IX
"Khrona dakar!"
A blast of orange flame, hurled from thirty feet away, slammed into the door that the vampires had passed through. The thin wood splintered under the raw power of the shrieking fire, sending shards flying inward even as they burned.
Tal whirled around the corner and followed on the heels of the gout of hellish flame, his crystalline sword ablaze with cold blue light, and he disappeared through the now-open doorway. Shouts of surprise came from within, and I ran toward them, crossing that thirty-foot distance in the span of only a few seconds, hurling myself through the smoldering door frame. Another spell was already on my lips as I took stock of the situation.
The Arbiter was pursuing two of the vampires, who'd turned to flee into an inner doorway. The third cowered against the far wall, though it was recovering from its shock more quickly than any human could have. Before my eyes, it transformed, shedding its human-like form and becoming a vaporous black shadow, red eyes glowing like coals from within the billowing smoke-form.
Something lashed out and struck me. Though there was no physical pain, I felt what could only be described as a kind of spiritual agony as the vampire's tendril locked onto my wrist and began draining the life from me. A scream tore itself from my lips as I felt my spirit struggle to hold on, and somehow I managed to shape the scream into another incantation.
"Kettek!" I shrieked, and an arrow made of pure white light crossed the space between me and the vampire in the blink of an eye, slamming into the shadowy form with a jarring impact that actually shook the walls of the rickety house we'd entered. The tendril shook loose from my arm, and I felt my strength surge as it returned.
Then it came at me, and my breath caught in my throat as it descended. I tried to scream again, to force air past my lips, but my lungs were frozen in terror as the crimson eyes of the vampire rushed toward me. A cold rush of wind went past me, and its tendrils drilled to the center of my very soul.
Despair filled me as my vision began to darken. I had been overwhelmed, and the Arbiter was nowhere in sight. I should have taken his advice, gone back to my lab…
My lab.
The book, lying open on my lab table. Could it be enough to save me? Would Yzgar's formula work against the power of a fel creature instead of a carefully-crafted spell? Was my mind working well enough to remember the incantation while the vampire sucked my life away?
There was no choice left; I had to try.
My lips were cold, but I forced them to work. It started off as merely a murmur as I began to recite the incantation in its native Old Tellarian, the alien syllables twisting my tongue into strange shapes and patterns. My vision darkened further, but I whispered more phonemes. The chill crept from my hands up my arms as the vampires clutched and clawed at the core of my being, draining the manna that animated me and gave me life.
Then, the chill reversed, and warmth began pouring into me.
My chants became louder, more insistent. No longer whispers, they were spoken words, and they were now being almost drowned out by the piteous wails of the vampire as Yzgar the Black's ancient formula turned its own power against the creature and gave it to me. It began to unravel, just as the dark sorcerer had promised, and instead of draining my power, it was suddenly pushing its own into me.
It was glorious.
Warmth became heat, and I was flooded with power and energy beyond anything I had ever experienced before. My chanting grew to a crescendo, until I was shouting the words over the shrieking of the dying vampire and the roaring winds which rushed into the tiny building. The corrupted energy that gave life to the horror buoyed my spirit until I nearly began to sing the words of Yzgar's miraculous incantation, so happy was I and so euphoric, the greatest high I had ever experienced in twenty-odd years of magical practice.
There was a shift in the feeling of the power, subtle at first, but then it yanked me violently around and I was instead flooded with cold; cold beyond reason, cold beyond imagining, the deep chill of the depths of winter at the bottom of some far-flung icy sea. This was not the cold of death, though – no, this was the cold of the pure manna, the very power which had been kept by the dead Arbiter, Gaerton Daen. It was his power I was feeling now, taken by the vampire and then delivered into me via the incantation.
For a moment… a long, painful, ecstatic and beautiful moment, I held the two sides of the manna in my hands. My right arm blazed with the searing crimson heat of corruption, and my left with the wintry cobalt purity that shone from the Arbiter's eyes and sword. I was the embodiment of the world in that moment, in perfect balance and utter chaos all at once. It felt as though I could see the very fabric of the universe, all the inner workings and threads that tied every part of everything to everything else. It was perfect enlightenment.
A searing pain blossomed at the base of my skull, and I lost consciousness.