We can at the least wait until he can run on his own, not much to be trained if he’s still a child," I opted to speak aloud instead of through telepathy, but kept my voice low.
'I wonder about that; what two-year-old child is reading books that large?' He paused to let out a yawn before promptly plopping his head back on his pillow. 'You and I both saw the spirit that day, and Ace's seems to match up nicely.'
I considered his words for a moment. Ace had been unusually smart, but not overly so. He still cried, giggled, and pooped as any baby would. Aside from his odd magical and reading ability, he was as much a baby as any other. They say you can tell someone's intentions from looking into their eyes, and when Alecia embraces him, his eyes look truly at peace. I opted to answer telepathically this time, lowering the mental barrier around the memories Ace simply acting like a baby. Ace giggling, Ace crying, Ace sleeping, Ace wagging his arms in curiosity at the sight of Hubert.
A painting is worth a thousand words, but a memory is worth a million. Hubert mentally nodded his understanding to me, realizing what I meant.
" We can still monitor and guide him; if something seems amiss, then we'll cross that bridge when we get there," I spoke aloud. I tossed Hubert one of his favorite treats and scratched behind his ear. Despite his current minimized form, Hubert was older than me by almost two hundred years. While I wasn't overly suspicious of Ace, I still wouldn't ignore the words of my partner; he had saved my life many times over our time travelling together.
I met him on a day when my party and I had gone particularly deep into the Great Forest of Atron to explore and map. We were all high-tier magic users from all over Athia, and we were arrogant. There were four of us, and we hadn't found a single creature we had trouble defeating when we were together. We had found old ruins of a fortress buried deep underground; it was almost a city it was so large. We had inadvertently alerted the traps of the abandoned fortress. When nothing of note occurred after the mana around the trap flared and disappeared, we waited for a bit before continuing. We had discovered a crown made of blood mana in the throne room, so repulsing that it was a struggle looking directly at it or even being in its vicinity. I had begrudgingly carried the crown on a bed of wind mana, floating it a few meters behind us at all times.
We had advanced past the dark throne room and into a hidden basement that our nature-mana specialist had noticed. When we reached the bottom, we were let out into a large shadowy hallway lined with portraits and texts in a language I still to this day did not recognize. The portraits portrayed the various races of people living among the continent, but all seemed to have a dark, foreboding tone. Moreover, all of the pictures were drawn in blacks and whites, with no room for color, making everything depicted seem depressing.
At the end of the hallway stood a massive door, similar to the one we had passed entering the throne room. The difference, however, was the meter-long black shield with a white bat taking flight built into the door. It looked like an insignia or symbol of some sort. After opening the sizeable door, we were let out into a colossal room; this one had the appearance of a church of sorts. Black chairs lined the room on the left and right sides, set up in rows facing towards the stage at the front. They parted in the middle of the room/church to leave a pathway to the stage. If that wasn't ominous enough, the front of the room had a massive ivory portal-looking structure. Two pure white pillars reached into the air, connecting in an arc at the top. Directly above it was another shield with the same symbol as the one on the door but at least three times larger. It commanded a presence and radiated blood mana aura. I felt like I was being watched by an invisible foe hiding in the shield.
The four of us had walked up in the middle row in silence; only the tap-tap-tap of our shoes could be heard echoing around the room. The crown still floated behind me, my party giving it a wide berth as I led the way to the portal. Then, as we were about 20 meters away from the sweeping ivory portal, it began to glow. Turning on my mana vision, I watched as the mana surrounding the portal disappeared; it wasn't being destroyed but being displaced. This was my first encounter with space mana, and it was not an enjoyable experience.
My group and I tensed, awaiting an explosion or something of the sort. What we did not expect was a lone man walking out of the now ultra-bright portal. All at once, the light it had emitted was extinguished; the portal was back to being simply a fancy decoration. Right after that came the pressure. It was a technique just about anyone could use, spreading your mana out across the room. While harmless at the weaker ranks, it could be a powerful tool for the strong. The mana pressure he had exuded that day surpassed even that of my current self, nearly fifty years in the future, and I still could not match him evenly.
The man was covered in a red and black coat that covered his figure but did nothing to hide his height. He was at the very minimum seven feet tall, with deathly pale skin and glowing red eyes and a mane of blonde hair falling around his face. Each of my companions reinforced their bodies with their respective mana affinities. No one was messing around; we could feel he was strong, stronger than any of us.
Our team leader, Camille Speargrove, immediately called for our retreat, her nature mana growing a small forest between the enemy and us. She was a demi-human of the fox kin race, with soft facial features and two fluffy ears sprouting out at the top of her auburn hair. Her tail twitched in nervousness as myself and Thadrick Earthson, a prodigious dwarf hailing from the famous Earthson family, retreated towards the hallway we came from. Even Alfred Hunter, a human raised near a volcano with nearly unmatched fire mana, ran back with us. We got into formation. Alfred and I took up the rear while Thadrick played defense around Camille, our healer.
It was a basic formation, but the basics worked, at least they normally did, unless your enemy teleports to your healer and slashes her throat. I had loved Camille at the time; she had saved my life a few times with her miraculous healing arts and was a great friend to boot. At the time, her death was so sudden I'd refused to believe my eyes. How could something so precious be stolen so easily? She had been killed so fast there was nothing we could do. Our normal formation relied on Alfred and me being on the front lines, with her in the back. There was no way we could have known he would teleport. After all, it was nearly unheard of for anyone to be able to utilize space mana.
Camille's eyes widened in surprise before her body slumped to the floor, lifeless. In the time I took to force myself out of my stupor, he had moved on to Thackrick, who was also unable to react in time before meeting a similar fate. He had snapped out of his daze faster than the rest of us, instantly bringing up and multilayered wall of stone in between him and his opponent. I watched in horror as the blonde man brought his clawed fingers to the mana-made wall and plowed through it. With his bare hands, he had broken through multiple layers of stone and pierced Thackwicks heart. He ripped his clawed fingers out of Thackrick's heart and let his body hit the floor with a thump.
He turned his head to look at me and Alfred, who, like me, was still shocked by the sight in front of us. He blocked our exit now, as we had been behind Thackrick and Camillie to stall him as long as possible. As he had turned his head, his hood fell off, and his face came into view. I looked once more at his tail of blonde hair extending down to his shoulders, his glowing red eyes, his V-shaped eyebrows, and his sharp upturned nose. Despite all that, his most terrifying feature came to light when he smiled at us, flashing his pearly white teeth at us. This, however, included the four long and sharp canine teeth extending out farther than any normal teeth would've. He kept his eyes trained on us as he brought his bloodied fingers to his lips and licked off the blood. He swallowed lightly with a pensive look on his face before his smile turned upwards even further, accentuating his large canines.
"Tas-ty, yes!" the blonde man managed in what sounded like broken Athian language.
I hadn't been able to muster a reply in confusion, grief, and shock all at once. He licked off his other fingers in a similar fashion, looking pleased with himself. Never breaking his eyes off of the two of us until he looked behind me. The only thing that should have been behind me was the crown. The crown that exuded blood aura no less. His face lost its amused expression and shifted into anger.
"MINE!" He screamed, pointing his clawed fingers behind me to the crown.
His face changed once more, taking on the expression he had before teleporting. I had learned my lesson by that point; it was clear he needed to focus to teleport. I willed my mana outwards and let loose a barrage of wind blades towards him, sharp condensed wind with great cutting power. Alfred, beside me, created a violent torrent of flames; it was much different than his usual refined and controlled fire, these flames were filled with the rage and loss of losing his two comrades. I combined my wind with his fire, bolstering it even further before we shot it at the tall blonde man.
The wind blades had interrupted his focus, forcing him to use pull his fingers free from where they had been clenched and slash each blade of wind with his claws. When he saw the enormous fireball heading his way, a bloodred shining sword materialized in his hand. He brought the glistening blade down onto the fireball, where it split in two, one side grazing his left arm while the other crashed into the four-meter shield that hung over the portal. The shield began teetering on its stand and was starting to tip over onto the ivory pillars. Despite the edges of his left arm being destroyed and his still on fire cloak, when he saw the shield begin to fall, he sped up and ran towards it. I nearly suspected he had teleported again from the speed he moved towards the portal and realized that he was toying with us. We had zero hope of winning this fight.
"We need to run, escape this place alive and warn the country; if this monster gets loose, we'll need our very best warriors to have even a hope of victory," I said to Alfred, fighting hard to keep my voice from trembling. I took one last look back as the enemy grabbed the entire shield out of the air and threw it down at the seats lining the room. One last look at Camille. One last look at Thackrick. Then we ran for the door.
Once we reached the door to the hallway, I turned on my heel and gathered nearly all my mana. I spread it out at key points that held the structure up, pillars, ceilings, support beams, whatever looked important. I summoned even more refined blades of wind and cut down the support network before summoning a tornado in the middle of the room for good measure. Once I got it going, I didn't need to feed it mana more mana for it to continue, it would eventually die out on its own, but it should buy us some time. The church-like building began to crumble and collapse.
I saw the man summon a sea of blood mana, giving it a corporeal form and deploying it to the various crumbling structures. Wherever my wind blades had sliced were being quickly filled in with hardened bloodstone. As for the tornado, it was enveloped in Dark-type mana, one of the rarest forms on the planet. I had no longer wanted to stay and watch the building crumble, opting instead to chase after Alfred, who was waiting for me on the stairs.
As much as I wanted to go faster, I was drained of mana, my core near empty and with little wind mana or water mana in the atmosphere to absorb. The rumbling that had accompanied the room being destroyed suddenly ceased when we were outside the fortress walls. That was when Hubert had come to us, offering us a ride out. I remember when he descended from the fortress walls with his five-meter long-form, looking majestic as you'd expect a descending angel, or in this case griffin, to be.
He had briefly spoken telepathically before he allowed us onto his back and flapped his mighty wings, blowing away the dust in the surrounding area. He had almost reached the cave we'd come from when the blonde man appeared at the entrance. He looked around and locked eyes with me, and I knew right away. Even on a griffin, we had zero chance of escape unless we were further away. It was also not lost on me that his left arm, which had been partially destroyed by fire, was back to pale, unblemished skin; he had regenerated. So, I did what any sane person would do. I hurled the crown halfway across the underground forest. He looked briefly between myself and the crown before dashing off in the distance towards the still-falling blood crown. The last I saw of him was when the man once again locked eyes with me and smiled, exposing his canines once again, holding the crown in his hands. I watched him place the crown gently atop his head, and the man, no, the vampire, looked like
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