Extensive fmes and deep bck smoke filled the air around the tiny city of ial Heights. Fire departments from every town and locality that could be called, had arrived on the se and were desperately trying to get the fires under trol without much success. Many of the gas stations had ground that was so hot because of the incessant press of the fmes that it igheir underground tanks in succession and caused virtual earthquakes that shook everything close to the ruptures. Immediately after, the rea would occur. Fming debris flung huge distanded in homes, apartments, vehicles and trees adding their chaos to the city's demise.
It wasn’t any of the flickering red-e fmes that had Archaios Enas smiling with glee. Surrounded by her beloved as they circled and howled with the sheer power being derived from the people bel, burning, worried and overall just suffering, She enacted her main pn. plete with the forbidden book, She’d used Elle’s rotting form to flip the pages and learned how to both restart the portal’s song to draw her vampire enemies into sunlight hell, and treat surprise how to blend…take something from every human they possessed. “We need a certain amount of a stone called kyanite, my lovelies. Affixed to the quartz, this stone is the heart and soul of human ability and in that…” Archaios Enas ughed vociferously and held out her hand and called a few Shadewraiths to her. “…we have a means to kill, charm and otherwise create fear in the blood-shells.” Approving howls of terror erupted all across the hill that Archaios Enas had occupied in order to watch the unfoldis of the city that they’d created.
Having read everything of importance for her kind to trol the portal and take over, Archaios Enas tossed the stolen prophesy guide into the closest fire she found. “The kyanite is the most important part of this. As the fires rage, we will keep a steady flow of emotional fear and fusion ing to us.” She opened her hand and four more of her beloved shrunk into bck swirling balls and she tucked them into her torso. “If we take a mage, do it.”
{“Yes, Archaios Enas. It will be done. Take them, torture them. Feed from them, but…don’t kill their spirit..yet.”}
Archaios Enas heard her Shadewraiths collectively agree in her mind. “Leave the leader to me. I owe this one for killing my beloved a few days ago…” She heard a wide range of vile ughter ing from the others, “It is time for me to let this rot-shell fall into a puddle of slime…in front of the others.” She looked over her once well-maintained form and even though she’d initially thought to keep up with Elle’s body and spirit, ohey’d leveled the federal building, she had no desire to do more than make her shell and spirit twist as she slowly ed every st ounce of Elle’s person. “This shell has served well. My beloved, I have but a drop of this oo feed and pull apart…” Archaios Enas looked around and her hate-filled eyes brought joy to the remainder of Shadewraiths cirg her.
{“Bring us into you, Archaios Enas. We wish to serve and feed from these…mages.”}
Archaios Enas opened her hand and the st of the Shadewraiths turned into their small swirling balls of bck, before she tucked them away much like a mother g for her young in a . “I am ing for you, Tatum Bckwell.” She howled loudly and with such force that the sound echoed through the burning city and briefly added a jolt of fear power into her body. “Such delightful shells. Simple flesh-shells.” Archaios Enas took off running down the hill and to what was left of the car she’d stolen.
{“Brethren, beloved. Set that part of the city afme, we attaow.”}
{“As Archaios Enas asks. Follow the suffering to yoal.”}
A few Shadewraiths offered as the others darted off, their ghostlike bd sooty forms deepening the night sky to such a point where they temporarily blotted out the light of the moon.
Walking along the streets of the subdivision that she’d protected for many years from the vampire rage that had overtaken the area, Tatum Bckwell was currently helping her neighbors by openly summoning raio saturate the ground to the point that the streets were covered in an inch of rain and magically staying in pbsp; A few of her udents were getting the hang of how to watd listen to the earth and subsequently act when the runes presehemselves.
Three of Tatum's best students had taken it among themselves while she and the others were dousing the nd in water, to move the visible tree line back at least te in the hopes that if the fires got to the woods, that the wicked fmes would not take root within the small group of homes. “That should do it..dies alemen.” Tatum said as she was having a bit of a memory problem recalling the student’s names. “I will learn them all in time, All good things in time.” Turning and walking back to her own home, Tatum stood looking at her pin little rancher and then looked down at small bags of bloodstohat she’d stolen from the Swift Creek Mill Pyhouse. “Water alone won’t stick to the house, hummm.”
A student walked up and stood to Tatum’s right. “What are you pnning ma’am?” a male voice still in his early twenties, inquired of the archmage. He opened his hand and showed Tatum the white rune embedded in his palm. “Are you ever going to tell us what we should call you?”
It took a few seds for Tatum to break from her thoughts and look at her young student. A smile came across the older woman’s face as she finally remembered a name. “Stelin, right?” She watched as he grinned and shook his head in obvious reverence. “Just call me Tatum, I am going to keep us as informal as I .” She looked around and saw the rest of the group as they walked up to Tatum and then stood behind her. Thinking about something sickly sweet and thick, Tatum spun on her heels and faced her small of mages. “First, I am going to cover our home with a version of ‘sticky’ water and bloodstone.” She held up her own white ruhat had over the years grown more promi. “My friends, I am not a teacher and I holy hated syself.” She ughed, “I went to an art school with the most talented of our kind to avoid the o study for hours.”
“Aren’t you an attorney, Miss B..um…Tatum?” a sweet southern at came from a woman in her mid-thirties asked. “Zoe , Ma’am.” She offered sheepishly.
