The Princess of the Night

Chapter 13 – Surprise Attack

Gerard paced the kitchen, running his hands through his hair. Finally he stopped and sighed, looking at Lily. Marek, as usual, was goofing off, hanging from the ceiling.

"We need to go to the College of Mages." He stated simply.

Lily looked incredulous. "Are you serious? Gerard, I get that you're good at magic, but this is the largest collection of mages on the planet. They've been indoctrinated. They won't let you just walk in and take Celestia. They're going to fight."

"Ok, I haven't been perfectly honest with you Lily. You think I'm just a mage who knows more than one discipline. I am so much more than that. I have been studying magic for a millennium. Literally one thousand years. I know so much magic that I can stop my own aging process. I can't die. I can manipulate my cellular structure at will, so I don't even have a true body any more. Have you ever heard of apotheosis?"

Lily nodded. "Yeah, it's the act of becoming a God."

Gerard chuckled. "Exactly. I have transcended my own humanity." He nodded to Marek. "I'm so powerful that my own consciousness is able to physically manifest itself.

Lily looked shocked. "But why? How?"

Gerard took a deep breath before talking. The tone of his voice had changed, he sounded reminiscent. "One day, sixty years ago in this dimension, I was woken in the middle of the night by a strange noise…"

And so she banished Celestia here in revenge. Don't you see? We have to get her back." Finished Gerard.

Lily looked dumbfounded. "Ok, let me get this straight. You spent a thousand years studying magic and even travelling to another dimension, just so you could have more time with the princess you love?"

"It's the very definition of dedication," Marek chimed in.

"I know, I know, it's completely ridiculous, but I had to. One lifetime just isn't enough to spend with her." He whispered, staring vacantly at a wall."

"But, if it's only a few months after you've left, that means Luna is still here…" frowned Lily. "Why don't you just go back to her?"

Gerard sighed, frustrated. "Because I don't know how to manipulate time during a Dimensional Jump. You'd need to somehow manipulate an eleven dimensional field into a three dimensional matrix. It would take me another millennium just to figure it out. It's just easier this way. I can never get those years back."

Lily's eyes hardened. "Well then we know what we need to do."

Gerard looked at her questioningly.

"We need to break in to the College of Mages."

Marek grinned. "Now we're talking!" he flipped back to the ground, his eyes lighting up in anticipation of all the destruction.

"So, how do we get there, and how do we get Celestia?" asked Gerard.

Suddenly, there came a knock on the door. Everyone turned their heads sharply in that direction.

"Well, that makes things a lot easier," mumbled Gerard, his hands crackling with electricity.

Fire flared into existence in Lily's, and Marek was surrounded in a writhing mass of shadows. Lily stared.

"Necromancy," sighed Marek impatiently, "Did you know it's rude to stare?"

There was a loud crash as the door was kicked in, then a scream of agony as bolts of lightning shot through the air. The shadows around Marek grew thicker as they fed off the death energy.

"We need to keep at least one alive," said Gerard, staring pointedly at Marek. He merely rolled his eyes as a mage burst into the kitchen. A sliver of shadows raced towards him, and his head as severed from his body. It rolled towards the trio as the body slumped to its knees, squirting blood everywhere.

"Split up?" enquired Marek, raising an eyebrow.

Gerard nodded, vanishing. In the blink of an eye, Lily stood alone in the kitchen, another sorcerer barging in. he thrust his hand in her direction and she felt a wall of air slam into her, slamming her into the wall. She bounced off and hit the ground, moaning.

She rose to her hands and knees as the sorcerer advanced towards her, meaning to finish her off. She raised her hand weakly and the mage laughed, thinking her defenceless. Too late her realised his mistake as a large chunk of ice slammed into his head with a sickening crunch. Lily got to her feet and hit him again, and again, until his head cracked open and his brains began to leak out on to the floor, mixing with his blood. Then she slumped to the floor, tears streaming down her face.

Gerard weaved around the sorcerers in the living room, measuring his odds. Three on one, normally not good odds. One mage held a katana, the blade gleaming with an azure glow. Gerard did not want to find out what the enchantment was. The woman slashed at him and he vanished, reappearing a few feet away as the blade sliced through a coffee table. The splinters froze solid as the table fell to the ground. Gerard dodged a fireball, realising too late that it was a ruse. The katana rushed towards him again, and he instinctively raised his arm to block it. There was a sharp slicing noise and Gerard's arm thumped on to the carpet, oozing blood. He stared at his attacker as his stump stopped bleeding and started reforming.

"Do you realise how difficult that stain is going to be to get out?" he asked as the woman stood there, looking in horror at the now completely reformed appendage.

Gerard drew back his arm and punched the woman, sending her flying into one of her colleagues. He turned his attention to the last mage, who stood there shaking like a leaf in a storm. He was a boy, barely out of his teens. Gerard teleported directly in front of him and whispered:

"Boo."

The young man's eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped to the ground. Ropes appeared out of thin air and bound him as Gerard walked over to inspect the other two mages. Somehow the woman's sword had impaled both, killing them instantly. He teleported to the bedroom to find Marek standing in a pool of blood and body parts, inhaling deeply. The shadows almost filled the entire room, and they writhed angrily.