Legacies of Blood

Elaina bent her knees as she reached out with her mind to the threads of magic within and bound them tightly to the muscles in her legs. Not only did she envision the speed she desired, but she could also feel it through her hair and face. “*Flehsk!*”

With an explosion of speed, Elaina covered the distance between her and Trevik in the blink of an eye. In the past, when she’d used the spell it had been a much smaller boost in speed, though still noticeable. Since refining it with Resius’s lessons, she got a much larger yield for her effort. As fast as she was, she wasn’t faster than light, however.

She collided with the knocker just as a searing ray meant for him slammed into her back. Between the defensive magic and the sturdy construction of the armor, she was spared the worst of its effects as she tumbled to the ground with the knocker in her arms. The pain in her back made it difficult to get to her feet, but the smell of her hair burning reminded her how dangerous it was to be immobile.

“H-holy shit,” Trevik gasped, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. “I thought it was going to kill me.”

“Well, the day is young,” Elaina said, dragging the knocker to his feet and pulling him around a stone pillar just in time to avoid another ray of light flying past them. “But let’s see how long we can keep our streak going, hm?”

Elaina peeked around the corner only to have the knocker pull her back into cover.

“Listen to me,” he hissed pointedly, glancing in the creature’s direction. “We can’t kill that thing. It’s impossible.”

“You know what it is?” Elaina replied suspiciously. “I saw how you looked at it. Like you’d seen a fucking ghost.”

Trevik nodded emphatically as the sound of Kitch and the other soldiers engaging the creature rattled the air around them. “Might as well be. It’s a lonruyanu, a type of fae.”

“What!?” Elaina exclaimed, moving to take a look, only to have the knocker shove her back against the pillar where it was safe.

“Doesn’t look like any bloody fae I’ve ever seen,” Resius casually commented beside Elaina. She realized he must have snuck over as the others drew the creature’s attention. “Where’d you get this from, mate?”

Trevik ran a hand nervously through his greasy, wiry hair. “Stories, mostly. I had an uncle who told us very vivid tales when we were whelps. Very descriptive, and I’ll be damned if that fucking thing doesn’t match his description to the T.”

“Stories,” Elaina repeated a little skeptically, only to be silenced by a casual wave of Resius’s hand.

The occultist met the knocker’s gaze with a deadly seriousness. “What do the stories say?”

Trevik frowned, uncomfortable speaking about it but recognizing the importance of the information. “Fae from another world---a dead world--- driven mad by the destruction of the world’s faen and kept on leashes by demons. They’re said to be creatures of light, bending and twisting it like their warped, broken minds. They hate and despise other fae or anything that reminds it of its former self and the withered husk it’s become.”

“Shit,” Elaina muttered, stealing a glance around the side of the pillar to see how the others were doing. So far, there were no serious injuries, but ground was being lost, and there didn’t appear to be a single scratch on the lonruyanu. “What’s it doing here?”

Resius glanced between them nervously. “Olcaru is from another world. She probably brought it with her. Considering the Obsidian Court of the vampires was her biggest rival in the Faction War, this was likely a sadistically ironic security measure in the event that one of them made it this far.”

“That makes sense,” Elaina muttered as she recalled the details of the little errand Kaethe had sent her on. She’d been evasive about it but had impressed upon Elaina her inability to breach the vault herself. Perhaps she’d had an idea of what had awaited her. Maybe she’d merely suspected it based on Olcaru’s peculiar sense of irony. “So how do we kill it?”

“We can’t,” Trevik snapped impatiently. “Aren’t you listening? These things are old. They wear armor of hardened light that bends to their every whim. They can even inflict their madness on others through the light, like an infection.”

“Yeah, but the story must have had something,” Elaina argued. “Some sort of silver bullet that can lay it low?”

“That’d be cold iron, mate,” Resius smirked, holding up the rod and wiggling it. Trevik’s frown deepened into one of disgust. “Just like all fae.”

“So we just need to give you a moment and a line of sight,” Elaina concluded. “Should be easy enough, right?”

“Y-you’re as insane as that thing is,” Trevik gasped in disbelief. “We need to get everyone out of here. It’s not likely it can venture too far from the vault doors.”

As if to dismiss the possibility of escape, the pillar vanished in a wobbly haze, as did the rest of the chamber around them. Vertigo washed over the trio as the terrain warped and shifted around them, replaced by a deep, eerie wood of blackened, gnarled trees that reached high up to the stars. As the vertigo’s grip on Elaina weakened, she struggled to identify any of the patterns of the unfamiliar sky. It was somehow clearer and darker than the darkest night she’d ever seen in her life.

“Where are we?” she whispered toward Resius, only to find that he was no longer at her side nor Trevik. She was all alone.

The terrain was unsettling; the light felt wrong, and she felt like she could fall into the sky if she stared at it long enough through the strange gnarled branches. There was something just beyond that darkness that she couldn’t describe but put the fear of the gods into her gut, chilling her mind. With her sword at the ready, she cautiously picked her way through the trees, making sure to keep her head on a swivel. She swore that each trunk she skulked past throbbed as though a beating heart was contained within.

In the distance, she could hear the sounds of trees crashing and snapping, followed by an eerie, bone-rattling roar that shook her to her bones. The ground shook beneath her feet, and the cold light of a spell briefly lit up the night, casting long shadows through the forest for a second before plunging the swordmage back into darkness. A scream of pain followed immediately after, only to be smothered by a wet, sizzling sound. Despite how far away the light implied the source was, it sounded much closer to her position.

“Trevik?” Elaina called out, knowing she was giving away her position to friend and foe alike. “Resius? Royce? Anyone?”

“I’m here!” Royce yelled, even though she sounded only a few feet from her amid the trees. “Elaina, come toward my voice.”

The redhead altered course, stalking her way through the trees as carefully as possible, every sense on a knife’s edge.

“Woodlock!” The landgraf’s voice called from some great distance in the dark. “Is that you? Where are you?”

“Come toward me, my lady,” Elaina instructed. “I’m heading toward Royce now.”

Royce’s voice interjected, coming from another direction entirely and somehow further away. “I think you’re heading away from me. Come back this way.”

The swordmage stopped in her tracks and took in her surroundings. She was sure that she had moved in a straight line toward Royce’s voice, yet the witch sounded as though she were behind her now. Trevik had mentioned that the lonruyanu could warp light and infect others’ minds with its madness. Perhaps this was what that looked like? Elaina looked down at the amulet she wore and focused her mind on it. There wasn’t a hint of anything trying to penetrate her mind directly. She supposed its command of the light might be enough to create such an elaborate illusion.

Elaina hunched over slowly, placing her hand on the ground and slowly moving it through the strange, black soil. It felt real enough but possessed a cold quality that felt off. Shaking the soil free of her hand, she placed it on the trunk of the nearest tree and closed her eyes, opening her mind’s eye to the perception of magical energies. It was tricky to manage, especially with so much magic present. Opening her sight to it gradually was crucial to minimize the risk of being overwhelmed.

The only thing trickier were illusions. The standard methods of discerning the nature of magic often didn’t work for illusions at higher levels, or so the book gifted to her by Blackbarn had led her to believe. Most illusions had a component that extended into such magical detection, thwarting them as easily as they would mundane sight. Elaina took a deep breath, steadying herself and focusing. She’d used enough glamer in her past to have an idea of what she was looking for amid the trees; she only needed to clear her mind.

Another flare of cold light lit up the night, longer like a blazing bonfire. Tortured screaming accompanied it, dying off in perfect sync with the light itself. Another yell of horrified fury followed it, only to be silenced by another bright flash of light. She realized that clearing her mind enough might be a taller order than she realized. With every passing moment she occupied the warped space, she became more confident of its illusory nature, but simply knowing something was an illusion wasn’t enough. One had to truly see through it in order to believe it---to see beyond the illusion.

A hand squeezed down on her shoulder, causing her to nearly jump six feet in the air in surprise. Whirling around with her blade ready, Elaina managed to stay her hand when she saw Resius staring back at her with a finger held up to his lips, holding the crystal ball out to her. Elaina reached out hesitantly to take the item. Her senses sharpened almost immediately, granting her the means to see the subtle gradations of total darkness while penetrating deep into the illusion. Holding the crystal ball level with her sight wasn’t required for the effect, but doing so allowed her to view things further away up close.

“Neat,” she whispered, remembering the tricky little trinket she’d once possessed that allowed her to see through solid surfaces. Like much of her other gear in the fight with Steinbach, it had been lost or destroyed---probably both.

Her suspicion of an illusion was confirmed as the ball revealed to her the true positions of her allies. Each was closer to one another than they realized, with the magical energies of the illusion disorienting their spatial orientation. “I don’t see the lonruyanu.”

“Neither did I,” Resius whispered back, glancing around to be sure he hadn’t just jinxed them. “Despite the sounds, it’s only managed to pick off one of us. The rest is a show to put us into a bloody panic.”

“I bet if we gave the vault doors another solid knock, we could get its attention,” Elaina suggested. Considering the other defenses that he and Herrog hadn’t yet bypassed, it was risky. She whirled around slowly to check for Herrog while he was on her mind and found him hunkered down behind a pillar, which he had been made to believe was another of the twisted trees.

“What is this place supposed to be, do you think?” Elaina wondered as she began to slowly pick her way toward Royce, who was spending much of her time spinning in circles, though she didn’t know it.

“Nitoxys, if I had to guess,” Resius whispered back. “The world that Olcaru is from. The one most distant from the sun.”

Elaina raised a quizzical brow, looking back at the occultist in confusion. Sometimes, it was hard to tell if the man was serious or yanking her chain again. The man’s brows furrowed as he waved his hand dismissively, “I’ll explain later.”

“Royce,” Elaina whispered, placing her hand on her shoulder as Resius had done with her. The witch whirled around with a hex at the ready but showed the same restraint as the swordmage before.

“Where did you come from?” She asked with a slightly offended tone. “I just heard you over there. I was trying to sneak over to you.”

Elaina tapped the crystal ball with one finger. “We all are. It’s a powerful illusion that’s got us going in circles.”

“What’s it fucking waiting for?” Royce snarled, holding her hands out to either side. “We’re right here.”

Elaina frowned as she wondered the same thing. It had all the opportunity it needed, with them all lost within the illusory hellscape of a distant world. She had a theory, but it would require testing. Unfortunately, doing so could prove fatal.

“Alright, here’s the plan,” the swordmage whispered conspiratorially. “Resius, when I give you the signal. You’re going to hurl a spell at the doors, but make sure it’s with the heat chisel. I think when it lost its mind earlier, it was because you cast a spell with it. I don’t think the heat shield would have been as effective without it.”

“What?” Royce hissed as she leaned closer. “Why?”

“That thing is some kind of fae,” Elaina explained. “The heat chisel is made with cold iron, so every spell using it as a focus can bypass fae defenses as easily as the rod itself. More importantly, Trevik said anything that reminds it of its former self throws it into a blind rage. So, a spell with that as the focus, Trevik, and I all fit that category. The idea is to get it so pissed off it has to focus on us---specifically me.”

“This sounds a bit dodgy,” Resius muttered.

“It’ll be alright,” Elaina assured him before turning her attention back to Royce. “You have pacts with trees or the forest, right?”

The witch nodded as realization sparked in her eyes. She had begun to pick up on where Elaina was going with things. “Yeah, that should work.”

“Good,” Elaina smirked and then looked back at Resius as she readied herself. “Make it big and noisy, eh?”

The occultist’s mouth twitched as he resisted a cocky smirk. “Well, you know me.”

Elaina gripped her sword tightly in both hands as she assumed the guardian stance. As soon as everything went off, she hoped the others would be quick to jump in with her. She wasn’t sure that her ruse would give them a huge window of opportunity. Beside her, Royce took a deep breath and muttered a brief incantation in vishanti, her body shifting and changing until her flesh became a combination of warm, supple wood and lush emerald green. It was a form she recognized from when the witch had come to her rescue, sparing her a messy death dashed upon the rocks beneath the destroyed bridge to Willowridge.

“Go,” Elaina grunted.

“*Augue Maxima*,” Resius growled, his hands moving in a quick spinning motion before thrusting the heat chisel forward. A small ball of gleaming orange, no bigger than a child’s marble, came into existence and sped off toward the vault doors concealed behind the illusion. The orange bead made contact with the door a second later, erupting into an intense conflagration of heat and light.

The lonruyanu responded immediately, emerging only feet from them in a ball of light as it had when they’d first encountered it, only this time, the vast majority of the effect was considerably muted. Royce, now synched with a variety of tree spirit riding her body, drank deep of the mystic energies, feeding on the light as any plant would on a sunny day. The result was a nearly complete negation of the effect, allowing Elaina to lash out in the brief opening presented.

“*Dreurkt Arim,”* Elaina intoned as she brought the sword up in a vicious arc. The weapon’s blade caught the gleam of an unseen light as it was infused with the spell, enhanced to cut cleaner, swing better, strike truer, and take a beating. It was usually something she paired with a glowing effect with the Radiant Blade spell, but she didn’t want to risk the creature being immune to all sources of radiant damage.

The magic blade caught the creature at the hip as it tried to move away, penetrating its strange skintight armor of hardened light and cutting an inch-deep wound up to the center of its chest. Pale blue-white blood coated her weapon, spattering in an arc across the stone floor of the outer vault chamber as the illusory surroundings melted away like the darkness at dawn.

The creature expressed its pain in a near-deafening shriek of rending metal from its gaping, glowing mouth. As Elaina advanced, the lonruyanu fell back, drifting through the air as it twisted and spun away from her strikes. Though still glowing with the magic that infused them, its claws were dimmer than before. After a moment or two, they regained some of their intensity, and the lonruyanu shifted to vicious parries of her blade instead of merely dodging. With a surge of renewed vigor, despite the wound in its chest, the creature attempted to press the attack, unaware of the kyrsahn hurling toward it from a flanking position.

In a flash of steel, Kitch lopped an arm off the creature as cleanly as a gardener trimming a shrub. She stopped beside Elaina, assuming the guardian stance alongside her. The creature shrieked again, clutching the bleeding stump of its lost arm as its white hair whirled around behind it in an unseen wind. It reminded Elaina more of a wraith than a fae, but she supposed many things from other worlds would cause similar confusion.

As the lonruyanu tried to orient itself, the nimbus of light around it grew in intensity. Elaina glanced over her shoulder toward the witch. “Royce?”

“I’m trying!” Royce shouted back, her hands outstretched as she struggled to match the output of radiant magic. Now that it was flying into another madness-fueled rage, it was putting out much more than she could handle.

A thin blade erupted from the creature’s chest, disrupting the growing intensity of the nimbus long enough for Royce to regain the advantage of siphoning its power. Behind the lonruyanu, the landgraf stood with her rapier buried to the hilt in its back, the dueling glove quickly burning away to begin crisping the flesh of her hand. She ripped the blade free and stumbled back, her sword hand trembling in pain.

Disregarding its growing collection of wounds, the creature thrust its remaining hand forward and let out another shriek of unbridled rage. Every active spell before it was snuffed out in an instant, as easily as blowing out a candle. Elaina’s weapon lost its added luster, and Royce was thrown abruptly back into her true form. Something about the spell’s force felt familiar to Elaina, though she didn’t have time to give it much thought.

More of the remaining soldiers piled on, one after another, striking at the lonruyanu with all their strength, unable to find purchase with mundane weapons against its magical protections. The creature didn’t even bother to avoid their strikes, though the flurry of blades did bog down its movements temporarily. Elaina knew they had to act fast before it rallied and burned every last man to a crisp.

The redhead joined the fray alongside Kitch, each scoring a series of glancing blows against the armor of light as they pressed forward. Were it not for their close formation, the creature’s magic might have overcome them, but alternating between strike and defense to cover one another prevented any meaningful retaliation. That was, until the creature suddenly vanished, only to emerge in a burst of light behind the group. Its eyes and mouth flared to life in unison, preparing a decision strike against them.

Resius brought the cold iron rod across the back of the lonruyanu’s skull with a strange ‘thock’ noise that caused its head to jerk slightly to one side, throwing its aim off as the blast of purest sunfire tore into the chamber wall and raked horizontally across the vault door as it tried to right itself.

Whirling around, the lonruyanu brought the back of its hand across the occultist’s skull, throwing him to the floor several feet away. Before it could take advantage of his prone position, Royce rushed forward with her athame, blazing with a strange, dark flame. With an unsettling precision, she drove the blade into the flesh of the creature where the kidneys might have been if it were human. The lonruyanu slumped and fell to its knees, no longer capable of floating. Its swirling nimbus of light was nearly extinguished in an instant.

Reaching up to the back of its skull with her clawed hand ablaze with that same dark flame, she took a handful of the creature’s hair and jerked back. With its throat exposed, the witch leaned down and whispered something into the fae creature’s ear before ripping the athame from its side and drawing it across its throat with precise intent.

It was over in a moment. Royce held the creature there as its light slowly dimmed and finally went out. The witch hissed a final curse in vishanti into the creature’s ear as the light went out in its eyes before releasing it. The lonruyanu fell to the floor lifelessly as its blue-white blood pooled beneath it.

The room grew quiet as Royce stood over the corpse of the creature, breathing heavily as she gazed down at it. The dark flames around her implements faded, flickered, then went out.

“Miss McKenna?” The landgraf inquired, breaking the fragile silence. She approached slowly when Royce didn’t answer immediately, cradling her burned hand with her other arm. “Are you alright?”

Royce turned to face Elsebeth, her eyes wild. The effect was only exacerbated by the unkempt state of her short blonde hair. It took her a moment to recognize the Landgraf and then Elaina as she stood beside her. Elaina frowned as she took another apprehensive step forward. “Royce?”

“I’m alright,” Royce assured her, holding her hands up before composing herself. “I just got a little carried away, is all. I’m alright.”

Elaina stared at her skeptically but accepted the answer. They could talk about it later when they were alone. For now, they had to address the wounded and assess the damage to the vault. They may have lost access to everything they had risked so much for.