Merlin 3:20 "Lifeblood"
mjbanks
In the forest on a quiet road three shiny black coaches sleep during the moments before dusk, three men approach the windowless caravan eating meat from bone and jovial until spotting the wagons in distance, thereby they stop and finish eating. One of them eats slower as they decide to approach. Tossing the meat on ground the man hammers the door with the bottom of his fist.
Revird: “Lord Matteus, the dusk approaches!”
The bar latch slides and the door opens slightly on the formidable coach, the other vampires hiss like housecats at the light, they and Matteus reveal little to nothing beneath the long sleeves and a hood that drapes over and across their faces, from the nearby town the smell of blood palpable to them thru the air. The scent hungers them, adding an aguish to their bloodlust thruout the latter of day.
Matteus: “Our prey is there by surety?”
Revird: “Without fail, my liege, agents have led him to our own eyes.”
Matteus: “Take us into town at dusk.”
The door slams shut on meditating occupants, to a forest where the owls are waking and the wolves have all gone home. In the town, in the tavern, in this moment, Nick stands trying to invoke fear and inferred provocation to Agnar, the Jotunn man sitting is almost as tall as Nick stands. He takes a knife and points to the door, swirls blade around his hand, and hammers the knife into the table. Ana’s laughing at Nick’s importunity becomes a lust for him from his challenge to the giant.
Agnar stands with the bench scraping and floor creaking as might his bones beneath pure muscular figure. Nick dusts his lapels and Agnar swings, misses, and with the other arm hits Nick in the ribs, the punch so heavy that the blow slides him a couple feet but topples him not. Nick punches in the tender spots of tension, the jaw, dodging swing and striking the outside of the large elbow hyperextending the joint, the throat, a kick to a knee, punching cheek bone, and eye the opposite side, and same knee to make it fold and drop to kneeling, dismantling the giant’s stature in merely moments. Agnar grabs the table as he collapses with one hand and with the other catches a punch from Nick intended for his face, discomforted, disillusioned, and deeply focusing to breathe.
Agnar: “Enough…to continue will have one of us fell or flat. Stand down.”
Nick withdraws his attack, tentatively and cautiously, to the uproarious pleasure of everyone in the tavern, pleasured by the experience of a good fight.
Nick: “Hello, darling, miss me?”
Ana: “If you carry me, I know just the spot.”
Nick: “Excuse me, gentlemen.”
From a lesser roar and laughter, Nick swipes Ana from her feet, into his arms and thru the room into another.
Kat: “Agnar, you are tree and storm.”
Agnar: “I know whoever won the bets, buys the next round.”
Merlin: “There wasn’t, and I mean you well, no time for wager.”
Digr: “What in bloody fie happened to you, Agnar? I thought you could fight a tree?”
Agnar: “He hit a nerve in my arm, after that I could only think in delay of each strike. I was going to grab the table, or throw Jonak,” feeling his own arm.
Jonak: “I can be pleasing in other ways.”
Digr: “Hey look…elves.”
Kat: “Oh no, you fool!”
Brad: “Oh, fie, Digr, here we go.”
Digr: “What graces fie?”
As Nick and Ana spend time against each other in the pantry, Agnar drops all expression and tallies steps forth with summary resentment. They gather their senses as best they can, watching him thru the bay window. Merlin, closer to sobriety, stands in the window to view, Jonak in the background calm as he, watching the wizard and the giant thru the sound of the others arguing whom shall fetch Agnar should trouble arise, and questioning where their missing fellow resides.
Three elves on horseback, having followed the rumor of three black wagons across counties, one becoming alerted to the dark travelers at the town, the two others as the wagons stop only a stone’s throw from the tavern. The elven riders encircle the avenue of the oblique caravan, waiting for war or welcome from without. The Jotunn Agnar decides to pick a fight.
Merlin: “O, fie, here we go.”
Agnar: “I do not welcome the hypocrisy of elves!”
Nisan: “A shame it is the only kind we know.”
Agnar grabs the rider and pulls him to the ground while punching him across the face, the tall elf falls and rolls over backwards, tossing his cape aside he watches Agnar approach another, the elf holds his hand to stop his allies from releasing an arrow and shouts.
Nisan: “No, your death is with me!”
The wagons have already stopped, waiting as Agnar and the elf begin to fight, as Nisan begins to meet his limits the other two dismount and join the fight, the horizon and sun fold into one and the cool air begins to arise from the forest night as the vampires begin exiting their carriages. It is not long before the wiles of bloodlust and predation begin carnivorously drinking to kill an elf. The three to one match of elves and giant, having the attention of many onlookers from inside buildings, becomes a fight of good and evil, Merlin and the other mages rush to fight the fanged foes.
Matteus leads four vampires thru the narrowest street in the town, any bystander becomes victim by one unto the next, turned against wall and soon to fall, and in the darkness, a vicious and scarred hand illumines a crystal ball with fire and magic. There are townsfolk that fight with passion, whom Merlin interjects as to defend. Agnar has a hammer, which holsters against his back and his belt, to smite the bites of creatures, in sooth so close to joy in war his formidable skill inspires three of the vampires to regroup to attack specifically him. Digr is good with a bronze sword, it is light in his hands and his earth magic allows him to wield it without ever dropping it, satisfying to him particularly because he cannot use the magic of Midgard spirits to pull their armor and arteries to his sword or push these foes from the breadth of deathblow. For they wear ancient stones of glass and fire that inhibit his powers, he knows of their rejection and instantly knows they three have gone. There are sooner things that have not escaped the throes of passion.
Nick: “Did you hear that?”
Ana: “I would if you shut up and brace me.”
The elves have two survived and not one, scattered into the town just as many of the vampires, and let to chase in this admixture leaving Merlin to fight a vampire who is killing townsfolk just to intimidate him. After waiting for a clearing Merlin takes one slight step forward, aligning his arm with his back and drives an electrocution at the creature, the staggered white light slightly blinds him that he does not see the vampire trying to pull-hence. As he stops his magic the night-brood begins to run, he shocks again and quits, allowing the militia to riddle the vampire with spears. Before they start, he wanders after another foe.
Doth not only nature confine his thoughts as from it Varin leaps from rooftop into closest high-window curtain of adjacent edifice. The fight around the wagons continues, the standoffish nature of it all, one elf with long hair is still determined to find what remains inside the black sargähnlichen carriages, finding it to be vampires, four of them younger in appearance and insatiable bloodlust. Soon to attack at his demise, just at the sun sets enough to bathe the town in shadow, a red sun beyond the restless horizon.
Varin approaches with the tenets of war to protect clergy from dying and soldiers more, Matteus continues stalking for Nickolas and virgin wives for taking by his dark and wicked flock. The scent of such condition a vampire can smell should they refuse to spoken tell, and such has resulted in the first of others being taken into the wagon for later purposes ranging from bad to worse. Varin seeing this attacks the kidnapper while fighting another who holds guard for the vehicles of escape, and the confused war cries and attacks of the militia. The town’s soldiers give him aid once seeing his comeuppance attacks the undead. He is agile and adept, limber and quick his defense of avoidance seconds his physical cruelty, he twists the vampire’s arm around its back swinging on the arm the duration, like a ballet of breaking bones. The painful torsion causes the vampire to scream with a growl in the night, the woman decapitates it with a sword, and almost slices Varin’s face. She rushes to him and they kiss in the street, for saving her life, or in somehow she saving his, him spinning her and holding tight. She departs of him and begins to detach the horses from the wagons, a slap on the first steed and it charges egress. The deceptively youthful blood-drinkers do certainly approve of this not, and cease all distraction to kill her, Varin kisses her again and tosses her onto the back of the second steed and segments the horse from bond, allowing her to escape. The battle spreads thru the town, and Varin’s bond to battle is their four to his one. In fires of flesh and passion, there is rampant one action that must become again two.
Ana: “I heard that my lover.”
Nick: “…damn straight you did!”
Ana: “No, my forever friend, listen.”
As he suits-up in one way, an explosion shatters the silence and batters the town once over. By faster than slow they rush from storeroom to the battle beyond them and into the fray. It is here that Matteus approaches that building from the alley, kicking down the door, kicking aside any small obstacle and stepping over any terrified children, a smell of prey allures him. Into the room where Nick and Ana were moments ago, they quickly peruse the room for clue to wend.
Matteus: “I smell the immortal.”
Decimus: “It reeks of war-fire.”
Matteus: “He was here – follow him!”
Matteus’ scream is matched with puerile fury and marked by him striking and breaking the nearest objects, before the final shard hits the floor his minions race after Nick and therefore Ana. To make matters worse, as are the two young secret newlyweds of two cultural tribes, so are the denizens, the town is a hotbed of sectarian warfare. One in four are of soldier age and much more so the ranks of the groom and his father whom is town high elder. Not for most of malevolence are they in direct combat, but they are stubbornly in eternal conflict and in circumstance of petty instinct do not always help each other at the hands of the vampires.
Hither by a tasteless sadistic joy of bloodshed and fearlessness of war, Jonak steps into the street, waiting and watching, staring at nothing and glare for in something purpose delivered on this eve. His magic is not learned nor passed nor alchemist task, given in birth and not future offspring. An abnormal displeasure with a fugue of confusion and drunken askance, he stares at two vampires walking to him cockily. He pulls his knife from a sheath stitched into his jacket just above his pocket on his stomach. The depth of his focus is in question favoring one eye more than tother, he is still not sober enough to tell if they are one foe or two, and he has only enough time to question his lucidity or chance running in a stupor.
He decides to stay and fight, backing to a wall, holding out the knife and certain that they are both and not blurry deception, his fingers on his other hand start to tremble ever so slightly, preparing to reach for the sword handle at the bottom of his back. Closer to him he drops the knife.
Jonak: “You can still turn away.”
Valens: “Drunk man…we could use a spiked drink.”
They move to him swaying in the street and weighting more on one foot, and hold him against the wall by his collar.
Jonak: “It is time to sleep.”
Aelius: “Huzzah, death whisperer, your magic plagues us not, we are already with you.”
Jonak: “Then walk with me in hell.”
Jonak pulls the sword quick enough to stab one in the stomach to the heart and grab the other by throat, to him a piercing thru a dead heart. As the second body falls, he cuts his hand on its passing fangs, causing him to scream and raise his hands in anger, hacking gruesomely at their heads until cleanly severing bloody heads, swearing all the drunkenly belligerent while.
Jonak: “Holy gadzooks; with the bloody fangs already, gyves of fie!”
Jonak almost slips in the blood trying to grab his dropped dagger. 5/5 The two elves stay close to each other, their clothes similar and almost uniform, Varin follows them from a distance that widens as he stops to end a random conflicts of townsfolk by rendering a man unconscious and lure his foe and neighbor, alto train the anger of difference and interruption at him and into quenchable folly. After eluding one fighter he follows them again, only seeing one and wondering where the other is, soon does he appear to Varin with overawe and bated patience.
Gullveig: “Follow us no more or rest assuredly our reason here.”
Gullveig holding him by the shirt and forcing him back to unbalance his step forcedly pushes him into the debris. Varin puts his hand over his head, keeping his other hand visible, and lifts a bandana to reveal a pointed ear, lesser peaked than theirs but all the same.
Varin: “No wait, we win together.”
Gullveig: “Tell me tour mother or father, half blood.”
Varin: “What means by this?”
Gullveig: “Who was the elf, your mother or father, and what is their name?”
Varin: “Her name was Hálma, from Rahnuor.”
Gullveig: “So come with us and you won’t have to join her.”
Agnar has chased three, joined by an additional two, vampires whom have sieged their way into the armory, good at taunting daunting foes and better with their aims from a room full of arrows. They are somewhat trapped and the men do not yet storm either of the two doors, the men arguing who will enter the small confines with the likes of them.
Eripmavus: “Someone get me a priest!”
Agnar: “Why (arrow) do you feel a need to confess (arrow) what will you tell them?”
Eripmavus: “No (arrow) not really (arrow) I just feel like killing a priest.”
A torch thrown at the door extinguishes itself before igniting anything, and the plastered walls are wary to fire.
Merlin stops a fight by reaching between to adolescent men and exploding an orb of light, tossing them several lengths apart, apiece knife was the cause of their strife for who would wield it to defend them both, their father had told them it was magic some time ago, yet it was merely a war trophy of a grandfather. The elves do not approve of two boys lying wounded in the street blasted by a wizard, they loft an arrow by his head, and he turns and holds a hollow blue orb of pure energy with ripples running over it like the ocean. Two more arrows pass him, deterred by his and the sphere’s magic, they reach for swords and Varin stops them.
Varin: “No, he is with my pride, our elder in fact.”
Gullveig: “Does he always blast children during midnight war?”
Merlin: “They were killing each other.”
Boy: “We were not!”
The young boy runs and hugs his younger brother tightly. In a nearby street Nick shows his skills against two men, practically toying with them by his swordsmanship, turning them on each other, and having fun clubbing some of them in the head less than safely. Ana is worried of her maternity and acts in greater portion as a nurse, when vampires do come she has fire that burns their eyes, and flesh, and souls like the essence of daylight when close enough to her magical flame. To the men fighting she is a god there to witness the war, giving them courage irreverent to the beliefs of both faiths, in larger part a danger comes from a nearby town that is kindred to the opposition of this one, in the count of forty hooves.
Ana blasts fire in her own defense, the bitten death raises grown men and undead, with the fury of thirst and rebirth as a blinding fever, heretofore Nick learns that her fire does not burn Braden. This concerns him faintly, and the solitary new thought as he battles the risen, confronted by a new problem, they wear the garb they had when felled, thus in defending himself the honest soldiers think he is attacking innocent men.
Tired of waiting for the soldiers to deplete of torches that are only extinguishing by some hex near the armory, and on its roof, Agnar throws a wounded man thru a window and uses the distraction to run close to the wall, he takes his sledgehammer and breaks a hole thru the wall. Peeking inside he counts his foes and waves fingers to tell the others. They spread their interior ranks to guard the whole, laughing at its use for arrow shooting, when Agnar sees Sino and others standing behind the small and word-painted window of a closed shop. The giant reaches in the hole and around the wall and pulls out one of the vampires, breaking an arm and dismantling the hole wider, dastard foe on his knees jumps to his feet, he wraps his massive hands around the feeble limbs of the vampire and throws him thru the shop window. The soldiers give battle cry and storm the armory as Agnar decides to go into the building for completing his victory.
Agnar into the shop walks in front of the stern faces and kicks the vampire onto its back, when seeing Sino and others it relaxes.
Eripmavus: “O thank bloody god.”
Agnar puts his foot on Eripmavus’s throat, despite struggle and grimace of enjoyment and breaks its neck as if is it an insect. Sino takes from his pocket a phial of black water and hands it to the Jotunn.
Sino: “Take this poison, and give it to Merlin. This is Gimlar, you will throw him out the window, outside you will find a necklace in his pocket, be sure to show and give it to Merlin.”
Eripmavus begins to heal thru the way that vampires can and a female warrior quickly draws her blade and severs its head with a katana, a sound of completion as she struck the head from shoulders is all that reveals gender beneath her armored veil and hat in the darkly shadows of the room. Gimlar, wearing a cloak very similar to the vampire’s, steps forward and Agnar defenestrates him.
Sino: “Agnar, do not even smell that poison, for it has no scent, and feel free to kill Gimlar.”
They look into the street and the soldiers are spearing Gimlar on the ground. Agnar rushes outside and waits for a time and inconspicuous procedure to look for what proves to be an amulet. Sino and his apprentices turn into smoke to disappear and separate. When Agnar looks into the window again Sino is gone and only smoke remains, he looks thru the doorway and a soldier notices him, heretofore the smoke, and calls alarm of fire.
Agnar gathers the necklace and drags the body by the chest, a sullen labor of infinitude, seen as sad and is determined mad to frighten any mortal foe, dragging him until near the wagons. He takes the necklace from his pocket and throws it with the body into one of the vampire wagons, breaking it and the dead body torn open by the otherwise strong ebony wood.
Newly turned vampires are becoming numbers, turned specifically to perpetrate and perpetuate violence in the streets, Matteus and his cadre have fed their blood to the dying, with plenty to spare, and they are not meek in their feeding savagery. In vampiric rebirth, they are not turning others, but feed and kill voraciously, an hour until dawn.
Matteus watches Merlin heal lesser wounds, almost dancing around him Nickolas doth spin a sword like it were his tail, and Ana with fire consume an arrow flung to her and chase the human shooter. Braden with a blue fire places his hands on foes to persecute only their bones with holy fire that reaches for their skin, Katyenka luring enemies for him. Digr boxing his enemies after magically forcing arrow and blade to ground, and Agnar having trouble finding a foe to challenge him, but when he sees Matteus calmly watching, he chooses him to battle, as two vampires walk side by side along the street toward them all.
Matteus: “There will be massive war, both civil and humane, assistance will cease to never restart, becoming sin the lechery will be, and I will have what I desire!”
Merlin: “Who are you?”
Matteus: “The question is who are they?”
Matteus welcomes the two men, their fangs pierce wicked smiles, they slide from their coats, long hair and only vests and scars cut to bury their amplifying alchemist artifacts beneath deeply their skin. These are the vampire warlocks, bringing wave of war and death defiance, one of them plays with black lightning and suffers onto them a heated sulphuric hail that quickly separates the fearful from the heroes, the other takes a bow and pulls arrows from the dead, the dripping bloody burning red unleashes arrows fire bringing accurate to aim ahead. Braden holds his hand afire blue, the flames to throw pointed arrowhead cuts his hand aside the bone and turns him to retread. These flaming arrows, Ana in focused anger, can burn before they pierce, against her flesh, but the strength remains of her and all thereby, is half exhausted. Merlin stands as lanthorn, gaining white fire and smokeless ash in the dank soil around him, drawing the attention of all who see.
Ana stops to arrows inviolate, and exhaustion showing starts to faint and Nickolas takes the third. She remains conscious, her serenity in fire makes this a moment of tiring and annoyance, even more so in seeing Nick hit by the arrow and scream, which he does not do often, she throws a curtain of fire like a splash of water turned into flames from thin air at the vampiric warlock archer. Behind her foe stands Braden, unharmed by her fire.
Nick: “Why does she not burn you?”
Braden: “You have hellfire, I have soul-fire, we share good intentions, friend.”
Ana: “Evil isn’t waiting, boys!”
Merlin and Katyenka have electricity, his more like vines and uniformly narrowing, hers jagged and cragged like lightning chaotic and shorter distance than he. The vampires still attack between the warlocks. Their foe fights them with ashen shielding of magic and air, resisting them one each by each one hand. As minions attack her Katyenka grabs and tortures it with electricity, the vampire warlock focusing all strength against Merlin just to survive, the bolts of lightning she bores a constant grasp of white burning holes and sounding scream. Cruel and unusual, but let to continue by fate, Ana and the others red against black fires behind them.
Merlin and his foe come close and their projections of manna burn thru the corpses on the ground as energies collide like stars, to not exhaust they pause. Ana, Nick, and Braden see Agnar and try to direct their foe toward him in an area clear of Merlin and his foe, aligning their foe with the help of Katyenka. Agnar mallets the warlock so violently and repeatedly the pummeling reveals black blood and the hidden runes thru battered and torn flesh, a foot to the back it laughs with bloody lungs until the decapitation.
Malleus: “The unnatural lifespans and laziness of their charity, it is enough to burn your flesh.”
Merlin: “For now you’ve got something to die.”
Malleus: “Time is the only thing moving.”
Merlin: “It has a way of healing all wounds.”
Malleus: “Some wounds better than others.”
Vampires trying to get into the wagons, assumedly to escape in haste, but returning outward with bolt-throwers, with fights spread thruout the area, six vampires with six widely headed steel arrows attached to ropes shoot Nick thru his body and limbs, his scream is pain and anger, the wagons pull him from the battle. Ana burns one of the ropes, but he becomes too distant to assist, Varin takes a shot with intense sight and skill hitting one of the vampires on the wagon, not enough to do damage to a creature undead.
The remaining warlock renews his torrent of aggression, to protect his kind and postpone a chase, the conflict at its most dangerous stage for the reckless fires of rage. Vampires whom have the only task of keeping Merlin and all others from following to save Nick do their best at moral worst, ending life with essence cursed, two hundred dead, some thirsting for blood after death, five of the makers and obeying their calling twenty new takers surrounding like locusts on Merlin and others implored.
With recalcitrant fire and storm of the lightning and dangerous peril tumultuous fighting the wicked lay bruised and buried undead with the warriors still clashing so blatantly close enough to be stabbing their eyes, for the brilliant keep dying and the lucky will stand, refusing to bleed for the feeding with their lives to remand. Errant running and hacking with daylight emerging the vampires scatter like murder retreating to the wicked fane of the dead, and the ignorant newly transformed are to ash in the dawn soon as said. The caste of Merlin stands shaken in victory, bloody and sullied with ash in the street.