Stronger Together chapter 143 (Patreon)

We had decided when we first got the car that it wasn't sturdy enough  for our uses. We ran into so many crazy things and had such bad luck in  terms of enemies that it seemed wise to reinforce the thing. Raven and  Cinder had both worked it over with their magic to create a series of  powerful enchantments on it. They toughened the glass of the windshield,  they strengthened the metal of the body and frame. They even put a few  utility spells on the thing to absorb some of the force in the event of a  car accident to reinforce the shields. That way even if one of use got  in a wreck the shock of the crash would actually make us safer.

It  had been the work of weeks if not months of powerful and careful spell  work to create the defenses on our car, and that was aside from how  sturdy the damn thing already was. So when I say that the angry werewolf  spider webbed the glass with cracks on impact that should tell you  something about how hard the bastard hit us. The cracks grew when the  second one hit us, and Raven barely had time to grab both of us and  shadow port us out of the car before the third impact shattered the  windshield and showered the inside of the now empty car with shards of  razor sharp magically enhanced glass.

The  magically enhanced glass did not, sadly seem to bother the werewolves,  nor did the crunch of the car smashing into a nearby light post and  uprooting it before smashing into the brick wall behind it. Honestly the  wall took more damage than the car did but it did stop. The werewolves  on the other hand, did not. The three of them climbed out of the car and  howled, a sound which was answered soon after by a bloodcurdling baying  response from at least a dozen more. Of the things that were very  obviously surrounding us.

Cinder  stepped defensively in front of me, which was really touching but kind  of redundant what with me having bones and skin reinforced with divine  metal. She glanced around in worry "What are these things? There are  only supposed to be three werewolves in town right? Aside from the  alphas but you said they turn into normal wolves not...these." That was a  valid concern, the monsters in front of us were really odd. They looked  like anthropomorphic wolves obviously but they were spindly and long  limbed. Their fur was thick and ragged around their hands and torsos but  patchy and thin along the length of their arms. They looked weirdly  sick.

Raven  was the one with the answers this time, she had been researching the  lore and creatures of the world recently along with working on her own  casting since she couldn't learn the magic that we used. "They're  vukodlak. Kind of a combination of werewolves and zombies. The one who  lays the curse on them feels like a pack leader to them and they obey  their commands fanatically. They have pretty limited mental faculties  and they're much stronger than most kinds of werewolf because they're  consumable after a fashion. The curse drains the vitality of the victim  to fuel their power making them incredibly strong and fast until they  run out and then they die."

I  blanched at the fact that someone was sending fucking zombie werewolf  suicide bombers at us. I glanced worriedly at Raven "Who the hell would  send something like that at us? Not to mention how to kill them? Do they  have a weakness or something that could help us put them down fast? Or  is there a way to reverse the curse and save the victims?" I didn't feel  great about the idea of killing a bunch of random people in rabid wolf  cosplay but I was pretty sure we weren't going to have the option to use  diplomacy since they appeared to only be letting us talk this long so  they could surround us.

Her  violet eyes were angry and guilty as she shook her head sadly. "The  only way to lift the curse is to have the original caster remove it,  kill the caster, or to kill them yourself. Which since we have no clue  who cast it could be something of an issue in this case. As for  weaknesses unfortunately no. The reason werewolves traditionally have a  weakness to silver is that adding a vulnerability allows you to lower  the cost and complexity of the spell to create them. The fewer drawbacks  a type of magic has the more complex it is to make it function. "

I  groaned in understanding "Unfortunately in this case the drawback is  that they're rabid self destructive monsters who burn out in a few  hours. Which is a pretty huge downside but is actually worse for us  because we're fighting basically fighting werewolves on angel dust and  they aren't even weak to the one thing werewolves are supposed to be  afraid of. Fuck. The question is why the hell are they targeting us,  they're supposed to be after Connor right? We sent him and Tera home the  other day. How do they know we're connected to them."

Raven's  annoyed frown was actually kind of cute but now really wasn't the time.  She was in a bit of a huff as she answered "I'm guessing they smelled  them. Whoever made them probably made a bunch of them and let them loose  on the city to track down Tera and Connor by scent. Not sure where they  got their scent but sadly showering and changing clothes won't be  enough to throw off the senses of something like a vukodlak." She was so  irritated by the swarm of werewolves I couldn't help but smile. My  girlfriend had an iron spine, she was more upset at the inconvenience  than the slavering monsters about to eat our faces.

I  triggered my lightning aspect and my aspect of flame. Fire magic was  one of my more recent spell types, Harry had taught it to me a few  months ago and it paired insanely well with my lightning's speed aspect.  The flame aspect created actual fire from any friction my body caused  including air friction. It was a brilliant power when mixed with the  speed of the lightning aspect because it basically turned me into a  flaming cannonball. My timing was pretty good because shortly after I  activated my aspects the werewolves shifted their behavior in a way that  made it clear their massing was now complete and all...fuck, all twenty  six of them were going to attack.

I  poured a force spell into my aura to multiply the impact and before  they had a chance to attack i took the fight to them. In a blink I was  among them, an explosion of fire followed by dozens of smaller ones as I  rained down flaming super speed force augmented punches. My metal arm  was punching holes in the things every swing, but sadly they were  fucking dog piling on me, pun intended, and their enhanced healing was  allowing them to regenerate from the damage. I was surrounded by a  whirling cloud of claws and fangs and fur.

Cinder  was raining down white tinged fire from the sky as she floated in her  now fully restored fall maiden glory, but that didn't help too much  sadly, it just meant the angry meth head werewolves I was fighting were  on fire. Luckily I had my Aura up so the flames themselves didn't really  mess with me, but the damn thing was dimming pretty fast as a storm of  teeth and claws rained down on me. Between the crazy meth strength and  the numbers even my lightning aspect wasn't enough to catch or avoid all  the blows.

Raven  was floating next to Cinder, she'd put up a bubble around us to prevent  any civilians from noticing and heading this way but sadly keeping the  uninformed masses out of my zombie werewolf blended was preventing her  from actually helping. Cinder changed her tactics, manifesting a smaller  version of that giant flaming sword she'd called up in her fight with  Raven last year and started hacking into the wolves furthest from me.  Between us we managed to actually start whittling them down as we went.  Between Cinder lopping off their heads with a sword that cauterized the  wound automatically and me switching from punching to just tearing them  apart the numbers started to drop.

Of  course given the whirlwind we were reaping the number dropped at an  incredibly slow pace. Still, I had plenty of soul power after a year of  training and my magic reserves were full, I could pretty much do this  all day. Not to mention with klurkor boosting my body refinement I was  physically on par with a low level red court vampire at this point it  only took us about fifteen minutes to wade through them all. Once we  finished them off Raven dropped her bubble and began helping Cinder  dispose of the bodies while I healed up.

My  Aura had dropped during the fight and even with my godsteel weave to  interrupt the damage I had a ton of surface level scrapes and claw  marks. I dropped the aspects, mostly because experiencing agonizing pain  at super enhanced levels of perception makes it feel like it last  forever. My flesh was refined with the fires of creation so my healing  was pretty decent. Still all this damage would take a few minutes to  heal and I would prefer not to experience those minutes as hours of  horrifying pain.

I  used a bit of soulfire to torch the puddle of my blood left behind when  I got slashed up. The downside of being more well known was that we had  to be careful about things like that now. Raven floated down to the  ground to come check on me as Cinder worked on levering the car out of  the brick wall. She placed a hand on my shoulder in a spot with no claw  marks. "Hey, you ok? You got marked up pretty bad there. We're lucky you  were the one here, with that many of them any one of us would have had  trouble keeping from getting mauled by one of them. When it comes to  magic you're the toughest of all of us now I guess."

I  hadn't even thought of that, but it made me even more driven to finish  Kara's armor. Thinking of one of those things getting a lucky slaw swipe  into her guts or something filled me with icy dread. I shook off the  momentary panic though and smiled at Raven who was looking a bit  concerned "Sorry, spaced out for a second, yeah I'm fine. It was all  surface level stuff and werewolves can't turn you with a bit or scratch  like in the movies. I'm already healing, no need to worry about me." I  threw an arm around her shoulder as she sat down next to me.

She  was watching Cinder try to get the car free "You think she knows that  we won't be able to drive it since its full of razor sharp magic glass  and we could have just called a tow truck?" I burst into laughter, the  adrenaline turning to giggles as it so often did. She winked at me,  clearly having been trying to cheer me up. She certainly knew how, Raven  knew me best out of everyone in the house and not just because of her  empathy. I leaned in for a soft kiss and I felt her smile against my  lips before she put her hand to my forehead and pushed.

The  smile was soft and warm and her voice matched as she continued in a  tone still full off laughter "In all seriousness I should go help her. I  can remove the glass too, we'll be driving home without a windshield  but letting a towing service get their hands on that car might raise  some uncomfortable questions about it's durability." She gave me another  wink and walked away, satisfied I was ok, though I have to say even if I  hadn't been the swing she put in those gorgeous hips of hers as she  walked off would have definitely helped.