Spitefic: Nightfall

[seiler88.livejournal.com]

Title: Nightfall
Author: <lj user="seiler88">

Length: 2,624

Inspiration: Twilight series General. This is a rewrite of the series if it was set in my own universe. It is a world of magic and the humans are far from helpless. This is the first part of a four part series, one chapter for each book.

Summary: A series of strange happenings have been reported in the area round the small town of Forks. As such the Mage Council has sent in a Guardian, one of humanity’s most powerful warriors. What he finds threatens to reignite the flames of ancient war.

Final Note: *MST tune* So if you wonder how the vampires eat or breed or any of those other scientific things just remember/ Hey it’s not my fault the original author is a hack, so a wizard did it, you really should relax.

Special thanks to gehayi for being the Beta for this story. I can’t thank her enough.

I own only Durin and the wizards mentioned.

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It was cold and wet in the forest as a light rain fell. A figure in a black cloak and hood walked slowly along a small back trail. Wrapping his cloak tightly around himself and offering a silent prayer of thanks for modern materials, Durin stopped to observe his surroundings.


It was very dim and he could not see well, but, thankfully, he was not trying to use his eyes. Casting any form of detecting spell was always easier in the wild. The spell told him that something unnatural was at work. It was not major but the forest was slightly out of its normal rhythm.

The Mage Council had sent Durin to investigate a large increase of animal deaths, as well as a strange series of murders that was headed straight for the area. Some of the other investigator wizards believed that the two events were related. . Thanks to all the noise that the local Mage Chapter had made, the Council had sent Durin to investigate.


That meant Durin was getting tossed feet first into another unknown situation.


It also did not help that he knew that the Council was planning a huge operation in Italy.


"Here I am getting soaked on a wild goose chase and everyone else is having a pizza party." Durin kept on grumbling as he walked on. "Well at least my rain gear is better these days."


After walking a few more miles, Durin crested a hill and looked down on the town. This modern American small town was at the center of the strange happenings. His briefing had stated that this town was called Forks. Before heading into town, he reinforced the illusion spell that hid his two handed sword.


Another soggy mile brought Durin to a cheap motel at the edge of the town. He paid for his room and dropped off his small backpack of clothes and examined his room. It was small, lightly furnished but clean. Durin also noted the heavy door and single small window. The room would do nicely.


The clock read half past four. So the tired Guardian decided to take an early dinner.

He did not expect any trouble in the town itself, so he hid his blade in the room. After securing the place with wards, he went to find something to eat.


He stopped at a café. This drew some curious looks from the locals, not only because he was a newcomer but because of his odd attire. A waitress came by to take his order; he gave her his order in clipped tones and dismissed her quickly. She returned swiftly with his food, her gaze flinching away from the horrible scars on his face.

As he was eating, he unexpectedly felt a mental probe poking at his thoughts. Durin immediately  traced a few runes in the air under the table raising a magic shield around his mind. It was a good thing, too, given that the telepathic probe had locked on to him.


Durin used his own psychic training to trace the probe. It was coming from a young man who had just walked into the shop. The boy looked like he was slated for a career as a model, which Durin found very ironic. He was pale and looked as if he was going for what Durin thought was either a “goth” or “emo” look, as people these days called it. The effect clashed with the boy’s otherwise designer outfit. It looked pretentious and patently ridiculous. 


He was about to send the telepath a threatening glare when a girl walked in, obviously fixated on the boy as she was looking only at him and not even noticing anyone else. Her presence caused a conflict in the boy. His mental probe went back and forth between Durin and this girl. When the pair fixed their attentions on each other, Durin made a quick getaway.


The moment he was out of sight, Durin cast out his own mind at the young girl's mind. There was more resistance in her mind than he expected. Not only was her mind was completely obsessed with the young telepath, but the girl also appeared to be a Basic Screener.

At that moment it hit him. The boy was fascinated with both of them because he could not read their minds.

When Durin finally got past the girl's obsessive thoughts, he found some useful information, such as her name— Isabella Swan. The telepath was Edward Cullen.


Aside from those few facts, her head was mostly empty.


Durin decided to head back to his room and contact the local Chapter. After securing the room, he prepped the com crystal with the right runic seal and recited the proper incantation. The crystal created a holographic image of a middle-aged man.

"Greetings, Guardian. We were expecting your call."

 "Hello, Motemer. Do you have any new information for me?"


"Well, the only thing of any importance is that we have identified the common factor in all the deaths.” He picked up some files bearing the FBI insignia. “All of the corpses had their jugulars ripped open by what seem to be abnormally sharp human teeth and then drained of blood."

 "Drained of blood? That sounds like vampires. Why are there no puncture wounds?"

Motemer looked down for a moment, "This seems to be the work of a rare breed of vampire that is resistant to sunlight and most other conventional methods of slaying. The Council led a campaign against these monsters in the early Middle Ages. We thought we'd got rid of them all, but a few holed up in Italy, Their offspring and students spread slowly to the Americas. I'm sending more information now."


A small packet was teleported in a few minutes after Durin cut the connection. He decided to wait till morning to read it.


After resetting his wards, Durin went to sleep.


The first ward that was tripped was the psychic one. This woke him up. After guarding his mind for the second time in the same day, Durin decided to maintain his mental wards for a few minutes, just to be safe. <i>Basic psychic powers are not too uncommon, after all.</i> He was surprised when something tripped the proximity ward for non-human creatures about a minute later.


As Durin got out of bed and put his boots back on, he heard someone picking the lock on his window. As the window opened, he rewarded the intruder with a few hard kicks to the head and chest. The intruder's body seemed  unusually hard. <i>Is this guy wearing body armor?</i>
Durin then grabbed the intruder and threw him to the floor. Twisting the idiot's arm, he looked to see who had decided to break in.


Much to Durin's surprise, the intruder was the boy from the café. Even though Durin was holding his arm in a way that should have made it impossible to move, the boy was struggling so strongly that it took almost all Durin's strength and weight to hang onto him. Fortunately, when any more pressure would have damaged the boy's shoulder, he stopped moving.

"Twitch the wrong way and I'll tear your arm out of its socket. What the hell were you doing breaking into my room?"

The boy stammered, "I was watching you."

This response caused the bewildered Guardian to raise an eyebrow. At this point Durin decided the conversation was over. "If you want to speak to me, you can track me down during daylight hours. Now get out.  If you ever disturb me this way again, I will kill you."


Hauling the kid to his feet, he cracked the foolish teen's head against the door and gave his captured arm a final wrench for good measure. After locking the door again, Durin noted that it was dented where the boy's head had hit it.  Which was odd. Edward Cullen hadn't been wearing any armor.


"Now that I'm up and I've taken out the trash, what am I going to do?" It was almost five in the morning so he started to write up the report on Edward and the girl, recommending that the Council train them both. 

Then he remembered the information about vampires sitting on the dresser.


According to the report, these vamps had rock-like skin, superhuman strength, superhuman speed and flammable venom for fluids. The most important fact was that these vampires were blind to the magic that the mages used.


After breakfast, it was back to the woods. After a few tracing spells, he found one of the vampire's kills-A brown bear,  nearly torn to bits. The creature had been dead nearly a week as he could tell by the smell. Moreover, all the plants near the corpse were dying. Even the trees were looking ill.


Over the next few days, he found several other sites like the first. He even had to burn a few corpses.


Durin was scouring the woods one afternoon when his sensing spells detected two other beings nearby and one of them was not human. Casting a few concealing spells, he climbed though the trees to see what was going on. He soon reached a clearing where the two stood.

He immediately recognized the boy as Edward from their two past meetings and the girl from the café, Bella. The boy was just confirming that he was a vampire, as Durin already suspected, as the sun came though the clouds. The second the light hit the vampire he started shining in what Durin first thought was the most bizarre glamour he had ever seen. A second look revealed that it was no illusion and that the kid's skin really did sparkle. It was all he could do to choke back his laughter.


After that, the vampire started to dart around the girl in a blatant intimidation play. The way the two of them were talking to each other
was…odd. It was certainly not the way that a human would normally her murderer. As for the vampire—well, they rarely spoke to humans at all. Why talk to your food? But when the vampire started asking the girl whether or not she was afraid of him, Durin decided to step in. Dropping his concealment spell, he grabbed the vampire telekinetically, lifting him about a yard off the ground.

 "You! What are you doing here?"

Holding Edward suspended in the air so all he could do was flail around helplessly, Durin smiled. "As nice as it is to have my suspicions confirmed, I can't have you killing this poor girl in front of me. Let's see who else you've killed lately, shall we?" Durin peered into the vampire's mind, shielding his own.  It was very similar to a stagnant pool. But, to his surprise, Edward and his coven were not responsible for the murders.

"How can you be hiding your thoughts and reading mine at the same time? You're just a <i>human!</i> You shouldn't be able to do all this!"

 "I practice," was the Guardian's reply as he let the vampire go. The monster ran in fear.


The girl was still standing there, looking on blankly as if trying to comprehend what had just happened.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Swan."

"Who are you and how do you know my name?" she asked.

"My name is Durin. As to how I know your name…did you not hear the vampire?"

"That's impossible! He can't read my mind, so how can you?"

"As I told the vampire, I practice. Though your natural ability to shield your thoughts is noteworthy. My associates and I can help you develop that ability and teach you more, if you're interested."

 "Associates?"

Durin launched into a full-fledged recruitment pitch. "I work for the Mage Council, a world-spanning organization of wizards that protects people. We can train you to be far more powerful that that vampire."

 "So you 'wizards' are stronger and faster than Edward?"

 "Yes, but only in short bursts. Those kinds of stunts burn magic faster than conventional spell casting." When she looked at him in confusion, he explained "You know. Fireballs. Lightning. That sort of thing." Durin then turned to face her. "So are you interested?"

Bella took one good look at his face and immediately walked away. Durin caught one word in her mind as she did: "Ugly." Even though this was accurate since his face was mostly scar tissue, Durin thought that was uncalled for. "Rude" was the last word he had on the matter.

One evening as a storm was coming in, he got a call from the local Chapter head, an older woman named Ellen Samuel.

"Evening, Madam," Durin said, bowing. "What can I do for you?"

"This is an emergency, Guardian. We have confirmed the presence of the band of vampires that has been murdering people."

 Durin blinked in surprise. "Where are they?"

"Near the baseball field. There are three vampires."

"I'm on it."


He hurried to the baseball field. It was just starting to rain when he arrived.


As he approached the field, he noticed two men and a woman walking towards him. They appeared to be sizing him up. His sensing spells revealed that he had just run into his targets.


"Well, what do we have here?" said the lead vampire.

"Looks like my dinner, James. You two can go on since you already have plans in Phoenix," the other male responded.


Durin chuckled at the comments as he drew his sword. He was about to respond when the leader and the girl dashed off.

" Looks like it's just you and me, then." The vampire glanced at Durin's sword. "Nice blade. Too bad it's not going to do you a bit of good." With that, the monster launched himself at Durin.

Fortunately, Durin had raised a magic field, tracing the runes in the air while the vampire was talking. Durin knew that the vampire had no idea what had just happened until he collided with the shield. He also knew from a combination of study and experience that a vampire’s first attack was always a lungeing bite.

"You undead scum," Durin spat as he hit the stunned vampire with a lightning spell.


The vamp screamed as he was thrown violently back by the spell. It tried to recover but the heat from the blast had started to boil the creature’s volatile fluids.   

Durin could see the monster’s flesh bubble and stretch in what seemed to be a very painful manner. He then spoke a different spell that sheathed his sword in flame.

Summoning a final surge of power Durin dashed forward at a speed that not even the vampire could follow. As he passed by the wounded vampire he sliced the beast across the midsection, the enchanted blade easily burning though the vampire’s skin. 


The vampire staggered about and looked at his killer in shock.

"You will never kill another innocent human again. I now send you to God's judgment."

 The vampire screamed in agony as his venom ignited and he exploded.


"This is only the beginning," Durin said as he looked at the smoldering remains.


He made sure to get a good night's sleep that night.


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To all you editors and critics. Please tell me your honest thoughts on this work. It is an exercise in writing my universe and I want to know how I'm doing. So let me have it.

Comments

[hyperactivator.livejournal.com]

Nice to see something keep these evil dead child supremists in check.

[morri-delrae.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting idea. I imagine that writing magic into the Twisparkle universe could be difficult - the author needs to be very careful to keep the character from god-moding (Sparklepires are god-moded enough, as it is). Two pieces of general advice I'd give:

- Try not to announce time jumps with stock expressions like "in the morning he did this", "in the evening someone called him" or "one day he was in the woods", because it could be a little jarring. Introduce time jumps with less standard sentences, say: "It rained throughout the night and most of the morning, but that didn't stop him from going into the woods", "His supervisor's voice was clipped - she called him in the evening to find out how the investigation was going", or "The morning turned out to be quite productive - he was working his way through a bowl of cornflakes when an idea hit him".

- We still know next to nothing about Durin (other than the fact that he's a wizard and has scars). He seems to go into a sort of suspension mode when he's not around the Twilight characters. What are his habits? What's about his personality? What does he like and dislike? He's supposed to be a murder investigator - show him wandering around on his own, looking for clues, asking questions, at least a couple of times, so we could relate to him as a character.

Good luck with the story!

[seiler88.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out the technical stuff there, I'll keep that in mind in the next chapter.

As for the background stuff on my character and all that. Don't worry those issues are the main focus of the next chapter. Along with bringing in everyone's favorite outcast in as a main character.

Just one question: Did Durin come across as a bit of an aloof jerk? I really wanted that to get though because that's one of his major character flaws.

[morri-delrae.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it... he kind of does. I just wasn't sure if he seemed aloof, because there was so little we learned about him, or was it an intentional character feature.

[livingteacup.livejournal.com]

When is the next chapter coming if you don't mind me asking?

[seiler88.livejournal.com]

Soon I hope.

I've had a few things happen like my computer being stolen and having to start over.

[melissatreglia]

This was a promising start, but feels more like an outline than an actual story. If you have plans to rewrite it, make sure you help us get into Durin's head, so we have a better idea of what he's like.