Beam POV: Day 52

Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper

Xangô was talking, Solitaire was glaring, and my mouth tasted of blood. It was comforting to realise all that when I woke up, had I been in unfamiliar surroundings, it might’ve worried me.

“-You understand, there’s a lot of rumours about your, uh, kind, that we’d like to just verify with you before agreeing to anything. You die in sunlight, for example?”

I could hear something of a smile in the vampire’s voice as he answered, and I waited until he started speaking to move, trusting his own words to hide the noise my clumsy, battered body made. Everything hurt, but everything tended to hurt when one wanted to be an olympian. I ignored it.

“My kind do die in sunlight, yes, but we can mitigate this weakness. The oldest of us, the purest-blooded and most powerful, can temporarily abate its glare, or else puppet bodies to operate in open daylight with.”

Xangô swallowed. It was astonishingly good acting, on his part, considering he already knew- and, in fact, had written about half of- every single factoid he’d just been told. He pressed on regardless. By now I was halfway to my feet, if the vampire suddenly turned, he’d not fail to realise I was awake.

“And the thirst for blood? Children’s blood?”

The vampire laughed openly, openly and hard. I was able to fully stand by the time it finished.

“We do not-” My hand was against the wall “-Need to feed on children-” The wood was whispering to me “-To survive-” A spear was tight in my grip. The vampire paused, apparently searching for words, then found them.

“For ones of my power, I can subsist on even animals if I choose to, it is only the elders who require human blood, and only the most ancient who must feed on their own kind-”

I’d been closing in with every word, centimetres at a time, and I moved on the last. Leaning forwards, lunging, spear outstretched and muscles screaming together with the force of its propulsion.

The vampire moved faster than any creature could under the power of biology alone, but even the magic giving it velocity was just a shade too little. My weapon sank into the undead’s flank, just under its ribs, and carved a jagged path through. It was a testament to its resilience, after seeing so many skulls and limbs burst apart, that I felt such resistance and cut so shallowly, but by the time my weapon escaped its victim with a streak of dark blood, I knew the wound was a severe one.

I was given further proof when the vampire spun to round on me, rapier flashing, then bouncing aside as I parried it with the haft of my weapon. The force almost tore my arm out of its socket, and did send me back a full step, and yet…It was manageable. Diminished from the monstrous intensity I’d seen before.

Our foe was weakened now. The slow trickle of dead ichor still running down its flank would’ve attested to that. We had a chance.

“Treachery!” The vampire spat. “You would turn my offer against me? You-” He was interrupted, mid rant, when the most paranoid man currently alive body slammed him. Solitaire bounced off the vampire, finding his target anchored in place by the same magic that gave it such strength, but he forced them back an uneven step as he did. I didn’t need prompting to move in, swinging my spear in a wide arc, then twisting it downwards to change the angle moments before impact.

It was a clumsy swing, compared to what I’d have managed with a more familiar weapon, but Xangô had been right. There was overlap in my abilities, more than a little, and I clipped the bastard’s calf as it hastily parried me. The Vittonian stormed past me, thrusting with her own spear, then stepping back as the vampire riposted. A villager closed in with a pitchfork, and Solitaire kicked our enemy right in his ankle just as it was raising up for another dodge.

Metal met meat, hard. Supernatural meat, probably as tough as stone, but we saw a few drops of blood run down the pale face of our enemy all the same. With a vicious hiss it turned, leaping across the room and landing just in front of the window.

“You will all die for this!” The vampire roared, voice tight with white-hot fury. “Each of you, I will drown you in the blood of your chi-”

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Argar’s hammer missed by mere inches as the vampire twisted from its path in the last possible moment. The iron head caught the wood panelling behind it, taking a fist-sized chunk out as it bounced off to clatter at the vampire’s feet. By then it was already lunging from the window, within moments of disappearing from our sight.

I hurried to stop that, spear ready, nerves steeled. But the red light was back, engulfing me just as it had before. I felt sharp talons of fear sink their way into my mind, burrowing deep, whipping every synapse I had into a frenzied fear. I was too frightened to even scream. The spear dropped from my hands, my body dropped from a stand, and I fell trembling and shivering onto the ground, practically convulsive in my fear.

By the time I came to, the enemy was long gone already, and I was surrounded by concerned, fearful faces.

“You alright?” Xangô asked, frowning as he eyed me.

“I think he’s still convulsing.” Solitaire breathed, rocking me as he slapped my face, hard. I swore.

“I’m awake, you idiot.”

“He’s probably just hallucinating, I should slap him six or seven more times to make sure.”

I pushed the psychotic asshole off me and sat up, groaning. My head was ringing, waves of pain radiating through it, and yet there wasn’t a mark on me. Was this…A stress headache?

Made sense, I supposed. I hadn’t exactly passed out from relaxation.

“Beam, are you alright?” Xangô was clearly more concerned by far than our friend, and I felt a stab of guilt for worrying him.

“I’m fine.” I snapped, more angrily, more harshly, than I intended. And much more than he deserved. Xangô was wounded by my response, even I could see that much, and I sighed. “Sorry.” I pressed. “Just…Not nice getting disabled that easily.”

He nodded, sympathetic as ever, but I saw there was a hardness to him all the same.

“You had us worried there, is all.”

Standing up, I surveyed our surroundings. We were still in the mayor’s old office, where we’d made our last ditch defence, and by the looks of things we were alone in it. Solitaire answered my question before I could ask it.

“We made everyone else clear off.” He explained. “Wanted a bit of privacy, you understand. It’s daytime if you couldn’t tell.”

The sunlight streaming in through the smashed-apart windows hadn’t caught my attention before he said that, somehow. I must’ve been more out of it than I thought.

“Did we win?” I asked, blinking back a sudden headache. Xangô nodded, Solitaire scowled.

“We did.” The former replied, but even his smile was somewhat strained. “Though-”

“Bastards stole my black powder.” Solitaire cut in, practically snarled in fact. “Stupid fucking Redaclans, can’t build anything more complex than a thatch hut so they-”

“Not the time.” Xangô sighed, halting our friend’s tirade before it could gather momentum. Solitaire scowled at him, but said nothing more. Somehow the sight was relaxing. Familiar, soothing, normal. I took it in for a moment before the inevitable wave of worry hit me.

And it did, of course. Like a steam roller landing on me from orbit.

“The vampire will be back.” I said, pointlessly. Both my friends nodded. I sighed. “He’ll be back with more undead?”

That, at last, caused them to hesitate.

“Once you make an undead, it’s made for good.” Xangô said, slowly. “So it probably won’t be keeping any unmade, at least…”

“And the village was already resisting it before we came.” Solitaire added. “Which means there’s a good chance it had already thrown all of its usable bodies into the assault we turned away.”

Some of the tightness in my chest unravelled and faded, but not all of it. I made myself nod.

“Right then.” I breathed. “So we’re over the worst of it?”

They hesitated, and Solitaire answered. He was the expert on siege warfare, apparently.

“We don’t have the cannon anymore.” He explained. “But otherwise…Yeah, numerically at least they’ll probably be attacking us with half or less of what they did yesterday. The issue is that now they have the black powder, if the vampire knows how to use it…”

My blood ran cold. I wasn’t sure the thin cobbled walls of our new fortress would hold against the kinds of destruction I’d seen yesterday, and I knew we’d be killed without them. Solitaire sighed.

“It probably doesn’t though.” He added. “Seemed far too impressed by us to be any sort of expert…Probably.”

It was about as much reassurance as I was likely to get, and I took it graciously. Xangô was speaking next.

“There’s one other thing.” He noted. “Something we were waiting for you to wake up before going over.”

I eyed him, frowned, and then realised it all in an instant. My grin was so wide, the cold air hurt my teeth.

“We levelled up?” I asked.

“Let’s find out.” Xangô replied.