"So...what's your name then?" Tiar asked after a minute of geting his breath back.
"I'm Oderion, and I'm presuming that you're Tiar? So, whats the plan then"
"Ever fought a vampire before"
"Nope"
"Me neither. Know how to kill one"
"Aside from staking it, throwing holy water at it, making it eat garlic, cutting it's head off or expossing it to sunlight, no." The elf commented. Tiar smiled slightly, realising that they were in the same predicament, and at least the elf has a sense of humour, he added as an after thought. They scrambled the rest of the way out of the stream. The blue jelly like being was standing there waiting. "Has that got a name"
"Wouldn't know"
"Not yours then?" Tiar asked.
"No, it's Diana's...rather pathetic isn't it for a summons?" The elf asked, almost rhetorically.
"Wouldn't know, I've only been doing magic for just over two weeks now"
"Fair enough. Got any weapons?" The elf asked, reaching out behind his back and unclipping his bow.
"I've only got the magic I can wield as my weapon." Tiar responded.
"Want one? I't won't be too much trouble for me to get you something"
"I wouldn't know how to use it." Tiar said casually, trying to dry himself a little. Oderion walked over to a tree and then reached his hand through it. He gave a sharp tug, and then showed Tiar the weapon he had drawn. It was a gleaming, brand new sword.
"Do I want to know where you pulled that one from?" Tiar asked, eyeing up the blade.
"Elves used to live in these woods, we used to put weapons in trees incase ours got broken, and something was after us, so do you want the sword, or not?" Oderion asked, getting a little bored.
"Sure." Tiar held out his hand to take it. The elf reversed it so that the hilt was facing Tiar. Tiar grabbed it, and carefully gave it a few experimental swings. It felt light and swift, yet strong at the same time.
"Hey hey careful! That's elven steel, it can cut through most things." The elf informed Tiar.
"Callyse!" Tiar ordered, creating her time compass to locate her. "Lets go then!" The two began to run forward. The jelly summons raised its head slightly, saw which way they were heading and spreadout its feelers, taking a thin membrane with it. With its newly formed wings, it tried a vertical takeover, realised that wasn't how it was build to fly, bounced up a tree and then leapt out to glide after the two boys.

Callyse watched those happenings through a large bubbling potion, knowledge of which she had somehow inherited from the vampire that had bitten her. She laughed manically. There hadn't been a vampire mage before, usually because the mages wouldn't let themselves get caught. Callyse was very proud of the fact she was the first. She was the best of both worlds. She had immortality, super human strength, the power to control the weather the abilty to change shape at will,, and all the perks of being a mage of nature, like sunlight, garlic and holy water immunity, a reflection, power over the earth and living things, which linked well with her vampiric ability to alter the thinking of others. Let them come, she thought to herself as she decended the long spiralling steps to the dungeon that had her previous friends in. She didn't even need to be the one to fight Tiar and the elf, she could get them to fight for her. Again she laughed manically, enjoying her feeling of invincibility.

"We got to stop!" Tiar informed Oderion. They skidded to a halt. "I think she was watching us back then, untill we started running"
"Really?... so what, she knows were coming, it won't stop us killing her any the less"
" She's making herself more powerful...she's...trying...to hold the hybridisation between human and vampire. The 'perfect balance', or something"
"What! so she's keeping the best of both worlds! Well how are we meant to kill her that way!" Oderion began to hyperventilate, not used to going up against something that couldn't be stopped.
"Calm down. I think we just need back up. Stand back, I'm going to try something!" Oderion looked straight at Tiar. He was serious. Just then, the summons landed on Oderions shoulder, and then changed shape to become a sort of snake, and wrapped itself around his arm. Tiar's eyes flickered for a second. "Belmarsh? do you want to become a big summons?" A head formed on the stretched out slime and looked at him, or at least faced his general direction.
"You found out it's name?...sorry." Oderion apologised after getting an icy look from Tiar. Belmarsh, the summons, leapt from where it was wrapped around Oderion's arm, to where Tiar held out his own. As soon as it landed a sphere of time erupted around it, speeding up the time within it. Lines of power spread over Belmarsh. It began to shake violantly as it went through rapid evolution. Tiars eyes roled up into his head, and then his legs gave in under him. Belmarsh now had a larger form, which was much more defined into the shape of a doglike creature. Power of a much stronger magnitute than it had had previously emminated from it. It was still getting bigger, but Tiar was growing visibly weaker. After a minute the time sphere broke down. Leaving Tiar gasping for breath.
Oderion took a massive handful of the elven magical powder and threw it at Tiar. Tiar stopped squirming in pain. "Wow, that is bloody good stuff!" He said after a few more seconds.
"Yeah, that was all of it." Oderion commentated, looking into his now empty pouch. Belmarsh stood at about waist height by that point. "Good job though!" Oderion added, looking at what had once been a shape shifting blue blob.
"Can you summon?" Tiar asked.
"Elves can't do magic, at least not in the same way that humans can." Oderion informed him.
"Did you see how Diana did it"
"No, I was the other side of a huge tree when she did"
"Diana!" Tiar ordered. The water mages time compass spun into existance. "DIANA!" Tiar yelled at it, to make it solid.
"WHAT?" She yelled back.
"How do you create a summons?" Tiar asked in a more civilised tone.
"Er...you open a rift to a world filled with the magic you use and then call out to something to try and coax it through...or at least that's what I did...but I don't recomend it"
"sor...ry......you're......bre...aki...ng......up!" He made a few 'static' like sounds, and then returned the compass to it's ghost from.
"You should listen to her! she's been doing magic a lot longer than you have"
"Don't worry...I don't know how to open rifts, it was only a thought anyway, come on lets get going!" Tiar began to run again. Oderion knelt, and then sprinted away to catch up with Tiar. Belmarsh began running after them, though she wasn't used to running on four legs, so it took her a little while to get the sequence correct.
Five minutes lates the arrived at the drawbridge to the castle that housed the vampires. The three of them had to skid to a halt to stop themselves running into the welcoming party. Callyse had placed Tiye and Aremas, still in their zombie like state, at the entrance to the castle, presumably with orders to attack him when they approached, though arming them just slowed them down even more. Tiar grabbed Oderion and Belmarsh roughly and held time still with his mind, giving them an easy chance to slip through the weapon weilding lads without any risk of accidentally getting their ears cut off or something. Once past Tiar released his hold on time, and began to run to the tower that the time compass pointed to.
Gareth was standing infront of the door. She wasn't making it easy for them. Gareth had been made to erect shields around himself to prevent being frozen, and a giant nexus of power was glowing between his hands, raised above his head. His eyes saw Tiar, and much faster than the other two had been, he released the magic at Tiar and Oderion. Tiar threw his mind and his magic against the powerful destructive force, making it into energy without time, which he then absorbed and rechanelled back to knock out the old head of the school he had attended for less than a full day. Gareth wasn't finished off by this though, he was weakened yes, but he got up from where he had been knocked down, creating another nexus of power. Tiar was still reeling from the huge amount it had taken to stop the last one.
Oderion had been ordered by Diana not to hurt anyone unless Tiar tried to. Gareth released the magic, which took all of his remaining strength. Belmarsh leapt up and took a huge amount of the blast. She fell limp to the ground, but still alive. "That just leaves Flick, the werewolf, Callyse and any other vampires that might be hanging around." Tiar informed the elf. Oderion drew his bow and then released it upwards, no arrow attached. Yet something did follow it up, like a thin thread to dig through the over hanging Tarrets. Oderion wrapped his hands around it, gave it a sharp tug and then started to climb up. Tiar stood underneath him, barely able to see the thread, and wondering how it was strong enough to support the elf. A few metres up Oderion looked down and signalled for Tiar to follow him up.
Reluctantly, Tiar wrapped the threat around his hand like Oderion had done, and then put a foot experimentally on the wall. After a second he tried to move the second one aswell. He found that although the threat was thin, it didn't cut through his hands like he had expected, nor did it buckle under his weight. He began climbing up slowly, not daring to look down. Slowly be baegan to climb up, taking it one step at a time, and leaving a good gap between the two of them. Oderion was already close to half way up by that point. Tiar began to take faster steps, becoming more and more confident in the rope, and in actually climbing a wall, which he had never done before. Oderion waited for him, until he was nearly level, before continuing up.
The closer they got to the top, the worse Tiar began to feel. It was as if fate and destiny awaited him up above. He knew tht Callyse was up there, but what of Flick? he had yet to get past her, and she would be difficult. unlike the others, he couldn't bring himself to use his power over time on her. He didn't even knew if he could, given that she seemed to have some natural ability to evade the time freezing he had done way back when on his first day at the school. But then, so had Callyse. The more Tiar thought about it, the worse the situation seemed to become. Just then Belmarsh was beside him. She was walking up the wall without the assisstance of a rope. Seeing her seemed to banish all his fears. He didn't need to use his power on Callyse to beat her. A plan formulated in his head. He knew wat he could do. What he would do.
Then they were only a couple of metres from the top. All three of them stopped. Up above they could hear the low voices of Callyse, and another. This voice was a male one. It spoke with a voice that had withstood the centries, and the tests of time. It was an ancient evil, too primal to be fully understood. It's lust for blood was greater than any other of it's kind. It might not have been the first, but it was deffinitly a close second. Time and reality are linked, you alter one you alter the other. The balance will always maintain though. With that Tiar let his cotrol of time out, letting it do what it wanted. The rope slipped from between his fingers. But things were already in motion. Matter created gravity, the bigger the object, the more pull it had. At some point time and gravity had to meet, had to co-exist. Tiar stopped falling. He hovered in the air for a second, and then became vertical. His arms were outstretched, mimicing the crane position of martial arts.
His magic took a firmer hold and he began to rise up. He caught the startled look on Oderion's face as he sailed past. The landing on the edge of the parapet was graceful, and controlled. The two figgures on it turned to face him. Time was matter. That was fact. With that in mind it was easy for Tiar to add a holy glowing aura to himself as he stood there. The vampires backed away slightly. But then Callyse remembered who she was and began to advance upon him. "Stop." It went beyond an order. It was mind warping of the highest level, equalled only by the mind control of the vampires themselves. After all, Tiar reasoned, what was thought but the firing of electrons in the brain. Without time there to sustain them they were nothing, and without thinking, you could not move.
Callyse was allready trying to compensate for this by endulging more of her vampirian side, exactly as Tiar had expected her to do. He concentrated for a second, stretching out his power. The ancient vampire began to move toward Tiar, knowing he couldn't be stopped, and that it was a long, lethal fall to the ground. "Want to know why Time wizards are so rare?" he asked. They both looked at him.
"Because there isn't nothing a truely good one can't do!" He looked up at the sky. Unable to stop themselves, their gazes followed. The clouds parted and bright rays of light shone through, straight onto them. Both howled, but Callyse was allready becoming more human, more immune to the sunshine. The ancient vampire reached out one last hand towards her before he was disintergrated.
"I have to admit Tiar, I didn't think you had that much power." Callyse called from where she now stood weakened. "I won't make that mistake again!" With that she became a bat and was gone in seconds. The coldness that had surrounded the castle evaporated. It became just another ordinary stone building. Oderion was pulling himself up next to Tiar, with Belmarsh on the other side. Tiar collapsed forward. Again the backlash of using so much power hit him. There was always a balance, you couldn't tip it without getting tipped back. Despite the amount he had used, it was nothing compared to what he had touched upon when he had let his power flow out. For the briefest of seconds he had felt the enormity of time every where. It was all his to use if he so wanted. An almost unlimited supply of it.
Just then Flick burst out onto the roof from a small doorway. She looked battered and bruised, like she had just taken on ten vampires, single handedly, and won. She looked round, trying to see where Callyse was. She spotted Tiar. "How did you get up here without having to fight those damned vampires?" She demanded.
"We climbed up the outside. Callyse managed to get away. Do you think everyone else is going to be okay?" Tiar asked. Flick seemed to relax a lot.
"Nice sword." Tiar looked at the sword strapped to his belt. He had forgotten about the elven blade.
"Lets go check on them. I think we might have bit of apologising to do, I...sort of used a lot of power against them. You must have aswell." Tiar said, walking over to the ledge where the ropes were tied, and leapt off.
"WAIT!" Oderion yelled behind him, the ropes wrapped up in piles ontop of the ledge. Tiar's head popped back up.
"Yes?" He asked, bobbing slightly in the air. Oderion, Belmarsh and Flick looked down. Tiar was hovering in the air.
"What the.....???!??!!!!" exclaimed Flick.
"Relax, it's only magic." Tiar replied before letting gravity take a hold of him once again.
"Is he on instant regenerate or something?" She asked.
"Probably. He deffinitly seems to have a lot of it. I'm Oderion by the way. That's Belmarsh beside you"
"Flick. Want to go that way, or down the stairs"
"Stairs are good enough for me." He replied. They turned and descended the way she had come up. They past several piles of ash on the way down. "let me guess, they used to be vampires"
"now what would make you say that?" Flick responded as sweetly as she could muster. She saw the inocent look in his eyes, and decided he was too trust worthy. "Ofcourse they are. Serves them right for trying to bite me, don't it?" She added, slipping back into her normal tones. They left the tower. Tiar was already checking on their fallen comrads.
"Looks like they are all regaining their strength, and individualness." Tiar called over, checking on Gareth.