A Fortuitous Month

Omentus sat at the main desk in his workshop. It was large, oaken thing that was sturdy beyond mention. Furrows had been carved into its top, where an annoyed Omentus liked to run his demonically sharp nails. It had been three days since the last time he slept, though it was worth it for these results. Behind his right ear, he had managed to graft a set of seven copper-colored vassyr scales to his own flesh. The work was a complete success; as far as his body was concerned, they were always there. He had also just managed to process the blood of the gargoyle he had captured a week beforehand.

When he injected himself with the partially homunculized blood, a few moments went by with nothing. Then, there was a sudden surge of the gargoyle's life. Her name was Amberstone. She was a vassyr, and the power she had over electricity was called Life Spark. These were but trivial things compared to the treasure of knowledge he had just come into ownership of – there were more gargoyles.

* * *

Boltvein, a large silver vassyr with midnight blue eyes, quietly landed in a meadow, knowing that there was a human outlook nearby. She sniffed the air like she always did, this time catching a scent of her cub, but it was too faint to learn where she went to. 'Amberstone... where are you?' she thought. Her silver scales blazed in the sunlight while she slowly moved around, trying to find a hint of a trail that could lead the gargoyle in the direction of her cub.

* * *

Memories of a mother called Boltvein appeared in the necromancer's mind. She had come from Cloudbluff, a city of the vassyr. He frowned, not knowing where to find her, and looked up at the scrying mirror that kept constant track of Amberstone. She was not near her mother, and his frown grew deeper. He reached into his cloak and drew out a bloodwell and quill, then wrote a strange, symmetrical design on the mirror in the blood of Esmoiress. Setting fingers to the pane, he turned back the time of the image. Instead of flowing forward, he scried into the gargoyle's past. To outside observers, the mirror glittered for a few moments, before suddenly coming to rest on the image of the gargoyle cub and her mother. The alchemist changed the position of his fingers on the mirror pane, and the image changed with them. It was centered on a large silver vassyr in a meadow. He recognized the location; it was only a feet hundred feet outside of Kedaldown.

Chuckling to himself, Omentus placed a finger near the image of Boltvein, using another of the scrying magics at his disposal. He spoke in his second voice, mimicking the sound of Amberstone's voice with perfection. In the meadow, her voice called out weakly, but its location was unclear. "Mother?" the voice began, "Mother, are you there?"

* * *

Boltvein’s ears shot up, and twitched all over the place, trying to locate the voice. 'Amberstone! But where is she...?' The gargoyle looked around, before calling out in the vassyr's language, "Where are you, my cub?"

Omentus responded from the mirror, speaking again in the cub's voice, "Mother… help me. I… I can't see." He cried, mewling as Amberstone would when frightened and helpless. "Mother, please find me. I…" he trailed off, as though the child vassyr had fainted.

Boltvein stood frozen as she heard that. In a second she roared, the sound actually shook some trees. It sounded like a loud crash of thunder, before the gargoyle began to trot around the area, hoping to find her cub. 'Where are you?!' There was a look of fear on her face, and she hoped desperately to not find her cub dead somewhere.

* * *

Omentus took his finger off of the mirror so that his voice would no longer be channeled through it. Grinning, he chuckled to himself as the mother searched frantically for her child. "That ought to keep her busy for a while." he said, opening one of the drawers on his desk. He pulled out a heavy cloak pin. It was a shiny black thing which looked like a pair of lightning bolts twining around one another. The charm was not permanent, but it would absorb even Boltvein's Life Spark for an hour or so if she attacked him. He replaced the main pin in his dark red cloak with the charm, securing it so strongly that it might never come off.

The necromancer looked toward his normal armaments, Fluffy and the rabbit targe, and shook his head. Living equipment was useless against this vassyr. Frowning, he bid his armor remove itself, and it obeyed, opening itself at the seams and crawling over to a mannequin as he finished his preparations. In just half an hour's time, he was walking out onto the meadow where Boltvein had been searching, without even the benefit of his Ignore Me spell for protection. He wanted to be seen.

Boltvein continued to hurry along, searching the area for any sign of her cub. She sniffed the air, and caught a familiar scent. 'Amberstone!' The gargoyle practically broke into a sprint, before stopping and seeing someone standing in the meadow. 'Why does this human have her scent?' The gargoyle snarled, before stepping into the meadow, keeping the human in her sights. "Who are you, and why do you have my cub's scent?!"

Omentus smiled at Boltvein, appreciating the adult's far larger size. He looked her over before answering, "Your cub? Oh, do you mean Amberstone?" It wasn't really a question, more like a mockery. Breaking into a grin that showed too many teeth, he said, "You won't find her here, Boltvein."

The gargoyle appeared shocked for a split second, before she growled at him, sounding like thunder was roaring close by. She slowly opened her over seven foot long wings and instantly shattered them. Half became charged with electricity, while the rest remained normal. Boltvein lowered herself to the ground, as if she was going to pounce, but spoke instead. "You did something to her, didn't you?!"

Omentus, safe from the gargoyle's electricity by means of his black lightning charm, and safe from her claws by means of his demonic skin, walked slowly toward her. “Did I do something to her?” the necromancer asked the gargoyle back, not expecting an answer. "Some… single… thing?" His left eye glimmered dangerously, "Would you like a list?"

She hissed venomously, "There's more!?" Her whole body shuddered in rage, before she closed her eyes. "Guardian." Her whole body turned white with electricity, before it faded in a split second. After it faded, she looked like he never had any scales. The gargoyle was covered in a single piece of sliver, yet she darted towards him as if there was nothing there, no seams showed at all. Even the inside of her mouth was coated in the silver; her eyes were covered as well. She could easily see and breathe however. The gargoyle leapt at him, the floating scales followed, trying to dig into his skin.

Omentus stumbled back, almost playfully as he let himself be pounced by the enraged vassyr. Her scales dug uselessly into his skin, but managed to tear some holes in his clothing; her claws nearly threatened to break his demonic hide when she grabbed, and a bone popped when she bit hard into his left shoulder. It was painful, to be sure, but the psychopath was genuinely enjoying her anguish. When his back hit the ground, he cried out not in his own voice, but in Amberstone's, "Mother! Stop, please, you're hurting me..." he whimpered, but couldn't stop himself from grinning.

Boltvein lifted her head up and stared right into his eyes, "You..." Anger surged through her, overwhelming her composure. She lashed out at him, clamping her jaw around his throat. Her fangs sank into his skin, drawing blood, but it wasn’t enough. Ripping her fangs out, she leapt off of him, wanting to tear him apart, but realized that wouldn't happen. "What did you do to her?!"

The necromancer rubbed his neck, feeling where the mother's fangs had nearly torn through, and where crimson, and yet silver-tinted blood crept slowly from the scratches she'd left. His blood was his own, yet also smelled exactly like the vassyr cub's. He shook his head as he got to his feet, steeling himself so as not to be knocked over by Boltvein again. "I think I've answered enough of your questions, for now." he said. "And I came out here to ask you a few of my own. Perhaps if you cooperate, I'll tell you more about Amberstone."

Boltvein still wanted to tear him apart, but stopped herself from launching at the man once more. "What are they?" The gargoyle kept her silver armor on her, just in case.

Omentus wasted no time on idle chat, nor did he bother to mask his questions in any way. "Where is Cloudbluff?" he asked first. He took a small flask out of one of the pockets in his cloak and drank from it. As he drank, the scratches disappeared from his neck and the bone in his shoulder settled back into its proper place.

'How does this human...?' Boltvein just looked at him for a moment, before answering, "Within the main cliff on Felloak Mountain."

Omentus nodded, taking a mental note before the next question. "Do the vassyr have a social system?"

"In a way. It's mainly a hierarchy; silver vassyrs are the strongest, iron follows next, and coppers are the weakest and… worthless to most other vassyrs. I'm an exception to the hierarchy though." She looked to her left slightly, "…I don't think my cub is weak or worthless."

Omentus looked the side, the sentiment truly lost on him, "But the other vassyr do, and is that why the two of you are out here? Because your cub is copper scaled?" Without a word or hesitation, one of the scales broke off from behind his ear and darted forward. He snapped his hand out and grabbed it as it sped away from him, and looked it over in his hand. Half-musing, he went on, "What is the political state of Cloudbluff?"

She noticed the scale immediately. 'That's one of her scales!' "In a way," she said, and then blinked, pausing. "What do you mean by that, a political state?"

"The details of the social hierarchy you described, the current events, their interaction with other cities, their civil interactions with one another..." He was partially absorbed in the scale's appearing. It glinted in the light of midday, but his mind was on the social connotations of this color.

"Most of my species do not interact with other cities, ever since a war broke out 20 to 25 years ago. Most reactions are calm, unless a human-like vassyr is around... I'm not certain on the current events, since I don't live in the city anymore," the vassyr mother explained.

"There are humanoid vassyr... hmm. Are they a different species, or is this sort of variation normal among your kind?"

"It's a variation of my species. The elders don't like them though; they weren't supposed to happen... at least that's what the elders say." Boltvein kept her eye on the human, not sure what he would do, if anything.

Omentus nodded again, a smile creeping back into his face. He put his hand down at his side, but the scale that was in it stayed floating in the air. After a moment, it disappeared behind his ear. "Would you say that your Life Spark is stronger than Amberstone's?"

"Yes, I would." She looked questioningly at him for a moment, "... unless you did something to her... did you?!" Even though her eyes were hidden behind silver, her face showed a slight hint of worry and anger.

"How much stronger?"

"Twice as strong, but I don't dare go any higher, since I don't want to hurt her... My actual level is about six times her own."

Omentus perked up the mention of six, looking directly into Boltvein's eyes, "Six times, you say? Fascinating..." He put a hand up to his chin, mumbling just loud enough to be heard, although it wasn't clear whether or not he knew he was speaking, "...even more and her body adjusts well to the amplified load, although the flora may certainly have been necessary..."

Omentus snapped out of his mumbling reverie, shaking his head slightly. His eyes came into focus once more, "Just one more thing I want from you, Boltvein, and then we can go back to your questions."

Boltvein instantly looked confused, but buried it quickly, "What else do you want to know?

Omentus smirked, unable to contain his excitement. "Oh, it isn't really what I want to know," he said slowly, while drawing Helir out of the holster on his right leg, "it's something I want from you, as payment for the rest of my ... aid in helping you find your cub."

She noticed the odd object quickly. 'What is that?' "What is it then?" Boltvein kept her armor on, as she slightly became nervous.

"One vial of your blood." He watched her reaction, searching for the telltale signs of fear. Finding them, he said quickly, "Oh– no need to be afraid. You'll only feel a little pinch, but you'll need to remove that… beautiful armor." He restrained the urge to lick his lips, but the hunger was evident on his voice.

She lowered her head slightly, keeping her eyes on him, before she closed them. "Vanish," her Life Spark covered herself again, while the scales on her wings reattached, forming the leather skin on her wings. The armor vanished as her electricity did. The gargoyle relaxed her body as much as possible, but stayed alert. "Go ahead…"

Omentus spun the syringe in his hand, closing the distance between the two of them with a smile on his face. This was a good month, indeed. He made no hesitation, nor did he seem to care for the gargoyle's well being when he made the stick, but his aim was perfect. Helir's needle slid into a vein on the vassyr's arm and drew out a full barrel of thick, black blood in just moments. It didn't just pinch, though. To the gargoyle, it was very uncomfortable to have a cold length of steel embedded in her arm. After a moment, he pulled the syringe free and put it back into the harness on his leg, then placed a hand on Boltvein's arm, where the hole he'd made from the needle stick was.

Black blood trickled out of the injury as Omentus intoned the words, "Tinsu avis taera." There was a shivering in the air, and then the gargoyle's injury didn't just close, it got up from her scaled hide and left her. The puncture slid along the necromancer's hand and up his arm, until it came to rest somewhere beneath his clothing and spread out into a number of lesser injuries, almost too small to even bleed.

Boltvein didn't even wince during this, but she just looked at his face. "Will you tell me what you did to my cub now…?"

The necromancer laughed at the gargoyle's request, but his response wasn't one of mockery. Instead, he turned and walked away from Amberstone's mother, stopping after he'd put a good ten feet between the two of them. "You could say…" he began, “that I've become Amberstone.”

"I don't believe you." She thought back to what he muttered earlier, "What did you do to her?"

"Ah, so you don't believe me..." He scratched himself behind the ear and brushed his hair back, "Well, it's true, you know. Of course, that's not all that happened. Do you want the long version or the short one?"

"I'd rather know everything, the long version, please."

Omentus shrugged, not caring whether answer she wanted to hear, "The procedure was relatively simple, though it didn't yield in quite the positive direction I hoped it would have." He took a deep breath, "Beginning with the meeting of the subject on the bridge in the western sprawls of Kedaldown, it was a matter of capturing and sedating the creature, although initial reactions indicated and later testing revealed the beli drug is particularly effective on the child gargoyle, and it may be that the drug is of particular effect on all vassyr, though conclusive evidence is yet to be seen. After sedation of the subject, it was recovered to my laboratory for testing, and pending its nature, restrained before it could do harm to the delicate instruments therein. After the juvenile was restrained and its Life Spark charge was grounded, I connected her to a gauging device designed to determine electrical intensity, which showed nominal results.

"Thereupon did I reason that the strength of the charge produced should be one of internal ability and wanting to discover the upper limits of a vassyr gargoyle's electrical capability did I perform surgery for the implantation of one pair of truequartz-kryas crystal arrays and found myself at the creature's heart. The opportunity presenting itself as it did, I implanted also to the heart of the subject a powered refinery, reservoir and injection mechanism for the deific blood of the deceased god Nesconx, before closing the incision and waking the subject."

Omentus looked back at Boltvein, his attention having wandered off as he related the details of the operations of his work on Amberstone. "Any questions so far?"

She took in everything he said, and actually understood it. "No, please continue..."

Omentus nodded, continuing his explanation, "On the waking of the subject, did I learn that she was, in fact, an intelligent creature capable of speech and an understanding of the Antan language. Pending this new information did I press for the whereabouts of others of the creature's kind and reason a way to persuade her to produce the most potent charge of Life Spark at her disposal for a prolonged period of time, the testing of which indicated to be greater than six and one third the maximum level of charge before the implantation of the arrays. However, it did also appear that the discharge of such levels of Life Spark were harmful to the body of the vassyr. This not being conducive to the lifespan of the experiment, I injected to the spinal cord and brain of the subject a beneficial nervous flora to counteract the result of overcharging the vassyr body. Shortly thereafter did the subject break from its constraints in a fit of panic, attack me, and flee from the window my second story laboratory. I followed her onto the streets below and attempted to detain her, but met with the full force of her Life Spark in its newest incarnation, and was stunned, unable to pursue her as she left the city Kedaldown, returning to the west as she had come from."

Boltvein nodded slowly at this. "Let me see if I understand this, and I believe I do understand it. You found my cub, drugged her, took her away to some place, and hooked her up to a machine to measure her Life Spark. Then, you cut into her, placed objects on and around her heart, and then closed the wound up. You then wanted to see if she could handle her new Life Spark's power, and somehow forced her to use this new level of her power, and found out that she was hurt by it." The gargoyle paused, taking a breath, "You then injected her with bacteria that would help her control this new level over time, and that would protect her from further injury of her Life Spark. You possibly scared her so much that my cub then broke out of the restraints, and fought you. She then broke out of the building she was in, you tried to catch her again, and she fought you with her new level, and she beat you before flying off..." She was now within four feet of him. “Am I right? I'm guessing that you're going to do something with my blood, correct?" Boltvein looked directly at him, glaring.

Omentus brushed his nose, not intimidated by the gargoyle, "Almost, but not precisely. You have a fine grasp of the chain of events. For your own benefit, however, I'd like to state that your child is presently unharmed, and the nervous flora should be flourishing. By now, it is likely that she will not be able to find a single thing in the wild capable of withstanding a prolonged bolt from her Life Spark, and it still puts her own biology in no danger of injury."

She nodded, "So, my cub's at my full level of strength with my Life Spark, right now..." 'My poor cub, he must have had you suffer.' The gargoyle forced her anger away, and stepped away from him, not sure at what this human could do to her if he did that to her cub. 'Be glad I'm not trying to rip your throat out right now, and that's because she's still alive. If I find her... you will not survive against both of us. I'm certain of it.'

Omentus raised a brow at Boltvein as she took a step back and waited a moment. Suddenly, he said, "Oh, and I can hear your thoughts."

"Really?" She looked at him as if she didn't believe him at all.

Grinning broadly, the devil in his eye, Omentus replied, "No. I just wanted to see the look on your face."

"Oh. Thankfully, I didn't believe you."

"I noticed." He turned around, walking back toward Kedaldown, "The last time I saw your daughter," he called out to her behind him, "She was eighteen miles west of the city and three miles south. That was sometime this morning."

Boltvein watched him walk away, before taking flight and followed her cub's trail. 'I am not asking how he knew those things... I just hope I find her...'

***

Arriving in his apothecaries shop, Omentus went inside and upstairs, where the glass window had been replaced just hours beforehand. He sat down at his desk and opened one of the drawers, taking out another mirror pane. He set it down on the desk, face down, and scratched a design into its back. He reached into one of the jars sitting atop the desk and pulled out a green crystal, then pressed it against the back of the mirror, over the design he'd drawn. He turned the mirror over and put it up beside the pane that scried Amberstone. In this new mirror was Boltvein, her wings outstretched as she flew through the air toward the place the necromancer mentioned to her.

He placed a finger on the mother's mirror and spoke through it, his voice echoing in her mind, but seeming to come from all around her. This time, he didn't speak in Amberstone's voice, but unabashedly used his own, "Boltvein, don't think for a moment that I asked for your blood because I couldn't have taken it from you. Nor should you think that Amberstone escaped because she beat me. I let her go." The alchemist took his finger away from the mirror and took the scale he'd managed to steal from the gargoyle out of the pouch on his belt. It still felt warm, and it was time to get to work.

She ignored his voice, and continued to fly after her cub, hoping to find her soon.

Er, this is complete. Please feel free to leave comments.

Really? That was umm... rather short then. I did like it though.

(But isn't Amberstone, and therefore logically Boltvein too, someone else's character?)

Originally Posted by Sabbo

Really? That was umm... rather short then. I did like it though.

(But isn't Amberstone, and therefore logically Boltvein too, someone else's character?)

Yes, Amberstone is my character, but she's not actually there, just talked about. Boltvein is her mother, and an NPC of mine.

I gave Drammor the ok to use her in this, since it originally was an IMRP on AIM. (If that helps any.)

Ah, I see. That makes sense then.

Hey, man. Fictions don't have to be long. I like to write short stories, which don't require a lot of investment from the readers.

It was good. I really liked it. Though I did have trouble keeping up with Omentus talking to Boltvein about Amberstone.