’t do anything against a cloud of bullets raining down on her. Her best bet would be Arcane Shield, but that only made a one metre diameter buckler, which would hardly protect her body from that many bullets.
If I could even activate it before I died from a case of terminal velocity lead injection.
Mia’s main weakness, in her opinion, was ambushes. Her magic took precious moments to materialise, and needed her to have a clear enough mind to focus, which wasn’t a given when people were shooting at her.
Familiar shored that weakness up by a bit, letting her have something at the ready, but she knew it wouldn’t be able to do jackshit against a dozen rifles opening up on her in full auto.
It might block one or two, if it was even fast enough to intercept a bullet. But dozens? Hundreds of bullets coming from ten angles?
She’d have more holes in her than an emmentaler cheese before she could even assemble a spell circle.
Which was why she had to go about not getting shot in a preventative way. Like hiding, running away or ‘disarming’ anyone liable to be shooting at her from afar.
This was also why she let the cat loose on the Sergeant when he reached for his pistol. She didn’t have the reflexes, abilities and skill to stop a bullet or to defend against one.
Not yet anyway. She was hoping she could get either the Warding, Abjuration or the Illusion Runic Lexicons next. Either would go a long way about making that weakness less glaring, but it was likely only all three combined would fully eliminate it.
Wards for passive defence, Abjuration for active defence and Illusion for a better preventative defence.
If she could get that Summoning Ritual done perfectly and the resulting spell merged with her Class Skill though, that would be the optimal dream outcome. Supposedly, that would allow her to store two spectral knights in her Spirit that she could pull out at a moment’s notice.
No spells, spell circles, channelling mana, just a thought and a spiritual manifestation of carnage in the form of the Dark Knight would be ready to slaughter her enemies with extreme prejudice. Alternatively, the manifestation of heroic sacrifice, the White Guardian would be just as ready to fight till its last breath to protect her from harm.
Even her Arcanism book mentioned the Ritual, pointing at it as one of the obvious ways of shoring up this glaring weakness that all Arcane mages inherently have.
It applied for other mages too, but they generally had at least some body enhancements just from channelling their mana lessening the severity of it.
“Hide and observe it is,” Carmilla said, slouching into a crouch. “Come, I know you’re pretty stealthy in the forest but try to follow me. I have a pretty good understanding of forest stealth.”
Bet half of her bloodline memories are one of her ancestors hunting down some poor sod in a forest just like this.
Mia nodded, crouching too and paying careful attention to where Carmilla stepped. She did her best to follow in the vampiress’ wake, managing to be marginally stealthier than she would have been just by walking.
Progress. Nobody starts out as a master huntress. Well, nobody who didn’t have bloodline memories to help them anyway.
Piercing Bolt, as she’d come to think of the variant, was readied though she kept her mana firmly inside her pool. She couldn’t discount the idea that there was at least one elf in the group of soldiers ahead even if most of them she’d seen up until now appeared distinctly unchanged by the Awakening.
Then again, an elf would have heard Mia’s fumbling attempts at stealthiness from a mile away.
“Weird,” Carmilla whispered under her breath, making sure to keep her voice even dimmer than her footsteps. “I guess you were right. Only two of them have weapons in hand, and neither are aiming it towards the forest.”
Meaning they weren’t ordered to gun us down the moment we appeared. That’s the worst possible scenario torpedoed, still …
“They could be here to peacefully take us into custody,” Mia said, keeping her voice similarly level with startling ease.
It seemed whatever changes were done to her vocal cords during her transformation, it had made her voice more fit to softer tones and whispers.
They crept closer and from mere whispers getting lost in the song of the forest, the voices of the soldiers came into the foreground, clearly audible to Mia’s triangular ears.
“ … think this is great, I mean, the word is going to shit and all but we got magic and elves. Man, have you seen that blonde one in the third squad? Oh my god, I’m getting jittery just thinking about her-“
“Ass?” Another soldier snorted. “Don’t pull the wool over my eyes, ya daft cunt, you’d been staring at Emily’s ass even before she got those pointy ears.”
“But it’s different now! That was just … lust, but now!” The first soldier said, sounding enamoured. “This is love, just her fluttering glances with those emerald green eyes of hers are making my heart stutter!”
“I get ya,” a third one said, sounding understanding. “I met a girl just yesterday at a bbq party. She had the most adorable labrador-like ears on her head and wagged her tail whenever she talked to me. I think I’m in love.”
“You two nerds,” the second soldier, the one who tried to shut down the elf-lover, snorted again. “Why are you fethishising those mutants?”
Mutants? That word again.
“Shut the fuck up Garl,” elf-lover said dryly, clearly not the first time he’d heard the obnoxious man being a killjoy. “You’re just jealous no woman as hot as Emily would ever glance twice at your ugly mug.”
“Oh, you wanna fucking go- ?”
“Silence,” said a familiar voice, sounding both tired and commanding at the same time. “We have incoming. Keep your weapons holstered but get in combat readiness.”
Mia stiffened, her breath hitching. How did they detect us? Shit! We are still more than a hundred metres away from the-
Her ears twitched, her head swinging about to gaze at the thick shrubbery behind them. Lars, that unit of a man just crashed through a large bush with the grace of a drunk elephant.
The man was still dozens of metres away, but his gaze only swam for a bit before it locked onto the two girl’s location. He sniffed the air like a bloodhound, then lumbered towards them until Carmilla let out an almost inaudible hiss.
The man froze, clearly not understanding the girl’s meaning beyond ‘don’t get closer’.
“Shit,” Mia mumbled, hearing the soldiers line up just outside the treeline. That vaguely familiar voice ordered them about, had them fan out and take up position behind him. “What now?”
“Now,” Carmilla said, her predatory look softening slightly as she glanced back at Mia. “I’ll go out there and salvage the situation. You stay here and provide covering fire if they decide to be nasty and we run, okay?”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Mia asked worriedly, biting her lips as the anxiety gnawed at her. “I know you can heal but what if they catch you in the head? You can’t heal from you brain getting blown out, can you?
“I would … probably survive it,” the vampiress said. “But it’d be ugly, and … without my mind working properly my instincts would control my body.”
What does she- Oh. Instincts, the very same instincts that made the girl stare at Mia’s neck hungrily, the ones that gave her that prey drive she’d been suppressing. Vampiric instincts. That could get ugly indeed.
“You run if they as much as point a gun at you, okay?” Mia said, squeezing Carmilla’s arm. She stared into those ruby orbs, worried frown on her face. “I’ll have the Familiar distract them if they do and we can run. We are faster than them and in a forest, we’ll easily lose them.”
“Only send the cat in at my signal,” Carmilla responded, patting Mia on the shoulder in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring. Alas, the redhead was stiff and awkward with it. “‘Applejuice’, that’ll be the codeword. If I say apple juice, we bolt.”
“Okay,” Mia said, swallowing as she let go of Carmilla and crouched down behind a bush. “Be careful.”
“You too,” Carmilla said with a smile and turned, straightening up as she forewent all stealth. She walked through the woods, nudged Lars to follow her then strode towards the edge of the forest. “A welcoming committee? For us? You shouldn’t have.”
Is she taking her lines from books and movies? Mia thought, an amused smile coming over her face. I’m pretty sure ‘applejuice’ was the safeword in some movies too.
With how little social interaction the girl supposedly had growing up, Mia felt that made sense. Still, even with her confident demeanour now firmly hiding it, Mia saw that same awkwardness underneath.
Cute. Mia thought.
“Miss Carmilla?” The same vaguely familiar voice said, and despite Mia straining her ears she heard no rifles moving or safety handles getting unlocked on them. Though the heart rates of everyone picked up the moment they caught sight of the vampire, then jumped even higher when the very naked Lars stumbled out of the forest behind her. “I am-“
“Zeigler’s aide,” Carmilla said. “Kelvin, was it? I know. Now, would you be so kind as to explain why the lot of you felt the need to … what is this supposed to be? An ambush, or an arrest?”
“It is not,” the man, Kelvin, continued unperturbed by Carmilla cutting him off. Out of the group, he kept most calm up until now. “We are here merely to make sure the … man behind you is handled properly. We have heard he has admitted to the gruesome murder of one man, which we cannot allow to go unpunished.”
“That’s good to hear,” Carmilla said calmly. “But I think you’ll want to hear what he has to say before you decide on anything … permanent. This man behind me was the previous leader of the beastkin group living up on that hill.”
“Truly?” Kelvin asked, a note of surprise entering his voice but not without a hint of doubt also joining in. “And he would be willing to share what he knows about his previous group?”
“Would you?” Carmilla asked and Mia peeked out between the leaf covered branches of the bush to catch sight of what was happening.
“Yes,” Lars said, his voice showing a lucidity it didn’t have before. His posture though, was another thing entirely. He kept looking around at the soldiers jerkily, twitching this way and that at every little movement of one of the soldiers.
The soldiers in turn were wary, clearly knowing the danger of an unstable man of Lars’ size. Especially if the five soldiers from before said anything about his Shifter abilities.
You’d think they’d have brought heavier weaponry if they knew about him. But Kelvin knew he killed someone? What’s going on?
Mia frowned then ever so carefully started circling around the group. If her guess was right this small of a force wouldn’t be sent here to handle Lars by themselves.
Zeigler knows about him, so he should also know that Lars shrugged off concentrated rifle fire. So, if he still sent his men here- There! I knew it!
Further out, hiding behind a smaller mound were a pair of tanks and on it sat a platoon of tense soldiers clutching weaponry much more dangerous than mere rifles.
Mia swallowed, her throat going dry in an instant. Only the fact that the troopers lying in wait weren’t moving to flank or ambush Carmilla kept her from panicking.
“There … also happens to be a complaint about your friend, Miss Vexley. But I don’t see her anywhere? Did she … ?”
“Complaint?” Carmilla’s tone could have frozen over the sun, and sent a shiver down Mia’s spine. The vampiress sounded a moment away from ripping someone’s spine out and beating them to death with it. “By the Fireteam sent to ‘protect’ us I assume? With the Sergeant who struck my friend and then had the gall to call her a bitch?”
The silence that followed was deafening. The backup soldiers checked their weapons, their stances transforming into the human equivalent of a coiled up spring. The ones behind Kelvin audibly tightened their grips on their weapons, safeties coming undone and fingers landing on triggers, not yet firing but ready to at a moment’s notice.
A few seconds went by and Mia almost got a heart attack from the spiking anxiety. Her hands shook, but she was ready. In that moment she knew that the moment those tanks fired up their engines, she was going to let them have it.
She could practically hear the screams already, the metal shrieking as it tore under the force of her Arcane Blast and that repulsive scent of blood she’d never grown used to. She was ready. If they moved, she was going to kill them as they came.
She wouldn’t even let them lay their eyes on Carmilla, that unnamed ditch they huddled into would be their grave.
Her heart stuttered, her the rhythm of its beat drumming in her ears. She only saw them, their fingers on their rifles, their hands on grenades, their grasps on the heavy machine guns attached to the tanks.
A single twitch. That was all that stood between the lot of them and an explosive glittery pink death.
“The Sergeant left out that part.” Kelvin broke the silence, his voice dry and thick with forced stoicism. “I assume Miss Vexley is in good health?”
“She is,” Carmilla said, her tone softening almost imperceptibly. Mia felt a slight blush creeping up her cheeks at the gentleness behind those words, heavily contrasting the vampire’s previous tone of voice.
Even if Carmilla wasn’t interested in her in a romantic way, the girl cared. Not that Mia had given up on the first just yet, by her own account the girl had zero romantic experience so Mia held onto the hope that she was just dense and didn’t even know what being sexually attracted to someone felt like.
She never stared at men, though I don’t remember her checking out women either … is she asexual? That would be Fate’s nastiest joke played on me to date.
While Mia’s thoughts wandered over a sink and jumped down the drain, the tension slowly drained out of the air. The backup force behind the mound also heaved a collective sigh of relief, likely having been briefed before coming here about the two girl’s combat capabilities.
Nobody liked to fight against a petit elf-shaped automatic rocket launcher and a rampaging vampire, especially not so with a damned werebear possibly joining in on the fun.
“I’m sure the Colonel will take into consideration her actions when deciding on whether to keep the two of you under military employ, but I’d like to let you know that you will not be held accountable for your actions today beyond that.”
Take my actions into consideration? Mia felt a flare of righteous anger, hadn’t she been the one to be struck first? Hadn’t she been the one to protect the five morons who couldn’t even stay coherent throughout the fight and passed out like a group of toddlers when the time for their afternoon nap arrived?
The Sergeant should be happy she didn’t let her anger get the better of her and allowed him to live. She even gave him her Elixir damnit! A choice which she was quickly growing to regret.
Then the calm took hold, and like always she tried to put herself in the Colonel’s shoes. A random girl with magical rocket launchers in her hand just mutilated one of his men horribly.
He’d be foolish not to consider that the new powers might have unscrewed one too many screws in her head. If she was unstable, like Lars for example, she could understand him not wanting her anywhere near his men and endangering their lives by being a loose cannon.
“Smart,” Carmilla said with a mocking lilt to her voice and Mia wanted to facepalm for a moment. Did that silly girl want to fight? “Lead me to somewhere where I can leave Lars to you.”
Comments
jeff
I think with how chaotic Arcan magic is, I would think her body would really strong at the higher level to hold that kind of power
Fi
TFTC!❤️
Stephanie Washburn
Anyway, Mia and Camilla probably need to talk about and get a handle on the contempt they're showing towards the unprofessional side of the troops. They can probably get Colonel Ziegler to discipline those guys to heck and back, and help him reform the local military in the process. But professionals like Gwen, Kelvin, and Ziegler will probably not respond well to regular displays of violent disregard for the idiots on the force. If you lose the professionals' good opinion, you lose your chance at improving the local situation, and as Mia pointed out she's got no good defense against bullets. (I think they'll probably need to depose the brigadier general in the future and having Col. Ziegler to take over will be very important in that case).
Stephanie Washburn
I suppose Mia thinking of the protection detail as being as bad as "toddlers taking an afternoon nap" may be a sign of her just not thinking clearly. All this talk of how useless those soldiers were comes off as arrogance and a misunderstanding of what those guys' job and capabilities are - at least to me. The actual thing wrong with them is absolutely not that they were ineffective and needed protecting. It is that they failed to recognize a deescalated situation, defended guys who were creating a hostile workplace environment, and then overreacted to Mia's overly destructive disarm. (The reaction to her allowing her Familiar to maul him over a sucker punch was justified). In Mia's defense, she's a civilian who has no training on how to react in circumstances like these. She probably needs emotional guidance and mentorship from authority figures she trusts. Maybe the first skill she gets taught might be the after action analysis "what did I do well, what did I do poorly, what do I think I should do next time?". In a no judgement for what happened, but is there a more proportional way you could have handled that? kind of way.
Stephanie Washburn
That's somewhat poor fire discipline for those guys to wind up like that without an order. Though they might have gotten the order before hand. Regardless, this was a reasonably well written chapter.
