I own only Durin and the wizards mentioned.
Welcome dear reader to the addled mess that is my mind. Herein lies a few patches to plot holes that were never answered.
I look forward to the reviews.
------------
It was cold and wet in the forest as a light rain fell. A cloaked figure walked slowly along a small back trail. Wrapping his cloak tightly around himself and offering a silent prayer of thanks for modern materials Durin stopped to observe his surroundings.
It was very dim and he could not see well but thankfully he was not trying to use his eyes. Casting any form of detecting spell is always easier in the wild. The spell told him that something unnatural was at work. It was not major but the forest was slightly out of its normal rhythm.
The Mage Council had sent Durin to investigate a large increase of strange animal deaths and a strange path of murders that was headed strait for the area. Some of the other investigator wizards believed that the two events were related and thanks to all the noise that the local Mage Chapter had made, the High Council had sent in the Guardian.
That meant Durin was getting tossed feet first into another unknown situation.
It also did not help that he knew that the Council was planning a huge operation in Italy.
"Here I am getting soaked on a wild goose chase and everyone else is having a pizza party." Durin kept on grumbling as he walked on. "Well at least my rain gear is better these days."
After walking a few more miles Durin crested a hill and looked down on the town. This modern American small town was dead center of the strange happenings. The mission brief had designated this town as Forks. Before heading into town he reinforced the illusion spell that hid his two handed sword.
Another soggy mile brought Durin to a cheap motel at the edge of the town. He paid for his room and dropped of his small backpack of clothes and examined his room. It was small, lightly furnished but clean. Durin also noted the heavy door and single small window. The room would do nicely.
The clock read half past four. So the tired Guardian decided to take an early dinner.
He did not expect any trouble in the town itself so he hid his blade in the room. After securing the place with wards he went to find something to eat.
He stopped at a café, bought a sandwich and a warm drink. As he was eating he felt something he did not expect, a mental probe headed in his direction. Durin immediately raised a temporary magic shield around his mind. The shield held long enough for him to raise stronger defenses. It was a good thing too given that the telepathic probe had locked on to him.
Durin used his own psychic training to trace the probe. It was coming from a young man who had just walked into the shop. The guy looked like he was slated for a career as a model, which Durin found very ironic. The boy had a vacant look in his eyes and though his attention was fixed on Durin his facial expression looked rather… bored. An air headed psychic, oh boy.
The unnerving thing was how the kid was looking at him. I recognize that look; I used it myself over eight hundred years ago. He was about to send the telepath a death glare when a girl walked in obviously fixated on the man. The chick's presence caused a conflict in the boy. His mental probe went back and forth between Durin and this girl. When the pair fixed their physical attentions on each other Durin made a quick getaway.
As soon as he was out of sight Durin cast out his own mind at the young girl's mind. There was more resistance in her mind than he expected. The reason was that her mind was completely obsessed with the young telepath and the girl appeared to be a Basic level Screener. At that moment it hit him. The boy was fascinated with both of them because he could not read their minds. When Durin finally got past the girl's obsessive thoughts he found some useful information. For starters her name was Isabella Swan . Bella and the telepath was named Edward Cullen.
Aside from that her head was mostly empty.
Durin decided to head back to his room and contact the local Chapter. After securing the room he prepped the com crystal and recited the proper incantation. The crystal created a holographic image of a middle aged man. "Greetings Guardian, we were expecting your call." "Hello Motemer, do you have any new information for me?"
"Well the only thing of any importance is that we have identified the common factor in all the deaths." Durin nodded as this would be very helpful. "All of the corpses had their jugulars ripped open buy what seem to be very sharp human teeth and then drained of blood." "Drained of blood? That sounds like vampires so why are there no puncture wounds?" The mage looked down for a moment, "This seems to be the work of a rare breed of vampire that is resistant to sunlight and most other conventional methods of slaying. The Council led a campaign against these monsters in the early Middle Ages. We thought we got rid of them all but a few holed up in Italy and spread slowly to the Americas. I'm sending more information now."
A small packet was teleported in a few minutes after Durin cut the connection. He decided to wait till morning to read it.
After resetting his wards Durin went to sleep.
The first ward that was tripped was the psychic one. This woke him up. After guarding his mind for the second time in the same day Durin expected nothing to come of it but he decided to maintain it for a few minutes just to be safe. Basic psychic powers are not too uncommon after all. What really surprised him was when the proximity ward was tripped about a minute later.
This made Durin get out of bed and put his boots back on. Right about that time he heard someone picking the lock on his window. The window opened and the intruder was rewarded with a few hard kicks to the head and chest. The intruder's body seemed harder than usual. Is this guy wearing body armor? Durin then grabbed the person and threw them to the floor. After turning on the lights and twisting the idiot's arm he looked to see who had decided to break into his room.
Much to his surprise the intruder was the boy from the café. Even thought the way Durin had his arm held should have made it impossible to move the boy was struggling so strongly that it took almost all his strength and weight to hold him. At the point where any more pressure would have damaged the boy's shoulder he stopped moving. "Twitch the wrong way and I'll tare you arm out of its socket. What the hell were you doing breaking into my room?" Durin asked. The boy stammered "I was seeing you." This response caused the bewildered Guardian to raise an eyebrow. At this point Durin decided the conversation was over. "If you want to speak to me you can track me down during daylight hours. Now get out and if you ever disturb me in this way again I will probably kill you."
Hauling the kid to his feet he cracked the foolish teen's head against the door and gave the captured arm a final wrench for good measure. After locking the door again Durin noted a dent where the boy's head had hit. He had also had not been wearing any form of armor
"Now that I'm up and taken out the trash what am I going to do?" It was almost five in the morning so he did some paperwork. He started to write up the report to bring this Edward and the girl to the Council's attention for possible training when he remembered the vampire information on the dresser.
According to the report these vamps had rock-like skin, super-human strength, speed and flammable "venom" for fluids. In short it was nothing an experienced caster couldn't handle. Half of this sounded oddly familiar.
After breakfast it was back to the woods. After a few tracing spells he found one of the vampire's kills. A brown bear was on the ground nearly torn to bits. The creature had been dead nearly a week and it smelled of it. The other thing that the Guardian noted was that the plants were all dieing. Even the trees were looking ill.
Over the next few days he found several other sites like the first. He even had to burn a few corpses.
One afternoon Durin was still scouring the woods when he sensed two others near by and one of them was not human. Casting a few concealing spells to make sure he was not detected he climbed though the trees to see what was going on. He soon reached a clearing where the two stood.
He immediately recognized the boy as Edward from their two past meetings and the same girl from the café, Bella. The boy was just confirming that he was a vampire, as Durin already suspected, as the sun came though the clouds. The second the light hit the vampire he started shining in what Durin first thought was the most bizarre glamour he had ever seen. Another look reveled that it was no illusion and that the kid's skin really did sparkle. It was all he could do to not make a sound as he wanted to laugh so badly.
After that strange scene the vampire started to dart around the girl in a blatant intimidation play. The odd thing was the way the two of them were talking to each other. It was certainly not the way that one would normally address their lunch or their murderer. After some more showing off the vampire started to ask the girl whether or not she was afraid of him. This is where Durin decided to step in. Grabbing the vampire telekinetically, he lifted him about a yard off the ground as his concealment fell away. "You! What are you doing here?" Holding him suspended in the air so all he could do was flail around helplessly Durin smiled. "As nice as it is to have your suspicions confirmed I can't have you killing this poor girl in front of me." Durin peered into the vampires mind and shielded his own. The first thing he noticed as he entered the vamp's psyche was that it was very similar to a stagnant pool. "Let's see who else you killed lately, shall we?" It was a bit of a surprise when he found out that Edward and his coven was not responsible for the murders. "How can you be both hiding your thoughts and reading mine at the same time? You're just a human you shouldn't be able to do all this!" "I practice" was the Guardian's reply as he let the vampire go. The monster ran in fear.
The girl was still standing there looking on blankly as if trying to comprehend what just happened. "Good afternoon, Ms. Swan." "Who are you and how do you know my name?" she asked. "My name is Durin and as to how I know your name did you not hear the vampire?" "That's impossible he can't read my mind, so how can you?" "Same answer. Though your natural ability to shield your thoughts is note worthy. My associates and I can help you develop that ability and teach you more, if you're interested." "Associates?" Durin launched into a full fledged recruitment pitch. "I work for the Mage Council, a world spanning organization of wizards that protects people. We can train you to be far more powerful that that vampire." "So you 'wizards' can be stronger and faster than Edward?" "Yes, but only in short bursts, those kinds of stunts burn magic faster than conventional spell casting." When she looked like she didn't get it he explained "You know fireballs, lightning that sort of thing." Durin then turned to face her "So are you interested?" Bella took one good look at his face and immediately shut down and walked away. He caught one word in her mind as she did "ugly". Durin thought that was uncalled for even though it was accurate since his face was mostly scar tissue. "Rude" was the last word he had on the matter.
One evening as a storm was coming in he got a call from the Chapter head, an older woman named Ellen Samuel. "Evening Madam." Durin said while bowing, "What can I do for you?" "This is an emergency Guardian we have confirmed the presence of the band of vampires that has been murdering people." This news shocked Durin "Where are they?" "Near the baseball field, there are three of them." "I'm on it"
He hurried to the baseball field. It just started to rain when he arrived.
As he was approaching the field he noticed three people walking towards him. His sensing spells revealed that he had just run into his targets.
There were two men and a woman and they appeared to be sizing him up. "Well what do we have here?" said the lead vampire. "Looks like my dinner James." "You two can go on since you already have plans in Phoenix" the other male responded.
Durin chuckled at the comments as he drew his sword. He was about to respond when the leader and the girl dashed off. "Huh, well looks like it's just you and me then." The vampire looked at his sword "Nice blade, to bad it's not going to do you a bit of good."
At that moment the monster launched himself at Durin. Fortunately Durin was prepared and had raised a magic field a second before. His attacker collided hard with the shield, bouncing off. "You undead scum." Durin spat as he hit the stunned vampire with a lightning spell.
The vamp screamed as he was thrown violently back by the spell. Recovering the beast charged the Guardian again. This forced Durin to burn more magic to doge the attack. As his opponent came around for another pass Durin spoke a spell that sheathed his sword in fire. The vampire snarled and threw himself one more time, in a blind rage, at the Guardian. Durin used his decades of experience and almost all of his remaining magic to doge the attack and strike a killing blow.
The vampire staggered and looked at his killer in shock. "You will never kill another innocent human again. I now send you to God's judgment." The vampire screamed in agony as his venom ignited and he exploded.
"This is only the beginning." Durin said as he looked at the smoldering remains.
He made sure to get a good night's sleep that night.