2.5 hours until clone death
Another fireball careened through the air over Henry’s head, impacting with one of the many statues that lined the halls and turning it into rubble in an instant. He hadn’t had the time nor the willingness to bother clocking who it was depicting. Some old dead guy, from the brief glance he’d given it. Only slightly less important than the dead guy he was about to be if he didn’t hurry up and find a way out of this situation.
Henry’s breath grew ragged at the edges as he stumbled back to his feet from where he’d taken cover. A bit of a rhythm had developed, where It took several seconds for the vampires to conjure the next blast of flame, giving them time to cover some ground just before the next shot was sent off.
While the destructive power of the end result could be attested to, it took longer than even a middling Subway Wizard would have taken to accomplish the same feat. Hell, even some of the Club’s messy magitech ‘engineering’ could produce a similar result in a third of the time, provided mana cost was no object.
As it turned out, there was a reason for that. On one of the off times he risked glancing back to figure out why, he struck information gold and saw the vampiric trio feeding separate streams of Fire mana into a singular orb after they had skidded to a halt to concentrate. Somewhere along the line, they’d figured out to pool their mana together to get the results they wanted.
A coordinated spell. While it wasn’t entirely an unheard-of technique, it was… niche to say the least.
Firstly, mixing and matching mana of different Domain attunements was a complete no-go. Most of the time, all it accomplished was wasting magic and causing the result to fizzle out into nothing. The less said about the rare exceptions, the better.
Add on top of that that each caster needed to know what spell was being cast beforehand so they could conjure it in tandem with the rest of the gathered mages, and suddenly you had a very pigeonholed method of magic which gave spells a modest boost in raw power at the cost of being unable to handle any amount of complexity. Something that the innovation of enchantments accomplished much more efficiently and reliably, provided you etched in the ley lines properly.
Then again, a ball of fire was about as basic as it got. And those could do plenty with extra juice.
But, it did indicate a crucial detail about this new breed of vamp. Individually, none of them seemed to be capable of using Domains in any practical capacity.
Henry felt… relieved that it took three vampires each hopped up on what must have been gallons of human blood to even approach the level of a regular combat caster. The downside right now was that three vampires hopped up on gallons of human blood was more than their under-supplied, handicapped expeditionary force could reasonably take on, fireballs or not.
“Keep moving!”, Gordon shouted from the rear of the formation. “Just a few turns further!”
The words felt redundant and a little hollow, considering each of them knew that the exit at the end was still blocked. It hadn’t been the only reinforced doorway they’d come across while wandering around down here, but it was most definitely the only one that hadn’t been locked.
Well, for a sense of the term, anyway. That one had been booby-trapped to hell, but at least it opened. None of the others had been trapped, thankfully, but they hadn’t budged, either.
Henry wracked his brain for options, drafting half-baked ideas and casting them out equally as quickly as he continued to sprint down the hall despite the protests of his lungs. As his blood pumped faster and faster, so too did the leak in his forearm begin to pick up the pace. Best he could do was grit his teeth and bear it, but that didn’t do his train of thought any favors.
He nearly tripped on his own feet as a piece of rubble he hadn’t noticed got between his foot and its next step. Recovering just barely in the nick of time, he felt his knee flare up in discomfort as he pushed himself to keep moving forward.
“Gordon!”, he shouted. “I have a plan on how to get us out of this!”
Henry received an uninterested grunt in response from the man as he sprayed a short burst of SMG fire over his shoulder.
“Oh yeah? And why should I trust that? As I recall, your plans tend to end up with people dying.”
“Please, just listen to me! You’ll like this one!”, Henry insisted. “After all, you’ll get to kill me!”
“What?!”, Layla blurted out as an interjection. “Why would you offer that up?!”
“Relax… It’s not going to be, you know, me me. It’s only a copy, so don’t worry!”
She made a sour face beneath her hood as she ran alongside him. He got the distinct impression that she was not so dismissive.
“Henry, this…” she muttered as Gordon’s attention went back to giving return fire. “This isn’t the sort of thing you’re supposed to be able to act about, you know!”
“I can, and I will,” he returned dead seriously. “Believe me, I’d be much worse off in the head if I didn’t.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“But-”
“No buts! Now listen close because I’m going to need your-”
“INCOMING!”
Gordon bellowed as yet another fireball raced towards their position. On instinct, the four of them found a patch of dirt to cower on as they braced for impact. The tunnel shook, and yet another masterwork sculpture met its untimely demise in their stead.
His thoughts were cut short as Gordon got to his feet first and dragged Henry upright as he ran along.
“Okay, you have thirty seconds to tell me exactly what this plan of yours is!”
“I’ve got clones up above who can reach the control altar if I can get a message to them,” he explained hurriedly. “If one of us dies and another doesn’t see it, they get a brief vision of what happened. I write instructions on how to get us out of here, put them in my copy’s hands while you make him take a dirt nap, and we have a chance of seeing the surface again!”
“Bloody you were hiding something!” Gordon’s football hooligan accent slipped back into place for a brief moment, but quickly fell back underneath the professional diction Henry had started to grow accustomed to. “Ugh… fine. Could’ve been worse, anyways. Get cracking!”
The undercover operative of the Gentleman’s Club struck Henry as the type who liked to be in control, but at the very least he knew when to cede the floor once that control had been lost entirely. He couldn’t really say he liked it… but he could at least respect it.
Now that he had the green light, he didn’t waste another moment.
“Something to write with. Does anyone have a pen and paper on them?”
Gordon narrowed his eyes in his direction as they rounded another corner. “Do I look like a bookworm to you? Maybe the Shroudwalker’s got something.”
Layla turned her head to face him, but nearly ran into a statue as she began talking. The misstep barely slowed her down as she was able to veer to the side in time, but it did still slow her down.
“Sorry, I’m- gah! – I’m a scav first and a fighter second. Written records are for the quartermaster to deal with!”
“Damn it, okay, phone it is! Back pocket!”
He pointed at Layla to help him fish out his flip phone, and she complied. A tendril of opaque mist gushed out of her palm and towards Henry, and before long he had the weathered clamshell-shaped piece of tech in his hands.
Past that point things got… marginally easier. Kind of. He could actually press the buttons, but navigating the user interface on the old worn keypad was going to be a bit clunky no matter what he did.
Texting was always a pain with this thing. Normally, he’d just call, but that wasn’t an option right now.
Henry ducked just in the nick of time as a smaller, much faster fireball flew over his shoulder, missing his head by mere centimeters. He could feel the heat radiating off of it as it zipped by, taking a fist sized chunk out of the floor ahead. Then several more followed past the first, forcing him to duck into an alcove to avoid getting roasted.
The vamps had switched from one big attack to multiple smaller ones. They were magic, not just relying on the basics.
“Damn it, they’ve changed tactics!”, Gordon shouted unhelpfully from his own alcove. Similarly, Layla and the Harpy had slipped into one of their own each as well. They were all now pinned, and the vamps were advancing slowly one by one.
Henry hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it needed to be said nonetheless. “We should hold here for a bit! I can’t type run keep my head on a swivel! We’d need to find a place to hold out, anyways!”
Gordon visibly did not like that call, but fortunately at least was willing to build off of it constructively.
“Harpy! Front and center! Focus on the fireballs, Air blades for point defense! Protect us with your life! We’re doing a fighting retreat!”
It was doubtful that the Harpy was exactly happy with its role, but it complied in the same puppeteered fashion nonetheless. They matched the pace of the vampires advance as the two branches of Domain magic clashed midair, making small noises where they collided with each other.
It was, for now, sustainable. Henry made sure to make the most of it before tactics changed for a second time.
He got about three quarters of the way through the message before that happened.
This time, the vampires downsized their attacks even further. Breaking their cohesion entirely, they each began launching their own small flurries of attacks, each flame wisp no larger than the size of a pea, but in much greater numbers that the Harpy could no longer deflect them all.
With no choice remaining if it wanted to preserve its own life, it wrapped its wings around to the front of it, blocking the incoming fusillade at the expense of its own offense. The vampires seized on this opportunity immediately, galloping down the hall at breakneck speeds to close into melee range.
“Hurry up, kid! We should have been gone yesterday!”
One vampire pounced on the Harpy. Then a second. The third slipped past, mouth practically frothing as it leapt through the air fangs outstretched towards Gordon’s throat.
Layla decided that the time for playing damsel in distress had long since passed.
Two clouds of mist burst from her arms, only to be immediately sucked back in through her… pores? Went back into her arms. When the haze cleared, however, they were both free of their restraints, and the zip-ties hung limply around the frame of her pack.
She blitzed in front of Gordon, ducking low while aiming high, with a mean right hook aimed straight between the lunging vampire's eyes. Fist connected with face, and a second burst of fog issued forth immediately upon contact.
A ring-like cloud dispersed around the point of impact, and the vampire went flying back down the hallway, face mangled and collapsing in a disheveled heap.
Black blood oozed from every new crevice in its mashed skull. Something the other vampires took notice of immediately.
Turning away from the comparatively slim pickings of the Harpy’s metallic frame, they smelled the blood in the air and returned to the still living body of their once ally, tearing into it so that none of the precious bounty it had gathered went to waste seeping into the floor.
He hadn’t known vampires could scream in . They might not be human, but sometimes they got close enough to hit the uncanny valley.
Henry wanted nothing to do with it. Fortunately, it had given him just enough time to finish the message and get his copy summoned.
“Gordon!” he shouted towards the head member of the GC, who still seemed a little fazed by his close brush with death.
Henry barely had time to get the phone in his duplicate’s hand before the small bead of water drilled through the copy’s ear and came out the other side. The reactive shield did pop up for a brief moment, but was shattered quickly as more and more power was pumped into the tiny speck of glowing blue liquid.
The second pass might have been justified, but by the time the bead took a third and fourth route through his duplicate’s cranium, it had long since hit the ground. Henry let the man take out his pent-up frustrations as he saw fit, gingerly removing his phone from the dead body’s grasp as Gordon worked on his anger issues in a… healthy manner? He couldn’t say for sure, but considering how close it was to actually addressing the man’s gripes, it probably was not too far off from that.
At least, to a fault. They were wasting precious time while he continued his percussive therapy session.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough. We need to get as much distance as we can, now.”
He saw how Gordon considered him after that statement. Weighing if he wanted to risk his boss’s ire by getting a fresh target. He considered himself fortunate when the moment passed and Gordon took the lead again.
As he past them, he nodded in Layla’s direction. “Thanks for the save. You can ditch the ties for now, but don’t forget that we’re all dead if you try something.”
Layla nodded, and Henry and the Harpy fell in behind, one checking themselves for damage while the other desperately tried to ignore the sickening slurping noise coming from the two remaining vamps.
