Arc 2 – Part 8
"This is a bad plan," said Caprifexia, following after Serana as they moved towards the holy wards that protected the small, riverside town close to where they had arrived on Innistrad.
The sun had continued to dip behind the western hills, and twilight was rapidly approaching. The town itself was lit up brightly, and glowed ahead of them like a beacon. The sound of music and laughter carried on the gentle evening breeze, along with the smell of sizzling meat and frying fish that made her mouth water ever so slightly.
"Shut up, Capri," said Serana, meanly.
"Walking into a town full of villains is a bad plan," repeated Caprifexia.
For whatever reason, Eggy Melon the Vampire, grandfather of Sorbet Melon, had not yet launched his attack. His force, in fact, wasn't even visible, and the night air was cool and quiet as they crunched down the dry dirt road towards the town.
Also, she'd known mortals, and ex-mortals were weird, but why would you mix egg and fruit together?Weren't they both bad, and disgusting,enough by themselves?
"You have a better one?" snapped the vampire.
"Of course, I am a dragon."
Serana was a silent for a moment.
"And…?"said Serana.
"We do nothing," said Caprifexia.
"And just leave our friendsto get attacked by an army of undead!?" said Serana. "That's cold Capri, even for a cold-blooded lizard like you-"
"I do nothave cold blood!" said Caprifexia, outraged. "I have hotblood! I am a dragon!That is- you- you are-"
"Right well, ok, but that wasn't really my main point-"
"I have never been so insulted!" said Caprifexia.
"Capri, please, focus-"
"That is- you are a horrible person!" said Caprifexia. "Cold- cold blooded!? My Blood is- is-"
Serana rubbed her temples. "I'm sorry for calling you cold blooded, Capri," she said. "I was tryingto say that it is heartless thing to just abandon our friends. OK?"
Caprifexia glared.
"I said I was sorry!" said Serana.
Caprifexia grumbled. "Fine, whatever," she said. "But no, I wasn't being 'heartless' – you're just too stupid to understand my genius-"
"Oh, so it's fine to insult me?" muttered Serana.
"Chandra can Planeswalk the others away," finished Caprifexia. "They'll be fine."
"This town is about to be attacked,"said Serana. "What if they're not all together? What if it happens to quickly? I've met people like Edgar before-"
"Who?" said Caprifexia.
"Edgar-"
"Oh, Eggy, yes, yes, go on," nodded Caprifexia.
"That- whatever, fine, Eggy," said Serana, accepting her correction with surprising and uncharacteristic grace. "I know his kind. Defending your home, sure, that's one thing – but I'm not willing to bet he'll care much if the townspeople in there get slaughtered by his beasties. When I look at him, I see far too much of my father for my liking."
"So… he's a villain?" said Caprifexia, frowning. "I thought those guards were the villains? They triggered my wards, they must have meant to hurt us. Or you, at least."
Serana sighed and came to a stop, rubbing the bridge of her nose as if struggling with something particularly annoying and difficult – her own inadequacy, perhaps?
"Capri," said Serana, putting her hands on Caprifexia's shoulders. "Not everything in the worldis that black and white. Those people were trying to protect us from monsters, not realising that I am one. And they have good reason to hate me and the Markovs, we feed upon them – we drink their blood."
"Yes, yes," said Caprifexia, waving a hand absently. "But you only eat villains, or obtain blood without killing mortals. You're not a villain."
"But they didn't know that," said Serana sadly. "Most vampires don't restrain themselves – they see a person, and they see food. It's hard for me too, you know. Even with Lommy and Einar and J'zargo and Chandra and all the others at the college, my friends, people who are the closest thing to a real family I've ever had; even with them, its hard keeping control of the thing inside me. You're pretty much the only person that I don't have the impulse to want to bite all the time– and that's only because you smell like ash and brimstone."
"Then why don't you find a…" said Caprifexia, before trailing off as she remembered her overhead conversation, back in the library, between Serana and Lombardia.
'Besides, who's going tostop the multiverse burning down when you and Einar are gone?'
Caprifexia felt a sudden tightness in her chest, and a fear tears formed at her eyes as she recalled the words and they suddenly made sense to her. At the time she hadn't understood by it, and now that she did Caprifexia felt compelled to point out that it was fundamentally unfairto suggest that she would 'burn the multiverse down.' But perhaps more importantly than Serana being a bit mean and unfair and predictably dragonist, was that Caprifexia realised that the Serana was staying a monster for her.So that she would still be around to see Caprifexia grow into a wyrm, when Einar and J'zargo and everyone but Chandra had withered and died.
For some reason that was… it made her feel all funny inside. Like she wanted to hug the vampire. Which, of course, was ridiculous – Dragons didn't hug. She must have tripped, or something. That was the only reason why her arms could have found themselves around the bloodsucker. Obviously.
"Oh, um, OK?" laughed Serana, patting Caprifexia gingerly on the back.
"You're… you're not terrible to be around all the time," said Caprifexia, squeezing the bloodsucking fiend tightly. "You're the best undead abomination I know."
"That's… that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me," said Serana. "Where'd this come from?"
"Nothing," muttered Caprifexia, stepping back from the totally not-hug that she wasn't even sure how she'd gotten into, wiping her stupid leaking faux-mortal eyes.
"Really, you can tell me," said Serana with a smile. "It's OK, sweetie."
"Don't call me sweetie!" huffed Caprifexia, turning and looking away. "I'm fine! Leave me alone!"
"Right, well…" said Serana, still giving her a funny look. "What I'm saying is that 'Eggy', from these people's perspective, is a bad guy – and they've probably got good reason to believe it. They're not 'villains.'"
"Then shouldn't we have killed Eggy?" said Caprifexia. "If he's the villain?"
"Sure, let's just attack the ancient vampire who just walked through your lethalwards like they weren't there. Oh, and don't forget his horde of gargoyles and whatever else he has," said Serana. "And look, from his perspective, he's defending his home. Although… well, I'd prefer it if he were – at least then it would just be soldiers' dying, not townsfolk."
"That sounds like villain apologia to me," said Caprifexia warily.
"Maybe," said Serana with a shrug. "But from what Einar's told me, Sorin is one of the Planeswalkers actually trying to stop whole worlds being devoured by the Eldrazi. And he helped future you come back to stop Mirael. Sometimes you need to work with people you don't like, who might not be the most heroic people around, to achieve bigger objectives. Like, stopping reality unravelling, for example. All I'm saying is that there's more grey in the world thank you might at first think: nuance. And not all choices are easy ones."
Caprifexia furrowed her mortal brow. That was… confusing.
She was a hero. It was her job to destroy villains and, if it didn't get in the way of villain destruction, protect the weak. But… there werebigger and smaller villains, obviously. A dragon that was a villain would be more of a villain than a mortal who was a villain, for example. So would it follow then that to destroy the bigger villain, the dragon, it was OK to use the mortal villain as a tool? She supposed that did seem to follow, although it made her feel a bit uncomfortable.
"Then shouldn't we try to stop the two fighting?" said Caprifexia. "If neither are villains? Or, one sort of is, but I need them for my more important heroing?"
"If you've got a way to do that, I'd love to hear it," said Serana, grimacing slightly as they got closer to the ward-line that was glowing with holy sigils.
Caprifexia stopped, and turned towards the rolling, partly forested hills above the town. Twilight had set in, but it wasn't quitenight just yet. She couldn't be sure, but she thought that, here and there, she could a glimpse of moving shadows and distant, baleful yellow eyes.
"What?" said Serana.
"Eggy hasn't attacked yet," said Caprifexia.
"Not his name, but yes, and?" said Serana. "He's probably waiting for nightfall. Humans can't see very far in the dark, they're an easier target. Especially when they're not on guard, like these idiots."
Caprifexia looked back at the mortals who, despite their holy wards and token fortifications, were clearly not expecting an attack. Soldiers of the various different factions were chatting and laughing, sitting around fires and cooking and drinking and playing games. If Caprifexia was a disgusting abomination in charge of an army of similarity revolting ilk, this would be an idealtime to attack them, although not quite as ideal as when it got properly dark.
"So what if we put them on guard?" said Caprifexia.
Serana clicked her teeth. "I mean, sure, that would help them," she said. "But their defences are still shocking. I mean, it will hurt like hell getting through those wards alone, and they might slow down his grunts down a bit, but I have no doubt that Edg- that Eggywill smash straight through. They need proper ditches and palisades, stuff to stop the foot-soldiers. Whoever is in command is should be fired."
Caprifexia scratched her horn and turned to the river, the beginnings of a plan knitting together a plan in her crystalline mind. All she needed to do was prevent the maybe-villainous defenders from being overrun quickly enough that Chandra could walk the others to safety. She could do that.
"What about running water?" asked Caprifexia. "There were some undead on Azeroth that couldn't cross running water? Is that the same on Nirn?"
"Err, for some ghouls and zombies, yeah," said Seranas. "And I don't likeit, really, although it doesn't stop me. But how does that help us? We can't dig a new arm for the river in the what, fifteen minutes until its totally dark?"
Caprifexia grinned. "You can't," she said, raising her hands summoning burning red mana from across the eternities and beginning to weave together a very large terramancy matrix. "But I am a blackdragon."
"Which means…?" said Serana, staring at the glowing energy in Caprifexia's hands. "Specifically, I mean?"
"My people were Wardens of the Earth," she said. "Specifically empowered by beings almost as magnificent as ourselves to be masters of Terramancy."
Serana glanced between the town and Caprifexia several times.
"Really?" said Serana, her voice almost impressed. "You can do something that large?"
"Of course," said Caprifexia.
"And you doknow that they'll attack us back."
"Yes, but they can't Planeswalk," said Caprifexia. "I just need you to shield me long enough to finish. Are you capable of doing that?"
Serana frowned and chewed on her lip for a moment.
"I don't know if I'm more shocked that your plan is actually pretty good," she said slowly. "Or that it doesn't involve killing anyone. You're not just going to like, cut the town in half or something?"
Caprifexia glared at her. "No."
"First the hug, now this," chuckled Serana, summoning a shimmering white-gold shield. "Are you sure you're Caprifexia? Not some kind of doppelganger?"
Caprifexia ignored Serana's cheek as she finished her spell matrix, and the earth bent and buckled under the power of her people's Gift. Ahead of her, there were shouts of alarm, and just ahead of the camp outside the town a narrow crack emerged in the ground ahead of them, and beside her Serana nearly fell over as the full force of Caprifexia's spell took hold.
It was similar to the one she had cast on Kaldheim during her amazing defeat of the demon-worshipping villains. This one, however, wasn't designed to rip up a wide section of land indiscriminately. Instead, she was visualising, very carefully, a crack that ran around the perimeter of the town, and pouring every last ounce of her red mana into the spell to do it.
She knew from her books that Sorin had lent her, that the quantity of mana that a bond with a place might provide varied wildly. It seemed, however, that the red magic of High Hrothgar she had bonded with, or perhaps all of Skyrim's had been quite potent, because Chandra couldn't draw nearly as much energy from her home on Kaladesh as Caprifexia could.
Then again, Caprifexia was a dragon, and therefore exceptional, so it might just have been that. Probably was, even.
"They've figured out where we are!" shouted Serana, conjuring a shield of magic as a trio of magic missiles arced out from the camp and came spinning through space towards them. They smashed against the vampire's shield. "Hurry up!"
Caprifexia continued her spell, and she saw a small contingent of knights who had been charging from the camp pull on their reigns, shouting in alarm and trying to stop as the crack grew wider rushing water began to pour into the space. A few of the knights fell in, the riders screaming along with their horses as they plunged into the growing, churning depths, but it seemed that even when you wereactively saving people there were always a few who complained.
The crack grew wider and wider, racing the length of the camps and then turning, following the perimeter, more or less, around the town. She did see a stone tower sort of… listed,and then collapsed,but that probably wasn't her fault. And if it was, she was pretty sure, hero rules wise, that people weren't allowed to be annoyed if you accidentally knocked over a tower or two in the pursuit of heroism: 'collateral damage' was the term, she thought.
Serana grunted as her shield turned aside more and more spells, and Caprifexia was just beginning to start the last curve that would connect both sides of the still forming channel to the river when there was an angry shout from behind them. Caprifexia turned her head to see the eggy-fruit loving vampire standing at the head of a large host of ghouls and vampries and gargoyles and werewolves and more.
Ah, it seemed that they'd run out of time.
"What are you doing!?" shouted Eggy.
"We're, um, helping!" said Serana, in what Caprifexia regarded as quite a skilful lie. "See, err, Capri just… knocked over a tower."
"Anyone could have done that!" shot back Caprifexia, as she continued her spellwork.
"Not now Capri!" hissed Serana, as arrows and spells continued to ping off her shield. The shouts of alarm from the village grew louder, as the defenders caught sight of the massive army massing behind Caprifexia and the others. From atop the wall she saw several large boulders loaded into trebuchets being lit on fire.
"How are my minions going to cross the water!?" shouted Eggy. "You're making a moat!"
"Undead here can't cross water?" said Serana, continuing to rather impressively twist the truth almost as well as Caprifexia could. "Really? That, um, it isn't like that on Nirn at all."
"Even if they couldn't, a moat is still a defensivefortification!" shouted Eggy, before he frowned and bared his teeth. "You- you little worms. You're helping them!"
"Whaaaat? Us? No. Never," said Serana, glancing at Caprifexia and lowering her voice. "Capri are you done yet!?"
Caprifexia finished the last of her spell and lowered her arms, nodding. Where there had once been solid land, there was now a great, somewhat winding crack that ran around the town, some ten to fifteen feet across, and about that deep, which was rapidly filling with water from the river. It wasn't quiteas precise as she'd have liked, and a few tents at the edge of the camp had fallen in, but the soldiers were definitely no longer singing and drinking and laughing, and instead bells were ringing and mortals were shouting and getting ready to defend the village.
There were some whooshing sounds from the village, and flaming boulders launched from some trebuchets arced high into the air before rushing down towards them – one of them on a course for Caprifexia and Serana. Caprifexia had used most of her mana, but it was a flaming piece of rock and she was a black dragon, and it wasn't hard to modify its trajectory. It shifted, and with a flaming crunchlanded on a young-ish looking vampire lady.
"Layla! No!" shouted Eggy in a distraught voice. He turned to Caprifexia and bared his teeth. "You little- I'll kill you!"
His form blurred as he streaking towards Caprifexia, his sword whistling from its sheath. She yelped in alarm, but before he could strike Serana's stepped forward, her blade locking against the other vampires and blocking the blow. She grunted from the effort, but managed to push the ancient vampire back.
Eggy's palm burned red, and Serana deflected the attack with a spell even as she parried the next blow and swiped at Eggy's throat with her own blade.
"Capri! Portal! Now!" said Serana, as the pair of vampires began to exchange a series of incredibly fast, almost invisible strikes that filled the air with thunder-like claps of steel against steel.
Caprifexia had only had one lesson on sword fighting, but even with only an advanced, rather than expert understanding, she could see that Serana was having trouble keeping up with the ancient vampire, and was being forced to take several steps back.
All around her the other undead fiends began to move forward to surround them, and behind her, without Serana's shield, magic and arrows from the town also began to rain down around her. A fireball landed a meter to her left, and she staggered as the force of the blast washed over her with a wave of harmless flame. Yes, it was time to go.
Caprifexia's spark surged to the fore, and a portal appeared between her and the town, shielding her from the hail of projectiles. Actually, that was quite a good use of it, she'd have to remember that.
Caprifexia scrambled through into the Void, and flexed her hand, using the last of her Red mana to shift the ground beneath Eggy's feet. The sudden lunch made him trip, and Serana took the opportunity to disengage, her form all but blurring as she rushed through the portal. The aperture snapped shut a moment later, and the last thing Caprifexia saw was the utterly enraged face of Sorbet Melon's grandfather.
"You know…" said Serana, giving Caprifexia a toothy grin as she lowered her sword. "That went surprisingly well."
"Of course it went well, it was my plan after all," sniffed Caprifexia. "My plans always go well."
"Seriously. No one dead, well, apart from that one vampire I guess, only a few buildings destroyed… who are you, and what did you do with Caprifexia?"laughed Serana, sheathing her sword.
Caprifexia crossed her arms. "I resent that."
"I mean it – nice job, Capri," said Serana, ruffling her hair. "And you'll need to show me how to shift the ground to trip someone. Assuming it isn't super secret dragon magic, that is."
Caprifexia sniffed. "If you ask nicely, maybe."
"Now all we have to hope for is that Sorin doesn't chase us down and kill us for sabotaging his grandfather's attack," said Serana cheerfully.
"I wouldn't worry, Sorbetis rubbish at magic," said Caprifexia.