She shivered, “What's it doing?” Kasia was moving slowly, the gentle and delicate movements of a feline stalking prey. That with the black eyes reflecting light with a slight shine made her wonder if Kasia hadn't told her something about her lineage. “Locked eyes with me. It's watching me like I'm watching it. Definitely another predator and one used to ambush, it hasn't decided if it wants the fight yet. Do you have enchanted ammunition?”
She resisted the urge to shake her head as she tried to think what local creatures it could be, “No, just iron and silver.” The vampire was crawling slowly on top of the table between them to cross the distance without moving her eye level, “Slowly swap to silver then.” Myla carefully reached for her rifle and the lock box with specialized ammo, “Do you know what it is?” She was a little grateful to not be watching Kasia move, it was uncanny to see her suddenly shed her mask of humanity like this.
Logically she knew Kasia wasn't human anymore, but it was another thing to see her move like that. Kasia answered as she started climbing around her chair to get to the other side of her, “A dozen guesses and nothing to bet with. I'm going to need you to do exactly what I say as quickly as you can and we don't have a lot of time for more questions. When I say move, I'm going to need you to go out the door all at once and lock gazes with this thing when it looks at you.”
Myla loaded the rifle while Kasia spoke in the same even tone, “Blinking will break the creature's focus so you need to buy as much time as you can for me to get in position. Be ready to shoot it as soon as it starts to move.” She took a slow breath in, “You think we should hit it first?” Kasia laughed softly, “I think nothing on my short list is worth risking my life by giving it the initiative. Ready?” Myla centered herself and took a firm hold on her rifle before looking at Kasia, “When you are.”
The vampire was rubbing at her left wrist with her thumb, “Move.” She rushed out of the tower door and snapped her scope up to her eye and advanced to the rail. She could only see the gold eyes of the shadow thing, they snapped to meet her gaze and then slowly tilted like it was curious. Her skin crawled like she was standing in front of a cougar on the trail. She didn't look away, only hearing the sound of something hitting the wood floor behind her and then the creak of wood as Kasia climbed onto the railing next to her. Everything was still again.
Then it all happened at once, she blinked and the shadow thing bolted. She heard the railing protest as Kasia used it as leverage to snap herself forward into the air. Myla snapped off a shot at the shadow thing and cursed as she missed and worked the bolt to chamber a new round. She caught flashes of pale skin following after it, bounding from tree to tree to catch up. Her second shot caught it between two trees, she wasn't sure where but it clearly slowed enough for Kasia to catch it.
She jerked back at the sudden explosion of noise in the underbrush, like a pair of big cats ripping into one another. She could barely track them, following motion and flashes of Kasia's ghostly skin rather than the action itself. She couldn't find a clean shot on that! One of the figures shot out from the brawl like a thrown spear, the pitch black creature slammed into the base of the ranger tower with a crash that shook it. The lights blazed to life with the sudden motion, and she heard a tea kettle scream that made her inner ear vibrate painfully.
She ignored it and hit the railing in a rush, she leaned over with the rifle pointed down to find the black thing recovering its feet. It looked like liquid night had been worked into a human shape, the light seemed to burn away the haze around to make it almost solid. Golden pupilless eyes snapped up to her as a gnarled hand tipped with vicious ripping claws lifted to try and block the light. It hissed that angry tea kettle scream at her. So she shot it again, that seemed to smash it down to a knee.
When Kasia shot out of the night to slam it back into the support struts again she just readied her next shot and waited. It looked even more like two big cats fighting in the light, snarling rage, flashing claws, black liquid flew from them like fur. Most of it turned to mist and burned away in the light. Some of it became blood splatter in the light. The shadow thing bolted away from Kasia with a ripping sound, clearly it had lost its appetite for the fight. She tracked it, judged the speed, and took another shot. It stumbled but didn't stop, scrambling away into the night.
She didn't see Kasia chasing it so she just lowered the rifle. All she could hear was her own pounding heart and the ring of the gun shots at first but then caught an unexpected noise. Laughter. She looked down and saw Kasia dancing on the spot, alternating between laughing and shouting after the creature in Polish. The vampire looked up at her with a massive grin and then shocked her by squatting and rocketing straight up in a jump. She used the struts to propel herself upwards with reckless speed.
She shot past the railing and caught it with a trailing hand to stop herself, coming to rest in a handstand. She grinned upside down at Myla, “Did you see that? Menda pierdolni?t?! You had better keep running!” She flipped back to her feet on the railing and yelled into the dark while making an obscene gesture, “It'll think twice before it fucks with us again!” Myla found herself laughing at her and sitting down hard on the ranger towers viewing platform, “You're insane! I can't believe you just- and I just shot at it- and you threw it at the tower- fuck!”
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She spotted red stains on the vampire's clothes, “Wait no. First, are you alright?” The vampire turned and sat on the railing, one leg swinging whimsically as she offered a cheshire grin, “Alright? I'm more than alright! I won!” She threw her hands in the air excitedly and almost fell off the tower before Myla caught her, “Yeah? I saw a lot of blood, let me check you out.” Kasia's grin didn't waver, “Oh I'll let you check me out alright, but there's someone on the radio. Sounds like they're real worried about the gun fire another tower heard. I'm not bleeding so you should answer that.”
The Vampire
She watched Myla hesitate, eyeing the rips in her clothes. She was sweet to worry, “Before they call in the army? You can strip me down and check me for wounds after, no arguments from me.” The ranger reluctantly nodded and went to answer the radio. And almost tripped over Kasia's discarded boots. Myla looked at them then at Kasia's bare feet, so she wiggled her toes at the younger woman, “Easier to fight like that without them. Let's me use back claws. Go answer the radio, they're about to scramble half the rangers here. Tell them it was a Solomon Shade and that we drove it back successfully.”
She felt her grin grow, “It won't bother anyone tonight, not after that beating!” She wasn't going to be bothering anyone tonight either for the same reason but decided not to make Myla worry. She took stock of her own wounds while Myla reported it in. The Shade had missed hitting the runes she had carved into her wrist before the fight started and one of them made it so she didn't actually feel pain. Deep cuts on her side and stomach, it had tried to sever her artery in her thigh, several broken ribs, maybe a burst kidney?
That was impressive, between her own unnatural fortitude and the defensive runes that took some serious strength to pull off. A powerful example of its kind. Was that what was summoned in the woods? Was this why Lilith's specter had wanted her to see that? She would need a good meal to heal all that properly. Too bad Myla would be tapped for a while, she needed time to recover her own blood before Kasia could ask for more. The bagged blood would help, but it wasn't a substitute for straight from the vein. Bagged blood and time then, nothing else for it.
Myla came back over, “The chief is on the way with a couple other rangers. They don't know what a Solomon Shade is anymore than I do and are nervous. Now come on, let's check your wounds.” She let herself be pulled inside without a fuss and was sat down on the table, “I’m not in any danger. I wouldn't want to fight anything like that for a couple days at least and I'll need some blood, but I made sure I wouldn't bleed out before the fight started.” Myla glanced at her face then lifted her shirt anyway.
Of course she froze at the brutal looking mess of clotted blood so she flipped over her wrist to show her the runes, “I'm ok really, I just need to eat and it'll start healing. These little gems are why.” Myla looked at them then frowned as she pulled out the medical kit anyway, “How do they help?” She accepted the girls fussing with good humor, “I call them the Immortal Special. They're Persian runes made for their Immortals, the royal guard I mean. The first one is Bloodless and it just clots the blood when you're cut. But it does it instantly so it takes major damage to actually draw real blood from someone using it.”
She went down them in order, pointing to each in turn, “Fearless, it actually makes it so you don't feel pain and for some people that's basically the same thing. Steel Body, it makes your muscles more dense. Doesn't make you much stronger but it makes it so it's harder to get a blade past the muscle level. Stone Bones makes them harder to break.” She felt Myla tug on the bandage on her thigh, “Sounds useful but you still took a beating.” Kasia shrugged, “And when I break the Fearless rune it's gonna suck.”
She waved a dismissive hand at the rangers expression and changed the subject, it wasn't really worth addressing, “There's actually more for heightening sight and hearing too, but I skipped those. My senses are already overtunned, I don't need to make that worse.” Myla sighed and looked reproachfully at her, “Want to explain what a Solomon Shade is?” She kicked her feet, the fight had left her restless. Maybe they had time to fuck before the others got here?
No wait, answer the question first, “Sure, as implied by the name the Sorcerer King Solomon is most famous for summoning them but he wasn't actually the first to do it exactly. Shade itself is a catch-all term for the shadow creatures summoned from other realms that are both malicious and envious of life.” She gestured out the window, “The eyes are the best indication of which you're dealing with. I wish you could say definitively which it is using the eyes, but you won't actually know unless you can get a good feel for their aura and can identify that.”
She leaned back to lay on the table, she wasn't going to get laid if Myla was freaked out over a little thing like this. “I've dealt with Solomon Shades before, and their auras are almost identical. Almost. Enough so that if you can recognize one then you can recognize them all. They were assassins and spies for the king, they can blend perfectly into any shadow if they want to. I only spotted that one because I can normally see through the dark even when in the light, but I couldn't see through it's dark. One spot you can't see is really suspicious. They can tell when they're spotted too so it stopped trying to hide.”
Myla looked more and more concerned, “Do you think that was enough damage and it'll… bleed to death or something?” Kasia shook her head, “You can't kill them. Hurt them sure, weaken definitely, but even direct sunlight doesn't actually kill them. But sunlight can banish them back into their home realm, and it was theorized that if you could keep them from going back they may die eventually. In my day we could never prove that, but maybe modern tech could do it? Either way, you might have to go to their home plain to kill them and we're pretty sure they're small game there. Mostly because no one that went to explore it came back.”
She considered if she should explain the realms and went on with more practical information instead, Silver hurts them, the right enchantments too, but bronze works the best. I know a few wards we can start placing to keep people safe from it on the roads and in buildings too. Nothing that works on mobile objects unfortunately.” Myla gave her an odd look, “Then why didn't we just ward the tower?” Kasia held up two fingers, “First reason, any wards I would have dropped before the fight would have been a gamble. Too many kinds of shades, and those aren't universal wards. Second, if I did then where would it go?”
She gestured vaguely to where it had fled, “They're malicious, actively want to hurt people. By giving it a beating it's going to need to heal. They're not native to the plain so they use energy to stay here, that means they take ages to recover when badly hurt. But if we had just let it leave, it would have just found other people to prey on. Out here, that means another ranger too. Actually you might want to tell them to check around the stations just to be safe.” Myla grabbed the radio then paused, “Hey, if they're not native then how did that one get here?”
Kasia could only shrug, "Someone summoned it, but we can't do anything with that yet. For now, handle immediate problems. We can figure out the rest later.” She looked back into the dark and started picking at her fingers subconsciously while Myla started talking in English to the other rangers. Now that she was calming down, that shade did have a familiar aura. Far too familiar. Someone was playing with one of her books. She didn't like people using her magic without permission. That would need handling.
