Mysterious Stranger's Story

"Hrm...err...who's there?" Kurt stirred from his evening ritual at the knock on the door. Oh shit. Man with a crowbar and he was out of most of his peaceful spells. Looked about his age. The dude looked like he was stoned off his ass. Kurt made sure to check his door locks and pulled a book out to check what he had left. Oh good. Still had mage sight. Kurt fired that off as his brain went to work. There was hardly any chance this dude was some strung-out psycho. To come this far off the fire escape, and to stop here...someone knew where he was. Someone had a reason to seek him out. Someone wanted to send a message by bringing a lethal improvised weapon.

In short, this whacko's appearance was most likely not an accident. This was a hit. Time to go full offense. As he waited for the mage sight to ferret out information on what sorts of magical mayhem was afoot, he pulled a wand from his end table and got ready to pelt the would-be intruder with a few magic missiles.

The woman dropped, very dead. Across town, Brandon had managed to kill one of the thralls and was fighting off the other. In the Seychelle house, the mother screamed out as the thrall used Laura as a shield, preventing the father from shooting him as he baked out of their home.

In Kurt's home however, the thrall smashed against the lock and the door until they broke open and it walked in, the jagged edges of the entrance it making catching his skin and breaking it, drawing blood. The man held up the crowbar and prepared to hit Kurt with the crowbar.

The mage sight would reveal that this was a human in thrall, deeply spelled by a talented necromancer into doing their biding, however unwilling said human may be. But there was no fighting the thrall for this one. Drugged to push past their limits, this thrall didn't fight back, just pushed forward to attack.

"Gods forgive me for what I must do," Kurt prayed quickly. If arcane power was real, who knew what else. Before the thrall could get within arm's reach, Kurt shouted the trigger completion words for the wand to fire bolts of power and knock his assailant back.

"Ekkusu busuta!" Translucent missiles of pure force rippled through the air, aimed at the center of mass to act as man-stoppers. He wasn't going to let up until the man stopped twitching or he knocked him off the fire escape and down the several stories to the cold pavement below.

Was the man innocent? Probably, but one of them was going to die tonight. Self defense training had taught the wizened wizard how to make sure it would be the other guy. And so the missiles kept coming, a veritable magical machine gun.

The thrall managed to take one step closer, before he was forced back by the magic missiles, back and back again stumbling with each one. Despite attempting to push forward, this was a mundane man, spelled or not, and soon he gave out and went over the edge. He couldn't help but fall, landing head first with a sickening crack. The thrall had been pushed by the force of his magic and hadn't been given any resistance to the magic at hand.

An innocent man had died, and the necromantic magic abandoned the body. It was okay in the necromancer's view. The distraction for that one hadn't lasted as long, but it hadn't needed too, it had only needed to force him to use up more of his magic stores. In that, the attack had succeeded.

--

Across town at Catherine's home, the phone rang urgently.

Tripping over the debris and detritus that had been left in the wake of the attack, Catherine grabbed the phone in the hallway. "Yes?" She snapped. There was a dead woman in her house, and she was running on empty. The problem could be remedied, but she really didn't want to go down that avenue right then and there.

"It's 3:00 o'clock in the god damn morning.. this had better be good."

"Try two fucking thralls attacking the shop, and a panicked phone call from Laura's parents asking to let them or the police know if I see her, as she's been kidnapped by what sounds like another." Brandon growled into the phone, clearly not happy. "It's 3 o'clock in the damn morning. Who the fuck pulls this shit, and how the fuck am I going to find that damn trouble magnet?"

And she was one hell of a trouble magnet. It was driving him insane.

Catherine sighed as she listened to her nephew on the other side of the phone. "One just attacked me here." She replied, grimacing in pain from the bruises. "I don't know who does this Brandon." Catherine added tiredly. So much for getting a clean up team out, or even sleeping; the woman had seen to that easily.

"Look, call the office and they'll send someone out. It's going to take me awhile to get anywhere." What exactly was she going to do with the body? This had complicated things greatly.

On the other end, Brandon ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "It's just...it's Laura, and it's probably the damn necromancer causing this mess, and that kid's so fucking innocent. She doesn't deserve to be in the hands of that level of evil." It wasn't like it had been with him. He was evil as hell, before Sanina had ever even gotten her hands on him, and he was pretty certain even Bethy's hands hadn't been clean, despite being five and having zero concept of death at all. Nervous, he ran a hand through his hair again. "I can't even call the coven I've been cast out of for advice on what spell to use, because it could be one of them." And the only spell he could think of was a major no go as far as the council was concerned.

"I know you're probably worried about her ..." Catherine said trailing off, unsure of what to say next. "And you're right, it probably is the necromancer causing the mess... the thrall reaked of necromanic magic." She just wanted to go back to bed, and back to sleep. "Coven's are overrated anyway, more trouble than an HOA."

She did not want to be having this conversation, she did not even want to be there, and be awake. "Look, I'm running on close to 3 hours of sleep here. Unless you have a way to get the mess over here cleaned up, I can't be of any help to anyone."

---

---

---