"Now," Kurt commanded, pressing his thumb against Alexis's, flaring his od. "Breathe."

  She grunted in pain, but did as commanded, taking a lungful of air through her nose. Suddenly, Kurt felt the grip of her hand growing much, much stronger, and saw the number above her head jump into the double digits, from 6 to 17.

  "Good," he said, letting go. "How you feel?"

  "Tired," she said. "But also energized at the same time, like I'm on my last reserves of stamina, but those last reserves are suddenly much greater than what I had before I depleted them. Does that make sense?"

  Kurt nodded. "Yep, I get the feeling."

  Slowly, she got up from her chair and made her way toward her friends, Maxell and Alfred, levels 20 and 25, respectively.

  Absentmindedly rubbing the cut on his thum, Kurt allowed himself to slump on his chair, closing his eyes for a second.

  "So It's done," came Conrad's voice from his side. Kurt opened his eyes to find the blond swordsman standing besides him, his arms crossed and his face serious. "Are you sure this was a good idea? If they start running their mouths about Pneuma..."

  "I know," Kurt reasured him. "But I'm willing to take that risk. These people have been ripped away from their safe, mundane world into this mess we have. They atleast deserved something to defend themselves with."

  "No disagreement there. But why did it have to be Pneuma. It's already risky enough to try and teach it within the order like your sister wanted. To grant knowledge about it to three strangers... It seems like this could backfire pretty hard."

  "I don't see these guys turning into supervillains any time soon, Conrad. Plus, this way they won't be defenseless if something comes from them."

  Conrad grunted, purring his lips. "Speaking of which, you still haven't really explained why are you taking Alfred on the assault team. 'He asked me to'? Come on, man, you aren't that much of a pushover. So why are you letting him?"

  "Ah," Kurt sighed, reclining on his chair. "Because if I didn't, he might never leave this place and what happened here behind. When I say that he 'asked me to', I mean that he offered his life just to have any role whatsoever in rescuing Amelia, because he knew he didn't have anything else to offer in that scenario. Which is why I gave him and his friends something else to offer."

  He looked up at Conrad.

  "Neither of them deserves to go through what we did, Conrad. The one thing they take away from the Veiled World shouldn't be 'I can't belong here. I'm not special enough.'. You have to agree with me on that one, man."

  "Yeah, I know," Conrad agreed, looking at the group of four.

  Alexis an Mila where chatting with one another, big smiles plastted on their faces. At one point of the conversation, Alexis took a deep breath and gave a single, girlish hop. Except that jump took her a solid foot off the grouns, as though she were on the Moon. She clearly hadn't expected such a performance, because she gave a little startled yelp at the height of her ascent, then tried to amneuver herself, which only cause her to fall flat on her butt.

  She looked more surprised than pained though, and soon both her and the rest of the group were laughing at her small slapstick routine.

  "In the name of keeping them from being defenseless," Conrad said. "Then maybe we should give them some kind of weapons."

  Kurt hummed in agreement, nodding. "Any ideas?"

  Conrad merely smiled at him, and walked away.

  A minute later, he came back with three shovels in his arms, which he offered to Kurt.

  "Do your magic," he said. "Just like you did with that switchblade."

  The switchblade. The small knife that had been the subject's of Kurt's experimentation with alteration sorcery and that he had managed, by the end of said tests, to turn into a weapon capable of sundering rock without breaking, however temporarily.

  Kurt conjured his wand, and took hold of the first of the offered implements.

  First, he filled it with colorless aether, which he ordered into a Structural Reinforcement spell. With this done, he cast a Sharpening spell on the shovel's head. It felt a bit as though he were hollowing the thing out and, to an extent, that's what he was doing. He took the pressure and force that went into holding the metal together and condensed them along the edges, reinforcing and strengthening them at the cost of everything else growing weaker.

  Once he was done, he dropped the shovel head-first onto the dirt floor. Through nothing but its weight, it sunk all the head's way in.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Kurt chuckled hearthly, at the sight. "Yeah, that could work."

  He handed Kurt the next shovel and, once he was done with that one too, he gave him the last one.

  As soon as they had them ready, they handed them to the three college students.

  And then the seven of them walked out the manor, and into the ghost town.

  They advanced like a single unit, all gathered up together, covering each other's blind spots, and moved slowly. No point in rushing at this point, when they stall a few hours of sunlight. They treaded according to Maxell's directions, as he was the one that properly remembered the path between the manor and the mine's entrance.

  It was a short trip. Not even five minutes after leaving the manor. The seven stood before the dark tunnel that penetrated into on of the cliff's that surrounded the town. It walls were rough and uncouth, the random depresssions on it giving it an almost bulbous appearance.

  "Here we go," Kurt said, Alfred and Buck standing by his side. He tooka steadying breath, and turned to the evacuation team. "See you guys in a little, okay?"

  Maxell and Alexis nodded sharply, while Mila and Conrad walked up to him.

  Being the first to reach him, Mila hugged him, looping her arms around his neck. "Be safe," she told him, pleading. "Whatever happens down there, please just be safe."

  Returning the hug, Kurt said, "I will. Promise."

  They broke the hug and, after staring at each other's eyes for a moment, Mila walked away. She was wearing her jacket, and Christopher Robin was hanging off its back like a baby koala.

  Before he could chuckle at the sight, Conrad reached him and, much to Kurt's surprise, he too hugged him.

  "Go do your thing," he told Kurt as he disengaged. "I know you'll be fine."

  The farewells stretched a bit longer, but soon the evacuation team had left for their own mission, leaving the three of them standing before the tunnel's swallowing darkness.

  Worldlessly, they walked in, side by side.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  "So, how strong you guys think that vampire's gonna be?" Alexis asked. It was the first thing any of the four had said since their departure from the assault team, and her words cut through the silence of their stroll like a knife.

  "Stronger than Alfred," Mila answered. "Weaker than either Kurt or Buck."

  Maxell whistled. "So they are going to cream that thing, uh? If nothing goes wrong, at least."

  "There's alway the chance stuff will go poorly," Conrad said. He was the one spearheading the group, and his sride on the rocky deser floor was smooth and graceful. "But the opposite is also true. Best we can do is assume they will go wrong and prepare as much as we can, while hopping we won't need any of that preparing."

  "Like Mel Brooks said: Hope for the best. Expect the worst." Maxell said, chuckling. He rose his head, observing the rocky cliffs that enveloped the valley. They were walking alongside one of such cliffs, encircling the town in what was, to their knowledge, the least exposed trail to the valley's entrance. "We are getting close. I remember this are. We should be getting on the trail in five minutes or so."

  Wordlessly, Conrad nodded, raising a hand in acknoledgement.

  "And from there, how long until we reach the van?" asked Mila.

  "Another five or so minutes. We parked it pretty close."

  "Good," Mila replied, looking over her shoulder, as though trying to see the mine's entrance through the dozen or so buildings that stood now between them. "That's...good to hear."

  Alexis glance at Mila with worry, and then spoke aloud. "Hey, why don't we just run? Everyone here's superhumanly fast, right? We can get done with the whole evacuation thing in a minute!"

  "Or we could be dead in less than that," said Conrad firmly, though not harshly. "The faster we move, the harder it'll be to react to any potential ambushes. Plus, we would be wasting valuable stamina we could instead use in any fight that may arise." He half turned to Alexis, and gave her a shrug and a mild, almost apologetic grimace. "Take it from the speedster: when in a life or death scenario, there's an unspoken value on knowing to move slowly. Recklessness kills in this world."

  "I see," Alexis said, lowering her eyes. "That makes sense, yeah. Sorry I said anything."

  "Don't be," Conrad told her, waving a hand dismissively. "You proposed an idea, that's all."

  From Alexis's side, Mila hummed positively. "Yeah, don't worry. We don't need to hurry to ace this thing!" Then, silently and after walking closer to Alexis, she said. "Thank you."

  Silently, the college girl nodded and, after a second of hesitation, pulled the young fae into a quick side hug, one that Mila was happy to reciprocate.

  "They'll be fine," Alexis said.

  "I know," answered Mila.

  Suddenly, the group's footfalls stopped, and the four of them rose their heads to contemplate the two crossing rock spires that loomed far above their heads, forming a triangular shaped that perfectly framed the path exiting the valley.

  Then, returning their sights to the path before them, the group began walking anew. The crunch of their steps on the dirt road filled the openess of the wilderness around them.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  As the assault team made their way down the mine shaft, the sound of their steps reverberated on the earthen walls surrounding them, bouncing back a dozen times over in a dim but still suffocatin echo.

  As they advanced, the sunlight on their backs grew dimmer and dimmer. Soon, they would find themselves forced to use some method of ilumination, either Alfred's phone (which had no signal, by the way) or one of Kurt's Fireball, and that would be a double edged sword indeed. It would make it easier for them to find their guy, and even easier for him to find them.

  So they would rely on the sunlight for as long as it would last.

  Buck had moved between Kurt and Alfred during their descent, and he moved while sniffing at the grouns, looking, or perhaps following, a trail only he could perceive. Perhaps they could rely on his guidance when the light grew to dim. Between his sense of smell and night vision, he ought to make the perfect guide.

  As it turned out, they ended up not needing any such measures, because as soon as the light on their backs had become too weak, they found that another light shone palely before them, just shiny enough for them to navigate through the tunnels.

  Despite its convenience, this development just made Kurt grow even more weary.

  They followed the ghostlight until they reached the end of the tunnel, reaching a chamber the size of a baseball field's diamond, from which over half a dozen more tunnels sprouted. Some sort of hub for all the shafts that made up the mining system. Peppered around the room's floor were four electric lanterns, ones that had been brought and then abandoned by the college party, Alfred told him.

  They hadn't even reached the center of thisroom before they heard the voice.

  "Whaa...?" it came, slurring and slow. "What the hell is...? Oh, shit!"

  Their heads snapped toward one of the room's corners, and there they found, lying on an old tarp, the monstrous figure of the vampire.

  Kurt had known that vampires took the physical traits of those they fed upon, and that he had fed on at least one direwolf of Buck's blood.

  He still was shocked by what stood before him.

  The thing stood at 7 feet of height, and so muscled it looked deformed. The only thing he wore was a pair of sweater pants that had been torn at knee height, exposing most of his hairy-no, not hairy. Exposing most of his fur-covered frame for the world to see.

  Forearms, shoulders, chest, stomach and shins... every place where a regular man would have a mild coating of hair, the vampire had an expanse of blood-colored fur so thick it covered the flesh beneath completely. The nails on his toes and fingers were long, black and thick-looking, more like the talons of a carnivorous bird than something human.

  And then was the man-creature's face.

  Jutting chin, narrow forehead, and mostly black, reflective eyes crowned by thick red brows. The vampire looked, rather ironically, more like what the layman would expect from a werewolf. But Kurt made no such mistake. He knew that it wasn't Lycaon's blood-curse what had twisted this man's flesh, and the screen above his head confirmed it.

  Juvenile Vampire

  Rudy MacArthur

  LV: 40

  Kurt stepped forward, putting himself between the creature and the rest of his team.

  "Good day to you, Mr. MacArthur," he said, drawing a shocked expression for the vampire's apeish face. "We have come here in search for the girl you kidnapped, plus any of red wolves you have not yet consumed. Now..."

  Kurt drew his sword, and the shock in the vampire's faced twisted into fear.

  "...kindly point us in their direction, Mr. MacArthur, and we will be more than willing to talk this through."