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  Guild Workshop

  Sean was rather pleased with himself; he'd laid down all of the base spells on the plate, now that it was prepared for enchanting. With that finished, he'd 'locked' everything into place, so the spells wouldn't degrade between now and when he got to work on it again.

  He probably could have used that power to do even more work on the plate and just left things to sit on their own, if his calculations were correct, it would let him finish in nine days, rather than fourteen. But all of the books warned against that, because the spells would start to unravel on their own after only nine or ten hours. So if you missed the next day, or were even late, all of your work would be lost.

  Sean thought that in the first few days of enchanting, that was probably a risk normally worth taking. But this was his first major project, so he wanted to be sure he was doing the sealing spell properly.

  "How's it going?" Daelyn asked, coming into the room with a box.

  "It's going great!" Sean said and stretched. He really needed to go out and run for a while tonight. All of this sitting down and spell casting was definitely giving him a lot of pent up energy.

  "What's in the box?" he asked.

  "Oh, that wire crank assemble you wanted," Daelyn smiled, "I improved it."

  "Improved it? How?" Sean asked a little worried.

  "I got rid of the crank and put a low-speed, high-torque motor on it with a foot switch."

  "A foot switch?"

  Daelyn nodded, "Yeah, this way it leaves your hands free. You can control the speed; even put it in reverse if you need to."

  "Huh, that does sound pretty sweet." He smiled, "Thanks, Hon."

  "No problem. Still trying to figure out a better way to move items onto the plate and off of it than just using a couple of sticks," Daelyn wrinkled her nose at the thought of that. "I was thinking maybe a wooden wheel with the items clipped to it, like you see them do with orders at a diner. But I want a better feed mechanism than just people putting them on and taking them off."

  "Why?" Sean was curious as to why she felt so strongly about that.

  "Because if somebody screws up, you're the one who's gonna get hurt, that's why. And then Rox is gonna blame me for not doing it right in the first place."

  Sean sighed, "Oh, she won't do that, Dae."

  "Sure she will! Have you seen her do those puppy dog eyes of hers? I didn't think cats knew how! Then she makes her upper lip tremble and you feel like you just murdered somebody's kitten!"

  Sean couldn't help himself, he started laughing.

  "It's not fair that she can manipulate us all so easily! Cats are evil, I tell you!"

  "Hey! I'm a cat!" Sean reminded her, between laughs.

  "And your point is?" Daelyn asked. "She knows she probably can't win on strength against me, so she just cheats," she grumbled.

  "I almost feel sorry for Jo," Sean snickered, "you're both way stronger than she is."

  "Jo just bribes you with backrubs and massages and such." Daelyn looked around and lowered her voice, "She can damn near make Rox roll over and beg."

  "And I'll get you to that point one of these days as well, Dae dear," Jolene said coming into the room.

  Daelyn turned a rather bright red at that.

  "Where's Rox?" Sean asked.

  "Watching Sarah for Roberta. Ready for dinner?"

  Sean nodded, "Yeah, let's go." Standing up, he put the plate back in its box for now, and followed the girls out of the room.

  "Roll over and beg, indeed" Sean snickered.

  Jolene laughed, "Like you don't, Dear? I got you trained weeks ago!"

  Sean harrumphed with a smile, "I only do sit up and beg, and you know it!"

  "Well, then I guess it's time for a new trick, right Dae?"

  It was late out, and Sean was running through the fields to the east of the guild, enjoying it immensely as he and his lion just let go and ran. Roxy was of course running circles around him half the time, but he really didn't care.

  It just felt good to be outside and running free across the ground. He hadn't been out running as a lion in weeks, honestly, he was surprised that his lion hadn't been bugging him about it. He felt a few sheepish thoughts from that side of his psyche; apparently he wasn't the only one who'd been caught up in everything that was going on.

  "What was that?" Roxy growled pivoting to face back towards the grounds that the guild was on.

  "What was what?" Sean asked and spinning around he looked back towards the grounds as well.

  "I thought I heard something!" Roxy said and then just like that, she was off like a flash.

  Sighing, Sean took off after her. He'd never catch up with her, but the whole point of being out here was to stretch out his muscles and get some exercise.

  When he got back to the compound, the first thing he noticed was that the gates had been rammed by a truck, and were now open.

  The second was the guy Roxy was disemboweling.

  Swearing Sean slowed down to get an idea of just what was going on. He could see a skirmish line of men with semi-automatic rifles were moving forward into the compound. From the way one of the lycan defenders started screaming when they were shot, Sean realized immediately that they were using silver bullets.

  Swearing he charged towards the middle of the skirmish line, coming up on the men from behind. Someone must have heard something or seen him, as the man he was running for started to turn around, but Sean got to him first and ripping the man's head off with a swipe from his left paw, Sean turned to his right and attacked the next man in the skirmish line, batting the man with his massive paws twice, ripping him open from chin to groin. The man went limp then and Sean ran over the body, letting his hind claws do some extra damage as he opened his mouth wide and then closed his jaws on the side of the next man, driving his fangs deep into the man and through the body armor he was wearing, as Sean shook him like a rag doll.

  It was then that Sean realized that the men he was attacking were all lycans, werewolves, and that unless he did truly massive amounts of damage to them, they'd regenerate, eventually. Putting a paw on the body of the man he had his jaws in, he pinned him to the ground and ripped out a huge piece of his body, entrails and all.

  Dropping the dead body, Sean could feel that he was being shot now and his silver shield had already soaked up enough power to start growing and solidifying. Sean moved on to attack the next man in line, who brought the gun around to try and shoot Sean in the mouth as Sean roared loudly at him.

  Bringing the gun around however brought the silver in the magazine into the expanding shield, which converted them all instantly. With so much excess power the shield was now starting to deflect bullets.

  It also was heating up, as well as causing the silver in the magazines on the man's belt to heat up as they were converted, enough so they started cooking off and setting the attacker on fire as Sean ripped the his head off.

  By this point, the rest of the skirmish line in front of Sean had started to flee, running from their obvious deaths. Unfortunately for them, Roxy was coming at them from the other direction, now in her hybrid form and covered in blood that was quite obviously not her own. Somehow she'd gotten her hands on one of the rifles, and keeping her hands off the magazine, so she wouldn't change the silver bullets there, she was laying waste to all of the attackers around her with her well developed shooting skills.

  Sean killed one more with an attack from the rear, then spinning around he went after the ones that were shooting him from behind, causing them to immediately scatter in all directions.

  That was when the mages attacked.

  They started off first with sleep and paralyzation spells, which of course had no effect on Sean, but he could feel them coming in as he called up his monitor program and shifted into hybrid form now himself, and then called up his offensive spell frame.

  Charging the mages, Sean sent a lightning bolt at the one in front, who dodged to the side, only to let the guy behind him take the hit. Claw
s out, Sean waded into the midst of them, casting lighting bolts between slashes with his hands and stomping or kicking whoever was within his reach, killing two of them immediately.

  As soon as they broke and ran for the gates, Sean turned towards the living quarters, where he saw the first body of somebody that he knew. Joyce was lying on the ground with several bullet wounds, dead.

  Growling loudly, Sean ran into the building and started immediately for Roberta's room, and the girls.

  When he got there, the door had already been broken down and there were two dead werewolves on the ground, both with their heads caved in. Looking up he saw Daelyn, with a bloody bandage on her left arm, holding the recently repaired Maxwell in her right.

  "Is everyone okay?" Sean growled.

  "I got these two, but there may be more in the building," Daelyn told him.

  "Roberta, Sarah, and Jolene are in the bedroom."

  "Yell if you need anything," Sean growled and then went back outside into the hallway, as Roxy came running up.

  "You're wounded," Roxy said, panting.

  "So are you," Sean growled.

  "Most of them are retreating."

  "Let's clear the living quarters, then the rest of the ground."

  Roxy nodded and they started going door to door. It took them fifteen minutes to clear the building, the attackers they found by then were dead, but they came across several dead lycans, shot with silver bullets, and a couple of dead sorceresses, either killed by magic, physical violence, or by bullets as well.

  By the time they got out onto the rest of the grounds, none of the attackers were left, only the dead remained behind.

  "Gather up the bodies," Sean growled to Roxy, "let's see if we can figure out who was behind this."

  Two hours later, they had all of the bodies of the attackers lined up on one side of the first courtyard. Thirty-six dead, ten of which Sean had killed, the five on the skirmish line, then the five mages who had been unfortunate enough to attract Sean's attention. Roxy had killed the one magic user by the gate, and another nine of the skirmishers. Daelyn had accounted for the two that had attacked Roberta's room, apparently Roberta and Jolene had been casting spells from the living room window, so those two had been sent up to stop them.

  The remaining fourteen dead had been killed by various sorceresses who had only been able to do so because their lycans partners had stood between them and the men trying to shoot them.

  Out of all of the dead, only the magic users that Sean and Roxy had killed had been human. All of the rest had been lycans.

  "How many died?" Sean asked Deanna in a soft voice, as she came out to inspect the dead bodies.

  "Eight of my sorceresses, twenty-three of our own lycans," Deanna told him, her features hard as she looked over the line of dead bodies.

  "I'm sorry," Sean sighed, "this is all my fault."

  "As much as I would like to find fault with you for what happened tonight, I don't think that I can. These are from the Ascendants; they are taking revenge on what we did to the Totis leader."

  "How do you know?" Sean asked, surprised.

  "We captured two of their mages," Deanna said. "I questioned them quite thoroughly. I will have someone bring their bodies out to add to these, so they can all be disposed of together."

  Deanna sighed and looked at him, "We are at war now with the Council of the Ascendance. Yes, your bringing Preston here for us to deal with played a part in that. However your presence here also played a part. We would not have survived tonight if you and yours had not been here. Their use of silver against us, and their willingness to sacrifice their lycans was as unexpected as their attack."

  "Why were they so willing to sacrifice them?" Sean asked looking at their bodies.

  "Because they believe that you are going to free them, so they figure they might as well start using them up before then," Deanna said, shaking her head.

  "That's evil!"

  Deanna nodded, "The Council of the Ascendance has always been known for their lack of morals or compassion."

  "Especially where lycans are concerned," Roxy growled.

  "Now that they know you are here," Deanna said, "I'm afraid that they'll be back. It might be best for you to leave; I need to meet with the others. We need to discuss our options."

  "I have a better idea," Sean growled.

  "And what would that be?"

  "Rox, get Daelyn and meet me in the workroom. I'll meet you there after I get that box out of the van."

  "Oh no, you're not doing that again!" Roxy growled.

  "Roxy," Sean said turning to look her in the eye, "I love you more than anything, but we are doing this, and you are helping. I have a responsibility to all of the lycans who died here today, and we are going to do what we can to keep this from happening again."

  "I'm not going to...."

  "Rox," Sean said lowering the pitch of his voice. "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you."

  Roxy looked at him then turning on her heel she stomped off in search of Daelyn.

  "Fucking lions!" she swore.

  "What are you going to do?" Deanna asked, looking concerned.

  "I'm going to make as many silver tags as I can before I either pass out from exhaustion or drop dead," Sean told her. "Excuse me please."

  Once again Sean was sitting in a chair in his hybrid form, without any clothing on, or anything flammable within ten feet of him. He had his enchantment program open and his monitor program open. Only this time, instead of having Daelyn lowering a rod of silver on a string, he had a spool full of silver hanging up above his head with a foot pedal under his right foot to control how fast it fed him silver.

  On his right side was a table with rows of silver tags on it. On his left side was a table with stacks of lycan collars. The girls would push the tables after he enchanted each group of tags to bring more into his reach. While they were doing that he'd move to the collars, which were stacked in piles of five, to burn off the excess energy.

  Taking a moment to turn off the tag's encryption program, he made the same two changes as the last time, and then took another moment to check just where everything was laid out, reaching around himself with his hands to be sure it was all within reach.

  "You haven't started, have you?" Roberta asked, coming into the room in a rush.

  "No," Sean said looking up at her, "what's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong, but I thought you might want this," Roberta came over to him and Sean could see she was carrying a ten-inch tall metal owl that looked to be fairly heavy.

  "What's that?" Sean asked.

  "A battery," Roberta grinned. "I swiped it out of the gate mechanism that protects us against blast spells."

  "Won't that be missed?" Roxy asked.

  "Have you seen the gates?" Roberta snorted, "I told them we needed something heavier, but no one thought someone would ram a big ass truck through them."

  Sean took the owl from her and checked it with his program. Sure enough, it was a battery alright, and it was more than four times the size of the ones he'd been planning on making.

  "At least it's not silver," Sean said and after he tarred a copy of it he put it on the floor and put his left foot on it.

  "This is not going to be easy," he grumbled. "Stand back, it's liable to get hot in here."

  Taking one last look around, he blew a kiss to Roxy, who was still scowling at him, then pushing his foot down, he started to feed the silver into his shield.

  This time, he didn't try to get ahead of himself and make too many, doing just one at a time, then dumping the extra energy into the battery when it came back. When the battery was half-full, he stopped feeding himself silver, and used the energy in the battery to make the next two tags, then went back to using silver to power the reaction.

  When all the tags within reach had been enchanted, Sean switched over to the lycan collars while Roxy pushed the table forward.

  Switching to the collars threw him off for a moment, they required a lo
t less energy. Fortunately having them in stacks of five helped, but after doing the single enchanting on the tags he wasn't all that comfortable with multiples, especially as it had gotten him in so much trouble last time.

  Switching back to the tags, after the next batch was within reach, Sean unpacked the spell into each of them once more, before running out of tags within reach on the table again.

  Three more times they moved the table, and then suddenly he was out of tags to enchant. Going back to the collars he did all of the ones he could reach. He ran out of silver before he ran out of collars, surprisingly. He enchanted another six stacks, just using what was in the battery at that point.

  Then he just dropped everything and looked around the room. Roxy was still glaring at him, Daelyn was watching him carefully, Jolene and Roberta were both sitting in chairs, leaning against the wall and sound asleep.

  "Done?" Roxy growled.

  "Two things," Sean sighed, as he set the program in the tag back to normal and turned the encryption back on.

  "What?"

  "A hug and a kiss," he smiled crookedly at her. "And why is everything moving?"

  Daelyn looked at Roxy as Sean keeled over and started snoring.

  "If you forgive him, I promise never to hold you down and shave you bald again."

  Roxy looked at Daelyn a bit askance. "Just when did you ever do that?"

  "In about five minutes from now if you don't let it go," Daelyn smiled and held up a pair of electric shears, turning them on.

  Roxy looked at Daelyn, and then back at Sean, who was completely out of it.

  "Let's pack all this up first," Roxy sighed. "I think he did about five hundred tags."

  "Four hundred and seventeen," Daelyn said. "He made it through an entire box, plus three hundred and ten collars."

  Roxy shook her head again looking at him, "He's such a dick sometimes."

  "Oh come off it, you love it when he tells you what to do," Daelyn laughed, and then laughed even louder as Roxy's facial fur bushed out in a blush as she started quickly stacking the tags back in their box.