SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifteen.
It had been like a hundred Christmas times all at once, and with various experts, we went through the artefacts, and acquired some much needed weaponry, to be truthful…, it was desperately needed, as what we had before could not defend against demonic dogs let alone a master demon…, and if we were to come up against a fallen…, then we could kiss our butts’ goodbye.
The Elves were in fact, and still are true masters in creating such weapons, and as great as their skill is, and Its only drawback was that it takes time to create each and every single item. As making something takes time, and with selected high-end master demons, it takes even longer to create weapons which affected them let alone kept them at bay.
But if a fallen becomes involved and you find yourself confronted by such, you want more than a pee shooter in your possession to help you, and these weapons take even longer to make, and were usually so very, very expensive.
When I was told there were less than forty master craftsmen left in all of the Elvin kingdom, I was horrified, and even with their apprentices, they had enough work to cover the next thousand years.
I had one rooky cop state it was a load of bull and that the elves were driving up the price for their weapons, I kind of understood his thinking, well I guess they could be.
But I gave him a challenge after learning from Lewis just what was involved, any modest craftsman can forge a basic weapon, but these were works of art that would have put the great sword makers of Japan to shame.
I handed the loud mouthed rooky a pin…, yes you heard me correctly a pin, and then I told him to inscribe upon the pointed end a full page of A4 script from any book of his choice. He thought I was joking, until I placed a sword under an electron microscope and focused just upon one tiny pin point.
When it came into focus, he sat down from shock, there perfectly inscribed neatly into the metal were wards and runes covering the entire blade, including the edges and tip and handle.
After that he apologised and understood, one simple single mistake and the entire weapon would fail to reach the perfection needed to defend against the fallen.
Yes, it could be used for fighting lessor demons…, but it would be like losing a high-end Bentley Continental and been given an old three wheeled bubble car…, such was the difference. It was till functional…, but just place your life or that of whom you were defending hoping it will be ok…, yes as I said it would destroy most demons…, but not a fallen angel.
So maybe now you can understand why we were so excited to have acquired all these artefacts, and by the time we sorted and collated the artefacts alone we discovered we had a hundred and twenty high end weapons all still functioning and just under two hundred lessor weapons which would perfectly cope with all bar the fallen.
As for the books that was a different thing entirely, and if I am truthful it was these that benefitted us the most. As they contained detailed spells and illustrations, history and detailed explanations in how these weapons were made, but more importantly it was the runes and wards that started to change the war.
We photo copied thousands upon thousands of pages and created instruction manuals of our own. The eventual effect was we were able to start placing wards and runes upon our own weapons.
In the past when a demonic creature was shot with either a silver or metal bullet, it was like hitting them with tissue paper. But the moment we warded our weapons with hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of tiny runes. They gutted anything they hit, and it was like a bull elephant stepping upon a rat.
Sorry rat lovers…, but it’s a good example, the effect was quick and instant, and to our surprise it even transformed for a time, military warfare, until the other side acquired runes of their own.
The demons were past rune experts and had always used such magic or runes…, but humans had not, and for this reason the books we created were kept under strict security as were our weapons.
James got his students as he was knowledgeable about runes and wards and had a reasonable knowledge of their usage, he could also read elfish as well as write it, and if he had wanted five hundred thousand a year, he would have been worth it.
Steve started teaching defence and attack with Elvin art, and I do not mean drawings, although even they were important, and when we examined the Elvin nets as expected we discovered each mifrin ring within the net and there were thousands of them, were covered in ruins.
There was also one other surprised discovery…, it transpired James had a sister, and she was once an apprentice to a well-known and respected wizard of the High Wizard Courts, who was killed by a friend with a warded bullet fired over two miles away, so he could escape the death curse. He died of a sort…, well Father John died in front of me, but he still was here…, and kind of the same applied for a time with Lowrance, the wizard friend.
James told me it almost destroyed his sister and for a time she almost lost control of her emotional state, eventually she recovered and changed her name and became known as Holly, and her brothers and sisters eventually grew into adults, and with their parents now retiring.
Her father had once himself been a knight of the God but had retired after a rescue mission went badly wrong and he was injured almost fatally.
Now the siblings had children of their own, even Holly had a partner and life had gone on, James was the only one to have not yet married, well he was married to his work, and that had taken all of his time.
Holly however, had recovered and had taken her masters place, the High White Council had stopped hunting her…, and finally recognised she was an asset which needed nurturing and guidance, and took her in, and eventually she became captain of their guard, and the previous captain who had befriended her, became the Merlin or Merliness…, whatever the title.
One vital role attributed to Holly was changing the Councils mind set on killing young wizards or warlocks, as Holly herself was once condemned by the council…, and marked for death…, simply because she was young…, immature and had discovered she had powers which others did not, and not having a teacher she experimented on her own.
The result was the Council became aware and she was judged to have practiced even if unknowingly black magic.
Had not her wizard master stepped in and defended her, she would have been killed, but because of his actions he had to train her himself…, hence how she became a trained wizard.
Holly had become a formidable warrior and her attention was drawn to Mabb queen of the winter Fay, and for a time Holly was taken under her wing for further lessons until Mag acquired her real goal and that was the service of Holly’s old master…, even if in human terms he was dead.