Lost Bloodlines Ch. 04

None of them had noticed my sprawled presence yet, and I wasn't sure I wanted them to yet either. If this really was a breakout, these men were more liable to shoot me than explain what the hell was going on. I was debating my options on how to sneak past when part of the pre-fab exploded outwards, showering both the soldiers and myself in concrete. I shielded my face, but when I lowered my arm, my eyes locked onto the truly fantastic sight of the figure that stepped through the ensuing gap in the building.

It was a man, broadly built and tall, covered head to toe in a pitch-black robe embroidered with swirling blue designs. He carried, of all things, a staff. It was a metal construction, pale silver with a carved sapphire glinting at its tip. His face was almost entirely hidden by his cowl, but a bearded chin and a cruel smirk peeked out from beneath its shadows.

As the soldiers scrambled for new cover, the figure gestured with his hand, and the temperature of the cool night air rapidly lowered, and my breath began to puff out before me as the air became frigidly cold. With a contemptuous wave of his staff, the man stalked forward, and shards of ice lanced from the tip of the staff, piercing the back of one fleeing solder and sending him tumbling to the ground. One of the man's squamates responded, sending a flurry of haphazard bullets at the robed man, but the shots seemed to hit a barrier a foot distant from his body, each immediately robbed of its momentum and falling harmlessly to the ground. The shooter was skewered with a bolt of ice in response.

I was locked into place as I watched the casual slaughter unfold. I wasn't sure who I should be helping here. Should I even interfere? I didn't want to attack a possible rescuer, maybe he was some type of monster under that robe? The next figure to step through the gap, however, immediately decided who I should be helping in this situation.

Another man, this one bare chested and painted over with dozens of sigils and glyphs across his bare skin and leather pouches strung across his waist, tugged a chain behind him, and three monsters, each clad in the tan uniform of the camp with glowing collars around their necks stumbled out of the breach. I tensed. Yeah, anyone dragging someone by a metal collar was no friend of mine.

As I watched, the painted man said something to the robed figure, and they both seemed to chuckle as they watched the fleeing soldiers hide behind a nearby pavilion tent. The ice-thrower stepped forward and leveled his staff in their direction. Okay, if there was a time to act, it was now.

I sprung to my feet and sprinted towards the robed figure. A shout rose from behind him as I charged forwards, talons outstretched.

"Succubus!"

The robed man immediately shifted his aim, and a trio of ice shards rocketed towards my body. I raised a hand over my face, but the ice shattered harmlessly against the scaled armor of my chest, feeling only like a light punch as I rapidly reached my target. My claws slammed into the blue barrier protecting him, bouncing off its surface, but I had felt magical shield give as I slammed into it. I followed the man as he scrambled backwards, launching punches and swipes at the barrier as best I could. Repeatedly he summoned splinters of ice to bush me back, but each attack merely glanced off of my armored form or shattered entirely, and I could see the fear in the man's eyes as his hood slipped back and revealed a balding head and pale blue eyes. Notably, it was a bald human head.

The realization startled me for a moment, enough time for the robed man to escape my immediate grasp, leaving me entirely open to his painted companion. The other man, with the chain still grasped tightly in his opposite hand, was holding out some sort of object directly at me. His painted face was lit with a manic grin, brown hair spiking haphazardly from his head. He whispered something, and the object in his hand lit with a hellish glow. It was a horn. With a start of recognition, I saw that it was almost identical to my own curling horns, if smaller in size. The fucker was pointing a succubus horn at me!

A stream of fire, flickering with an unnatural darkness, shot from the horn and immediately engulfed me in flame. For a moment I rested easy. I was fireproof, idiot. And then the burning started.

I screamed as the metal scales of my armor heated to unbearable temperatures, scalding the skin within. I felt the skin on my exposed face blacken and crack as I was burned for the first time since my transformation. I fell to the ground and heard the man cackle as I burned alive.

It was terrible, the worst pain I had ever experienced. Every nerve was alight with fire, and I desperately just wished for death to end the torture of the black fire.

No, it wasn't the worst pain I had experienced! This fire was nothing compared to the soul-wrenching agony of the crimson sea inside my own mind, of the eternity of drowning I had been subjected to before the sea had eventually calmed. If my transformation was worse than this, I could survive this bastard's torture.

Muscles and skin screaming in agony, I pushed myself to my feet and locked eyes with the painted man through the black flames. His grin froze on his face and he stared at my rising form in disbelief.

"That's not possible," he muttered. He looked down at the crumbling horn in his hand and back at me. He screamed, spittle flying. "That's not possible! What are you!?"

I didn't answer, merely lunging forward and slamming a talon through the brown barrier that appeared before his body. It shattered at my touch, and in an instant, I felt my talons sink into his chest and close around his heart. As my fingers clenched shut, the fire still burning around me died, and the man died with disbelief still written across his face.

His body slumped to the ground, and I stared numbly at the gore dripping from the brass covering my talons.

"Weyleth!" I heard a shout from nearby, and slowly turned my head as the robed figure stared in shock at his fallen comrade. His face twisted in rage, and he began chanting, the temperature dropping again to below zero and the warmth immediately leaving me body. He pointed the staff at me once more, and I numbly wondered if this would hurt as much as the tank shell when his head exploded.

The headless remains of the man's body slumped to the ground and fell, revealing the black-clad soldier standing just behind him, smoking sidearm still raised in the air. I stared at my unexpected savior, looked back down at the headless corpse, and promptly vomited. I fell to my hands and knees on the ground as I was rocked with nausea and disgust, puking my guts out into the grass. When the first round stopped, I wiped off my face, only realizing as I tasted blood and felt hot, viscous liquid spread across my lips and cheek that I had used the hand that had just been in a man's chest cavity. I vomited again.

I was shaking, dry heaving on the ground when I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I jerked away and fell to my side, but it was just the unknown soldier, offering a rag to my fallen form. I grabbed it thankfully. It smelled like gunmetal and grease, but I cleaned my face of the vomit and blood, wincing as the rag caught on the cracks of my burned skin. Hopefully that would heal quickly. I looked back up, and the remainder of the man's squad had circled around me, along with the three monsters still collared and chained. Only four soldiers remained, my savior included. The medic was standing with them, and I assumed their wounded comrades had died in the first blast.

The leader again offered a hand, and I took it as he pulled me to my feet. I didn't recognize his face from anywhere around camp, but then again most of the soldiers had blended into a formless malevolent mass during my time here, so that wasn't saying much. He was light skinned and lightly bearded, black hair greying around the sides, and the hair peeking from beneath his helmet was a similar salt-and pepper shade.

"Captain Brooks," he introduced himself, shaking my hand as I still clutched it. "I do believe we'd all be dead if not for you." His squad and the monsters nodded in agreement, and I blushed. Or maybe my face tried to blush, I doubt it was visible through the burns.

"Lilith. Just wanted to help," I mumbled. I looked over to the fallen bodies of the magical humans. There was no other word for what they had been able to do. Magic was real, and apparently humans could do it just as well as monsters. I pushed down the nausea that threatened to rise again. I turned back to the Captain. "What is going on here? Is this the Militia?"

The Captain blinked. "How the hell do you know about the Militia? Ah, never mind, no this isn't them. Don't think the Militia has any god-damn wizards with them." He looked up the dome that still loomed over us. "Figure there's no point hiding it if you already know about the Militia. We don't know who the hell these guys are, but this is the fourth camp they've hit in the last two days. Always with these invisible fucking domes. They're why we beefed up security and set restrictions." His face soured into a grimace.

He looked over to where Barrack 1 stood in the distance. Gunfire still sounded from that direction. "We had two units stationed here when the dome formed, you're looking at the remainder of the second. We need to reinforce Unit 1 and stop these fuckers from grabbing any more monsters." He nodded to where the three monsters stood shivering in fear and confusion. Two of them were women, a brown-haired satyr and a blue-skinned woman with fins and gills on her neck. Water nymph maybe? The third was a man, a squat and wide fellow with a bushy beard. A dwarf, in the fantasy rather than literal sense.

"Menner," Captain Brooks commanded to one of the soldiers, "Take the monsters outside the dome and return if you can. The rest of you, with me. That includes you, Lilith, you're the first thing I've seen get through those barriers without taking them by surprise."

The soldiers began hurrying in the direction of Barrack 1. After a moment of indecision, I hurried after them. I caught up with Brooks as his eyes scanned every tent we passed with gun raised. "I...I don't want to kill anyone else." I stuttered out.

He gave me a skeptical side-eye. "They're not going to give you much choice on that one. And besides," his eyes flickered to my armored hands. "Looks like you're armed for war. If I had to guess, I don't think those claws were made for slicin' up veggies."

I scowled and let him resume his point at the front of the group. I did what I had to do to make the pain stop, I would try to knock out anyone else we found. Nothing else. I wasn't a killer. I wasn't.

Yes, you are. You're the world's best killer.

Again, I banished the intrusive thoughts. I wasn't dealing with that shit right now.

We quickly made it to the barrack, encountering no one else on our way. The gunfire had intensified, but came entirely from within the structure. The soldiers stacked up against the door and I inelegantly followed. With a slow count from Brooks, the soldiers busted in and immediately began firing at whatever was behind the door. I followed, heart pounding and sweat beading at the back of my neck. I could do this. I can help people rather than hurt them.

Once inside, I was greeted with a sight of destruction. Two soldiers kneeled behind overturned couches in the common room, firing further into the building. Fully half of the separate rooms had been demolished by some great blast, leaving most of the large building open and casting rubble everywhere.

I shuddered to think of the monsters caught asleep in their rooms when everything came tumbling down.

Four more of the, uh, 'wizards' stood near the opposite end of the room. Three of them were trading shots with the soldiers, two hurling balls of fire and another flinging what looked like slivers of darkness. The last wizard was affixing another collar to a monster, a group of maybe a dozen huddling, chained and scared at the far end of the hall. The bodies of both monsters and soldiers were strewn across the floor, but I noted that two robed figures were also among the casualties.

As I watched, one of those dark slivers pierced through one of the impromptu barricades, striking a soldier in the arm. In an instant his flesh withered and sunk inwards, the life draining from his body in seconds and leaving a desiccated corpse behind.

Our group rushed forwards and grabbed cover, as much good as it did the last man, and begin laying down fire at the robed figures. One of the wizards with red trim on his black robes formed another fireball and saw my chance to be useful. I dove out of cover and flung myself directly in front of the approaching flames. Unlike the black fire from earlier, this flame dissipated harmlessly against my body. The wizard paused in confusion, and his body was immediately riddled with bullets and fell to the ground. Seems those barriers required concentration to maintain.

I began to walk forward, wings outstretched to catch any more errant blasts, and heard the soldiers fall into step behind me. Great, I always wanted to be a bullet, er, magic shield. We made it half-way down the hall as the other wizard flung increasingly desperate flame at us, each absorbed harmlessly against my brass armor or my outstretched wings. His companion with untrimmed black robes was quiet, forming a ball of darkness between his outstretched hands and looking deeply into the void it created.

"Shoot the dark one!" I yelled, but as soon as the words left my lips, the ball of darkness exploded outwards, and suddenly it felt as if I was moving through molasses. Every step took tremendous willpower, and I felt my strength rapidly being sapped from my body. Dark tendrils grabbed at my limbs to hold me back, and I heard grunts of exertion from behind me as the soldiers similarly struggled.

Soon I was stopped entirely as I struggled against the dark bonds. We were sitting ducks, and I screamed in frustration as one of my companions were immolated by the red wizard at his leisure. In desperation I released the only other trick I knew, the pink mist, sending it spiraling forward towards the wizards with a burst of willpower. When it reached them, I saw it immediately take hold, causing their attention to focus solely on me. Unfortunately, this only caused the dark tendrils to abandon the soldiers and cling tighter to my body. I was forced entirely to the ground and completely immobilized, but it seemed my trick didn't entirely backfire.

Concentrated as the dark wizard was on me, the soldiers were able to resume their fire on him, and he quickly collapsed into a heap. The black bonds disappeared from my body and I surged forward to finally finish the last two wizards.

"Enough!" A voice boomed from within one of the rooms farther down the hall, and the ground exploded from under me. Dark roots speared up from the broken concrete, wrapping around my outstretched limbs with unnatural strength. No matter how I tried to slip out of their grasp, the roots squeezed tighter until I was suspended entirely within a bizarre cage of wood with the strength of steel. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my three remaining companions similarly imprisoned, their weapons far out of reach.

Another robed man stepped out from one of the rooms, trailed by two companions and another monster. I immediately recognized the large form of Alana Kingsley, and belatedly remembered that she had mentioned she was staying in the female section of Barrack 1. Her eyes were downcast and a collar rested around her cobra hood as she sullenly slithered behind the three figures.

My eyes narrowed in worry on Alana's bound form, but shifted back to what I assumed was my captor as he hobbled forward. He was bent over in advanced age, leaning heavily on an oaken staff, wrinkled brown skin mostly covered by a robe covered in excessively intricate green embroidery. His companions were much younger, their robe trim blue and stormy grey respectively. The three stepped forward and briefly conferred with the last of their group guarding the captured monsters, handing off the chain to Alana's collar to the man, notably bare-chested and painted as the "Weyleth" outside had been. They were seemingly unconcerned for our presence, speaking at length before the elderly figure turned back towards us.

He walked forward haltingly; each step supported heavily by his staff. As he approached, he examined my bound form through milky-white eyes, squinting in what looked like confusion on his aged face. He paused directly before me, stroking a long white beard that rested over his robe. God, could he be any more of a cliché?

His eyes roved over my body before resting on my face, and then suddenly his eyes widened in some unknown emotion. Was that...recognition? He stumbled backwards a step before catching himself on his staff, and his eyes sharpening as they searched for something in my eyes.

When he finally spoke, it was in a booming tenor that was entirely out of place on his frail frame.

"Lilith Firstborn," he spoke, and my heart froze in shock. He stared critically at me and ran a hand along his beard once more. "You're supposed to be dead."

As lost and frightened as I was in that moment, I couldn't help replying. "Sorry to disappoint, Gandalf."

The man reached forward with speed impossible for his frame and seized my jaw. "Always so impudent." He spoke harshly at me. "My dear, you're supposed to be dead because I watched you fall from the sky a thousand years ago. I examined your fatal wounds at the behest of..." His eyes widened again and he stepped back, lips clamped shut. His head twisted, turning back to look at the chained monsters, then back at me. His expression was wild, and I saw a note of fear enter his eyes.

He clutched his staff with both hands and looked towards the ground.

"He did it." He muttered softly. "The mad bastard actually did it."

"Did what!?" I demanded, but the wizard didn't even look up at me. "Who are you talking about? What am I? Who did this to me?"

The green-robed wizard turned on his heel and barked orders at his fellows. "Leave the rest! They are meaningless now. We're taking her back to the Conclave; they must hear of this. Bring me a collar!" As his subordinates jumped to follow his orders, I struggled harder at my bonds. No way in hell are they locking me up like a slave. I pressed at the roots holding me with desperate strength, but they refused to budge. As the wizards neared me and my motions grew more frantic, I heard a sudden commotion from near the entrance to the hall. I twisted my head and beheld a stream of female monsters pour into the building, Aqua and Victoria at their head.

As soon as Aqua laid eyes on my bound form, her face narrowed in rage, and she opened her mouth and began to sing. An odd time for a recital, but as her voice rose, I was caught up in its beauty and my thoughts emptied. Her voice was rich and powerful, wrapping me up and promising me untold wonders as the siren unleashed her song. I heard the wizards behind me fall to their knees, but I couldn't care. I didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was the goddess with a voice like honey. I had to get to her. I had to reach her. She would love me more than anyone else in this world. I could feel it.

I strained harder against the roots to reach her, but they wouldn't move. Why wouldn't they move!? Didn't they know how much she loved me?

I was lost in her growing song, and my eyes locked onto hers in desperation. I had to make her know that I was hers. She could do anything she wanted to me. Please let me out!