Approximately two hundred miles northeast of Red Point, a square-jawed asshole in a suit was sitting behind a desk. Said desk was in a partially refurbished castle on a dark and stormy island, which itself was seldom visited. Which is exactly why said asshole picked it as his base of operations, of course.

Of course, his train of thought was rudely interrupted by one of his minions. “Lord Valiant! We’ve learned the location of an underage archmage!”

The aforementioned ‘Lord’ looked up from his scheming for a moment.

“I wasn’t aware any underage archmages existed, so this is very good news indeed. Tell me, who exactly are we looking for, and where are they?”

The rotund blonde acting as messenger hurriedly answered, “The archmage in question is an eight year old boy named Geoffrey Blue, and he’s currently attending Red Point Magic Academy.”

Lord Vallium the Defenestrated grinned maliciously. Ah, a perfect target! Red Point was a dump as far as boarding schools for magic went, thanks to that Humbernot fellow going around the bend. And an eight year old boy was likely to be far less dangerous than the archmages he usually tried to capture.

“Ah, this should be quite easy then. Red Point might as well not have a security department, and one of their Mancia teachers is already on my payroll. Many thanks to Humbernot for driving that school’s quality into the ground.”

A pause.

“You seem hesitant, Steven. Do you have important information you haven’t told me yet?”

The now-named Steven answered, “Humbernot hasn’t been headmaster of Red Point for about four months, Lord Valiant. His replacement has been making lots of changes, big ones. The security team was completely replaced, and Arrence was fired for cause. Though he seems to still be drawing his pay from you.”

The would-be Lord glared at his subordinate. “I see. Who, exactly, did they get to be headmaster of that dump?”

“That would be Adrian Adley, sir. The archmage who-”

Lord Vallium snapped, “Yes I know exactly what Adrian did to me all those years ago! Are there any other Archmages at that school I should be warned about, perhaps?”

Steven quivered, “Yes actually. It’s a bit foggy, but apparently Lawrence Demouls was hired to replace Arrence as Mancia teacher.”

And just like that ‘Lord Valiant’ shriveled in fear. “Adrian hired him!? The only reason I’m still alive is because Demouls couldn’t find me after I tried extorting the secret out of him! If this gets traced back to me I’m definitely done for!”

Steven asked, “So… we’re not going to be kidnapping Geoffrey Blue?”

Lord Valiant snorted. “What, no! Of course we’re going to be kidnapping him; he’s simply too good of a target. We’ll just need to be very very careful about how we go about it, make sure to scout out the place ahead of time, and send someone suitably expendable to do the actual deed.”

Steven carefully raised a finger, as if to ask.

“What? No, not you. You’re one of the only people willing to tell me unpleasant truths. That’s the exact opposite of being expendable. No, we need someone very very fast, violent, and who’ll do the job without asking any unfortunate questions.”

Steven noted, “I think I might know someone like that, but he requires pay in a distinctly non-standard currency.”

‘Lord Valiant’ quirked an eyebrow, “Oh? What does he want? Gold bullion? Diamonds? Cowry shells? Teeth?”

“He’s a vampire, my Lord.”

Vallium smiled, “Ah. Blood then. Won’t be hard to arrange; just capture a few unwatched people from rural areas to feed him. That said, hiring him will need to wait a little bit. We need an intermediary, and we also need to scout Red Point magic academy; find out what exactly Adrian’s done with the place.”

“I’ll get started on finding a suitable go-between then?”

“Please do. Oh, and call for Helen would you? I think she’d be a perfect scout. She’s got that five year old ductile of hers after all. Just teach the kid some harmless tricks and suddenly Helen has to come visit the school.”

Steven nodded, and left the room.

A couple minutes later a muscular woman entered Vallium’s office.

“Yes, my lord?”

The self-proclaimed Lord nodded, “Hello, Helen. There’s something I need you to do for the cause. I need you to secure a tour of Red Point Magic Academy and ask lots of questions about their security.”

Helen nodded hesitantly, “I can think of a way to do it, but I don’t particularly want to be separated from Sarah for thirteen years.”

“Do you want to be an archmage when I find out the secret or not?”

“I do, I very much want to be an archmage. I’ll do it. I just need a little bit of time to get Sarah ready. One question though. Are you planning anything dangerous at Red Point?”

Lord Vallium simply answered, “If you care for Sarah’s safety, enroll her at a different school when all is said and done.”

Helen’s face paled slightly, and she answered, “I understand, my lord. I’ll teach her a few first aid spells with Bionce, I think. Minimal chance of issues for her or legal trouble for me.”

“Very well, now get on with it.”

Helen took the teleportation pad home. Yes it was very very expensive to run, but Vallium valued the security it offered enough to eat the cost.

When she got there, Helen found Sarah playing with her dollies.

“Sarah, I think there’s something I need to teach you. If you get injured or sick, there’s some things you can do to make the problem less bad until you can see a doctor.”

Sarah nodded, “Ok mom, how do they work?”

“Well, first I’m going to teach you a spell to close wounds and stop bleeding. It doesn’t heal exactly, but it does stop things from getting worse.”

“Oh that was what you used when I scraped my knee that one time!”

Elsewhere and a day later, Steven was programming a go-between for talking to the vampire. And programming was literal; he’d wiped out whoever used to be in that man’s skull with Mancia, and now the husk needed instruction on how to proceed.

The victim in question had been a farm hand who lived miles from the nearest town; few would immediately notice their sudden disappearance. Presently, his body was strapped to a chair for Steven to work on it.

“Hmmm. Still needs contingency handling. Though I suppose I could configure it as a puppet, that would also work.”

That’s when Lord Valiant entered the room, observing Steven’s work.

“Ah, Steven. I see you have our go-between. Is he ready?”

Steven looked up from his work, “No, my Lord. He was most uncooperative, so I had to erase his mind. I’m currently programming what’s left with what we need it to do. I’ll have him ready to go in maybe two days.”

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Lord Valiant nodded, “I understand. That’s quicker than we’ll need him ready by anyway; Helen’s visit to Red Point is scheduled for three days from now.”

Steven grinned, “Ah, more time for error-checking. Excellent. Don’t worry, Jerry here will be ready by the time Helen reports back.”

Lord Valiant grinned, “Oh Steven, that was never in doubt. Now, I’ve got some unrelated matters to attend to.”

Said unrelated matters turned out to be a certain Professor Arrence, chained to a wall in the castle’s dungeon.

“Hello, professor. We need to have a bit of a talk about professional integrity.”

Arrence panicked out, “It’s not my fault that Adrian fired me!”

Lord Vallium scoffed, “It most certainly was! But even if it weren’t, I could have found something else useful to do with you if you’d simply told me your employment there had ended!”

He leaned in close, “But you didn’t do that, did you?”

It wasn’t a question. There was a pause for several moments, before Lord Vallium’s cheer returned, “Anyway, if you return the money I paid you for the last month and a half you go free. Otherwise I’m going to have to do something unpleasant.”

Arrence croaked in a defeated tone, “Don’t have it any more. Spent it.”

Lord Vallium tsked, “Oh how unfortunate. For you. Oh what to do with you? I could mutilate you and leave you out in public as an example. I could use you as coin for paying a certain someone. Maybe ship you to Xinjiang after wiping your memories.”

Arrence remarked, “I’d much prefer the trip to Xinjiang.”

A smile crossed Vallium’s face, “Thank you for narrowing down the possibilities! So… public example or bargaining token. Which is it going to be, I wonder?”

“I don’t really have a choice in this, do I?”

Lord Vallium adopted a tone much like a deranged game show host.

“You are absolutely one hundred percent correct my friend!”

Then he knocked Arrence out with a stunning spell, and went about the rest of his day.

A few days passed, before Helen reported back.

Lord Valiant greeted her in his office, “Ah, good to see you again Helen. Do you have anything to report?”

Helen nodded, “I’ve confirmed the presence of all three Archmages of interest at Red Point. Adrian Adley, Lawrence Demouls, and Geoffrey Blue are all on site. I also have a detailed map of the school’s public areas; apparently the basement isn’t part of the tour.”

Lord Vallium hummed. Ah well, if Helen couldn’t get a look at the basement she couldn’t get a look at the basement and that was that.

“I presume your daughter is elsewhere?”

Helen nodded, “Yes. Adrian’s really turned the school around, but I still think Granite Ridge is a better school for Sarah to attend.”

“Can I see the floor plan please?”

Helen quickly fished the piece of paper from out of her pocket, “Had to transcribe it from memory so there’s probably some errors there, but it should be reasonably accurate.”

“Thank you Helen. You may go.”

Right. Steven should have the go-between ready by now, and that was scouting done. Now all that needed to happen was contacting the vampire and arranging payment.

The vampire in question was Richter Stahl. He was currently at his hunting lodge, and was somewhat bemused when an obviously enthralled man walked up to his residence.

Richter licked his lips, “Who do I have the pleasure of meeting tonight?”

“We wish to hire your services to kidnap someone.”

Ah. Mercenary work, now that sounded rather interesting. “Oh? Who is it you wish captured, and where can I find them?”

“We wish to capture an eight year old Archmage by the name of Geoffrey Blue. He is currently attending Red Point Magic Academy.”

Hmmm. That didn’t sound particularly hard. “What’s the catch?”

The thrall answered, “Lawrence Demouls is faculty at the school, as is another archmage by the name of Adrian Adley.”

Lawrence Demouls. Lawrence Fucking Demouls. Still… this could just maybe be manageable, with enough blood to spend. And the challenge would be very fun indeed.

Richter paused to think for a moment, “My price is fifty men or sixty women; men tend to have a bit more blood in them is all. No less. But provide them, and I will do it with only one question.”

“Oh?”

“Where do I drop off the kid when I’m done? Here is out of the question; I like this place and don’t want it destroyed.”

Clearly the thrall was ready for this, “Ten miles due east of Red Point Magic Academy, there is a clearing in the forest. In said clearing there is a tree stump with a triangle cut into its top. We will be waiting there on the day of your attack.”

Richter hummed, “I’ll want to take a look at that clearing first of course, so I know where it is. I suppose I will also take my payment there. Is there anything else of use I should know?”

The thrall held out a piece of paper, “We have a partial floor plan of the school. Still, it should cover all areas Geoffrey Blue is likely to be in.”

The vampire collected the map from the thrall, “Thank you, this will be most helpful. Now hurry along and collect my pay.”

Back at Lord Vallium’s castle, he noted, “Very well then. Steven, I do believe this Richter fellow is exactly the sort we need for this job. Thank you for finding him.”

The henchman preened under his master’s attention, “Only doing my job, my Lord. I’ll get started on rounding up the vampire’s pay, shall I?”

“Please do. And make sure to collect a few extras, so we can give him a tip if he does particularly well.”

And so off Steven went, looking for isolated people to kidnap away. Finding them was relatively easy, out in the countryside.

The tricky bit, Steven thought while ducking behind a tree for cover, was that many of them were armed and hyper-vigilant.

“Get back out here where I can blast you, ya fat weasel!”

Case in point, this one had apparently been in the army scouts and kept in shape. That gun was nasty, and the wards on his clothes had already deflected just about everything Steven could do back. At the very least he didn’t seem to have any transcendent combat skills.

So, not being terribly keen on getting perforated, Steven came up with a plan. Namely he kicked up a lot of dust in the air to obscure his position and ran for his life.

Kidnapping people currently indoors was also generally a non-starter. Rural families were very keen on magically hardening their homes, precisely because they wouldn’t have time for help to arrive if attacked. Breaking into any of them would be utter suicide without a team backing you up and detailed knowledge of their particular ward structures.

Still, over the course of a good three weeks Steven managed to capture seventy assorted adults from the countryside. Most had been going about their day outdoors when Steven surprise attacked them. With no-one else around, Steven was able to simply knock them unconscious and have them teleported back to Lord Valiant’s castle.

It wasn’t until just after the first snowstorm of winter that everything was ready. The thrall and Richter met up in the clearing as planned, the full moon shining overhead. Just to the side, sixty men and women huddled in shivering horror.

“Richter, here is your payment, as requested.”

The vampire looked to the crowd. “Oh yes, yes this will do nicely. I sincerely thank you for this generous donation of blood.”

And then he walked up to one of the bound and gagged victims, bit down, and drank her like a juice box. The rest started desperately flailing to escape their restraints when they saw this, but it was for naught. Richter Stahl was there, and he wasn’t about to let his meal get away from him.

One after another, the innocents Steven had rounded up were lifted off the ground, bitten wherever would be the most violating, sucked dry as the desert sands, and carelessly tossed aside. It took barely ten minutes for Richter to work his way through them all, then he was done.

Then the corpses started to rise, as thralls of Richter’s own.

“Ah, I haven’t been this well-fed in a long long time. Now to get the job done, I believe?”

“We have an additional ten for you upon completion.”

Richter smiled menacingly, “Oh you’re far too kind. Thank you.”

And with that the vampire was off, his thralls in tow.

Back at headquarters, Lord Vallium and Steven were waiting for Richter’s return.

Steven estimated, “At the speed that vampire was going, with all his thralls in tow, he should be done with this in less than two hours. One way or another we’ll know what happened on the mission soon enough.”

“Indeed. Could you get us some dinner while we wait, please?”

And so the two waited. And waited. And waited some more.

After about six hours of waiting, Steven finally admitted, “It’s been too long, I think something happened to Richter.”

“Keep the thrall ready to receive for at least a day, just in case. That said I’m rapidly losing hope in this particular effort succeeding.”

“Understood, Lord Valiant.”

The very next day, the newspaper that Lord Valiant was discretely subscribed to had a very intriguing headline: “RED POINT MAGIC ACADEMY ATTACKED BY VAMPIRE! TWELVE DEAD AND THIRTY WOUNDED! HEADMASTER BLAMES LACK OF FUNDING FOR SECURITY UPGRADES!”

The would be archmage stared down at the page in fury. Richter had failed. His plan had failed. He would not have Geoffrey Blue to interrogate over the secret.

“Steven? Did that vampire oversell his abilities by any chance?”

Steven shook his head, “No, sir. He’d killed archmages before. Even raided a military outpost once. I don’t think he scammed us, or underestimated the people there.”

Lord Vallium leveled a distinctly unimpressed glare at his minion, “Then why did he fail in such dramatic fashion, then?”

“I couldn’t say sir, something unforeseen must have happened.”

Ideas already whirling in that evil little mind of his, Lord Vallium was already concocting his next move. He’d have Geoffrey Blue, oh he’d have that child archmage alright.

“Very well. Clearly what we did was an inadequate effort. We will need to gather more information, amass more resources, probably hire more mercenaries.”

Steven nodded, “And then?”

Lord Vallium steepled his gloved fingers together “And then we simply try again. Geoffrey Blue will be mine. I will extract the secret from his childlike mind. I WILL become an archmage. And nothing on or off this earth is going to stop me.”

Steven had seen Lord Vallium get like this plenty of times before, so he knew exactly what to say at times like this. “Yes, my Lord.”