by HDA Roberts
"Hey," I protested.
"So,” she continued, deliberately ignoring my protest, “defence is everything. Protect yourself at all times. Now, show me your Shields."
Des did as he was told. It took him thirty seconds to draw a vertical plane of bound Light into something resembling a defence; far too long to produce something so weedy. I could have knocked it down with the tiniest Dispel.
"Oh dear," Cassandra said with a sigh.
Welcome to my world, I sent Telepathically, making her jump. Making that work from inside Spelleaters hadn't been easy. I'd probably been a bit loud.
Des had never been the best student. It wasn't that he couldn't learn, it was just that he wasn't good at retaining things that weren't immediately interesting to him. He'd managed to get through his duels simply through throwing light at everyone he'd fought, maybe the occasional fireball if he was feeling adventurous. If given time, he could conjure some pretty powerful attacks, but he was essentially a one-trick pony.
"Matty, take the rest of the evening off. I'm going to work with your brother a bit. And yes, I know that the manacles aren't going to work. They're making you clumsy, leave it to me."
"Thank you," I gasped, gratefully pulling those wretched things off my arms.
I left them to it, Des was still looking a bit smug, the poor fool.
I have to say that I enjoyed the idea of putting those two together; maybe they’d each gain a greater appreciation of what I’d been dealing with over the years.
Probably not, though. Cassandra would just blame me, and Des would likely enjoy getting pummelled.
Chapter 24
That was a nice distraction from my little war, but my mind soon drifted back to it. Thankfully for my nerves, it didn’t take too long for things to proceed on the Aurelia front.
It was a little after six in the evening on the Wednesday after I’d frozen the Elders and I’d just gotten home from another long day at the university. We’d started exploring the deep psyche in Telepathy class, how the mind connected to the Soul and how one could affect the other. It was an interesting and very involved subject that I could spend a lifetime exploring without feeling that my time had been wasted.
I was sitting in my library, leafing through my notes when Tethys came in with a broad smile on her face.
"It's starting," she said.
"What's that?" Mother asked, looking up from a news report on the television about the sudden and unexplained appearance of a massive dome of ice in south-eastern France (she, Father and Des had found their way to my library after I’d gotten home).
"Hopefully the next step in getting your lives back to normal," I said, returning my friend’s smile.
Mother seemed dubious, but didn’t question me.
I followed Tethys to the West Wing, where she had something of an operations centre, manned twenty-four hours a day by at least two people (and frequently more) keeping track of every important piece of information that went in and out. This was in yet another converted dungeon, making use of the thick walls and cool surroundings to house a small server farm and several large pieces of high value (and highly illegal) cracking and surveillance equipment.
The entrance was protected by a retina scanner, which Tethys peered into. There was a 'clack' and the door opened to reveal a wide space with several rows of computer-covered desks.
There were four of her technicians inside, staring at a screen that showed a dark chamber lit only by dim braziers in the corners. There was a wide, circular table in the middle of the chamber, around which were seven seats. One was occupied by Bellegarde and the last remaining Elders filled two more.
Tethys and I sat down near the back of the room in a pair of comfortable seats, and she nodded at one of the technicians to un-pause the feed.
"And just how did you manage to get out completely unscathed, Bellegarde?" Rosanna asked suspiciously.
"I was to be the warning for the rest of us," Bellegarde replied.
"Ooh, is that shame, I detect?" Armand Toutain said. His hair was a pure white, and his eyes a startling, cunning blue. He sat with his feet on the table, apparently relaxed, but there was a definite tension in his legs and arms that spoke of a readiness for violence.
"Hardly," Bellegarde replied, turning a glare on the man.
"Really? If I were appropriating the holdings of our stricken associates as ruthlessly as you, I'd feel shameful," he said.
Bellegarde's eyes narrowed, "Are you sure about that? Were those not your lieutenants moving in on Gaume's holdings in the south?"
Toutain smiled and tipped his head.
"You two disgust me," Rosanna said, snarling, "We were attacked, as good as wiped out and what? You two pick over our fellows' bones?"
"You only say that because you heard too late to pick anything more than a coccyx from the heap," Toutain said with a chuckle.
Rosanna stood with a growl, her fingernails elongating into claws.
"Say that again," she hissed.
"Oh my God, this is the best thing ever!" Tethys said, grinning like a kid in a toy store.
I smiled as well. I had been very careful to remove only the steady vampires, the true Elders; five hundred-plus years old. The ones that remained were the hot heads, still full of themselves and their place at the top of the food chain (in their ridiculous opinion). If I'd taken these three out of the equation, the others would have just replaced them and things would have carried on as they were ad nauseam. But, by taking the calm and collected four away...
"Enough!" Bellegarde snapped, "This is getting us nowhere. We need a plan, and we need to decide how to split up the territories so that we don't kill each other."
"I notice that you didn’t mention appointing replacement Elders or custodians for our comatose brethren's holdings," Toutain said smugly.
"Shut up, Toutain," Bellegarde said, "We all know what has to happen here."
"And you think I'll just go along with it?!" Rosanna snapped.
"Yes, for two reasons; one, you are the youngest here, which means that attempting to stop us from taking what we deserve would end... badly, for you," Toutain said.
"And the second?" Rosanna asked, looking about ready to jump across the table and throttle the man.
"It is going to be a relatively even three-way split, of course," Toutain replied, nodding at Bellegarde, who nodded back.
Rosanna twitched a little, but then she started to settle and her claws retracted.
"How 'relatively'?"
I smiled.
Tethys and I then watched as the three Elders brought out a map of Europe, a long list of holdings, and went through them one by one, dividing it all up between them. Bellegarde was the oldest, and had the most diverse holdings going in, so she came out the best, with about four-ninths of the total territory, Toutain got a third and Rosanna the rest.
"We'll have that cut and ready for dissemination in half an hour," Tethys said once the Elders had finished their negotiations and left. None of the three were completely happy, but none of them were willing to go to war either... yet.
"How did you get that camera in there, by the way?" I asked, still happy as a clam that things seemed to be going so well. I just knew it was all going to go wrong at some point, but I allowed myself to enjoy this brief moment of triumph.
"Bribery, and a small favour called in from our friends at GCHQ. That was a good call, by the way," she said, that last part grudgingly.
"Thank you."
The thing about having a widespread intelligence network is that you occasionally come across things that don't affect you very much, but which would be of great interest to other parties. I decided that we would pass such nuggets on to the security services in exchange for a similar consideration, and the occasional favour. Tethys hadn't been too happy with the idea initially, but she'd grown to appreciate it after she received a number of compromising surveillance photos which allowed her to acquire the last few shares in a financial group she was
trying to pilfer.
“You don’t have to sound so smug about it,” she grumbled.
“You’ve known me how long?”
She rolled her eyes and pecked my cheek.
“Go away. It’s all boring stuff from here.”
I chuckled and left her to it.
It really was nice that things had gone according to plan for once, not that this was too difficult to predict. Vampires were, as a group, both opportunistic and materialistic. Give them a free shot at a fortune, and they would latch on to it with both hands and all their teeth. The odds were always good that at least one of them would try a land-grab, which would drag in the other two just to stay competitive, so this part was at least something of a given. It was what came next that could go either way.
Still, I left that room in a fantastic mood... and it lasted all of thirty seconds.
"Hi Mathew," Cassandra said as I rounded a corner, startling me. She was wearing her exercise gear; tight-fitting cotton bottoms and a short yoga top that left her taught belly and toned arms bare. I might have enjoyed the look, if I didn’t know what it meant.
"Oh God, no."
"Oh yes. I have found a way for you to train."
"But... I..."
She tapped her foot once. My shoulders slumped.
"Fine."
She smiled and led the way to her chamber of horrors (exercise equipment... horrors, the same thing to someone who thinks 'exertion' is a dirty word).
Des was already there, squealing like a stuck pig as Lacy (one of the Wardens) contorted his arm into a configuration Graves arms were not supposed to bend into; I speak from experience (unfortunately).
"Uncle! Uncle!"
"Not how it works, kid. Break the lock how I showed you or I'm going to break the arm," Lacy replied mercilessly.
"She's not really going to break it, is she?" I whispered.
"Probably not, but I can't promise that. Lacy gets a bit serious when training."
That was enough for me.
"Lacy, please don't break my brother, we're trying to get him to like training," I said, rushing forward to pat her shoulder.
"You think he's not enjoying it? The little pervert’s loving it. Aren't you, Pervert?"
"What? No, I- ack! Yes, I love it, I love it, please let me go?"
Lacy let him drop to the ground, "We'll pick this up later."
She nodded once to me and left the room.
"I think I'm in love," Des whispered when she was out of earshot, making me laugh.
The Graves men... we had rather a weakness for women that could beat the snot out of us; make of that what you will.
Cassandra shook her head in disgust and threw the protective cuffs at us again. Once we were in the ring, she brought a velvet pouch out of a side cabinet. She pulled on the drawstrings and revealed a multi-faceted, carefully shaped and shined crystal just small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. She held it up for me to see.
"This is a Damascus Stone," she said. "It is a Magically attuned crystal only found in certain places of power, generally those near a volcano, so they're rare to say the least. They act as reservoirs for pure Magic. Depending on the purity of the crystal, a chunk this size can contain the output of anything from a high-end Acolyte to a low-end Wizard. This is one of the better ones, a low-end Wizard."
"Let me guess..."
"Yep. You will train, drawing power only from this crystal. You can fill it up yourself, no problem, and it shouldn't cause you any difficulties with concentration."
All true, but the evil look on her face told me that she knew exactly how much of a disadvantage I was suddenly at. The categories that defined Magical Power were on a logarithmic scale, by factors of ten, so the difference between a weak Wizard (the power I was now reduced to) and a strong one (like Cassandra and Des) was not to be laughed at. They now (each) had access to about ten times the power I did.
"This sounds like fun!" Des said.
I smiled weakly.
Cassandra smirked.
"Alright, let's try this again. Same rules, no High Magic."
We entered the ring, and I prepared constructs in my head, ready to go while Des took something resembling a ready stance.
"Ready? Duel!"
I immediately made a mistake. My Will Shield was too big for the power I had available, and I drained at least a quarter of my energy before I realised my mistake and reduced it to a sensible size. My Combat Shields were another mistake. It was all so ingrained in me by this point that I didn't even realise that I was being so inefficient until I didn't have all that power to fall back on.
Meanwhile Des had already conjured a set of quite effective Photonic Barriers around himself (apparently he and Cassandra had been very busy). Different to a simple ‘wall’ made of solid light, a Photonic Barrier was a sheet formed of compressed and highly agitated light, designed to release like a burning flare when struck, throwing a portion of the attack away from the shield. I'd thought that grade of Spell beyond Des, to be honest.
He threw out a simple Laser Lance, though this was much stronger than his last had been, and it cleaved off two of my four shield layers. My regeneration construct went to work and rebuilt them, but that was a losing proposition, I simply didn't have enough power!
I was thrown, on the back foot and... I dithered. I was thinking too much, running through a mental inventory that included Spells that could wipe cities off a map, but so few that could be cast with the miniscule amount of energy I had available. It was an entirely new situation for me, and I didn't recover in time to even put up a token fight. I was still wrestling with getting an efficient shield in place when Des threw out two of his Lances in quick succession and the room rang with a chime that indicated a hit (and a loss).
Cassandra looked smug as she came over to us.
"Well done, Desmond," she said with a nod.
Des grinned all over his face.
I frowned and refilled my Stone, thinking hard. I was overdoing everything; that was my problem. My shields were designed to act against all-comers, and that was a power-hog. I knew Spells designed to neutralise specific energy types as well as more basic shields that could act as a last line of defence...
"Do you know what you did wr-" Cassandra started, but I held up my finger and she stopped, smiling proudly. This was what she wanted all along, the cunning sadist; for me to start thinking. I wondered how long my particular duelling style had been annoying her for.
"Don't be like that Matty, it was only practice," Des said.
"Shh," Cassandra hissed. Des shut up, confusion crossing his features.
I thought for a while, letting my mind seep into the Damascus Stone, getting a proper feel for the energy available to me, and what that meant in practical terms. I pulled all my thinking away from Grade Ten Magic and way back to the earlier texts, easy Cantrips, and how they might be adapted for combat.
I turned to Cassandra and nodded.
She grinned broadly, "Okay, let's go again!"
Des looked confused, and retook his position. I took a breath and got into the right mental place for intricate Spellwork, pushing all distractions out of the way.
"Ready? Duel!"
Des repeated his tricks, but I was already prepared with an Elemental Shield, a very simple, very easy Spell designed to act as a sink to a particular type of energy, in this case Light (Photonic) Energy.
I layered a scalable Gravitational Barrier underneath it, tied to the energy in the Stone so that it could draw on that reserve in the case of attack. Gravity was the most easily accessible energy type, being essentially everywhere and effectively infinite as long as there was a planet underneath me. It made only a fair to middling Shield, but it would buy me time to cast a better alternative.
His Laser Lance flashed into nothingness against the Elemental Shield, and he immediately countered with a Fireball! Cassandra had been coaching him well. It passed through the Light Shield with barely a flicker and exploded against m
y Gravitational Barrier, draining me a little, but not too much. I put up a Heat Sink in front of the Light shield in time to take another Fireball.
I was actually quite pleased with myself. That was three simple shields on the go, and none of them draining too much power.
I won the Duel with a simple Dispel. That was the problem with Photonic Barriers. They were strong, but they were also volatile. If you took out the Spell Matrix keeping all that energy in place, it could blow up in your face... literally.
That's what happened to Des. Thankfully the gauntlet did what it was supposed to, and caught the energy before it could harm him. The chime went off, a slightly different tone for Des than for me.
"Crap," Des said.
"Much better, Matty. Very good improvisation Desmond," Cassandra said.
"You taught me," Des said modestly, which was a pleasant surprise. In days gone by, the words 'I'm the greatest' were never too far from Des' mind (or mouth, for that matter. It could get maddening). He actually seemed to have acquired a little humility, but then Cassandra had always been good at instilling that in some people.
For my part, that duel had left me rather pensive. My way of fighting hadn’t been all it could be. ‘Wrong’ isn’t quite the word, but I had certainly been wasteful of power and resources. I might argue that I’d just been careful, but that didn’t change the fact that I tended to vastly over-engineer my Spells; four strengthening constructs on a fireball, when one would have done, eight corrective Spell-monitors on my Shield Regeneration Spells, when four were too many... the examples were endless. Little things, really, but they would add up into a problem if I ever had to deal with someone close to my power level. The only area where I was perfectly efficient was with my Shadows, but that was my Affinity, practically an extension of my Soul, it should be perfect. Everywhere else was a picture of waste... wasted power and perhaps more importantly, wasted time.
I had to get better. There were things out there, against which even a scrap of Magic might make the difference. I'd even seen some of them through the rift Vallan had opened.
"When you think this hard, I swear I can smell beef cooking," Cassandra said, leaning against me. I snapped out of my reverie, noticing that Des was being manhandled by Lacy again, with every appearance of enjoyment, the weirdo...
