out some tendrils of psychic energy to sense other minds. As he stepped out the door, he used yet another psionic ability: a percipience of the area to remotely feel or sense where others might be hiding. Few other peoples had telepathic, telekinetic, and psionic abilities like the Keldon. Those abilities were not as easily noticed, unlike his mystic knight spellweavings, which could be sensed by wizards or other spellweavers.
He sensed one person at the edge of a building almost two streets away. Scanning for thoughts, he found that the individual was a retired evocati, or Roman veteran soldier, who was looking for him. Upon noticing Erios walking toward the dock, this scout moved away and headed toward his mercenary companions.
Erios walked along the cobblestone street toward the docking area that contained his dragonship. He sensed his crew and Gom were already aboard. His first officer, Thera, a female Keldon was also aboard, on the bridge. Erios read another of the mercenary’s thoughts. This man was a member of the group that had dream stalked him in order to distract him and allow the others to converge on his general location. The telltale signs and magical vibrations of a detection spell that the scout had recently used were still in the air.
Now that he was closer, Erios could sense them better. They would strike at him soon and were scrambling for better positions. They were essentially assassins hired by one of the religious orders known as Order of Entropy. They had instructions to try to capture him or, if not, slay him. Their spellcaster was evidently conjuring some type of concealing mist near their positions. “As if that will be enough to interfere with my senses,” Erios said as he continued to walk.
He had used protection spells earlier on the walls of his room and warehouse, but not his detection interfering spells. He wanted them to find him. He was tired of being tracked; it was time to strike back. If they were a rival business, then he would involve his crew. These were not rivals in that sense, so it would not be necessary to ask them to help—although Gom would likely intercede, because he was a mystical construct who was bound to Erios and would aid him if needed.
The twang of arrows being fired reached his ears, and then Erios sensed the arrows as they flew at him. Sometimes having several viable options for actions can be a problem. Erios moved rapidly, almost like a blur, and dodged three arrows; the next four, he stopped with his hastily formed telekinetic energy. The eighth arrow was fired from the height of the nearby building. They seemed to be aiming for his arms or legs.
The eighth arrow, having come from a different attack angle, struck his leg and penetrated into his lateral thigh before he could redirect or expand his barrier. Each of the arrows was coated in a poison; his enhanced Keldon senses noticed the odor. He didn’t worry but actually smiled for a moment. He was a full-blood Keldon and had considerable resistance to most poisons.
While they were attacking him, Erios concentrated on manipulating the spellweaving essence and controlling the effect creating an offensive attack. He released the spellweave as a series of powerful electrical blasts that amounted to several individual lightning bolts, each directed at one of his assailants. If they were not killed outright, then they would be stunned. He struck ten targets. Two did not have bows but had drawn maces. All but three collapsed, and two new opponents, who had been further back, emerged. One kept to the shadows; the other was a spellweaver and began to cast a spell, which Erios sensed was fire based. One of the evocati with a mace moved forward. One with a short bow moved forward, switched weapons, and drew a sword. Meanwhile the one on the elevated area shot another few arrows.
Ignoring the poison that would have paralyzed a human’s leg, Erios moved and drew the one with a mace into a stance that lead him to be shot by the one with the bow. He twisted, moving faster than humanly possible, and disarmed the sword wielder, a woman wearing concealed leather armor and hood. He used a close-combat martial maneuver kick-strike combination that stunned her and pushed her back several feet.
Erios shook his head near her face, telepathically sending a message that she should not have joined with this group. He was usually chivalrous with women and, even though he sensed she was generally corrupt, he rapidly used a blink-step maneuver and struck her neck and the back of her head, rendering her unconscious with his second martial maneuver.
As he turned and moved away, he sensed a fireball heading straight toward him. It had been formed by a wizard who approached after the bows were fired. This wizard was willing to endanger his companions with a fireball that would explode in the area. Erios used a spellweaving countering trick he had learned from his uncle, and the fireball looped back toward its caster, who would have been burned by his own fire except he had previously set a magical barrier around himself. Erios dodged another arrow and willed a gust of force that wrapped around the rooftop bowman and then pushed him off the roof.
These were human opponents, not Chaos warriors, and Erios was not the killing-for-sport type of person, so he did not use his most lethal spells or martial maneuvers against them. As he blink stepped toward the wizard, Erios sensed that one of those he had previously stunned and injured with his lightning strikes had regained his senses and pulled forth some daggers.
The remaining cloaked-and-hooded warrior, who had been moving in the shadows, also moved rapidly. Erios’s sharp mystical senses detected something different about this hooded warrior. He sensed one of the night crawlers. As Erios appeared next to the wizard after his blink step, he said, “Hm…a vampire.”
Turning and angling to avoid the wizard’s attempts to club at him with his staff allowed Erios to close the distance. He had been trained in several styles of combat by his extended family and by the mystic knight order he belonged to. Erios would use a mystic knight martial maneuver to neutralize the wizard. He would strike at his essence collection, or what some called chakra points, thereby interrupting his use of personal energies that he might use in his next spells. The effect would last many minutes, even up to an hour, and would effectively impair the wizard’s ability to gather essence for spellcasting.
He struck multiple different points on the wizard’s body, releasing his own energies at the chakra flow points. The wizard was elderly and unable to move fast enough to stop Erios. As he finished, he sensed a heavy wooden cart being flung at him by the vampire. He pushed the wizard back several feet and then turned to face the object. Extending the telekinetic inertial barrier that he used to stop the arrows, he halted the cart. The heavy object crashed, breaking apart against his barrier, which was now faintly glowing like a domed shield.
The vampire closed in and said, “Mystic knight.” He was dressed in a cloak and mantle with dark leather pants, a gray cloth shirt, and dark leather gloves. His pale skin was visible under the hood, and his eyes glowed slightly. He looked at Erios intently, trying to use the influencing power of his gaze. “I could be an ally. All you need to do is join us.”
“Your compelling gaze will not affect me, undead. My will is resolute.” Erios sensed a charm or compulsion but easily brushed any effect aside.
The vampire nodded and moved toward Erios, almost as quickly as a blink step, with a sword in his right hand.
The force of the blow hitting his inertial barrier pushed Erios several feet back, as he had not yet anchored the barrier to the ground. At the same time, he got his sword out and called upon the power of his mystic knights’ blade, which began to glow violet-blue in his right hand. The blade was shaped like a katana of a size to be used as either a one- or two-handed weapon. Erios altered the shape of his barrier and parried the vampire’s blade, testing the undead’s skill with a few quick maneuvers. The vampire’s sword had some magical effects from engraved runes and was imbued, or Erios’s katana would have shattered it.
“So many options,” Erios said as he contemplated the situation. “One question comes to mind, however. Who wants me captured or dead?”
The vampire narrowed his eyes and looked askance. “Why, my employer does.”
Erios scanned the vampire’s mind. The thoughts of undead things were somewhat more difficult to read, but an image of two men…no, not a human, but something like a human, or part human, the image seemed to be shrouded…and standing next to him, a priest of some odd northern order that Erios was unfamiliar with. The human priest seemed to be the vampire’s employer,