Tre Lloyd Adventures Ch. 10

Arianna looked back at him, meeting his eyes steadily, a look of pure anger flashing in her green eyes. "No! Absolutely not! I TRIED to help him, Akiro. Telemon wrapped me in a spell and I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. I tried and all I could do was watch as this spirit mauled Tre and he nearly killed himself trying to defend himself."

Keio scowled, growling "then I will have to go and have a talk with Telemon when this is over" before Akiro cut him off with another sharp movement of his hand. The younger Tanaka brother broke off, Kimiko leaning over to whisper quietly in his ear.

Arianna looked at Keio and Kimiko, an unreadable expression crossing her face as she saw Kimiko. "Please don't do that. It would only start trouble within the Order and Tre is not going to need any trouble for a while. He will need to rest and recover for a while. Please."

Kimiko finished speaking with Keio and looked at Arianna as she spoke to Akiro. A smile played at the corners of her mouth as she realized that this powerful spirit was in love with a human. Masuri, a reassuring presence behind her, spoke to her through the link they have. "The spirit has been around humans too long. She is beginning to love one of them." She sent Masuri an acknowledgement, keeping her face impassive as she watched Arianna in surprise.

Akiro reluctantly nodded. "Very well, Arianna, I will wait and talk with Tre before I do anything. Right now I have to prepare for the attack that's coming. Will you be able to stay and help?"

Arianna shook her head. "No, I have to get back to Tre. He will need me." She looked around at the Sun Swords, her eyes flashing slightly as they passed over Kimiko and Robert. Her glance flicked up at the spirit behind Kimiko before moving back to Akiro. "You have enough people here to defend the Villa. The wards will help you with that. I have to go. I don't want Tre to wake up and I'm not there."

Akiro started to speak but she faded into nothingness and disappeared again. He cussed quietly in Japanese and looked around. "Ok. Looks like it's just us then. We all know what is about to happen. We have mostly all fought vampires before. Most of us have fought humans. The ghouls are the only variable. Robert, do you know what all they are bringing with them?"

Robert shrugged. "I don't know for sure. There will be some mages with them. I know that because they asked for volunteers from the mages among the Sunchasers. The woman that told me they were coming is one of them. I don't want her hurt. She's coming to join us here."

Akiro nodded thoughtfully. "I can't promise anything, Robert. But I will try." He looked around at the others. "So we are going to have mages, vampires, dhampir and ghouls. The mages will probably have spirits and the like with them." He looked around thinking. "Let's get ready. They will be here any time. You all know what to do, get to it."

As everyone rose and began to split up to head outside, Heidi walked over to an unlit torch. With a gesture of her hand she lit it and began to focus her will to begin summoning fire elementals for the coming fight. She kept the strength of the spirits to a moderate level, preferring numbers to power. As the last elemental appeared in astral space she looked around, smiling at Tomas and nodding. "I'm ready. Let's get outside with the others."

Tomas nodded to her. "You bet." He cut off as a loud clang resonated through the Villa. "I think that means they are here. Come on." He turned and took off for the gardens exit. Heidi sent a mental command to the elementals to follow and hurried outside with Him.

As they got outside Dreux was pointing to a spot in the woods. "There they are. I can barely see them moving around. There's a lot of them out there though. I can see that much."

Bobby grabbed a small spotlight and began to point it into the woods but Akiro stopped him. "No. Let's wait a few minutes. They don't know that we have spotted them. Let them get closer and let the surprises Tre and Arianna cooked up for them go off. Then we can hit them." Bobby looked like he was about to argue but lowered the spotlight after a moment.

Tomas closed his eyes and slipped his vision into the astral as he looked out towards the woods. He quickly opened his eyes and looked at Akiro. "They are at the edges of the defensive wards. They have spirits with them. It also looks like there's a lower class demon or two. This is going to be tough."

Kimiko also slipped into the astral for a second to look around. As she opened her eyes she nodded to Akiro. "It's true. There are a few demons out there. Apparently Freyja sent at least three of her pet mages. She has only allowed a few of her mages to mess around with actual demons. She's kind of jealous of her power that way. Leave the mages to me." Her dark eyes flashed with something close to amusement. "That is my specialty after all."

"If you're going after the mages you'll need someone to watch your back." Her twin brother turned to look at her.

"No, Keio. You will all be busy with the vampires and ghouls. I can take care of the mages alone." She held a hand up as Robert opened her mouth to protest. "No, Robert, you're needed to help with the physical fight. Leave the mages to me. I have Masuri to watch my back. She will protect me almost as well as you can. Plus she can read my thoughts and react to them without me having to tell her what I want her to do. You have to use magic for that. She doesn't."

Robert looked like he was going to press the issue when Dave spoke up from the back of the group. "Wot the hell is a Masuri?" He looked around with a grin on his face. The grin lasted until, at a silent command from Kimiko, a trimly muscled humanoid figure appeared right in front of him. He reached for his sword before stopping, looking at the figure in surprise. It was female in appearance with short night black fur covering her body, what was visible of it from within the deep blue kimono she wore. Golden eyes glittering with an ancient intelligence gleamed from within a slender fox's head.

The spirit looked at Dave for a moment before turning and walking over to stand at Kimiko's side. She had a katana tucked into her kimono's sash along with a jitte on the other side. As she turned it was obvious that she had a tail, or more to the point, five tails sticking out through her kimono. Kimiko chuckled and put her hand on the spirit's shoulder lightly. "This is Masuri. She is my ally spirit, what some mages call a 'familiar'."

Keio looked at Masuri in wide eyed amazement. "That is a kitsune! Where did you find one of those?"

Kimiko laughed. "No, Keio, she is just a kami of nature that I summoned when I visited father's estate last. I didn't have the power to bind an actual kitsune spirit as an ally. I still don't think that I do. She has several different manifest forms, but she knows that this is the one I prefer and so she uses it unless I ask her to use something else."

Keio kept his eyes on the fox-headed spirit, still reasonably unconvinced that Masuri wasn't a kitsune. The ally spirit looked from Kimiko to him and smiled, a very human-like expression crossing her fox-like lips.

"They're coming," Tomas said, looking back out towards the forest with his astral perception. "It looks like the dhampirs and ghouls are leading the way while the vampires, spirits and demons try to find a way past the wards." He drew his submachine gun and checked the chamber, a similar sound coming from everybody carrying pistols.

"Everybody take your places. Bobby take the left flank. Jonathon, you take the right." Bobby and Jonathon turned and headed out to the low wall that was going to be their first line of defense. "Dreux you go with Bobby. Dave, you're with Jonathon. Heidi, Tomas, you two stay just right of here." As everyone turned to their places, Akiro looked at Kimiko and his nephew. "Kimiko, Robert, the two of you are the left-center. Keio and I are the center of the line." Robert nodded and moved to take his place, sliding his sword from its scabbard with a hiss of steel.

Kimiko stepped up and hugged her twin, kissing his cheek before doing the same to their elder brother. "Be careful, both of you. May the ancestors watch over you in this fight." She walked over to stand near Robert, her ally spirit moving soundlessly behind her, drawing her katana and jitte in preparation.

"Kimiko, you be careful too. Some of the surprises that Tre designed for the defense of the Villa are deadly to vampires." Keio spoke, moving to stand nearby pulling his helm on over his head and sliding the oni faceplate into place.

Akiro slid his kabuto into place and checked the faceplate as Kimiko answered. "I know. I heard rumors of some of them while trying to figure out how to contact him. Sunbursts or something of that nature I believe they were called. Something to do with sunlight, I know that much." As Keio acknowledged her statements with a nod she continued. "I'm ready for that. I don't have Freyja's tolerance for sun; she can take sunlight for about 5 minutes before it starts getting unbearably painful. I can take it for a few seconds before it becomes a distraction. In that time I can throw up a spell I made. I'll be fine, Keio. I promise."

Keio nodded, his voice sounding hollow behind the faceplate. "Ok, I'll take you at your word. I just wanted to warn you."

Kimiko smiled at him just as a deep gong sounded in the house. "They are through the outer wards." Akiro said. As he spoke bullets began to thud into the wall in front of them. Both of the Tanaka samurai drew their weapons and watched through the slits in the wall formed when bricks were removed for just that purpose.

On the ends of the line Bobby and Jonathon opened fire out at the coming attackers and Tomas switched to astral perception to target his shots. He saw his shots stagger what looked, by the aura, to be a ghoul but it didn't slow the creature much. "Dammit," he cussed to himself as he turned his MP7 towards a more susceptible target. "The ghouls can't be stopped with bullets. Save your ammunition and aim for the ones in the center! Those are the dhampirs."

Kimiko took a deep breath as the wards went down. She opened her eyes to the astral and saw the mages in the back of the vampire lines unleashing a series of spells. She quickly called to mind the spell she wanted and, murmuring the words of a prayer to the kami, released it. The spell blistered through astral space, meeting a pair of the inrushing spells with a flare of mystical energy. She shrugged off the drain of her counter spell with another prayer and saw a flaring from down the line to her right as a trio of fiery spears lanced out, each one catching an onrushing ghoul in the chest and exploding it into flames.

Heidi reveled in the feeling of her body wreathed in her fiery armor once again, her hair blowing in a hot wind no one else feels as her eyes glow with flames. She turned her head as Tomas threw out a counter spell just in time to keep a ball of acid from exploding on the wall in front of them. Two more spells splashed against the protective spells in front of the wall, lighting them up in the explosion of fire and lightning.

Robert didn't flinch away from the explosion of a lightning bolt the size of his leg against the spell wall in front of them. His mind was focused on one of his specialties. He sent his mind out to where he saw a demon moving towards them. Once He felt the connection made he began to exert his will against the demon's and its summoner. With a glance he saw which of the vampires had summoned the demon and sent a blast of dark ice followed by a ball of pure sonic power a second later. The vampire, distracted by the sudden immobility of the demon, took the blast of ice full to the chest, causing his torso to freeze solid, the sonic ball shattering the ice and the vampire, the unfrozen arms and legs simply falling to the ground. Quickly he wrapped the demon with a binding and returned it to its native plane before turning in search of another.

Tomas began to take up a role providing counter spell protection for the fighters, deflecting, defusing and sometimes reflecting the vampires' spells as they came soaring in. His MP7 jerked in his hand, the action of the bolt the only sound as he took potshots at the dhampir, making them keep their heads down and for the most part stopping their movement towards the wall. He could see the spirits moving along with the ghouls, but was leaving it to Heidi and the others to turn them back.

Akiro felt useless standing in the center of the line. He was able to see everything that went on but unable to do anything because he had focused his attentions on becoming a samurai and not a mage. He watched the ghouls drawing closer and tightened his hand on the hilt of his no-dachi. With so much magic flying back and forth through the air the kanji on the blade seemed to shimmer with power.

Kimiko broke off her prayer, sending the confusion spell towards the ghouls closest to the wall. She glanced at Masuri who was taking shots at the spirits moving with the ghouls and sent a quick telepathic message to her. "Time to go after the vampires." Masuri sent back an acknowledgement and Kimiko looked at Robert. "I'm taking Masuri and going to take out the vampires. I'll be back." With that she stepped back out of the line and, Masuri in tow, walked down to an out of the way spot and vaulted the wall, quickly fading into the darkness.

Keio heard Kimiko and was about to tell her to stay when she disappeared. He started to follow her and then the ghouls were at the wall. He turned back to the wall and slashed one of his katanas at a gray-skinned hand with claws as it reached over the wall. With the other katana he stabbed over the wall at the ghoul's head. He felt the first sword bite through skin and bone, stopping only when it hit the stone of the wall, the other crunching into bone. He twisted the second sword slightly as he jerked it back.

Akiro stepped up to the wall and slashed at another ghoul as it reached over the wall. The symbols on his sword flared into crimson fire as it bit into the ghoul's neck and sent the creatures head flying away. He jerked the sword back and slashed at another ghoul, missing as it leaped back with a snarl.

Dreux swung his club down, the spiked wood crunching into the shoulder and collarbone of a ghoul. He growled as the ghoul reached out and slashed at his hands with its still functional arm. He jerked hard on the club, pulling the ghoul forward with the club stuck securely in the ghoul's body. With an extra strong yank he wrenched the club free and dropped it behind him. He pulled at the cloak to remove it and willed the change. For a split second he hoped that Robert wouldn't decide to hack at him with that sword of his, then his mind was overwhelmed with the feeling of his body swelling and thickening. In the span of two seconds his body had been replaced with that of a large bear. He roared and lurched forward towards the wall and the ghouls on the other side of it.

Bobby laughed as he saw Dreux make the change out of the corner of his eye. He swung one of his submachine guns over and emptied half of a clip into the face of the ghoul with the crushed shoulder. His other submachine gun was clicking on empty so he swung the first one back over and emptied it at a pair of dhampirs who were rising out in the open. When they ducked back down he released one of the SMG's and quickly reloaded it before doing the same with the other. He quickly closed the bolts and began squeezing off three-round bursts at the ghouls gathering at the wall.

Heidi threw a handful of mini-fireballs into the face of a ghoul trying to get over the wall. The small pops and flashes of light that accompanied the spells impact showing the ghouls gray skin to be charred black now. She called up another lance of flame and speared the ghoul right between its burned eyes before pulling her hand back and releasing the spell with a throwing motion at one of the dhampir that was just standing up. The fiery javelin flew unerringly and caught the half-vampire right in the chest, sending him flying backwards, already catching fire.

Robert narrowly missed decapitating one ghoul as it stuck its head over the wall. A shimmering beside him showed that the wall ward was breached and spirits were coming through. He called out "Spirits behind the wall!" as He threw his left hand out, sending a jet of pure magical power into the spirit. As quickly as it began to appear it discorporated and vanished to its home plane. He felt a push into his mind and discerned a name.

His teeth pulled into a feral smile as he saw a large demon, the largest one of only two left, start his way. He focused his will behind the demon's name and sent it blasting out. His psychic blast completely shredded the vampire's control on the demon and, with a strong effort of will, he bound the demon under his control. He ordered the demon to attack its fellow demon and then slashed his sword at another spirit as it materialized behind the wall between him and his uncle. The kanji on his sword flared bright white as they sliced clean through the spirit, the spells on the steel banishing the spirit.

Kimiko watched from behind the vampires as the dhampir Robert had spoken of snuck away, making her way towards the wall cloaked in a bit of shadow. With a quick mental command to Masuri, she stepped forward. As her ally stepped up behind another vampire she reached out, cloaking the one she was behind in darkness and grabbed his head, yanking it to the side and biting into his neck. With her free hand she sent a blast of blood-powered ice at the nearest vampire. The blood surging through her brought more power to her and her spell easily overpowered the mages spell defense, leaving his body riddled with ice spears. Without ceasing the spell she walked it to the next closest one who was likewise overwhelmed. As she saw Masuri behead her target and move to attack another, the final two vampires both opened rips to the Fae realm and disappeared.

Akiro felt sweat running from under his helm as yet another wave of ghouls hit the wall. The dhampirs on the flanks were still farther back but the ones closest to where he stood near Keio were only a good stone's throw away. He hoped they didn't have any grenades or they were in trouble. He slashed at a ghoul as it reached over the wall and gashed its arm. He looked out to where the dhampirs were and saw they were rising up and firing towards the wall blindly as they scattered. He let out a war cry as they ran.

Dreux felt the bullets sinking into his body and roared his pain and rage. He swung one huge paw out and broke a ghoul's neck before reaching out with the other paw and just ripping the ghouls head clean off. Another ghoul raked its claws along the bear's side and he caught it with a paw swung backhand, knocking it back through the air. He turned and ambled after the undead creature before it ever hit the ground.

Dave was tired from swinging his twin gladii. He looked up at Akiro's war cry just as he stabbed out at a ghoul. He felt the impact of the blade with the creature's body and then felt an incredible pain shoot up his arm. He looked and saw that he had stabbed the ghoul in the throat and then the creature had bitten his hand. He was bringing his other sword around to stab the ghoul again when a flash of light caused the ghoul to catch fire. Suddenly a woman leapt over the wall. He was turning to defend himself against her when a katana deflected his stroke upwards.

"No," Robert said. "She's with me. This is the woman I was telling you about. Anita." Robert looked at the woman as she pulled the hood of her jacket back. "Come with me, Anita. I want to introduce you to my uncles."