Stronger Together chapter 120 (Patreon)

The entrance to the vampire den was, ironically enough, a church.  While amusing because of both the absurdity of vampires living in a  church, especially Blampires, it was also kind of fitting. Our search  started underground in a church and was ending underground below one. I  could tell the girls thought much the same thing. Yang stepped up next  to me, she'd volunteered to be part of the first wave with Kara and  Morgan once we got here, I knew she was wrestling with the decision but I  agreed she would do the most good on the front lines. Kara's hope for  saving the thralls was noble, but it might also get her hurt. Yang would  protect her friends before the lives of strangers.

Knowing  she was looking out for them made me feel much better. I smiled wanly  at her and she punched me in the arm with a forced grin "Buck up big  man, we'll get this done easy peasy and you can go home and rail Red and  Rae until the windows break. No matter how many vampires they have we  have the most kickass crew in this or any other world. Any one of us  would curb stomp the bastards eventually but with this whole team we'll  be in and out in ten minutes flat." I could tell she was psyching  herself up as much as trying to psych me up.

I smiled  at her leaning forward to give her a hug before they left. It was a sign  of just how worried she must have been that she didn't make a sarcastic  comment or a flirty remark about the gesture, just pulled me close and  squeezed. It probably would have hurt me even a week ago, but my new  reinforced godsteel weave body didn't even creak under the pressure. I  considered tapping my lightning aspect now to make sure I noticed  anything coming up on us but figured proper communication was key to a  good ambush.

The plan had been fine tuned over an hour  or two, and it was simple. Firstly we would hit them at night. We  considered a daytime assault but in the end decided that since they were  underground it wasn't likely to be a big factor and their guard would  be at its highest in daylight where they were theoretically most  vulnerable. Being the biggest bullies in the playground at night would  give them a false sense of security. The primary strike force, aka Kara,  Morgan, Yang, the wampires, and Lily's melee people would get in  position and bust in kool aid man style while we had Hana, Raven, Lily  and any other magic user with the knack layer veils on us.

Hopefully  we could flank their nobles and set off a burst of foxfire to take down  most of their stealth then just light them up. Mavra and Raucus we  would leave to Cinder and Raven as out magical heavyweights. It wasn't a  complicated plan but it was a solid one. With only one major hitch.  Lord fucking Raith was trying to claim priority on Mavra as a fellow  noble. Which couldn't happen because if we killed him during their fight  she might get away, and vice versa. Hana appeared next to me, just  coming into existence behind me presumably hidden under a veil.

I  wasn't surprised though, not because I noticed her but because my  godsteel enhanced reflexes allowed me to process her presence and then  dismiss it before my muscles could twitch involuntarily. Having a mesh  of enchanted living supermetal woven through your neurons was all kinds  of neat. It was disturbing to me though, how quickly I'd gotten used to  thinking of the godsteel portions of me as the useful parts and  dismissing the flesh around them. Was I going to keep weaving more into  myself until I was all metal like my arm?

Thinking of  that, my arm was somehow made of living godsteel, but so was most of my  body now. Why did most of me look normal? I considered trying to spread  the godsteel alone my body and convert it back, but that metal limb was a  hell of a weapon and getting rid of it before a big fight seemed  stupid. I put a pin in that thought for someday though. Hana spoke,  interrupting my musings which had taken far too little time for the  amount of thinking I did with my new super brain. "We have all the  illusions spun up and woven together, we need the flanking group to  gather up so we can lay down the veil."

I followed her  over to the group. Everyone was all systems go, full battle stations,  decked out in their best armor and gear. With the sole exception of  Ebenezar who wasn't wielding his black staff. His eyes locked on Lord  Raith and flared in rage before he quashed the look. I'd had Raven get  him alone under her cone of silence and explain the plan. Once he knew  the man was going to die tonight and heard what he'd planned to do (and  had already done) to his daughter, he was totally onboard. Ebenezar had a  nasty temper but he was a covert agent. He got bullheaded about family  but he knew how to play the long game.

A chant began,  taken up first by Hana, then by Lily, then Cinder, then Raven. It spread  to a few of the other sidhe, and then to the wizards, and finally I  started to speak it, along with Yang and Barb. Our contributions were  last because they would infuse it with soulfire, giving it weight and  power, if we went out of our way to go last it would minimize the people  in contact with our magic to the ones handling the main spell, only  Hana and Lily. Hana had been briefed and didn't care, and Lily already  knew.

A dome of rolling shimmering color rippled over  us, like multicolored glowing water cascading down the walls of an  invisible bubble. Then the bubble began to dip at the top and dropped  over us like a wet blanket. It rolled down our bodies, clinging and  coating and then melding into us before vanishing. I didn't see any  difference until I used the magic eye spell, after which point everyone  vanished. I frowned and turned it off. Being within the spell the  physical veil didn't affect us but even we couldn't see any of the magic  under here at all.

Our  disappearance was the signal to the others to begin, and the main strike  force rolled up on the church,. Yang's hair caught fire, her whole body  following as she used her aura to wreathe herself in yellow white  flame. Morgan howled with primal joy as her semblance flared to life,  beginning the cycle of mystical nitro boosting that would cascade her  into a league similar to Kara eventually. I noticed that the silver  blaze was muted though, and much more stable. Raven's repairs of the  girls soul and efforts to distance her from her Hunger had helped her  remain sane but they also appeared to have slowed and muted her power.

She  was still ramping up though and was already nearly as strong as Sam so I  wasn't too worried about her in the fight. Kara ripped the church doors  off their hinges with a primal scream and they stormed into the  building. We were on their heels, invisible and planning to slip around  back and into the access point to the underground levels if they were up  here or wait for the other group to storm their way down if not. As we  walked into the place though the doors slammed shut behind us and a deep  hush fell over us all.

We'd  planned for pretty much every contingency, expect for this one. The  church was full to bursting, vampires and thralls all packed into the  place and looking right at us, and on the stage, smiling her brittle,  dead smile, was a corpse of a woman who must be Mavra. Next to her stood  a man who looked much more freshly dead, his pallor and sunken cheeks  the only thing marking him as a corpse. This must have been Raxus. They  were both looking right at the spot we were standing in, but I stayed  silent, waiting to see if what they really knew.

Mavra  chuckled, a low raspy sound, "The point at which a lie ceases to  conceal your truth is the point at which the intelligent abandon the  deception. Reveal yourselves. I am sure we can come to  an...arrangement." Her raspy voice caressed the last word like sandpaper  on rough stone, and the others around us tittered like sycophantic  school kids. "No? Very well. I shall be the one to bring about  Revelation." She said that last part like it was a joke of some sort,  and I started to get a very bad feeling about this entire thing.

Before  we could react she raised a dingy iron crown. I would have expected it  to burn her like gasoline but it didn't she was able to hold it  perfectly. She raised it up over the basin on the altar and dropped it  in. A wave of...unmagic came from the thing. Not antimagic. It didn't  reverse the power of sorcery. It was like the opposite of life. A  twisted mockery of the primordial force of being born. It stank and  tasted like rotten meat and maggots and felt like bugs under my skin and  sounded like poisoned bees. Suddenly we were standing exposed.

She  smiled at us, if you could call that deaths head grimace such a thing,  and gave that same raspy chuckle. "Now isn't that nice. Now we can speak  as equals. It is so impolite to come into another persons home without  greeting the host properly. But don't worry, we were expecting you, so  we cleaned up." I was worried what she meant by that so I activated my  magic eye spell. I looked around for traps or pitfalls or hidden enemies  and I saw nothing. We were surrounded by vampires but that was it. I  couldn't see any hidden power...and then it hit me, and my blood turned  to ice.

I  turned my gaze at our own party. Kara, Cinder, Yang, Lily. Every one of  them was giving off no energy. No power, no magic or faith or anything.  If it affected Kara the same way as it affected the others (which based  on my suspicions it would) our heaviest hitters were now completely  normal people. Mavra actually giggled at the look on my face, or got as  close as she could manage. "Oh yes, this will set back the ritual for  m0nths but when I heard about your little assault I knew what an  opportunity it would be. So many blessed by the sun and it's flames. So  tell me, how do you like your little sample? How do you like the power  of the white God twisted to smother the light?"

I  was panicking, that was most of our strongest fighters, but we still  had River, and Ebenezar, and Harry and the Sidhe aside from Lily and Fix  who tapped Summer Fire directly. And if this was about dark magic they  hadn't even taken down our magical ace in the hole. I calmed myself,  taking a deep breath and pasting a cocky smirk on my face as I turned to  give Raven the signal to unleash hell on these undead fucks.

I  looked into her violet eyes, meeting them to give her the go ahead.  Just in time to see a pale white fist punch right through her chest,  sticking out of her sternum, wet with blood that looked a bit too  purple. My world started to spin on it's axis. What the fuck? I heard  Barbara scream somewhere in the back of my brain as I heard a sound like  rushing water in my ears. Like static in my head. I looked past my  impaled girlfriend to meet the pleasantly smiling face of Lord Raith and  stared in mute horror as he pulled his fist free, letting her body fall  limp to the ground.