Fortress blocks magic

[u/ghostgabe81]

One of them stepped forward and lowered its hood. It had been a female at one time, I thought, though mummified corpses reduce gender considerations to a large degree. It was wearing jewelry that looked like it might have been inspired by ancient Egyptian fashion, definitely somewhere in the Middle East, though historically speaking it was likely an affectation, since Drakul had been a late-fourteenth-century type. I dubbed it Cleopatra anyway. They were doubtless in similar shape.

“Okay, Cleo,” I said. “What you got?”

The vampire’s eyes glittered with pure malevolence and she raised her right hand, sending a bolt of white-hot flame scorching straight at me.

I narrowed my eyes, focused my will upon the castle’s defenses, and otherwise didn’t move a single muscle.

The fire streaked toward me—and stopped cold at the line of the battlements. The runes and sigils there burned brightly for a moment, and a faint impression of a wall of blue light appeared in the air between us, immaterial as a phantom and very much real enough to stop the hostile magic in its tracks. The stones of Merlin’s fortress absorbed the energy as easily as they stopped the wind.

Cleo lowered its hand, black eyes narrowing. Then it spoke, and its voice was as charming as sandpaper on rusted steel. “Malvora.”

I started to say something, and Bear grabbed my collar and jerked me back as a gunshot rang out. I had the flash impression of one of the Malvora moving swiftly, hand extending bearing a long-barreled pistol. Something hissed past my face, close enough to stir some of my hair as I dropped back.

Merlin’s fortress had been designed to be impregnable to supernatural forces. Modern firearms hadn’t really been a factor in its engineering, and while the stone was damned near impregnable, especially while charged with power like it was at the moment, I couldn’t use it to stop bullets from zipping through the air.

Twelve Months Chapter 53