Chapter 57: Pomp and Circumstance (Patreon)

Chapter 57: Pomp and Circumstance

There are times in life when careful consideration, thorough investigation, and careful planning are warranted.

“This is the place, then?” I asked Iliria as we stepped off the rickety old boat.

There are battles won in the mind, wars turned by the clever traps, and enemies that cannot be bested with strength.

“Yep, that dreary old castle,” Iliria replied. We were standing on a lonely sandbar, the fortress in question rising like a dark monolith, the only structure on the island. “It has some nasty wards too. You can’t just break in.”

“Can’t you?” I said.

And then, there are times when you through all of those things away.

“Let’s put that to the test.”

The wards were strong. I could see them—with my other sight—from where we stood on the beach. Curtain walls of mystic protection, woven deep into the stone. In a way, that only made my task easier, as I raised my hand, and pushed.

The stone buckled, rent open as the magic meant to keep it safe twisted on its axis. The old and weathered stone suddenly was left to bear not only its own weight, but also the weight of keystones straining against their foundations.

For a moment, it held strong. The massive walls held down by their sheer size, anchoring the twisted wards. 

Then I pulled, and the walls came tumbling down.

Raven and Illira jumped as the avalanche of stone tumbled down onto the beach. The entire front of the castle sloughed away like detritus, revealing an ornately furnished interior. Even as I watched the whole castle seemed sag, rooms and hallways collapsing as their supports gave way.

A wave of stone rolled across the beach, coming to a stop a few feet away. I rolled my wrist, the weight of the protections had been vast, enough that I’d felt the push back as I’d torn it to shred.

But even still…looking at what I’d managed.

With a shake of my head, I started walking forward.

“Divines,” Iliria said, grinning from ear to ear. “Why didn’t you just do this at the college?”

I stepped onto the crumbled stone, and started walking. “And plunged us all into the sea, including the Elder Scroll that I was looking for in the first place?” I asked. Nevermind that, bereft of the same level of enchantments that pervaded this castle, bringing down the spire would have been beyond me.

Iliria looked unsatisfied, but Raven had a better answer. “Many of our spells can be indiscriminate,” she said. “You clearly don’t care about those things, but we do.”

“This time, however,” I said. “There should be no shortage of acceptable targets.

I heard more than saw the assassin grin. “I think those are my new favorite words.”

It was then that the vampires came.

The rose from the rubble in tattered finery, bloody and bruised, all traces of their mock civility stripped away as they charged like bloody shadows.

I raised my hand, and thunder rained down from the sky. The first wave shattered into dust, speared on lances of light.

I could only sigh at… the simplicity of it all. Swept away, just like that.

The next group of vampires, coming from deeper in the castle, paused at the edge of the destruction. These ones were dressed like nobility, and at there head was a broad shouldered man with a sharp beard, attired like a king.

“So,” I asked as I walked over the rubble. “What did these vampires even want?”

Iliria said nothing for a moment, before laughing. “Oh, you know, the end of the sun’s tyranny, eternal night, endless blood sacks, that sort of thing.”

“You’d think,” Raven said, “that you would be all for that.”

Iliria wrinkled her nose. “Vampires suck,” she said. “Babette’s the only interesting one, and she’s several hundred years old.”

“And?”

“I have more friend who are Men and Mer, obviously. And if these idiots can’t get there own blood why would I bother helping them.”

But as Raven and Iliria continued to discuss the Dragonborn’s own twisted morality, my mind was a million miles away. 

It could almost find it funny, in retrospect. When I’d been weak, barely understanding the very magic I used, I’d been fearless. I’d charged headlong into danger, not without sense, but without reservation. And my weakness and inability had cost me.

Then, after a few days of studying with Liliana, after receiving understanding of my powers and how to use them properly…I’d been nothing but timid. I’d sent out a murderer with a pet dragon to do my job for me, I never followed up on the vampires nesting near Morthol. I hadn’t even cared to look beyond the walls of the college itself.

And it had cost me.

More than that though, it had cost the lives of innocent men and women who went to the college to learn, before I’d drawn them into my battle with my careless actions. All because I was too caught up in my own problems, fear of my new form, desire for more power, pain of my loss. All of it had blinded me, not just to what was going on around me, but also to what I could do about it.

Even now, Liliana’s word rang through my head. Why should she help me, if I didn’t have the strength to help myself? 

It was a deplorable worldview, but one I was still all to familiar with. 

And if I wanted the world to change, if I wanted that self centered point of view to die out, so that what happened to me, what happened to the mages, what happened to so many others, would never happen again…

Then I would have to change it.

It was with this resolution that I came to a stop before the assemblage of vampires. I saw more than a score of lesser ones, all bunched around the assemblage of “nobles,” with the one man at their head.

“Interloper,” he snarled, aristocratic features contorting into a feral sneer. “You come here, tear down my walls, murder my servants. And you!” His gaze shifted to Iliria, “You have the temerity to show your face here, after I spared your life, after you stole my Elder Scroll like a thief in the night!”

“Some speech,” Raven said.

“Rather,” I said quietly.

The man growled low in his throat, but before he could speak again I started.

“Do you care? Or are you just mad that someone broke your toys, that someone took your Elder Scroll?” I asked.

The man sneered. “So like the chattel, to be concerned with such petty trifles.” He started walking forward, a dark cloak of energy gathering around him. “I will show you how much I care as I tear your head from your spine.”

Raven rose into the air, and Iliria went for her daggers, but I shook my head. “This one’s mine,” I said. The both frowned. “Deal with the others if you want,” I said, “but any that come after me? Leave them.”

“Your arrogance is befitting of one who would attack Cold Harbor,” the vampire said.

“No,” I replied. “But it is befitting of the one who will destroy it.”

The man barred his teeth, his fangs were tinged red from years and years of death. “We shall see.”

The dark magic surrounding him erupted, shredding his mortal form and revealing a pale monstrosity with hairless arms and scythe like wings. As one, the other nobles changed, even as their retainers blurred forward, like knives in the dark.

It was different, being on the other side of this equation, the single powerful foe to be overcome. But I wouldn’t forget the lessons I learned before I knew about the power singing in my veins.

I flew backwards, feet skimming the ground. I left fire in my wake, singing the shadows and forcing them to break off. The monstrous vampires charged right through, even as my protection ward snapped into place.

I grinned as the first monster practically slid past me, pale claws not even touching my cloak as I stabbed him through the neck.

Then a fist hit me full in the face.

“An interesting spell,” the leader growled. “But a simple application of mana can turn aside it’s effects.”

To the side, I heard a “So that’s how it works!”

With a huff, I pulled myself to my feet. I dodged past the next vampire, but now there strikes were no longer diverted by my spell. “Inconvenient.” 

The thing laughed. “Impudent mortal, I have lived for centuries, and you think I could not pick apart your little spell.” It flicked it’s wrist. “Kill her.”

The other monsters charged, circling around me.

I cast my arm skyward, and a wave of golden light knocked the back. 

Right into the path of my lightning. 

The pale skinned things blurred away, smoldering and burned. One did not rise.

I dodged forward on instinct, feeling the air as several of the lesser vampires tore through the air behind me. I answered them with a wave of fire, reducing them to ash. I turned forward just in time to see one of the pale ones—

—get impaled by a tendril of living shadow. With a twirl, I conjured up a dozen bolts of black fire, forcing the rest back. I glimpsed Raven out of the corner of my eye, handling the lesser vampires with ease. She raised an eyebrow.

‘thanks’ I mouthed.

Then I dove back into the fray. 

With a flick of wrist, fire surged up the blade of my rapier, an old spell repurposed. With each stab it surged out. I burned one monster, and when it flinched, I hammered it into the rubble.

Dodged past another and sowed lightning in my wake. The singularities of energy burst a second after. Iliria mopped up the two that fell, still steaming, from the sky.

With fire and sword, I cut through them, moving faster and faster as first one, and two more demons fell. My magic felt like a living force, filling me, arching out with the barest touch, so easily I bent the confluence around me to my will.

I cast down a lightning bolt from on high, and leashed it to my desired. It arced impossibly through the air, carving a swath through the ranks of shadows on the ground like a serpent of destruction. Then, before I could be pinned down, I pulled it back up into a tight ring, and threw it outward.

The wave of electricity struck the other vampires from the air, the last handful of the ‘noble’ ones. Bolts of chaos magic cored them on the way down, leaving only shadows.

And in a few seconds more, even the lesser vampires on the ground were all accounted for.

With a quick glance around I realized that I had, without realizing, killed the leader during the middle of the fighting.

Those…greater vampires? They all had the same form, predatory features, chalk white skin. And in death, all the vampires were reduced to piles of ash. All that remains are…various levels sand sprinkled clothing lying strewn over the stone.

Slowly, I let myself sink back to the ground. During the battle, we’d all flown up higher and higher. Though only the master vampires could reach me in the skies.

I let out a breath as my feet touched the cobble. I’d expected more resistance, even with the revelations about my power, about what I could do with magic now that I really understood it. And yet, here we were.

It made me wonder just how terrifying Liliana must be, if she truly wanted to fight. 

But then, I knew I wasn’t the strongest, I could only endeavor to keep growing so that I could—

“Hey!”

I suppressed a flinch.

Turning, I saw Iliria haul a vampire, the one that had attacked me at the college out from behind a pile of stone.

“Can I keep this one?” she asked. I blinked. “She was pretty good at casting spells, and also I feel a bit bad for dragging her into this mess, especially because she was locked in a rock before I came to pick up the scroll.”

I blinked again, rubbing my brow. “Of course you want to keep one,” I said. “Why are you even asking me?”

Iliria grinned. “Well, I’d rather not have to fight you after that display, might singe my armor!”

This woman.

Part of me was tempted to just kill both of them and be done with it. Iliria, regardless of what she was doing now, was clearly a remorseless killer, and the vampire woman had no excess of mercy either. But…did I want to be that person?

I glanced behind me, back to the ruin of the castle, the remains of nearly fifty vampires, and maybe more crushed by the rocks.

It had been almost easy.

Perhaps, now that I had discovered my strength in truth, now that I really understood what I could do, it would be better to give some of that power back to the people I was protecting.

Or, at the very least, not strike down everyone in my sight.

“I’m half tempted to haul you before the Jarl’s for the crimes you’ve committed,” I said instead.

Iliria just laughed. “No, I’ve turned over a new leaf, see? I even payed back all of my bounties, so if you tried to lock me up the guards would just let me go again.”

I blinked, sighing. Of course it would work like that.

And again, just killing her? It…wasn’t a person I wanted to become.

“I’ll be back to check in on you,” I said. “You’d best keep her well-guarded.”

“Sure thing.”

I chuckled as Raven walked up to me and Iliria walked away, despondent vampire in tow. “She’s insane isn’t she?”

“Is it really wise to let her go?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’m not going to let that stop me from doing what I think is best. None of the other options seem better and…” I shrugged, “she helped do some good here, bringing justice to this nest of killers. Maybe she’ll do more in the future.”

After a moment, Raven shrugged as well. “And what will you do?” she asked.

I said nothing for a moment, looking up at the overcast sky. “Let’s find that scroll,” I said. “I think, I’m ready to be a hero, this time.”

“Debatable.”

“Quiet, you.”