INTERLUDE 7F: THE VAMPIRE FOOLED
“I am the punishment that comes to the deserving. I am the sacrifice willingly made. I am the wound that never seals. I am Lord Suffering.”
– from the Mortiforic Creed
Moon IX Crossing V
He stood on the battlement of the mountainous fortress, looking out on the desert below, wind whipping about him. The gleaming sands were a thousand miles away – his physiology, such that it could be said to properly exist in this place, was truly formidable, yet even his sight could not cover such distances. No, it was his spiritual endowments that let him pick out every grain of sand, every desperate clawing finger. It was his status, his nature as a Chosen of the Gods. The dirges of the broken, the cries of the lost – these were the winds that rippled his collar, and he knew every voice, heard every prayer down to the last word. He could smell every rotten clambering corpse, even discern the addictive odours of the Life Perpetual, the river of blood that was as far from here as far could be… The red waters ran at once as wide as an ocean, as narrow as a cavern stream, and there was no telling why the winds brought him its playful scents.
Vaahn tempts me, he thought. Vaahn tempts me, and I submit, only so that I might not break.
He indulged himself, just for one moment of time, one segment of this ever-flowing nothingness. He remembered the taste of the blood, covering his tongue and gums and all the soft and hard creases of flesh in between, running down his throat, filling the void inside him and painting his tonsils in its red brilliance so that even for minutes afterwards it might drip, drip, drip more – enough blood that even in remembering it he wanted to choke, wanted to savour every single priceless droplet…
But he was long practised. He managed to return to himself, scowling a little at the extent of his sojourn into the lip of the abyss, the edge of madness.
I will abide, and await my Lord’s call, to go hence through the Gate, and know that I might find Celestium for my troubles.
I will never break.
More time passed, and the servitor of Illodin stepped up beside him. It’d been hundreds of years since they’d last come across one another, but the silence between them was instantly a comfortable one. They’d been acquainted for a good few aeons; incidental conversation wasn’t required.
For seventeen minutes they stood there, as the hours were accounted in the House of Sacrifice, waiting together, looking down. Over four days took effect down there on the sand, the events displayed in translated sequence.
The black-armoured armies crawled closer. A fraction of a fraction, but progress was progress.
One day, they would arrive. Their hostile intent betrayed them, increased the time-space they traversed by an almost incalculable amount. Yet it was not infinite; not quite incalculable. On Moon III Descending XI, their outriders would appear, the hated banners raised in siege.
At last, the pale, shimmering revenant turned to the vampire. His voice was hollow, resonating through the dark air as though it echoed off itself.
“Thinkest thou my Divine Lord and thine shall come to accord?”
“My thoughts,” the vampire replied, “and thine, Lord Moss, on this matter and all others, remain unfortunately irrelevant. Yet, should our Masters fail, the host of the Prince of Chains may strike all the sooner, and without such resolution we shall withstand the blow shieldless.”
“The Gate cannot fall, Mr. Owl,” Lord Moss intoned.
“That, I am afraid –” the vampire smiled tightly “– is not quite accurate, my lord. Forget not that I as much as or more than thee stand to lose from its destruction.”
“My Lord cannot condone it,” Illodin’s servant said obstinately.
“If only it were of such simplicity. Thou knowest thy Lord’s inclination towards inactivity.” Mr. Owl sighed, and sought to change the topic away from such grave concerns, so that the comfortable silence might reinstate itself afterwards. “Hast thou entertained the envoy of the Horned One?”
The gleaming revenant seemed to dim for a moment, and Mr. Owl permitted himself a rare chuckle.
“The impertinent wench!” Lord Moss groaned. “How camest a creature such as she into the service of a Divine? For such a one to be Chosen – it is insanity!”
Mr. Owl inclined his head. In the line of work he and Lord Moss had accepted as their lot in the afterlife, they didn’t get much opportunity to interact with fey.
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“If I comprehend of her philosophy,” the vampire said mildly, “she sees it not as service at all. Wherefore else might such a one do the bidding of a deity, and of whom else might such a deity beg favour?”
“She dared question my faith!”
“I think, my lord, she questioned only thy diligence; thine own lack of questioning, if thou wilt. Such is, after all, her remit.”
Lord Moss started muttering: “… might have come in herself, an avatar of no less power that her hooves stood like pillars in our sands; yet a tree with roots planted this Equine Courtesan doth remain…”
“Speak no ill of the Unbroken Unicorn, my lord, when it is her own long foe whose shadow darkens our great Door –“
“When it is her whose hand fell first in judgement, smiting him on the jaw, him whose own hand drawn back now in anger strikes first her unknowing allies at his flank! Mr. Owl, I think that even here upon thy stone I shall stand atop mine own two legs, if thou dost so please, and speak with a tongue whose courses my mind alone shall design. I shall bite the consequence, or be bitten; on either hand thou shalt find me abrim with comment, and no less afoot.”
His attempt to subvert the direction of the conversation having failed, the vampire merely nodded, allowing the uncomfortable silence to reassert itself. Whatever their Masters decided, he was in agreement with Lord Moss. Nentheleme ought to have come in person, however great her disdain of Nethernum.
He was about to say something, expound upon the meaning of his wordless nod, when a new psychic link came into sharp relief.
“And there we must hold, for now at least, alas,” Mr. Owl said, turning and pointing. “A matter arises which requireth mine oversight.”
Where he indicated, not ten feet away across the titanic empty parapet of black stone, the spectral form of one of his assistants appeared. It manifested as a glamour of purple mist, resembling the upper body of the cloaked, hooded skeleton contacting him.
He noted with some surprise that it was one of the soul-takers, tasked with sorting the spirits of those who sacrificed of themselves. They very rarely needed supervision. The vampire took a step towards the apparition, feeling his curiosity piqued.
“Mr. Bagreldiar – to what do I owe this pleasure?”
The fleshless jaw moved beneath the hood, the inflectionless words emanating from the purple mist in the spectre’s own voice.
“Mr. Owl, my good sir – I hath in my possession the soul of one Lyferin Othelroe –“
“I hasten!”
Mr. Owl whirled away, crying, “Fare thee well, Lord Moss!” as he waved his hand and plunged through the portal he’d opened.
When the vampire stepped into the mausoleum, mere seconds later, his worst fears were confirmed.
Lyferin’s spirit was already awake.
He dismissed the spectre with a glance; Mr. Bagreldiar dissipated, and Mr. Owl refocussed his attention upon the lich.
The young man was standing by the window of his tomb. His skin was already starting to thin. There was a black line across his neck and lower jaw that would never heal, the memory of the blow that had taken his head off. Beneath the default nethernal dressings, robes draped about him in vague suggestion of his mortal raiments, Mr. Owl could sense the wound in his chest where missiles had pierced his heart, magically exploding it.
Had it been present.
“What is this place?” Lyferin groaned, casting about outside with his new undead eyes.
“It is thy home. Thy tomb, and womb. Thou needst not –”
“Ahh – you.” The lich didn’t glance over his shoulder, and the vampire cast no reflection in the glass of any world; he must’ve recognised the seneschal by voice alone. “Mr. Owl, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
“I remember you, Mr. Owl.” Lyferin drew a deep breath. “My home. Of course. Where I buried my heart.” He seemed to understand and started laughing, turning away from the window and displaying his pearly-white teeth to the vampire as if in challenge. “I don’t mean it figuratively, you know.”
“I am aware.”
“You know what I did.”
“Those rituals thou didst seek to emulate… They are most unclean.”
Lyferin brayed wild, mocking laughter. “Haha! So the sacrifices did work… I am no mere lich, no mere arch-lich! The use of a mage’s phylactery freed me! I am indestructible! I am –”
“Thou art now presented with an interesting choice indeed, Lord Othelroe. Like I thou didst reject the risks of rebirth, binding thy will, flesh, spirit into one single substance. Yet it was the sacrifice thou didst offer in those first demonic sorties which hath reft thee of thine ultimate damnation; lift thy voice in joyous song! Might that pure substance now be put to higher purpose, or shall base instinct rule this proud essence? Wouldst thou continue on as thou wert, or else step off this path of debauchery thou hast trod hence, and put thy hands and strengths to better deeds? We hath dire need of such talents as thou dost possess in droves, and a dearth of arch-liches. With us, thou shouldst find thyself upraised before the days grow late, a man of noble mien and stature, a lord enthroned with powers of command and dispensation. Out there – he whose lips claimeth to know what thou wilt find, out there, is a liar-born.”
While he spoke Lyferin crossed to the ghostly four-poster bed, sitting up against the headrest with his legs out straight in front of him.
“You try very hard, vampire, do you not? Does this often work for you?” He waved a hand dismissively, looking aside. “No, don’t answer me. You’ve already spoken at length to convince me that it doesn’t.”
“I shall remind thee that all thou hast undertaken to perform, all thou hast done unto thine own soul, hath been attempted many times, even achieved. No less ruin did those sorry spirits endure than shall be thy fill, shouldst thou choose to bite the darker meat.”
“So it is true? I might find a better patron, one providing a finer meal… Utenya and Vaahn, whose nethernal domains the rites invoked, perhaps, or –“
“Do not speak those names here!” Mr. Owl hissed.
It was too late, anyway. The guardian-servitors would’ve been alerted just at the mention, and the context didn’t improve matters one bit.
“Come now, Mr. Owl, don’t be churlish. You are a vampire, are you not? Tell me, where might one such as yourself find prey on this plane? And how am I to travel? I must find new eldritches immediately. Might I just open –“
The vampire stepped back smoothly as the space itself widened, the distance between him and the bed, the bed and the window, all of it doubling and redoubling. He saw from afar that Lyferin’s lich-face was creased in puzzlement: the room was now bigger than a palatial dining room.
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