The Vampire & Her Witch

Heila’s concentration on her snow cloud spell shattered when Ignatious’s deeply anguished howl of pain split the night. Fat, fluffy snowflakes still hung in the air, drifting slowly toward the ground but the barrage of snowballs ceased as she turned her attention to the injured vampire.

Pale yellowish-gold flames ran along the length of the blade, turning a darker reddish-orange where they spilled from the hilt of the sword onto the former Inquisitor’s charred and blackened hands. Already, the flesh on the backs of his hands and a few of his fingers had begun to crack and split, revealing pale white bone and tendon beneath the charred and blackened skin.

”Ignatious!” Heila shouted, instantly gathering a handful of snow from the ground at her feet and rushing toward him. ”Drop the sword!” she yelled, flinging the snow on his hands in the hopes of doing something to counter the heat. The snow, however, did nothing to improve matters, melting before it could even reach the blade and turning into a cloud of steem that froze in the air as it drifted away.

”I, c-can’t, let g-go,” Ignatious said through gritted teeth. Blood ran down his chin from where his fangs had pierced his lips as he tried to summon the will to fight back against the flames of the blade but nothing he did seemed to help.

In fact, the more he fought, the worse matters became as the blade drank in his energy like a vampire consuming blood, turning it into its own strength and feeding it back to him in the form of hotter, more penetrating flames. Already, the flames were spreading up his forearms, burning away the red and gold robes of the Inquisition and revealing pale flesh that had begun to blister and crack.

”You have to!” Heila cried, wracking her brain for something, anything that she could do. Strangely, the heat of the blade had done nothing to the snow around Ignatious despite the fact that it’s flames were hot enough to boil the blood in his veins. The only time it seemed to do anything to the environment was when Heila tried to use snow to fight the flames or soothe his wounds.

”What if you give up?” Heila asked as she tried to recall everything the artificer had said about the Holy Flame Blade. ”Didn’t Erkembalt say that if the sword won the struggle, it would leave you exhausted but unharmed? Why is this happening?”

”I can’t give up,” Ignatious said through clenched teeth. He’d already tried surrendering to the blade once and that decision had allowed the flames to spread almost to his elbows. If he gave the blade any more ground, it would only drink more deeply from the vast pool of energy he carried and it would use that energy to immolate him until nothing remained but bones and ash.

”I’m sorry, little Heila,” the vampire said as a defeated expression appeared on his face. ”Perhaps I can endure until it’s drained me dry,” he said as he pushed back against the blade, forcing the flames to halt their advance beyond his forearms. ”But I’ll be no use to you or Lady Ashlynn.”

”No!” Heila snapped, lowering her head and slamming into the defeated looking vampire with both of her horns. The blow knocked him to the ground, falling awkwardly on his back as Heila forced him down to a level where she could reach the burning blade. ”You don’t give up! Not when Lady Ashlynn needs you,” she said.

”My Lady,” Kurtz snapped, his eyes wide in horror as he rushed forward to pull his daughter’s hero away from the burning vampire before the flames could consume her. He’d come all the way to this frozen, barren nowhere to keep her safe from the enemies that were massing even now on the fortress walls but he’d never imagined that the person he would need to protect her from the most was herself! If anything happened to her here and he did nothing...

”Stay back!” Heila snapped, not even looking in Kurtz’s direction as she focused all of her attention on Ignatious. Tears of frustration froze on Heila’s lashes in the freezing winds of the mountainside, limiting her vision but she paid it no mind as her hands fumbled at her waist for her Severing Knife.

The blade of her knife wasn’t very sharp, in fact, it was deliberately dull. Jacques and Amahle had helped her to carve the knife from the the tooth of a Giant Thornback Alligator after she and Ashlynn hunted it for their ’graduation exam.’ To Heila, the knife wasn’t a weapon but a tool that was only intended to cut through magic.

The knife alone, however, wouldn’t be enough for what she had in mind but she had very little time to compose an effective spell for what she had to do. Instead, she focused on the feeling deep within her chest and let the most fervent desire in her heart form the words she used.

”From snow and ice, my guard now form,

Let water’s chill quench fire’s storm!”

”Heila, what are you...” Ignatious started to ask, only for his eyes to go wide in shock as Heila stabbed her curved, bone blade between his fingers and began to pry.

”Please, Lady Heila,” he pleaded, watching the flames begin to dance over her tiny hands, slowly burning through her own protective magic. ”If the flames reach you...”

”They won’t,” Heila said fiercely. She might not have any trees or even weeds to draw on to power her wood and healing magics, but there was plenty of ice and snow which meant there wasn’t just an abundance of water energy trapped on the mountain, there was an abundance of very cold water energy.

Now, she opened herself up to the bitter cold of the mountain, drawing the energy into her body and using it to create a barrier between herself and the sword’s flames as she worked frantically with the Severing Knife.

She only hoped that the knife’s magic was strong enough to resist such an ancient, powerful artifact, because if it wasn’t... then there was truly nothing else she could do but watch as Ignatious was consumed by the flames of his own sword.