Chapter 56: Expulsion (Patreon)

Chapter 56: Expulsion

The Vampire was fast.

That was the first thing I noticed. She danced past my rapier more like a living shadow than someone of flesh and blood. She was faster than me, with all of my enhancements.

Lucky me then, that she was so dependent on magic.

Already half a dozen spikes of jagged ice had shattered on the stone walls. I slipped past yet another, subtly nudged aside by my own power. Something behind me shattered.

My sword cut an arc where her neck had been a moment prior. It chimed against the stone.

With a flick of my other hand, I countered her draining spell. By now, the clawed gesture that prompted it was familiar. Old hat.

I hurled lightning back.

She slipped beneath my aim. My bed, used all of once, shattered into kindling and smoldering goose feathers. 

I spun, blindly lashing out.

I hit air, as a trail of fire cut deep into my side.

One white mana, one red and—

The explosion I cast ripped the rest of my room apart, but it sent the Vampire tumbling. My first solid hit. Even then, she managed to flip over short well in the center of the room. With a solid three meters between her and my sword, she had the advantage of reach.

Or, she would, anyway.

Her next spell exploded in her fist. I grinned at her cry, leaping forward. One foot on the stone lip of the fountain, I lunged. 

She spun.

The tip of my blade sheered through her cloak from shoulder to the very edge.

I landed lightly, twirling my blade.

I was grinning, I realized.

The vampire was much less amused. She edged backwards slowly. I felt her gathering magic, but she didn’t dare cast it. 

I could only raise my eyebrow as she pulled a dagger from her waste. “Really?” I asked. It was an elegant thing, all smooth curves and embossed feathers.

It was also more than a foot shorter than my rapier.

“Try me, if you’re so confident, thief,” she said.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” I said. “Or something like that.” 

This time, she charged, and I gave ground.

Blades sparked as they met in the air. She was better than me at this too, I realized. A hundred years or more of skill.

Each clash, she would beat my guard with a flick of her wrist, or snake past it like smoke. She would lash out, and I would dance away. Follow too close and be impaled. 

I saw the frustration building on her face. If she had a sword, I’d be bleeding by now, but instead, I had enough reach and speed to stay ahead of her, time and time again.

The next time, she lunged.

My fist buried itself in her face.

I leaned forward, piling on my weight as her feet slipped from the floor. With a roar, I punched, a blast of force and magic launching the woman across the room. 

A heartbeat later, my rapier dug into the floor, deflected off of a ward. I slashed, she rolled. I took another few inches from her cloak, but no more.

I still couldn’t stop grinning.

“Keep going like this and you’ll end up in rags,” I said.

She only glowered. I watched, idly, as her crimson eyes flicked from me to the rest of the room. Looking for a way to pin me down, no doubt.

Too bad for her, the room was a circled, and like hell I’d let her force me into one of the little alcoves that served as the student’s rooms.

After a moment, I spread my arms. “What’s wrong? Itsy bitsy mortal giving you some trouble?”

“Oh you’ve given me plenty of trouble,” she said, voice low. She stepped to the right, circling around the low fountain. I followed her lead. “You and that assassin of yours.”

“She’s a treasure,” I deadpanned.

“Yes, much like the one she stole from me.” The woman grinned. “I’ll be taking it back now.” 

She stomped hard on the handle of the Elder Scroll, kicking it up from where it had fallen during our fight. She’d just been trying to walk me a way from it.

“No!” I lunged across the divide, but this time her speed finally proved enough advantage. With scroll in hand, she dashed for the door, throwing it open a second before I could grasp the tattered remains of her cloak.

We spilled out into the darkened courtyard, me a second behind. I could only watch as she dashed forward, gaining ground, and burying her dagger in the shoulder of one of the mages.

She screamed as she was thrown aside.

But no one even paused.

The college courtyard had turned into a battlefield.

Shouts and light filled the air. Gouts of flame and spikes of ice washed against the outer rim of the courtyard. I saw the head mage, holding off three vampires on her before the hall of the elements.

A score or more of vampires dashed through the shadows of the battlements, pulling red streams of vitality from tight clumps of mages in the center. Whenever one lapsed in their casting, the shadows would dart in with vicious daggers, only being forced back with waves of fire. 

The instructors were all present, heading up tight knots of students and bolstering the younger mages. But we were still vastly outnumbered. 

They would have all died, no doubt, if not for Raven and Iliria.

Iliria was a shadow that preyed on the shadows. Any slip, any misstep, and she was there, bearing a vampire to the ground with knives and fangs both stained red. I counted six on her, keeping her penned, with a seventh bleeding out at her feet.

Raven, was above the chaos, throwing out claws of darkness and shattered masonry at the ground below. If not for her, no doubt the defenders would have been swarmed in moments.

I counted more than a few suspicious looking smears beneath her rocks.

I dove in after the leader, but even with my sight I quickly lost track of her in the scrum. Vampires swirled around me, taunting, blades glinting in the moonlight. I saw the off with fire.

Screams pierced the night and a dozen vampires perished beneath my onslaught, charred corpses writhing on the ground before the monsters realized they were dead.

“After the cloaked one!” I shouted. “She has an Elder Scroll.”

And if that didn’t get everyone’s attention, nothing would.

At once the battle shifted. Mages pushing forward. Hands threw out magelights as one, banishing the shadows and pinpointing the lead vampire. 

The Vampires contracted, rolling backwards like mist, forming a defensive perimeter around the scroll. I snarled, crashing into them with fire and steel.

And that was what the third group had been waiting for.

I heard a scream. Dispatching the closes foes with quick sweeps of my blade, I turned to see another wave of shadows attacking the mages from behind.

Blood ran slick across the cobble stones.

I glowered as the storm of magic lessened as people turned to confront the new assault. Lanced of fire and lightning pushed Raven back through the air, sending her dodging.

God knows where Iliria was in this mess. 

The next six vampires came at me together, sweeping low past fading magelights. Over their heads, I saw the first vampire. She still had the elder scroll clutched in her fingers.

Then two sets of daggers met my blade.

They bought her time with their blood. Fifteen seconds it took me to clear my way through the detritus, and by that point she had vanished through the main gate, along with most of her retinue. By the time I plunged my blade through the last pale neck, sending the woman to the ground, choking, only the dead and dying remained in the courtyard.

Raven landed next to me a moment later.

“Did you see them?” I asked. 

She shook her head. “The woman with the scroll, she cast some sort of spell, then they all jumped off of the bridge and floated down to the channel below. There was a boat, but I couldn’t see any more.”

I looked back towards the sky. The moon was thin, and even my enhanced sight had trouble picking out the details, with divination however… Slowly, I turned to look at the courtyard. The restoration professor glowed gold as her magic streamed into half a dozen unmoving bodies. As I watched, one coughed weakly, and stilled. The river of gold broke off from him, even as it intensified in all of the rest.

I realized that my fists were clenched enough to send stardust sprinkling to the ground.

“Destiny?” Raven asked. 

I turned on a heel and marched over towards the restoration professor. The spell she was using was complicated enough that it would take some time to dissect it, even with it going on right in front of my eyes. From the look of utmost concentration on her face, I imagined that was the same for her, something that pushed the boundaries of this plane’s magic. 

Unfortunately for the people bleeding out on the ground, it might not be enough. Not for lack of skill or will, but power. Already, I could see the streams light thinning on the edges, in her eyes see as she approached the point of casting one or two loose to save the rest.

It was uncomfortably familiar.

I couldn’t cast the spell, but perhaps I could do something good enough. “Don’t flinch,” I said, then I placed my hand on the woman’s shoulder. She made eye contact with me for a moment. Her mousy features did not do justice to the fire burning in her eyes.

I channeled white mana into her spell. At once, the golden light strengthened, expanded, streamers reaching out to several other wounded, that she hadn’t had the energy to reach before.

There was a moment of surprise, but then the professor let her eyes slip shut, focusing all of her attention on the spell. After a second, I did the same. Feeding my mana into her construction was difficult. I could not give it to her directly, it would at best do nothing, but more likely than not it would slowly burn her to death from the inside out.

Instead, I fed it directly into the shaping itself, adding more and more energy to the matrix where it would normally be attached to her soul. After a few minutes, there was nothing but my own energy, drawn from the plane of order.

Or perhaps, now that I had more time to examine it, a little piece of it that I’d broken off and made my own.

Questions for another time.

Under my attention, the spell expanded and strengthened, before starting to shrink once more. Not for lack of power, this time, but because men and women started to get back to their feet. Slowly, the golden light dwindled down to nothing. The Restoration Professor slumped, and I kept her upright until others could help the woman stand up on her own.

“Tha-thank you,” she said in a reedy voice. Still she seemed almost happy. Accomplished maybe. I couldn’t find the same feeling.

I looked away. “It was the least I could do.”

Once again, on the sidelines unable to do the truly important work. Too busy grinning like and idiot and fighting an unimportant battle while people died right outside my room.

Like I said, far too familiar a feeling.

“It was the least I could do,” I said out loud. Then I stood, “Without your expertise it wouldn’t have been possible.” If anything, that made the woman even happier, and the saved crowded around her, giving thanks and affirmation of my words. 

I left her to her victory, putting on a smile as I walked towards the Hall of the Elements. It faded from my lips.

Leaning against the front doors is the head mage, Mirabelle Ervine I thought her name was. We’d been introduced briefly on my first day at the college. At her feet are perhaps ten vampires, made more difficult to count by how thoroughly she destroyed them.

“Trying to get inside?” I asked, stopping a few steps away.

She nodded. “Perhaps they thought that scroll of yours was in the Arcanaeum,” she said almost casually. Her expression gave lie to that tone. “Though what you thought you were doing with one of those—”

“Take it up with Iliria,” I shot back. “She dumped it on me right before this all started, and probably left those vampires a note telling them exactly where to go.”

Mirabelle’s face hardens at that. “Perhaps I will. And you?”

I looked up at the shattered window to the Archmage’s quarters, covered with a thin lattice of blue light. 

“I’m going to speak with Liliana,” I said. “Directly.”

Mirabelle’s lips quirked. “I wish you luck with that.”

“Likewise.”

I pushed open the doors, quickly making my way up to the Archmage’s quarters. The door to the chamber itself was barred both with lock and several wards.

With a flick of my wrist, I dissolved them. The lock I scoured away beneath the weight of my magic alone, and then I stepped inside.

The alarm wards broke against my skin, as they were meant to, I made no further move into the room, instead waiting in the entry way, hands loose at my sides, unshaped mana tingling at my fingertips. After a few moments, just enough to let me know that I was still present on her sufferance, Liliana swept into the room.

She’d taken the time to put on her headdress, I noticed, even as she appeared elegantly bedraggled, as if she had just rolled out of bed looking that way.

The clothes were different though, the blue cloak was not her usual fair. A sleeping robe perhaps. [https://i.etsystatic.com/9001376/r/il/9af60c/898013504/il_570xN.898013504_801a.jpg]

“My, what an…unexpected visit,” she said, slipping into a high-backed chair. “By now, one would think that I’d made my position on night time visitors quite clear. Or did that fool simply sell you on the enjoyment of defenestration?”

“Where were you?” I asked.

She arched an eyebrow. In lieu of reply, she raised her hand, and one of her servitors placed a glass of wine in it. She made a show of looking around her quarters with a hum.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“Do I?” she said. “Dear child, are you sure that you know what you mean? Breaking into my chambers like a common ruffian, passing about non-sequiturs like party favors. Why, if you’d made for the enchanting table, I would have been hard pressed to tell you and Iliria apart.”

I held back a growl, “The college was just attacked,” I said instead. “Did you notice, or were you too preoccupied with your beauty sleep?”

Her expression sharpened. “Careful, girl,” she said, voice low. “Do not mistake my sufferance for kindness, lest I need to remind you the difference.”

I opened my mouth, but she spoke over me.

“Or, is the little baby just upset that she isn’t as strong as she thought?” Her lips quirked into a mocking smile. “Had trouble with some itty-bitty blood suckers, did you. Want mommy to kiss it better?”

“You have a responsibility to your students,” I hissed.

“Spare me the ‘great power’ speech,” she said, waving her hand. “It was more original from the spider, and you are nowhere near as forthright.”

“I am—”

“Weak. Weak is the word you are looking for,” Liliana said. “Or else did you have the power to kill the vampires and yet were too idiotic to realize it?”

I grit my teeth. “Sweeping spells would have hit the mages I was trying to protect.” And my targeted spells cut a swath through the vampires, along with my sword.

Still Liliana laughed. “Your point?” she said. “I offered you spells of mending and ruin did I not? Either would have trivialized this battle, yet instead, you asked for knowledge of the future and came crying to my door when you lacked the foresight to use it.”

“If it would have been so trivial why didn’t you do anything?” I shouted. “That’s your job isn’t it? Your only responsibility as an archmage is to protect the dammed college!”

Liliana set aside her glass.

“I told you not to take that tack with me,” she said, rising from her chair. “Responsibility? Are you responsible for the ants beneath your feet if you happen to step upon their hill?”

The air began to stir, wind plucking at my clothes.

“Is it,” she continued, “The responsibility of the teacher to paper over her student’s each and every mistake? I am not your mother, idiot girl. But if this is how you behaved towards her then perhaps her death was merely a sweet release.”

I flinched backwards, reeling. “You…!”

She placed a hand upon my chest, and I froze. I hadn’t even seen her move, but even I couldn’t miss the font of energy pooling in her palm. It was brighter than a star, and so tightly controlled that I could find no purchase, no way to shape or direct it.

“Me,” she said, pushing me backwards a step. “I will not change who I am based upon your whining. Come if you think you have the strength to force my will aside. Else,” she shoved me again, releasing a burst of force that sent me flying out of the room onto the staircase behind me, “do not bother speaking at all.”

The door slammed shut, wards and locks quickly reapplying themselves. And I lay on the stairs, breath coming in short gasps.

I reached up to my face, and my cheeks were wet.

“Dammit,” I muttered.

“Things… didn’t go well?” Raven said. I glanced up, well, down the stairs. Raven’s feet were only a few steps below my head. I chuckled, and then she leaned down and helped me to my feet.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, centering myself. “Call it a difference of opinion.” I sighed, slumping against Raven’s shoulder. After a moment, I felt a hand come up and pat my hair.

“Are… you alright?”

I took another breath, letting it out.

I’d been angry, furious, in the moment, but now… “Yeah,” I said. “I knew who she was going into this. I don’t even… know what I was thinking, going in there and lambasting her like that.” I sighed. “I was probably just mad that I lost the Elder Scroll not ten minutes after getting it. I didn’t even have time to examine the damn thing…”

“About that,” Raven said. “Was her door that heavily warded before?”

I turned, blinking as I took in the various workings on the door to the Archmage’s study. “Probably about the same,” I said. “Why?”

She quirked her lips, “Well, our resident psychopath said she knows where the vampires are going.”

“Of course she does,” I said, slumping again.

“Her plan depends on you taking down the wards protecting their hiding place,” Raven said. “I was going to ask if the Archmage would be interested in joining our little expedition but…”

I snorted, before finally standing up on my own. “She’s not interested,” I said, remembering the words she’d spoken to me.

‘Is it the responsibility of the teacher to paper over her student’s each and every mistake?’

“No,” I said. “I’ll handle this myself.”