Bootstrapping Book 1

by Tersin22

An insert wakes up on the first day of her new life in a world of magic, with none of her own. No advantages, no starting place, knowing nothing but that she's out gunned at every turn and power is out there to grab. One way or another she'll drag her way to safety and arcane power, over the bodies of everybody in her way if she must.

21. Fire Makes Everything Better

The thing I like the most about my armor so far, is that it's light. Really, in spite of the amount of metal it contains, the moment it became a part of me again, it might as well have been made of air.

It makes running away much easier.

I'm also very glad that business districts, even in large cities, tend to be largely empty late enough at night. I don't know how I would have explained what's happening to a cop, or even how I would have gone about surviving with innocent bystanders in the way.

Behind me I can smell dust and ancient dried corpse, off to the right is the smell of dry scales and poison. My two pursuers, still on my tail and unlikely to give up anytime soon. As demonstrated by the sound of something large flying at me through the air.

Not that there's any reason for them to give up. The two chasing me are pacing me with insulting ease, and taking pot shots every few steps I manage to take.

I stop my head long sprint and spin on the ball of my foot. Bracing myself just in time I catch the flying car by the roof that's about to hit me. My fingers dig through the thin sheet metal letting me grip the car's more solid frame. My armor absorbs most of the energy of the impact, my own strength dealing with the rest, allowing me to catch the four door sedan and only slide back a few feet.

As quickly as I can I twist around the vehicle, now improvised shield, to block the stream of acid green liquid that comes flying from my left. Once I'm sure that all of the liquid has splashed onto the undercarriage of the car I throw it aside with a grunt of effort. I only get it a couple of yards away, but that's enough to clear the immediate area so I have some room to maneuver.

I'll need it.

As it turns out, once I start looking for them, there are stray devils everywhere. This, plus the standing bounty that the devils have on their wayward kin, means that everybody that can, hunts the damn things as an easy source of ready cash. That means that the stupid and weak ones die rather quickly, leaving only the clever and powerful.

Clever and powerful means hard to find.

I really didn't expect to have so much trouble running down a stray Pawn or some such. I certainly didn't expect to have to go all the way to China to find one. And I really didn't expect the stray devil to have a friend when I did.

Which leads me to where I am now. Standing at the bottom of a steel, concrete, and glass canyon. To my left and up, clinging to the side of one of the tall office buildings through some mechanism that I'm not going to devote any thought to, is the stray devil.

The stray devil is snakes. It's body and head is one large snake. Sprouting off of where it's shoulders would have been are arms that are two more snakes, it's hands are the heads of those snakes. It has hair that's more snakes. The only concession to whatever humanoid form it might have had, before it lost its mind and became snakes, are two lumps on it's chest that I think are supposed to be scale covered breasts. Why it has those I'm not going to devote any thought to...

... Except I've decided that the next person I find particularly useless I'm going to call 'as useful as tits on a snake'. Because they just look ridiculous, like they'd be perpetually in the way, and I can't think of any reason for them to be there.

The stray made out of snakes clings to the building and every single one of its... her? It's, snake heads are staring at me and hissing menacingly.

Down the street in front of me is the unexpected guest. An odd creature that looks like a shriveled corpse with fangs and glowing eyes. It's dressed in what was once very fine silk, and a very silly hat that makes me think it's supposed to be dressed as some sort of courtier or noble from some period of Imperial China. I don't think it's actually old enough to be from any period of Imperial China, otherwise instead of cars it would be ripping buildings out of the ground to throw at me.

This desiccated monstrosity is a hopping vampire, and as ridiculous as the name sounds it honestly scares me more than the made of snakes, acid and venom spitting, insane, stray devil. Hopping vampires get their name from being corpses so decayed and withered that their bodies have shriveled into uselessness. They compensate for this with truly, ridiculously, powerful telekinesis. Telekinesis with which they propel themselves in prodigious leaps. Why they don't just fly I have no idea, the one in front of me is easily powerful enough to do so. Instead, they simply use anything around them that's light enough, and insufficiently nailed down as a weapon. Including myself. We ended up in this running battle when I kicked in the door to what I thought was the stray devil's lair, only to have a corpse turn to look at me. At that point I'd been flung out of the building via the nearest wall.

It had been very unpleasant.

Now though, the hyper mobile corpse is settling gently to the ground after a leap of over a city block in length, and is, somehow, glaring at me despite its lack of facial expressions. Turning my body so that I can keep both of my opponents in my field of view, I slowly draw Sclamhaire from over my shoulder. My sword immediately connects with my tattoos and begins to feed me a steady, if tiny, trickle of mana. That trickle will do more to help me stay in this fight than the surges that my armor has been giving me. Not that those rushes are unwelcome, but at the moment I have fewer ways of using them. A steady stream is much better for keeping my stamina up.

I really don't want to fight the two of them here. I'm not just running because I walked into a fight fat, dumb, happy and gotten more than I bargained for. I have actually considered the idea that the stray devil I find would be more than I can handle in a straight up fight. Even with my shiny new gear. So I planned ahead. I set up an ambush of sorts in an out of the way alley, using Script and some... let's call it military surplus, that a few gremlins that owe me a favor or six just happened to find.

The problem with an out of the way alley that's unlikely to be occupied though, is that it's out of the way, i.e. inconveniently located. This particular out of the way alley is still a few blocks away, but might as well be on the other side of the city for all the good it'll do me. I can't out run either of my current opponents, and between the two of them they can attack me constantly enough to significantly slow me down, enough so that I'm making practically no progress. I need to either distract them long enough to get a head start, or one of them will have to go.

Either way it means I'm fighting them here.

I take a relaxed two handed stance, my arms hanging loose and Sclamhaire's hilt resting across my thighs. An odd moment of stillness comes over the battle as the three of us assess where the others have ended up and what we have to work with. There should have been a tumble weed or a newspaper or something blowing by, but the air is still.

Then, it very much isn't as the three of us all start moving almost at once. I take two steps forward towards the vampire before I'm launched through the air towards the stray devil with no warning. The devil is on the ball and spits two streams of acid, or venom, from it's two snake arms while I can't dodge.

I respond by slashing through both streams of liquid. Sclamhaire lives up to her name and devours enough heat from both of the vibrant green blobs to freeze the dangerous liquid. Whether it's venom or acid or both, the liquid is far less dangerous as a solid. They splash off my armor like two particularly unfortunately colored snowballs, and with about as much effect.

Honestly I'm relieved, I acted mostly on instinct. I had no idea that Sclamhaire's energy devouring ability would work fast enough to mostly solidify the fluid projectiles. I was just trying to put something in the way.

A moment later I twist in mid air just enough to hit the building feet first. I land a few feet away from where the devil is still clinging to the building, just out of sword reach. That shows far more tactical awareness from the vampire than I was hoping for. If I'd been aimed right at the devil, I could have turned their attempt to trap me where I can't dodge into something usefully aggressive.

As it is, I now have to figure out how to fall five stories without dying.

As my feet come away from the building and I start my trip towards the ground, I can hear odd rhythmic hissing sounds. It takes me a moment to realize that the god damned snakes are laughing at me.

I grit my teeth, and try to put the sound and how angry it makes me out of my head. I need some way to slow myself down a lot. Frantically glancing around I catch sight of Sclamhaire out of the corner of my eye.

With a short cry of effort, I manage to catch Sclamhaire's tip in the side of the building I'm falling past. The black blade bites into concrete and steel like they're paper, leaving a frosted gash behind. Sclamhaire cuts so well that it actually doesn't slow me down much. It does give me a solid point to swing myself back towards the building though.

I grab my athame and drive it into the building edge up. The knife doesn't go in with the same ease that Sclamhaire did, but it does sink in, and with the back of the athame largely unsharpened, I jerk to a sudden halt.

With a sickening pop my shoulder comes free of its socket, and I immediately lose my grip on the knife. Fortunately it stopped my momentum, even if only for a moment, allowing me to fall the remaining two stories without injury. My trollish skeleton and armor allow me to absorb the remaining impact.

No sooner have I landed, than a street sign hits me in the head. As promised my hood acts like a much more solid material, and doesn't give a bit and the rush of mana from the impact is a welcome jump start to the healing of my arm. It still knocks me slightly off balance forcing me to take a step out to the side.

It also delays me for the half second it takes the devil to slither down five stories, and get back in my face. I slash at it once, twice, three times, with as precisely controlled cuts as I can manage off balance. Sclamhaire's negligible weight in my hand plus my strength allows me to swing the two handed sword one handed. For all the good it does me, the devil bends and twists with impossible speed, and seems to flow around my strikes as though I'm standing still.

My attempt at offensive action having failed, I frantically try to move Sclamhaire the shortest distance possible to block the counter attack that I know is coming. The devil's arms coil like the snakes they are, mouths open wide displaying fangs dripping venom, and rush at me with all the speed of a supernatural striking serpent.

I manage to get Sclamhaire in the way of one of the snakes, but the other hits me in the chest. It's fangs skittered off the fae metal, and the armor absorbs a lot of the impact, but there's enough left over that it feels like I got hit with a fast ball.

I stagger a step backwards from the hit thanks to being off balance. I hear something else large rushing towards me. So instead of counter swinging at the devil to keep it back, I spin and just manage to interpose Sclamhaire's blade between me and a neon sign about as large as I am.

I brace myself for the impact as well as I can with only one working arm, and a poor stance, and further brace myself for the pain of the sign hitting me anyway. Both are things that never came. Instead the sign strikes the flat of Sclamhaire's blade and just... stops.

I stare at it for what feels like several minutes, but can't have been that long, as the sign seems to just hang there in the air. Then it falls to the ground, and I'm jerked out of my daze by the rush of mana from Sclamhaire. Mana that allows my regeneration to pop my shoulder back into place with a painful crunch, and finish healing.

I gasp for air, and have just enough awareness to register the sound of a many snake shaped object flying through the air at me, all heads and mouths pointed forward and open. Through the unexpected pain in my shoulder I do the only thing I can think of and drop to the ground, letting my legs go limp under me.

Fortunately for me, my desperate dodge works, and the snake devil goes flying over my head, though my hood brushes belly scales as it goes by. The thing is unfairly fast, and I can't really afford to lay here and catch my breath. Any time I'm in one place for any length of time, and the snake isn't in the way, my vampiric dance partner beams me with something.

So far it has failed to miss.

I roll away from the snake and, as expected, a street light is rammed into and through the asphalt where I had just been. I get to my feet as quickly as I can, and start sprinting again, this time though at the building I had just fallen off of, and where my athame is still lodged into a wall.

Behind me I can hear the snake gaining, but fortunately it's jump has carried it far enough past me that I have the time to make a leap of my own. Vampiricly enhanced troll muscle allows me to clear a single story with that leap. So my foot first touches a solid surface at the bottom edge of the second floor of the office building. Parkour provides me the next step as I push off and up, and start running up the side of the building. I can only make three, maybe four steps like this, but that's all I need.

I start to lose my footing on the third step but, with a stretch of my newly healed left arm, I manage to wrap gauntleted fingers around the hilt of my knife. A one armed pull up gets my feet under me again which is good because the devil is right behind me.

I've been tracking it by sound as it closes and decides to take its own leap. It skips the first and most of the second floor completely, and launches itself right at where it knows I will be. Which works out just about perfectly for me. Just as they had tried to do to me, in the air the devil's speed means nothing as it can't move to evade.

I push off the building, jumping straight at the stray devil and ripping my athame out of the wall. Leading with a slash from Sclamhaire, my sword decapitates both of the devil's arms where they were lunging at me again. Which leaves a path clear for my knife to plunge straight into its chest, as I practically shoulder check the beast out of the air.

What I want from this kill is clear in my mind. So as we hit the ground, the devil thoughtfully cushioning my fall, I feel the Script on my athame trigger. A trait is ripped free of the stray, and slides smoothly through my tattoos and into my soul. I'll have to get better at this, the feeling of my Self altering leaves me stunned for several seconds.

Fortunately for me the vampire also seems to be stunned.

It only takes me a moment to shake off what feels like a minor alteration, and a new small, but constant, drain on my mana. Slowly I push myself to my feet wincing at the aches from falling a couple of stories and not landing well. Nothing too bad and I have plenty of mana from the fall so what bruises made it through my armor are already fading.

The vampire is standing where he landed at the beginning of this scuffle. It takes me a moment to process what I'm seeing, but it looks like he's trembling. Or maybe the air around him is vibrating?

A howling screech fills the air, one so loud that all the glass on the street trembles. The howl should have been just noise, but I can perceive words, or at least a word, "Eudocia!"

I... have no idea what that means. Which given what I just gained, I'm assuming understanding words that previously I wouldn't have even recognized as language means that my Allspeak is working just fine, means that it's probably a proper name.

I glance down at where the snake devil that had been cohabitating with the vampire lay, minus two of its heads and plus a new hole in its chest, is already beginning to dissolve.

I think I may have made him angry...

Then I'm in motion. It feels like my internals have just decided to accelerate to the right, and take the rest of me along for the ride as an incidental. The office building stops my travel, compressing my insides against my spine and the inside of my rib cage. It hurts like hell and I'm very glad that my armor has fed me plenty of mana for healing. Now if only the vampire would let me go, so I can actually get to that healing thing.

Instead I'm again yanked by my guts, and slammed into the street again, then into the opposite building, then down onto a car. Right he isn't letting go of me. This hurts like hell, and is doing more damage than I'd like, if not as much as the vampire wants. I take a moment to lament my lack of ranged offensive options, and swear to myself that I'll put the time and effort into my Siren's voice to make it effective in combat.

If I can't attack him to make him stop yanking me around by my intestines, I'll just have to make him lose his grip. Fortunately I have something that I'm pretty sure will work for that.

I'm not here.

I vanish from all senses, and the vampire's telekinetic grip vanishes as well. I roll off the thoroughly pancaked sedan, and onto the sidewalk, letting go of my glamor and sheathing Sclamhaire and the athame. The car provides adequate cover to hide from the vampire, but this isn't really a long term solution. It's a necessary stop gap while I wait for my guts to finish healing though.

On the street, I can hear a human sized and shaped object soaring through the air to set down gently next to where the devil is still in the process of dissolving away. The vampire doesn't move after that, it just stands there. If it were capable, I think it would have knelt next to what's left of the rapidly vanishing body, but bending in any way would probably snap the animate corpse in half.

At this point I can probably just leave. Use my glamor to escape notice and just go. I've got what I came for, after all. No reason to fight this thing too...

I hear a cracking sound that I can't really place. After a few moments of being puzzled, I realize it's coming from the area where the vampire is standing. I lean down peering under the car, I noticed idly that it's the same car I used as a shield against the snake devil. I also see the asphalt of the road under the vampire begin to crack and crumble in a slowly expanding circle around him. Being a desiccated corpse it has neither expressions, nor scent, to give away it's emotional state, but I feel comfortable in guessing that it's pissed.

I can run, and not fight the angry vampire... but it's an undead monstrosity that hunts people down late at night and suffocates them, drawing out their breath as its method of draining victims of life energy. Beyond that, I've seen this thing in action. It's powerful, though not ancient. It's also extremely accurate with its telekinesis, and clever. If it decides to go on a rampage, it's fast and powerful enough that it can probably depopulate several decently sized neighborhoods. Especially given how long it would take before anybody actually capable of stopping it would be able to get here.

That would be a lot of people dead because I took out its... girl friend? I try not to think about how that would work, and move on. I take another peek over the car to see that pieces of debris are now being picked up and launched away from the vampire. Debris with enough force behind them to take chips out of the concrete buildings.

It certainly looks like it's going to start venting it's anger. The image of Sarah, settling in to go to sleep in her parents' house, only to have an SUV come flying through her bedroom wall because of a pissed off vampire, fills my mind.

...Fuck it. Telekinesis is on my wish list anyway.

The bruising on my internal organs has healed, so I reapply my glamor and try to get to the vampire. The trick is getting close, without getting hit by any of the many flying rocks that might give me away. I end up doing my best impression of a Hollywood fem-fatal dancing through a laser grid. I think I manage pretty well, but when my glamor fads as I get ready to actually strike, I'm immediately blasted down the street.

I hit the ground and rolled several times before stopping. I'm beginning to feel a little battered even through the armor. So with a groan I pull myself to my feet and face my enemy.

...I regret everything.

Cars, dumpsters, street signs, traffic lights, decorative trees, even hunks of buildings are in the air and flying towards me at high speed. A howl carrying the word, "DIE!" to my ears comes with them.

Definitely pissed it off.

I duck sideways avoiding a street sign, then have to dive over a low flying bench. Rolling sideways to avoid a dumpster, I pull Sclamhaire from my back just in time to block a truck arcing down on me from above. Like with the sign earlier though, the truck strikes Sclamhaire's flat and stops dead. No impact, no strain, just stopped.

Well, the truck is stopped, causing a flood of mana rushing into me from Sclamhaire as the truck stays in the air and continues pressing down on me. A flood that grows in size as another dumpster ramms into the back of the truck. Then it increases again as a chunk of building hits the back of the dumpster.

Three large, heavy objects constantly pressing down on me, all lined up in a row as the vampire tries to pound me like a stubborn nail. I'm having flashbacks to the last time I fought vampires as the mana just keeps on coming, without me being able to do anything about it. There have only been a few seconds since I stopped the truck, and I can already feel my mana channels growing full and beginning to strain.

Just as it's beginning to hurt, a portion of the mana is siphoned away. It's only a momentary reprieve though as the flow of mana doesn't abate in the slightest. I'm starting to think that I'll have to do something before the influx of mana starts hurting me, when two armatures snap out of the back of my armor.

I'm momentarily confused, but then from the bottom of the armatures energy rushes violently into the air. The pressure on my mana system immediately eases as what would have been overflowing from my channels is instead drawn away by my armor and vented from my back. I take a moment to glance sideways into one of the dark plate glass windows in the office buildings surrounding me, and I'm rather surprised with what I see.

A skirted and hooded figure stands in black armor, a sword beyond black held in its hands holding back a mountain of debris, and straight out from its back arch two brilliantly shining wings, of harsh white light.

Exactly what kind of angel I look like I have no idea, but it's fucking awesome.

As incredible as the look is though, it isn't really solving my problem. I'm pinned down, and the vampire can just keep on hammering heavy objects onto the end of this odd conga line it's set up until either something overwhelms me, or I explode from mana overload. Even if my armor can keep up with the growing amount of incoming mana indefinitely, which I doubt, I'm not getting anywhere.

I still have my ambush site, if I can just break away from direct combat long enough to start running again. That would involve the vampire letting up on me though. If only for a second. The last time I had been pinned down by something powerful enough to keep me from even attempting to fight back, I screamed at it. That ended up working out pretty well for me.

If it worked once it's worth trying again.

I still can't do any of the really fancy tricks that the Sirens can do, but I can be loud and destructive with the best of them. A long inhale both takes in air, and provides me a physical action to help move my mana into my throat. When I can't take in any more air, or press any more mana into my voice box, I scream.

Every piece of glass in range shatters explosively. Paint peels off the truck in front of me. The asphalt of the road spider webs out in a cone in front of me. Best of all my scream is accompanied by a howl from in front of me. A howl that carries no words, but instead expresses a very physical pain. I'm beginning to think that even though it's nothing but a desiccated corpse physically, the vampire still has vampirically enhanced hearing.

Sucks to be that guy.

The chain of telekinetic projectiles drops to the ground with a thundering crash. The vampire's attention is suddenly, and completely, occupied by the horrible pain stabbing into whatever passes for it's brain through its ears. For just a moment I'm entirely free to act with no interference. So in accordance with my brilliant plan, I spin on the ball of my foot, re-sheathing Sclamhaire, and run.

Only moments later my armor reduces my internal mana to something that I can hold without strain or damage. The moment it has, the vented energy that forms my brilliant wings evaporates, and the armatures snap closed, vanishing into my back plate.

I know the moment the vampire has regained its wits, as large objects started flying at me again. I dodge as best I can and manage to avoid the larger ones. The little things, rocks, shards of glass, and on one occasion a red cylindrical mailbox, still manage to hit me though.

None of them break my stride, so they don't really matter. I run as hard and as fast as I possibly can, but as before it makes no difference. The vampire hops along behind me, it's soaring leaps easily keeping pace. It can probably out pace me if it puts any effort in at all.

I really need some way to jump start my speed the same way I used the trolls to jump start my strength. I am faster than any Olympic sprinter, and I can keep it up forever, and that means absolutely nothing in the face of actual supernatural speed.

Something I can think about later though, I finally spot the out of the way dead end alleyway where I set up my one woman ambush.

I swerve to avoid another car, and dart into the alley. Desperately I reach for any last hidden reserves of speed that may have been hiding somewhere in my body. I have to be at the very end of this alley before the vampire catches up with me. Otherwise this will get very unpleasant for everybody, instead of just my pursuer.

Fortunately for me the vampire seems to like keeping some distance. It stays in line of sight, but a distance away from it's opponent. So as I reach the walled off end of the alleyway I stop my head long sprint, nearly crashing into the wall, and turn to face back the way I came. My breath sounds harshly in my ears as I wait, counting the seconds, until finally the vampire drops down in front of the narrow corridor between two solid concrete walls.

The air around it begins to tremble again, and I think it's about to try talking to me. Probably to try and verbally torment me now that it thinks it has me trapped, but honestly I'm not interested in listening to it.

I bite my lip hard, spit the blood onto the beginning of the Script story, and sing a single harsh word. Already primed Script, hanging just on the edge of activation, lites up all along and just outside the alley, and several things happened almost at once.

First a Script barrier snaps up closing me off from the rest of the alley. Then two lines of script that stretch just far enough to bracket the vampire activated, and yank it into the alley itself. Finally the alleyway explodes into sound and fury as the claymore mines and Script bombs that line the length of the alley, detonate just as the vampire comes in line with them.

Moments after I set everything off, a shredded husk of half a torso and head thump into the Script barrier that kept me safe from the explosions. A moment later the barrier flickers and dies, its purpose served, leaving everything that's left of the vampire waiting at my feet.

Script traps are something that I don't have a lot of opportunities to use, as usually I don't have the chance to prep the battle field in advance. Either because I don't know the fight is coming, or because I don't have access before the fight starts. When I do however, damn if they aren't effective.

The vampire isn't dead, even after all of that though. Green sparks of light still burn in its eye sockets. Hopping vampires, being subject to decay, rely less on their physical bodies than more classic vampires. Give it a few minutes, maybe an hour at the outside, to pull itself together somewhat, pun intended, and it would be able to leave the alley to find prey. After it suffocates a few people for their life energy, it would be well on its way back to its former mummified glory.

Pulling free my athame I drive it into the vampire's chest, pinning it to the concrete. Keeping a good grip so the connection to my tattoos is solid, I pull a lighter out of my skirt with my other hand. A few tries gets the zippo lit, and I set the thing on fire.

If you aren't sure how to kill something, fire is usually a pretty good bet.

Most things die if you set them on fire.