As Lucca sliced a deep slash in his forearm with his burning blade, he dropped to his knees in the glade. Blazing with Light, he tossed the sword aside – scrawling an enormous sigil into the grass with his bloody fingertips. For he hadn’t just made a small cut; Ariana watched horrified as blood gushed from a mortal wound in Lucca’s forearm, pouring down over his hand as he quickly wrote his sigil. Where that sigil went, the grass died instantly, black and withered like it had been burned. Slamming his bloody palm to the sigil as he finished it, Lucca blasted it with power like a bomb.
And their trio’s magic exploded in the night.
Lucca’s connection to Ariana and Quinn flashed out as that explosion hit them. But Lucca’s move had made its mark, light blazing through Ariana as she screamed and Quinn echoed her. Scalding power was suddenly thrust through her like suns going supernova – all for her and Quinn’s use.
Ariana understood that Lucca had somehow used that sigil to thrust the entirety of his magic into her and Quinn through their connection; and as it exploded through them, she and Quinn’s combined powers rang in a single, united tone. It was tremendous, a pureness of sound as if the Music had suddenly tuned inside them to a universal resonance. And as the Music found that note, it thundered out from Quinn and Ariana.
Sundering Revenants all around.
Quinn’s dark fire was like solar flares as it shot out, skewering Revenants with light and burning sound. Crystallized Music flowed from Ariana in deafening waves, focused through her hands now as she hammered that power out all around. The hall was an eruption of rage as Revenants shrieked back, Masters clapping their hands to their ears as they fell to their knees in agony.
But Ariana’s Music was not aimed at the Masters; they were saved from that tone as it hammered through the sea of cursed Night. The Revenants boiled as the Music poured through them now, eating them alive. Thundering through them, it resonated something deep inside their auric bodies of smoke and darkness. As it did, it hummed up to the max, like someone had up-tuned the volume and the frequency all at once.
Shattering the Revenants apart – just like it had the Bloodstone.
Thuds like bodies hitting stone came all around as the Music snapped out. The battle was just suddenly over as whirls of auric smoke dissipated from the underground hall and Ariana was left with her ears ringing. Disoriented, her heart still hammered, her breath heaving from the fight – when she saw thirty naked men and women laying upon the checkerboard floor where only Revenants had been before. As the hall cleared of magic and seething Revenant-smoke, chunks fell from blasted-out marble pillars, but that was the only noise now.
As every Master stared in an astonished silence at what lay in a circle around Ariana and Quinn.
Lowering her hands, her power so spent now she was shaking, Ariana saw how the naked people laying around her breathed slowly, unconscious. Gasping from the battle, she glanced to Quinn; like her, he was staring at all the unconscious people with wide eyes, shocked. As one finally stirred, a woman with long blonde hair so pale it was nearly white, Quinn glanced to her. As she pushed up to sitting, his lips fell open. She was so close that his subtle motion drew her attention. Glancing over, the woman seemed befuddled as she shivered. But then Ariana saw awareness come into her luminous silver eyes as she marveled at Quinn and lifted a hand.
Reaching out and quietly stroking his jaw.
“Allen ou touest?” She asked as she frowned. It was an ancient language, Ariana understood, though it wasn’t even one Quinn knew as his eyebrows lifted.
But as the woman spoke, a gasp came in the hall – and Arturos moved forward, going to one knee beside her. As a strange, watery resonance passed between them, her face brightened; heaving forward, she embraced him, and he choked out a laugh as he clutched her. Everyone gaped as Arturos cradled the woman’s head to his shoulder, glancing to Quinn.
“She’s a Siren! A Vampire-Siren, like me. She used an ancient Siren language ten thousand years dead, but it’s one I know. She must have been a Revenant for gods know how long, her mind lost to her bestial nature…”
“Sweet Power of the Night!” Quinn breathed, shocked to learn how old this Vampire woman was – and how long she had been insane. But Ariana, Quinn, and Lucca’s power had released the woman from her madness somehow; as Arturos helped her to standing, others began to stir. Rising and helping Ariana up though he was still shaking from everything they had just gone through, Quinn summoned Devi and Curio. Nodding to Lady Eiseth as Arturos stepped close with his charge, Quinn glanced between them all.
“You can speak the Dead Tongues?” Quinn spoke quickly to Eiseth and Arturos, as more once-Revenants began sitting up and blinking around confusedly.
“A few of them.” Arturos spoke as Eiseth nodded.
“Good.” Quinn spoke, falling into commander mode as he beckoned his astonished Vampire servers forward now, sternly pointing them to once-Revenants as they came to. “Talk with those who are waking; explain what has happened. Curio, have your Concierges make rooms ready throughout the Hotel, anything well-insulated from daylight will do. Devi, alert the staff that we have thirty very special new guests staying with us for the indefinite future. Until we can figure out which Dark Havens they belong to.”
As everyone nodded alertly, Ariana suddenly realized there had been far more than thirty Revenants battling in the hall tonight. But it seemed the rest had disappeared when the Music hit – and whomever had instigated this fight was not here, she felt as she glanced around. But even as she wondered who had orchestrated this attack tonight, two more Masters suddenly cried out.
Recognizing someone waking upon the floor and rushing to them.
Ariana watched Arturos give his Vampire-Siren charge quietly over to one of the Catering staff now, speaking low words to her in a flowing sea-language. With a squeeze to Ariana’s hand and a deep look, Quinn moved forward with Lady Eiseth and Arturos to tend those waking, speaking to them in a variety of arcane Twilight Realm languages and letting them know where they were. As Ariana watched a few more Masters find relations among the once-Revenants, she realized someone had stepped to her side. Vast interest issued from the person standing next to her.
Watching not just the scene before them, but Ariana also.
“Something interesting?” Turning, Ariana lifted an eyebrow – to realize the tall, gaunt Winter Fae Master from the Draining of the Bloodstone stood beside her.
“Much.” The man spoke with gravitas as he watched the scene, then looked at Ariana, his pale blue eyes chilly like tundra ice. “You have no idea what you’ve just done here, do you, Dark Fae?”
“Avoided a lot of people dying tonight, I’d say.” Ariana spoke alertly now, as she noted a number of Masters shrink back from the man beside her, as if he had a bad reputation.
“You thwarted a tremendously powerful magical attack leveled at your Master tonight.” The tall Winter Fae Vampire continued as his gaze penetrated her, a sensation of wind and snow sighing off of him. “We could all feel a dominant mind behind it, pushing these Revenants to act as one. Quinn has made an enemy of someone tremendously powerful, who sought to test him tonight. To testyou, and see what his Dark Fae could do. Much, it seems. And now… the entire world is watching.” Making a sweeping gesture, the man indicated the hall – a number of Masters staring at Ariana rather than the once-Revenants.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” She asked, Quinn still busy helping Eiseth and Arturos talk to once-Revenants and get them squared away for the night. Glancing up as if feeling Ariana’s unrest, Quinn saw her with the Winter Fae Vampire and paused deeply, becoming statuesque as he and the strange Master exchanged a long glance.
“My name is Vasily Ilyov, Master of Siberia.” The man answered Ariana with a chuckle, though it was cold as he looked back to her. “I don’t believe you know this, Dark Fae, but it is impossible for either Fae or Vampires to wake a Revenant back to their saner mind.The only person who has done so in the past ten thousand years is the current Crystal Dragon King, Dusk Arlohaim. But Dragons are outrageously powerful magical beings; and even Dusk could not awaken Revenants back to theirflesh. Which you have done tonight – not just a single Revenant, but thirty all at once.”
“What are you saying?” Ariana spoke, frowning to understand that she and Quinn had attracted copious attention with a ridiculously potent ability tonight – one that they didn’t even understand the half of yet. “Are you saying I have a Dragon’s power?”
