CH3: Dragon's Lure

I had questions, and the vampire in my arms probably had answers harder to pry than teeth. World Gov was a corporation that manufactured weapons like the relics vampires used. They weren't a government at all, but they wrote laws backed by the Borgs like they were.

Slots opened on the ball, and four long, sharp legs emerged and lifted the ball from the crater. I aimed for the eye and fired. The ball didn't even move. More slots opened, revealing long tentacles with shiny red bulbs at their ends.

"Get some distance." Once shot forward, I felt some of my energy leave me. I jumped backward and landed on a branch. "It many of us before we figured it out." The vampire said.

I cocked my head. While it might be hindsight, I could clearly sense the loss. Fighting wouldn't happen with her in my arms, but who said I had to. While the ball was scary, it had to use energy to move. Could I force it to waste its fuel and withdraw?

"Watch out," I jumped to a new tree just before a laser fired.

The tree I stood on was sliced in two. Some of my energy was mixed in with several others within the beam. After some thought, the robot's little laser trick could be replicated. It was basic, if powerful, only requiring control, something I had practiced practically since birth.

"Let's see how it likes it." I shifted the vampire on my left shoulder and raised a finger.

"What are you doing?" A small dot of roiling energy appeared at the tip of my finger, glowing brighter and brighter before I fired a white energy beam. The robot threw its tentacles up, and my beam dispersed against a barrier before the tentacles absorbed the energy. "You're only making it stronger."

She stopped breathing as arcs of heat blasted off the robot's shield, splashing the ground, glassing the earth, and causing flash fires to burst in the foliage.

Was I? The barrier was impressive; the pattern was complicated and more beehive-shaped than the normal flat barrier. I would need to test it against Jason to see if it was superior to or inferior to my natural barrier. The energy required to make so many comb-shaped formations would be expensive. As a rule, the natural barrier was superior in energy to defense. But what if the option to drain energy was added? Well, then, an energy-intensive barrier might be effective.

Another problem with energy usage was the more complicated the energy construct, the more mental energy was needed to sustain it. The natural barrier was used because it could always be maintained without causing undue mental stress. It took time and hardship to make a new technique instinctive. Containment took time to develop; we had to maintain it while training and sleeping.

"Do you even have enough mana to run away?" The vampire demanded.

"I thought you were dead," I said.

"Let me go. I would like to stand if we're going to make our last stand." The vampire said.

She moved a shaky hand to her relic while the flames consumed the forest around the robot.

"I told Jason we needed a fire break, and now look what's happened."

"Is he a friend of yours?" She asked.

"My brother, I think he's probably either rushing over to help or fortifying our home," I said.

"How much mana do you have left? Maybe we can hold out?"

"Don't use that word. I hate it, and I have about 90% left. That laser trick took a lot out of me." Letting the other person know my boundaries when forming a new relationship was important. "We're fine; it's slow, and a vampire hunter base is not too far from here."

The ball shot forward like it fired from a canon and shattered the tree we stood upon. I leaped to a new one while it fired its lasers, cutting the trees around it. My balance was off, and I didn't want to use full power against something capable of scanning me. For all I knew, it might call some friends if it felt threatened.

"What's the story with this thing? It doesn't seem to like either of us."

"That is none of your business, mage."

"Touchy, I got it. Do you know how to kill it?" I asked.

"They fell upon us before we could report in from our last mission. There were twelve of those things and six of us. I was lucky to get away." She said.

I continued making my way toward one of the vampire hunter patrols. With any luck, they were already stirred up. My fingertip rose with another laser; the machine froze and activated its barrier. Its tentacles emerged, ready to absorb the energy runoff. I held the attack and smiled.

"What are you doing?"

"That barrier can't be easy to maintain, and it doesn't seem capable of using its lasers and barrier in tandem, or it's trying to fool us," I said.

Concealment could also be called containment; despite my attack hovering above the tip of my finger until I fired it, I wouldn't lose the energy.

"You can't keep this up longer than it can. It has an M particle engine." My eyes widened at the information. Artificial energy engines were all the rage across the ocean, but the borgs there had a falling out after a few terrorist attacks, or so the story goes. World Gov wasn't welcome in Europe, Africa, and mainland Asia. "They also have a Mythril shell impervious to a mage's mana sense and resistant to all magic attacks." She said.

"Someone was doing a little corporate espionage," I said.

"My captain managed to rip one open; getting this information cost him his life. World Gov will stop at nothing to keep their new killers' secrets safe."

"So they decided they didn't need any of you anymore," I said.

"We were made to safeguard mankind." She said.

I scoffed and reabsorbed my attack. The robot dropped its shield and struck with lasers of its own. My body was already moving the second the ports opened. Then I saw 8 more ports open and laser fired from all sides of the monster.

Smoke rose, and sections of the forest burned. My passive aura filtered out the smoke while I kept it contained, and my vampire companion didn't need to breathe. She turned her head to the sounds of truck engines. The cavalry had arrived.

A nuclear-powered WWII PZ VI Tiger rolled in with a railgun replacement for its main gun.

"Say what you want about vampire hunters, but they know how to make stylish weapons."

Boom! The tiger tank with a stenciled orange cartoon tiger on a black painted tank got a direct hit on the robot, giving me so much trouble. Men in gasmasks pointed up at us, lit in the orange flames, and raised their Nordic rune-enchanted rifles. I engaged more energy and leaped high into the cloud of smoke into the burning hellscape of the forest. The sirens of fire trucks filled my ears.

Bullets whistled overhead while I ran through the flames, trusting my aura to keep the flames off the vampire and, more importantly, my rifle.

Lasers flashed even through the inferno, and the tank exploded. Radioactive material sprayed across the forest.

"Have you heard of dragons?" I asked.

She sucked in a breath and looked surprised when she wasn't coughing out her lungs.

"Yes, how are they relevant here. The robot is distracted; why aren't we leaving."

I chuckled.

"Energy causes mutations, and those mutants who survive become strong. Mutated genes are passed down to ever stronger generations of mutants. We gave a couple the stable variants names like witches, trolls, and dragons. My father, while not an expert on dragons, wrote down his experience."

A roar echoed through the forest; even the fiercest mutant knew to hide. I needed it to commit to descending and taking the drone's attention. With the right lure, those monsters of the thermosphere would descend to the ground.

"That isn't possible; they don't leave the Thermosphere." She said.

"Nuclear engines are considered old tech phased out for the cold fission and now M particle engines. There are regulations about what material nuclear engines can use, but the reason why was highly regulated. Do you know what I'm trying to say?"

The flames lifted, calling to a man stepping through the nuclear radiation and blackened corpses. Blue robes worn by graduates of the mage college of Egypt Mississippi blew in the updraft. A gnarled staff of black bodock wood gathered the flame from the forest fire before dousing them. The man was an Elementalist trained by the college or an impersonator.

200 years after the cease-fire between the major Mississippi mage institutions and Jackson mega-city, mages began leaving for college to find promising acolytes. Vampires turned a blind eye to the child-stealing mages preaching mana and elementalism.

The presence of the dragon left already.

"I am the mage, Morgan Brown. Drones do not fall under the protection of the treaty. Retreat now or face deactivation by my staff." Morgan said.