++Better to burn a town than leave it for the vampires. Let that much be known to all Wardens, better to burn than be taken. Better your town burn, or else you will.++

  Book 2: Chapter 21

  This was a full-fledged assault. Oleri took only moments to realise it. Worse, she saw, it was organised. Not just a thrashing mass of mindless zombies, this time it was headed by what appeared to be still-living humans. Still-living, but moving with all the considerable strength of a vampire’s enthrallment.

  Traitors, then. Every instinct she had told her to start killing them and to hell with anything else, but there were greater priorities here. If the head of the vampires died, Reginald Smith, then the attack would lose its momentum, and if whoever was enthralling these soldiers did so then it would lose its weight. So she had to kill him.

  Again.

  But Smith was already locked skyward with Arydaq, the two of them coiling through the air like sea snakes in water. They were moving too fast and too unpredictably for her to intervene safely. Oleri cursed again, turned to the rest of the combat and caught sight of the other vampire coming for her just as his stolen Circumscriber’s blade hissed right for her head. She brought hers up to parry, sending him back with the difference of their Strength, and stepped in to finish him.

  That was when his free hand came up and a fistful of something—dirt or maybe even gunpowder—went right into her eyes.

  Toughness as high as Oleri’s meant that the irritation was limited, but her body still had all its old, stupid reflexes about what to do when stuff went in its eyes and she went stumbling back with a snarl. Her sword came up in an instinctive parry that apparently failed, because a streak of pain ran right down her torso as the skin split open and the flesh parted. Blood frothed from the wound, she saw that once her vision had cleared. Too much blood.

  “Always hated Circumscribers,” the mutated vampire growled through his malformed mouth and throat. “You remember me?”

  She didn’t, and didn’t answer. He laughed anyway.

  “Thought not. Time to die, bitch.”

  Oleri expected him to attack, hearing that, but instead the man fell back and raised his own guard. She realised why instantly. With her Toughness sitting in the mid-40s, even a Circumscriber’s blade in a vampire’s hand hadn’t cut her deep enough to be instantly fatal. A single thought called on her Unyielding Flesh to stem the bleeding, too.

  She’d already lost a lot of blood though, already taken a wound that stung and throbbed when she tried to move. The vampire was backing away, cautious despite his minor victory. He seemed to know, already, how dangerous Oleri was.

  Remember me? He’d asked. So he’d seen her fight before. Ah, yes. He was the Witchfinder who’d accompanied Smith out into the grimwoods that day. The one Oleri had decided to spare rather than safely kill.

  One of the vampire’s thralls was closing in, now, moving faster than Oleri would have thought a mere human could manage. Ichor, the potent nectar of the undead. It strengthened him, quickened him, and was making problems for her when she already stood down a pint of her own blood. Better to kill the weak one before finishing the vampire, she decided, and lunged.

  Just in time, she recognised his Circumscriber’s blade and turned her sword thrust into a parry. The thrall went sprawling with the strength of her, but Oleri had left an opening for the Witchfinder to swing again. She fell back from it. He was nothing as a swordsman, not holding a candle to her or even a half-trained recruit, but circumstances were giving him all the advantages and he was using them well. A weak vampire was still a vampire, especially with the transformations this Lineage appeared capable of.

  Just when Oleri started to regain her poise and take back the offensive, her opponent drew a pistol and shot her right in the face.

  ***

  Reggie felt himself getting tugged around through the air, but it was weird. There wasn’t any wind force acting on him, no pressure from a grip or anything of the sort. It felt more like gravity was forgetting which way it pointed, but even that didn’t quite capture the feeling. There was no constant acceleration, just suddenly speed in one direction until it capped out.

  You are being targeted by telekinesis, this elven Wizard appears quite powerful.

  Well that explained it, then. Bugger.

  “What do I do!?” he screamed, feeling himself thrown down hard. Gravity combined with the telekinesis so that Reggie hit the ground at a more-than-considerable speed, actually cracking apart individual road cobbles on impact and ending up pressed several feet down into the dirt below. He lay there for a moment, groaning. Then he felt heat on his back and threw himself into a roll that barely took him from the path of oncoming flames.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I don’t know.

  [Kill him Reggie, make him eat his own face!]

  It was rare to have Sycily and Dvo be equally useful, and Reggie didn’t care for it at all. He kept running and jumping, dodging some fireballs and being caught on the fringes of others. They really were hot. Cobbles melted under them where misses engulfed the road, and Reggie could actually feel the air heating up just in the vicinity of where the Wizard was aiming.

  A shit shot, was that Wizard, but eventually he’d get lucky, so Reggie had to think fast. The problem of course was that his enemy could fly, and he couldn’t.

  Or could he?

  Now wasn’t the best time trying to figure out how to turn into a bat or whatever, not that Reggie expected such a thing would’ve been left off his Sheet, so instead he worked with what he had. A well-timed dodge took him rolling right beside a group of soldiers, who he promptly cut in half, then into quarters. It made them useless as reanimates, but spilled all the blood out fast and let him wrap it around himself in thick limbs.

  The blood had purchase in a moment, then Reggie was flying high. A bit too high, then too low. He smashed into a building and left an exit-wound in its back, then hit one of the city’s walls before he could even gather his bearings. One squad of defenders was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and bones broke as Reggie bowled them over before twisting skywards. He smashed into something else, something a lot harder and far screamier, before managing to stabilise.

  After that, he started to get the hang of things.

  ***

  Oleri had been winning, they all had. Her fellow Circumscribers had already slain five of the dozen or so thralls, while the remaining undead woodlouse had perished. Reanimated soldiers were still causing them issues, but they were making short work of even those. Oleri herself had been on the verge of putting down Smith’s fellow vampire.

  Then Smith himself had come screaming and spinning like a thrown discus, uncontrollably smashing through a row of defenders, sending several into a Circumscriber hard enough to bowl him over and pulp them on impact, before abruptly turning and hitting Oleri herself.

  He was heavier than he looked, and he looked plenty heavy already. In an instant Oleri’s speed went from zero to much more than fucking zero, the world became a blur of smeared colour and howling wind. Then she hit the wall and punched right through it. A foot of wood, smashed open and torn apart by her collision. She tumbled, rolled, finally came to a stop only after digging a trench dozens of feet long with her face.

  Oleri lay there for a moment, groaning.

  ***

  Reggie was on fire. Fortunately, at the speed he was flying, there was enough cool air smashing into him every second that most of the heat was getting carried away. Something about conservation of power or some shit, he was having a hard time remembering his old alchemical texts because his hair was melting.

  Luckily, he was also closing in on the Wizard and closing fast. The elf seemed quite surprised at the sheer speed of him.

  He threw out a bolt of lightning, which Reggie wasn’t fast enough to even attempt dodging but ended up being entirely missed by anyway. Then he smashed into his enemy and it was all fists.

  Somewhere, Reggie had lost his Circumscriber’s blade. That was a shame because it would’ve been nice to end this instantly by just taking the guy’s head off. Even so, grappling a vampire was more or less a death sentence already. Reggie bit down onto the elf’s chest and felt his fangs sink in.

  Compared to thick praetorian carapace, this elf’s skin was nothing.

  “Stop it,” the elf screamed. He thrashed around and punched Reggie with fists that felt…kind of superhuman, at least. Evidently a Wizard was pretty damned specialised in his magic, though, because despite his inferiority of Tier and this man’s clear edge in experience, Reggie barely even registered the impacts. He started biting deeper and twisting his head around, tearing and cutting up the flesh between his teeth.

  Blood flow increased, then increased some more.

  ***

  Ludvich had gotten ridiculously lucky by having Reggie smash into the Circumscriber, and it had saved his life. His unlife. Whatever.

  That didn’t mean he was out of the fire yet, though, because the battle was still not going well. Half the thralls had died already, and with Reggie tied up fighting the Wizard he’d not been able to replenish their ranks with as many reanimates as they’d initially planned.

  It was the Circumscribers, they were just too powerful. Two of them were doing more than all the other defenders combined. Worse, they were galvanizing those defenders. Ludvich saw them winning, now, as the last of the thralls attacked them all at once. Even with a few reanimates helping, it was no contest.

  Not until he got stuck in, that was. Quiet as a mouse Ludvich crept up and waited, picked his moment well. He couldn’t win a straight fight against elves yet, fine. He was a Witchfinder. Straight fights weren’t what he was trained for anyway.

  Of course, the elf knew he was there. Ludvich waited. Let him keep an eye on him while he focused on fighting, let him stay on-guard, let him think he’d foiled the ambush by spotting it before it came. Then the elf saw an opening in the thralls and moved to strike down two at once and win the fight outright. His eagerness brought a moment of distraction, and that was when Ludvich struck. The stolen Circumscriber’s sword jabbed right into his target’s neck and opened it up instantly.

  Ludvich watched the blood pump out for one second, then two. On the third he saw the elf finally seem to realise he’d been cut, eyes widening with panic as he mumbled something. Light hummed around the wound and his flesh took on an almost incandescent sheen, slowing the bleed.

  Warriors. Ludvich knew little about the Class, save that it was the basic brute enforcer of the elves’ Circumscribers. It figured they had a way around stab wounds besides just their Toughness.

  Not that it was doing him any good now. His moment of distraction to face Ludvich saw a new wound scored across his back from one of the similarly-armed thralls, and while he turned to that Ludvich continued his own advance. The elf died fast, leaving his ally alone for all of two seconds before the one Reggie punted through the town’s wall showed back up to join the fray.

  Two on everyone again, it seemed, but this time Ludvich was there, and another thrall had picked up the dead elf’s weapon.