Sebastian's legs were a little wobbly when Gideon dropped him off on the front lawn of Allender Manor. After hours of dangling flight, the young mage was finding solid ground to have a strange feel. Being flown over night-soaked landscapes in the clutches of a vampire's talon-like feet was exhilarating to say the least, and he needed a moment for the thrill to subside so he could steady himself. Watching the winged vampire land beside him and revert in a seamless morph from an imposing monstrosity to a dashing blond-haired man didn't help to curb the excitement coursing through Sebastian.
"That was...amazing," the young mage remarked, as wide-eyed as a kid coming off his first roller coaster ride.
"Glad you enjoyed it," Gideon replied as he slipped into his suit jacket. "Most who find themselves in my clutches don't have so pleasant a trip," he hinted, smirking devilishly as he buttoned up the jacket.
The pair strode away towards the manor with Gideon leading the charge. Upon opening the front door, the first thing the tall vampire noticed was Ethan's lifeless form sprawled out on the hallway floor. A panicked wave of alarm swept over him instantly, and he shot from the door in a blur of speed to reach the fallen man. Sebastian peeked inside, becoming cautious after the way Gideon suddenly disappeared in whirlwind before him. When he saw the sturdy vampire kneeling beside the motionless man, he rushed inside too.
"Is he alive?" Sebastian questioned, his voice brimming with concern as he knelt down beside Gideon.
"Yes, he is just unconscious," Gideon diagnosed, after sensing the steady thumping of Ethan's heart with his vampire ears. Gideon quickly scanned the surrounding area for any sign of the others he'd left behind at the manor, but the great house was suspiciously calm.
Scooping the fallen man up in his arms with ease, Gideon carried him off into the living room with a worried pace as Sebastian followed. He laid Ethan down gently on the couch, being extra careful when he propped the man's limply rolling head against the armrest. Patting him firmly on the cheek, the anxious vampire tried to rouse the only person who might be able to tell him what had happened to the others.
"Ethan!" Gideon summoned, his deep voice resounding in the spacious room like the toll of a church bell.
Sebastian stood by, watching intently as Gideon called out again while patting Ethan's cheek a little more rapidly. The bespectacled man lying motionless on the couch finally began to stir, but weakly. His arms and legs writhed slowly as his face contorted with a grimace that was struggling against his unconscious state. Gideon called out once more and Ethan's heavy eyes rolled open, flitting about groggily as his mind rebooted. Moaning from the soreness in his limbs, he stared up in glazed confusion at the tall vampire looming over him.
"Here, this will help you to recover faster," Gideon said as he bit into his wrist then hovered it over Ethan's slightly gaping mouth so that a few drops of blood found their way in.
Sebastian kept silent as the scene unfolded. Ethan smacked wearily with disapproval of the unwelcome taste in his mouth, but soon after he swallowed a noticable clarity returned to his soft eyes.
"Where's Gale? And Lydia and Corbin?" Ethan suddenly blurted out in a panic as he sprang up to a sitting position, glaring at Gideon with a desperate need for an answer.
"I was hoping you would be able to tell me that," Gideon worriedly admitted, slumping down on the couch beside Ethan with a deflated sigh. The stark realization that those he'd left behind had been taken, snatched away from his watchful eye began to settle on him with crushing weight. Never in all his years of watching over the children of his beloved Emma had things ever seemed so bleak. He had failed miserably at what he had vowed to do, he had lost them all.
"Can you tell us what happened here?" Sebastian interjected, stepping towards Ethan. His inquiry stunted the smothering despair swelling around the slouching vampire and the overwhelmed man in glasses.
Ethan shifted on the couch with a perplexed stare at the young mage until he recognized that it was Sebastian standing before him, then he furrowed his brow in thought as he struggled to conjure an answer from his hazy memory. Gideon seemed lost in his own grief, slouching so that his falling blond bangs hid his lowered face.
"We were all gathered here in the living room, then the doorbell rang, and then...Axel!" Ethan recalled, looking about excitedly as a flood of memories rushed into his mind.
"Axel? Who's Axel?" Sebastian questioned.
"Jarell's newest agent, apparently," Gideon surmised grimly as he raised his hanging head with a scowl born of anger and contempt for the dark angel's ways.
"I tried to get the jump on him, to give the others a chance to escape, but he...shot me with something," Ethan explained, shaking his head shamefully at his own perceived failure as he buried his face in his hands.
Gideon left his drooping posture long enough to console Ethan with a sympathetic pat on his slouching shoulders. "What of Amanda and Shade?" he asked hopefully.
Ethan just shook his head in his hands. "They left soon after you did, claiming you needed them for something and we haven't heard from then since," he mumbled out.
"More of Jarell's trickery no doubt," Gideon uttered somberly before returning to wallow in the grief of his own despair by hanging his head low once again.
"I don't understand, how could this Axel get past my protection spell?" Sebastian wondered, shifting the topic back to what puzzled him the most. "That spell should keep any person with harmful intentions from entering this house," he cited.
Arching his head back enough to cast his defeated gray eyes up through his fallen bangs at the young mage, Gideon hinted at the answer Sebastian was searching for. "Axel is not a person, not exactly."
"What do you mean?" Sebastian asked, drawing himself closer to the drooping vampire with baited curiosity.
"He is an android, one we unwittingly rescued from Jarell's clutches only to lose him again in a trade for my life," Gideon revealed, with a regretful tone shaping his mood.
"An android..." Sebastian considered wondrously, pacing away with thoughts of how to counter such a being with his magic.
A tiny ray of hope filtered through Gideon's grief in the form of an idea. He sat up and turned towards the young mage who wandered the large room with his thoughts. "Sebastian, can you perform the spell on Corbin from here?"
"No, I'm afraid not," the mage frowned as he turned to face Gideon with the hard facts. "I'll need to be in his presence in order to direct the spell's power."
"Then all is truly lost," Gideon sighed, as a wave of grief crashed over him again, forcing him back into a defeated slump. "Without so much as a single clue to where they have been taken, I have no idea of where to start looking."
"I know exactly where to start," Sebastian declared confidently as he marched back over to the couch.
Both Gideon and Ethan climbed out of their pits of anguish long enough to focus on the young mage with a glimmer of hope that his words stirred. Their urgent and expectant expressions were more than enough to prod Sebastian into revealing more.
"Remember when I told you that Vivian was away on a trip?" Sebastian reminded, looking at Gideon who nodded in return. "Well, what I didn't tell you was where she went. You see, a few weeks ago she tracked one of Jarell's lackeys back to a small outpost in the mountains.
There she learned the whereabouts of Jarell's personal headquarters, a stronghold carved into the bowels of Mt. Sychar. Do you know of that mountain?"
"Yes, of course," Gideon replied, perking up at how promising Sebastian's disclosure was sounding. The young mage went on with Gideon and Ethan hanging on his every word.
"Vivian infiltrated the stronghold and has been there ever since, gathering enough intel to cripple Jarell's operations once and for all. As soon as she felt confident in her findings, we were going to come to you for help in bringing Jarell down," Sebastian explained.
A mulling silence filled the room when Sebastian finished, and his eyes rested on Gideon, as did Ethan's. They both waited in anticipation for the centuries-old vampire's direction, for his plan on how to proceed. The revered vampire's posture straightened, and his broad shoulders no longer slumped under despair but expanded to proudly bear the weight and purpose of his vow. He combed his golden locks back with his hand as a steely look of contemplation forged a renewed strength across his pale features.
"Can you contact your sister?" Gideon asked calmly, focusing his stern gaze on Sebastian.
"Yeah," the young mage answered, pulling a cell phone from his pants pocket. "She checks in with me every day at an appointed time."
"Then we leave for Mt. Sychar at once," Gideon ordered, rising to his full stature with the vigor of a warrior crusading for a cause.
"But we need a plan, and it's almost dawn outside," Sebastian cautioned as he stepped up to Gideon. The young mage quickly found himself overshadowed and intimidated by the taller vampire's form, as well as the hardened resolve that glared down at him.
"The trip to Mt. Sychar will afford us plenty of time to devise a plan, and all of the cars here at the manor have protective tinting on the windows," Gideon countered, stifling any attempt at discussion with a domineering tone.
Sebastian lowered his head and conceded by stepping back. As Gideon turned to leave the room he was met by an unusually rigid Ethan. The bespectacled man stood toe-to-toe with the vampire, whose imposing determination to recover what he held dear made his pale features appear more than a little daunting. Folding his arms resolutely across his puffed-up chest, Ethan anchored himself before the stern-faced vampire.
"You're not going without me. If I lose Gale, I lose everything. And besides, Corbin and the others are like family to me too," Ethan firmly proclaimed. His whole demeanor was exuding courage and conviction that didn't waver in the least under Gideon's scrutinizing glare.
After a long, tense moment of consideration in which Gideon probed Ethan with a stare that would have made lesser men crumble, especially those who knew what he was capable of, the tall vampire consented when Ethan showed no signs of backing down. "Very well. Find the keys to Gale's car and bring it around."
Ethan restrained a triumphant gleam, opting wisely instead to respond with a dutiful nod before rushing off to play his part in the rescue attempt. He was no fool. Gaining Gideon's approval this time in no way meant he would have any degree of sway over him in the future, but it sure bolstered his confidence to win a rare standoff when so much was at stake, including the woman he loved.
Gideon swung back around to Sebastian with another detail of their joint venture. "We shall have to make a quick detour to my condo in the city. That is where I keep the amulet you will need for your spell."
Sebastian was about to inquire further about the amulet in Gideon's possession when the doorbell sounded, drawing them both cautiously to the front door. Sebastian hid behind Gideon as the fearless vampire flung the door open, eager to discover who or what waited on the other side. The two hooded and cloaked figures standing side-by-side on the pillared stoop, one hunched over on a jewel encrusted cane and the other standing with a rather smug amount of pomp, were not what he was expecting. Sebastian peeked around to take notice of the figures, particularly the runes which decorated their cloaks.
"Who are you, and what business have you here?" Gideon demanded, in no mood for tricks or games.
The postured figure stepped forth and after a mannerly bow pulled back his hood to reveal a mane of golden hair which framed his vainly groomed face. Behind a thin mustache and pointy beard, the man smirked devilishly. "We are the mages of Kursas. I am Zaman, and this is Kestus," the cloaked man introduced, motioning to his companion who removed his hood at the mention of his name.
"You have answered one question, now the other," Gideon prodded impatiently, eyeing the mages suspiciously.
"We have come bearing a token of amends," the hunched mage explained in his scratchy voice, as he wobbled forth on his cane.
"Amends?" Gideon pondered, cocking a perplexed eyebrow. A sudden realization hit him, and in a flash he was baring his fangs through a very aggressive snarl. "You two cast the spell on Corbin!"
"Careful vampire!" Kestus warned, throwing up his free hand to freeze Gideon in an immobilized state. "We have not come to fight, we want no quarrel with you or with the Raven's children," the hunched mage assured.
"Then why have you come?" Sebastian asked, stepping out from behind Gideon, who fidgeted angrily against the invisible force holding him in place.
"Like Kestus stated, we come bearing a token of amends," Zaman answered.
Sebastian shifted his untrusting gaze between the two figures, keeping a wary eye on them both. "Why don't you just undo what you have done, reverse the spell? That will be amends enough," he suggested.
"Ah, if only it were that simple," Zaman remarked, stroking his pointy beard in thought.
"What we have done cannot be undone, not by our hands," Kestus informed, keeping his raised hand aimed at Gideon. "That is the way of time spells, boy."
"But you already knew that, didn't you, Sebastian?" Zaman smirked knowingly.
"How...how do you know my name?" Sebastian questioned, becoming rattled by their advantage.
"We know much boy, but now is not the time for such revelations," Kestus retorted.
"He's right Sebastian," Zaman agreed as a serious expression fell over his devious features. The primped mage reached inside his cloak and pulled out a sterling piece of armor, a breastplate with a single shoulder plate attached on one side. "This armor is endowed with angelic properties as well as magical castings of our own devising. It will repel Jarell's blade and shift in size with the wearer," he explained, offering it out to Sebastian.
Sebastian looked to Gideon for guidance, but the agitated vampire was still caught helplessly in the grip of Kestus' power, unable to do anything other than squirm against it with an angry scowl. The young mage gulped down a rising unease that threatened his courage, then reached through the doorway to accept the armor. When he tried to pull the breastplate to himself, Zaman's hold stiffened and the bearded mage glared across the armor.
"Find the son of the Raven, reverse the spell, and give him this armor," Zaman instructed gravely, as if the fate of the world hinged on those three steps. Releasing the armor, Zaman stepped back to the side of his companion.
"Why are you doing this?" Sebastian questioned suspiciously, as he clutched the armor to himself and darted his eyes between the two mages for an answer.
"If Jarell rises, then we all fall," Kestus warned, his aged and weathered face proclaiming the the severity of his words with an unflinching stare.
The hunched mage lowered his hand, releasing Gideon from his hold, then he tapped his cane against the landing of the stoop. A dramatic flash of dazzling light and thick smoke engulfed the front entrance of the manor, and when it cleared all traces of the two mages vanished with it. Sebastian looked over at Gideon, who was regaining his composure by adjusting the fit of his suit. Before the young mage could utter a word, the tall vampire beside him shot away in a blur, disappearing into the manor.
Seconds later Gideon returned in a streak, stopping before Sebastian with the Sword of Ancients in hand. He let the tip of the blade rest on the floor as he steadied the glimmering sword by its intricately carved bone handle. The magnificent weapon given to Corbin by the angel Xander for Jarell's demise was as tall as Sebastian, who gawked at the luminous blade with a genuine sense of awe as Gideon grinned vengefully over it.
"Now we are ready," Gideon proclaimed confidently, eyeing the armor in Sebastian's clutches with a hunger for battle as he gripped the Sword of Ancients.