Time seemed to slow. The thrown blade spun end over end, heading straight for Tilaria. She heard a shout of warning, and grabbed her dagger at her waist.
Her blade came up just in time to deflect the thrown dagger upward. She stared at the figure in the door who still had his arm still extended from the throw. As the would-be assassin's blade came spinning down, Tilaria held out her open hand and caught the hilt squarely in her palm without moving her eyes.
"Arlen?" She whispered her attacker's name.
Time returned to normal. The ambassador from Alfheim stared at Tilaria with murder in his eyes, but there was no sign of the rest of his entourage. Arlen couldn't believe that Tilaria was still alive since his aim had been dead on, but Odin's younger son had noticed his attack. Just as Arlen had thought, Loki was trouble.
With his throwing blade in Tilaria's hands Arlen drew twin daggers, eight-inches long and double edged. Rather than kill Asgard's princes he still had to deal with the halfbreed. Loki had sharp instincts to be able to sense his attack.
"Crow was right," Arlen sighed, "you are trouble, boy."
He looked at Loki when he said that, but spoke quietly enough that only Tilaria heard him? Crow? She'd never that name before. Who was that?
The slight delay was all the Star Guard needed to break free of their shock and draw their swords. Loki stood to and hopped form his chair to land on the ground behind Tilaria, his twin daggers hidden in his black bracers fell to his palms. Unlike Loki, the other children had only their training gear, but Thor grabbed the knife off the table he had been using to cut the lamb.
Arlen looked at the Æsir in disgust and moved his lips. He let his daggers hover in midair as he flicked his hand in a few hand signs to cast. Tilaria and Loki both realized what he was doing, but Tilaria was closer. Crimson light like dust flickered at his fingertips as he plucked his blades out of midair and met Tilaria's swing, twisting his blade past her guard and slicing open her cheek before she managed to jump back.
Loki knew he wouldn't make it in time so he slid to a stop while Thor idiotically lunged past him. The air condescended into a dome shaped forceshield, tinting the air around its perimeter red. The forceshield solidified just as Thor touched the perimeter and he was caught in the middle of the charm.
There was an explosion of red sparkles like a firework, and Thor was thrown back past Loki. He hit his head on the table's edge with a sickening crack and landed on the chair, half-falling off of it to the floor. His makeshift weapon fell to the floor behind him with a clatter. Loki recoiled at his brother's injury, knowing that getting caught in the middle of a forceshield as powerful as that one could easily kill a non-mage like Thor.
He was forced to look away from the forceshield and run to Thor. Loki sent out a ripple of magic ahead of him instinctively, and it confirmed that Thor still had a heartbeat before Loki reached his side. It relieved Loki immensely as he knelt beside his brother and trailed his fingers through his brother's hair. Their tips turned red, but it was damnably lucky that he was alive.
Fandral crouched by Loki's side while Sif dumped her food off her plate and threw it at the forceshield. When it hit it, the metal plate shattered into dozens of pieces and each pieced smoked red-hot as if it had been sitting in a fire for a while. The forceshield Thor had hit was certainly of a high level.
The scratch on Tilaria's cheek healed almost instantly and she faced off against alone, alone with him. She did not turn her back on Arlen to look at Thor, aware that he could easily have been killed. There was no desperate shouting for Thor to wake up or wails so she assumed that he had survived.
"Nowhere to run now, mongrel," Arlen snarled.
"I'm not running," Tilaria promised him steadily.
She raised her straight dagger and the one Arlen had thrown slowly as she fell into stance. Tilaria was aware that she was out of her league fighting Arlen, even though she sounded fierce. This was not going to be an easy fight to win, and in all honestly she didn't think there was any way she was going to survive this.
Why was Arlen trying to kill her now? And why in the middle of Asgard's dining hall? Wouldn't it make more sense to kill her on Alfheim? Did that Crow person have something to do with this?
Arlen lunged forward and Tilaria discarded her questions, raising her own daggers in defense.
One of the Star Guard whisked Thor off to the Healer's Ward and dragged Thor's friends with him so they would be safely out of the way. All Loki had to do was turn invisible and he was forgotten as usual, left behind to watch the duel between Tilaria and Arlen. It was astonishing to him the difference in their skill level compared to his own, and made it painfully clear how weak he was. The speed of their blows alone was astounding.
Tilaria's inexperience and young age were also becoming clear, for although the wounds Hallien had inflicted were healing the red stains on her clothing proved where she had been hurt. A little bit of red had splattered onto the floor or onto the surface of the forceshield. There were no red stains on Arlen's clothes yet.
As he watched the blood on the forceshield run down to the ground, he reached out with his magic for a weak spot in the forceshield. All he needed was a brief breach to implant a shard of his magic in the forceshield and shatter it from the inside out. His killhex's simply dissolved on contact with the spell, and the forceshield seemed to double as an anti-magic field for Tilaria wasn't using magic to try and shift the balance the fight.
Anti-magic zones were way above Loki's level or knowledge, and he neither knew how to override one nor break it. Why was he so weak? His weakness was going to cost Tilaria because he could see that she was starting to tire.
Was the forceshield draining Tilaria's magic to fuel itself? What a nasty spell, to not only eliminate your enemy's magic, but to have their lifeforce be drained to fuel the very thing that was canceling their magic. Time really was of the essence. If she stayed within that thing long enough then she'd black out and eventually her heart wouldn't have the energy to beat.
Tilaria and Arlen's daggers locked on each other, and she tried to slide his dagger away from her when a wave of dizziness made her head bob and her eyesight blur. The strength left her arms for a moment, and Arlen was quick to take advantage before she recovered from the drain of Seidr.
Arlen slashed her arm with one of his blades, tearing through her bracer and her arm in a wash of blood as he struck so deep his dagger scratched the bone of her arm. The pain made her drop the throwing blade she had taken from Arlen drop to the ground as he struck with his second while her balance was off. Loki almost fell of the table when Arlen stabbed her, blade in a forward grip, up between her ribs.
He saw Tilaria's lips move in a silent cry as her grip on her dirk failed and it clattered to the ground. Tilaria slumped to the ground as her body realized it didn't have enough lifeforce left to instantly heal her wounds. Arlen stood over her with a satisfied look, and Loki growled like a wolf softly. There were Star Guard ranged outside his forceshield around Loki with drawn swords, but most were not in armor.
Arlen calmly analyzed the situation outside his forceshield with steady eyes, noticing the lack of armor. Star Guard, like the Immortal Guard on Alfheim, were used to fighting with the protection of armor. If these Star Guard were like the Immortal Guard of his home then the lack of armor would make them easy targets.
The other thing that surprised Arlen was that the younger prince of Asgard Crow had warned Arlen about was sitting on the table. He knew that it was like Crow had said, he couldn't trust the Æsir. Not even the Golden Eagles, which was why Arlen had to kill her himself. It wasn't likely he would leave alive, but neither would Tilaria or the young prince who had foolishly stayed.
Taking his time, Arlen tucked his throwing blade into his belt and then picked up Tilaria's fallen dagger. He whispered the counter-spell and his forceshield stopped draining Tilaria's lifeforce. Without the steady influx of life to fuel it, it flickered and began to fade.
Of course the Star Guard tensed and readied. Before the forceshield dissolved completely, Arlen threw Tilaria's blade at Loki. Some movement had drawn the prince's eyes away, and by the time he heard the sound of a blade cutting through the air it was too late.
Arlen smiled as Tilaria's dagger hit him, and then gawked when it went through him. The illusion of himself that Loki had cast to sit on the table and be a target had done its job, so he dismissed it into a pile of rippling sparkles of magic. It was surprising for Arlen to see that for creating a lifelike and life size illusion was, oddly enough, exceedingly rare and difficult. That was the moment when the Star Guard engaged him though, so Arlen let Loki's startling skill fade away as he raised his daggers and fell into stance.
Loki, the real Loki, had been hovering near the forceshield invisibly. The forceshield had fierce recoil to it to prevent any physical damage, and it had absorbed Loki's spells to feed itself so there had been nothing for Loki to do but wait. It was close, but the forceshield came down and Arlen was distracted so Loki took advantage of the chance to reach Tilaria's side. She was still alive.
He splashed through the blood and dropped to his knees beside her, unaware of the blood soaking into his pants. Loki focused his magic to his fingertips and hovered them above the injury on her side, beginning to weave a healing spell. Once he stopped the major bleeding he'd have to give Tilaria a dose of his magic to stabilize her lifeforce. Tilaria stirred and opened her eyes partly before Loki finished healing.
"Don't move," Loki warned her quietly as the sounds of battle between Arlen and the Star Guard created a background of white noise. "I'm not that good of a healer."
It was moments like these that Loki wished Sigyn were still alive. She was a healer, and a good one. Sigyn would be able to heal Tilaria easily, but she had been killed a century ago when the Jötnar had invaded Asgard.
*I've taken worse* a voice inside Loki's mind whispered, startling him. *What about Arlen?*
Loki stared at Tilaria, aware that he had heard her voice, but hadn't seen her lips move. "The Star Guard are keeping him busy. You, are you a telepath?"
*A true one* Tilaria
Telepathy was almost as rare an ability as creating realistic illusions because you had to be born a telepath. Mages could learn to broadcast their thoughts to other mages, but to be titled a true telepath you had to be born with the ability. If you didn't have it then you didn't have it.
There was a tremendous crash, and Loki looked up as he reflexively palmed one of his dirks. Arlen had flipped a Star Guard onto one of the tables and the guard had knocked a fair amount of the food onto the floor as he fell off it to the ground. Loki's hand curled around his blade's hilt started trembling when he realized that of the dozen or so Star Guard who had faced off of Arlen initially only two were still standing. How had he tore through so many so quickly, and why didn't Arlen look like he'd even been injured?
Even as Loki watched, Arlen dispatched one of the two when he cut his throat and threw his throwing blade at another, the blade getting him in the left eye. Loki was suddenly consciously aware of the difference in his and Arlen's experience, and in their body counts. How was he supposed to fight someone that strong?
Loki was dragged out of the shock before he fell too deeply into it by Tilaria grabbing his hand that had been healing her. The contact grounded Loki, and he looked at her from Arlen. His dagger was still shaking.
*Help me* Tilaria asked Loki telepathically, her voice as soft as a moth's antenna and echoing slightly within his skull.
Loki nodded, and his dagger stopped shaking at the calm confidence Tilaria's thoughts conveyed. He didn't know what she wanted him to do, but helped her sit up so she could dip her fingers in the blood on the ground and begin to trace a symbol on the floor. It was a symbol Loki didn't recognize, and he had read half the books in Asgard's library.
The symbol was a five point star with five straight strokes, inverted. A slash went from the downward facing point down. There were also feather-like wings that resembled narrow ribbons to either side of the star and the slash that pointed outwards.
She whispered words in an alien language as she drew the symbol, a language Loki had never heard before and one that had not been spoken in five thousand years since the Dökkálfr's extinction during the Convergence. Arlen turned just as Tilaria fell quiet. The bizarre symbol glowed a dark red-black before vanishing. Loki had no idea what that was supposed to have done, but Tilaria smiled confidently, and revealed her canines were elongated into fangs.
Then the blood scattered around on the floor by the two of them, everything on their clothes, and even the blood from the dead Star Guard dissipated like a mirage. Loki didn't realize what was going on until the light in the room seemed to darken, and the air became so thick with the scent of blood that it became hard to breath. Arlen hesitated, and Loki covered his mouth with a hand as he coughed. This magic that Tilaria was using was blood magic, forbidden magic.
The disturbing twisted aura of blood magic made Loki want to flee, but Tilaria had a tight grip on his hand. A chill began to set into Loki's fingers and travel up his arm as Tilaria siphoned off his lifeforce in place of her exhausted own to work the blood magic spell. Even as the air in the dining hall darkened to a twilight gloom as if they were on Jötunnheim, Loki saw Tilaria's shadow take on a different form then hers.
Her shadow morphed and moved even though her body did not shift, and separated itself from her. Loki stared at the unexpected occurrence as it morphed into the form of a stalking wolf. The wolf shadow sniffed the air and then reached out a paw. Its paw lifted off the floor and took on the third-dimension. With a little trouble, the shadow wolf's other paw entered the third dimension and it pulled its entire body free of the second dimension. It shook its mane as it adjusted to being three-dimensional and corporeal.
The shadow-wolf turned towards Tilaria as if awaiting her order and she said "Vae'jara."
It took a second for Loki's mind to catch up with the fact that a persona's shadow had suddenly become three-dimensional and the wolf had already turned away from her to Arlen before Loki understood her word. Vae'jara was the Ljósálfr word for kill. Kill, a harmless shadow made from light hitting your body, was going to kill? Was this blood magic?
Arlen stepped back, also affected by the blood magic's twisted, fear-inducing aura. Then the wolf pounced on him as if it was a real wolf. Of course, Arlen slashed with his dagger, and the dagger sliced open the wolf's jugular. This was not a real wolf however, and just a shadow so Arlen's dagger did as much good as if he was striking at the air. The wolf's black teeth were not so useless, and Loki flinched when those teeth crunched into Arlen's throat with a sickening sound Loki had never heard before.
Arlen tried to scream but all that came was a chocked gasp. Loki started trembling again without meaning to, and watched as Arlen's eyes glazed over and his body in the shadow wolf's jaws went limp. He could hear a lapping gulping sound as the wolf drank Arlen's blood, and it was near enough that not a single drop of blood touched the ground.
Once it was finished with its meal, the wolf released its hold on Arlen's body, and raised its head towards Loki and Tilaria. Its eyes were now pure red orbs the same color as the fallen blood with a liquid sheen to it, and its teeth were also red as if the more blood it drank the more corporeal it became. It walked over to them, but Loki was saved from the possibility of bolting for as it walked it faded into the second dimension and rejoined with Tilaria's body without a sound. Once more, it looked like an innocent shadow.
That was the moment when reinforcements came onto the dining hall, but skid to a stop at the numerous bodies and disaster before them. Tilaria had slipped unconscious, so Loki cradled her head in his lap. He was the only thing still conscious in the hall, and the Star Guard calmly walked over to him. The threat was passed.
Tilaria had used blood mage, the Dökkálfr's signature magic, even though she was a Ljósálfr. Now Loki thought he understood why blood magic was one of the forbidden branches of magic as he brushed some of Tilaria's bangs from her eyes. Blood magic, what a terrifying weapon.
As you guessed, blood magic is not a good type of magic. There are actually five types of forbidden magic: blood, Fel, transfiguration, necromancy, and manmagic. There will be more details revealed about these magics as the stories progress. I could not resist telepathy, since I love the idea of it so you have one "true telepath."
I know the upside down star is a "bad symbol" to some people, but blood magic is a bad type of magic. You'll see how it corrodes the minds of its users and that it's a fitting symbol for it in this fictional universe. I am not trying to offend anyone one way or another, and this is fictional so please don't get offended for mentioning things like this star, which is the symbol of blood magic and seen to some as the devil's symbol.