Liquid darkness flows out over the trampled gardens. Where shadows are meant to hide away from the light, these living concepts dance with the flickering flames that still spread across Pharisa’s flesh.

A creature not living and not dead walks into the ruined estate, her eyes set on me and her lips curve in a cruel smile. She sheds ash with every movement, regrowing herself only marginally faster than she burns away. The fact that the fire hasn’t destroyed her yet, but she hasn’t rid herself of it either is unexpected. I had worried that she might somehow survive, but this is something else.

How can she manage the pain of so much fire?

“Someone among you is talented with fire magics,” her voice rings out over the land, ringing through the halls where the thousands of survivors still cast their lights in resistance. “You will pull these flames from my heart, and I will give you mercy. This offer is not a kindness that will last, so choose swiftly.”

“In your heart?” I ask, my eyes widening as I press a hand to my own chest. If flames were to press so deep into my own flesh, I wouldn’t even have the chance to realize my fate.

“Yes, be glad that you haven’t experienced it,” she says, her smile harsh. “Your resistance to me is admirable in some ways, but you will bow to me. You will not have a choice. Tell me your methods, how you’ve taken your defiance so far, perhaps I will have mercy on you for your traitorous actions.”

How much should I say? Should I even talk at all, or should I fight instead?

Is time on our side or hers?

I glance back but Merry is still working on Belle, and no one else here seems ready to face the woman before me. No one here can flee, they cannot fight. Lewark seems distracted by something, whispering to some of the robed followers of the priest near him.

If Pharisa isn’t dealt with, they will all die.

Her shadows are constantly working to stifle the flames, work that they are ill-suited to. She is pushing herself hard just to stand before me. If she can’t rid herself of the fires, then it’s a matter of time before she burns herself out.

Time should be on our side.

Even assuming that the flames themselves are not enough for the task. I can push her until she burns through all her vampiric æther veins. The skillbook warned me against pushing myself to such limits. Without vampiric magic, I might not have the power to maintain this cursed state between life and death. The same must be true of her as well.

I step nearer, raising my knife as those behind me close the door. It is smart, but they will need more than that to protect themselves from her.

“Stand aside,” she orders me, her magic flowing into me before I can do a thing to stop her. She growls and lowers her head, glaring at me.

“I will not,” I reply.

“Who is it?” Pharisa asks. “Who is your necromancer? Are they still here with us, hidden in that manor?”

“Necromancer?” I ask, stepping closer and gathering my frost magics. “Don’t know of any dead magics.”

“It’s not…?” She asks. “Then what is it? Something this powerful… no? You are someone else’s? Aldramodore assured me that I wouldn’t be troubled by my siblings…”

“Well, here I am,” I say stepping closer and tightening my grasp on the æther flowing through me. The cold inside flows out through the core of the blade and forms a layer of frost in the air around me. Already the frost inside me is melting away. “Aldramodore doesn’t seem to care at all that he didn’t end me.”

“You’re his?” Pharisa asks, her expression hardening as she steps back from me.

“Ooh! Did you know about this?” Vael asks, sitting atop the mansion roof where some others are gathering, spreading their lights. “This is getting thrilling!”

“Vael, where did she go?” Semi is up there with her, but her attention is away from us. She stares out into the darkness beyond for some reason. With her help, perhaps I could win this fight. As a criminal leader, she must be strong enough to make a difference.

She shows no interest in it, instead waving out into the darkness beyond our battlefield.

“What are those two doing here…” Pharisa glares up at them, before shaking her head and returning her attention to me.

“You can’t be one of his. The pure curse is… it’s been decades since the last… You had best run back to our sire before he finds you, I can assure you that it would be better for you that way. Without his guidance, you will not last.”

“What does that mean?” I ask treading out closer to her.

“Go to him, or you will lose yourself,” she says, shaking her head. “Now step aside and allow me to recover, I am the one holding this city together under his command. You do not want to see what this city becomes without me.”

“You?” I ask, she growls, more flames spreading out over her. The shadows pat them down hiding her from sight for a moment, but she doesn’t teleport. Quite possibly, she cannot.

The people gathering on the ceiling of the manor are already spreading out large lights. It burns bright in the sky, but it’s still not nearly enough to make a meaningful difference. Even to me, this is little more than an annoyance.

Pharisa stares up at them her face twisting into an ugly sneer.

I draw closer to her while she’s distracted.

“Where are the others of our kind?” I ask. “They went to help you, didn’t they?”

She spins back to me, her darkness reeling as she considers me a threat.

It’s an illusion. A lie. I have no power that can wound her.

Neither her strength nor mine belong to a battlefield. Neither of us is suited to open war. We play games of deception and lies, that is how we hunt. It is what we are.

While neither of us should know fear, we can still be distracted by the pretty lights of illusions. I must only keep her distracted until she dies.

“They foolishly threw themselves onto me to try and stifle the flames,” Pharisa growls out the words, flames bursting through her mouth and thickening her voice. “They died uselessly.”

I do not think that they did so willingly, it is much more likely that she ordered them, and as slaves without control over their own fates, they stifled the flames the only way that they had. Throwing their own lives away. It is disgusting.

No one should wield such power over another.

Even a noble is only meant to be obeyed because they have earned the trust and faith of their knights and people. Slaves are only meant to be held such that they can reclaim the nature of a true person. No one should be forced into suicide because of cruel orders from an uncaring master.

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Is there no one who upholds the values that I was taught were absolute?

Is this kingdom so fully rotten through?

“Are you trying to fight me?” Pharisa asks turning to the people gathered on the ceiling, her darkness spreading out as tendrils. It is dense. That is the difference between her use of the magic and mine. The shadows are layered and strong. “That would be a mistake.”

“You will not touch them,” I say, stepping closer. “You cannot teleport while aflame, and you will not get past me.”

“You might be his spawn, but if he wants you, he can recover you from the ashes I leave behind,” she warns me, a small flinch crossing her expression breaking her vision of strength. “Do not waste my time here.”

“Can he?” I ask, summoning a ghost of an image behind her, just near enough that it would tickle the edges of her sight. It dances playfully, as if to a music that we cannot hear. It feels right.

Monsters are best fought in the light, with loud songs filling the air. Somewhere up on the mansion’s ceiling people are raising their voices and drumming on pans to imitate music.

“Can we truly survive that?” I ask.

“I… don’t know how he does it…” Pharisa says, a faint tremble moving through her limbs. “You do not want this. Move.”

“Why aren’t you forcing me?” I ask.

She shivers again.

“I can end us both here,” she says. “If that’s what you want.”

I watch her carefully, summoning another illusion though she hasn’t yet noticed the first. I spread them out, thin and wispy all around the edges of the light from the flickering flames.

“I don’t know how he does it,” Pharisa says. “They come back mad. Our siblings, all the others that he’s turned and brought back from the dead. They are insane. I knew one, a man. He was kind, as kind as one of us can be, but when he was… he’s a monster now. Chained and bound, a wild dog that can’t even speak properly. That is what you would condemn us to.”

Her words are interesting, the threats, the offers, and the depths of despair… she’s still imitating what a human would be.

“You’re afraid?” I ask, stepping back from her and raising my frost. The flames churn in her as she lifts her head back to me.

She sneers, it’s ugly and undignified, but human as anything.

“I shouldn’t even be wasting time on you,” she whispers. “I’m not so weak that you could best me. If you are not going to help me with this fire then, you had best use this chance to consider how you will respond when he comes for you.

“He will come for you.”

“I will not let you have them,” I say, sending my illusions before her. Dancing along the walls and forming an illusive army. She laughs, raising her arm and washing her darkness over them, they are gone in but a moment, but that is fine.

Darkness cannot destroy darkness.

The illusions are washed away but the shapes remain as shadows on the walls. They give her pause for but a moment before she steps closer again.

Those people gathered on the roof watch her approach, the darkness forming stairs in the empty air to let her up.

“Everything you have!” Lewark shouts back and the lights intensify. It is almost blinding for a moment, washing down over us and destroying the steps under her feet. For a moment the powers she uses to regenerate fade down to near nothing. The flames threaten to consume her, but the lights fade all too quick.

People fall where they stand, knocked flat by the very magic that they cast upon her. Lewark meets my eyes and tosses his cane down to me.

I rush in closer to Pharisa, catching Lewark’s cane from the air and thrusting it down at her chest. Her eyes, burning down to ash, meet mine, and her hands move to catch the weapon. The fires that coat her burn my skin and char the wooden staff. It snaps in her hands as she rolls away, pulled by the same shadows that have followed her this far.

I retreat a few steps, but her rage is already focused on me.

The people above move around and gather more magic to shower down on us, but it is meaningless.

The lights that they wield, the magics they have, it is not enough.

“They are mine,” I whisper, spreading my shadows faster around her, drawing shapes and lies and gripping my knife tight.

Her rage, which seems too human to belong to one of my kind, only lasts for a few more moments before she returns to a cold expression. She raises a hand at me, flames bursting out from inside of her and filling the air before me.

I summon the frost around me, subduing the flames that would burn me. I’m not able to kill it entirely, but it is enough to protect me as I step back and away.

“This fire is quite an interesting trick,” Pharisa says, shaking her head as she stares at her own hands. “Not worth the suffering, however.”

I grit my teeth and step back.

The shadows I place in her path are consumed by the fires slowly killing her, but I have no other tools to stop her.

She will kill everyone.

It is her mission, and she is a slave to it. There are no words I can say that would convince her otherwise, not when she is so bound.

Looking down at my hands I gather myself.

This may very well result in a fate worse even than death, but I will see that my people are protected.

She stands by the doors and I gather my powers.

“Pharisa!” I call her by name, she spares the shortest glance back at me which is the moment that I release my magic on the world.

The doors before her burst outwards, ejecting terrible red flames around her. She hisses, shielding herself with the darkness, but I move quickly in the opening to strike at her back. I summon a wooden stake into my hand and a fireball into the other.

She thrusts her hand out, sending her darkness to stop me.

Like a twisting, writhing limb covered in teeth. It throws me back and tears out half of my guts while I move.

“You have fire magic?” she asks, stepping back from the doors that have closed again.

Doors that were never even open. My magic is that of lies and deception.

The doors, the magic, all of it lies, the best that I could manage to create. Just barely enough to convince her. What more do I have left?

Distant clanging sounds of stomping feet distract me a moment. People are coming here, rushing here, and from the sound they’re armoured. Her allies?

Perhaps, more of the gang’s members?

I have to hope that it is someone that will side with me and not her because we are already troubled enough.

“I do,” I reply, not even lying. “Perhaps you should focus on me. I will pull the flames from you if you promise me that you won’t hurt them.”

“You won’t help me, then,” she says shaking her head and returning her attention to the door. “They must die. We cannot let them live, especially not those monks, or whatever they are. Our kind live and die through our lies, those who see us cannot be allowed to survive this night.

“I… I am sorry,” she says, heading for the door. I try for more illusions, armoured figures treading heavily around us. An army of distant shapes meant to intimidate. They wield all sorts of dangerous weapons, but she ignores them all.

“Burn her, before she kills us all!” I shout, adding sounds to the lies. Stomping feet and chatter. I step closer to her again, and I turn my pleading eyes to the armoured figures that stand separate from the lies that I’ve crafted.

A mage with a staff is already speaking the chants for a fire magic, I cast a shadow over them as Pharisa’s ears perk up at the sound. She leaps back from the doors, opens her arms wide and sets out her darkness to deal with the flames that are not yet here.

“Chants… no, it’s more lies?” she asks, turning to me. “Perhaps I should deal with you first. I can certainly spare a little time for you!”

Her voice wavers, it is, perhaps not entirely empty as a threat, but she is trying to bury concerns that are bubbling to the surface. She is like me, isn’t she? Is she still lost to the obsession of pretence? Acting as if she is still somehow human?

Darkness is shaped as monsters form around her and she shivers with rage, but she turns away again. She turns to the mansion, seeking to kill the innocent within. I gather my army of lies and surround her, giving them enough flesh to press against her magics, but it is nothing for her to fear.

“I’m not some fool,” she says, suppressing a cough as smoke and fire burst from her mouth. “I will not fall for your tricks anymore.”

“You won’t hurt them,” I say, moving her way. If I’m caught in the same fires… it will be necessary.

The mage walks through the darkness, led by the warriors beside her. With just a few final words, she lowers the staff, while my many illusions do just the same in a circle around the powerful vampire. Pharisa sneers at the sight, ignoring them. The flames must be ruining her vision, giving more credence to my lies than should be possible.

I raise a shield of frost as the winds pick up around us and the first sparks burst forth from the mage’s staff. The flames burn even from a distance, but that distance lasts for only a short instant. She is powerful, a lesser knight or close to it.

The flames climb into the skies, and the yellow and red ribbons flicker across my flesh.

It is pain worse than anything.

I collapse, summoning all the frost I can forge and curling up to get away from the burning pain. I can see nothing and feel nothing but the maddening pain.

Am I finally destroyed, or is this some new and more terrible state of being between life and death?

“Hey, are you okay!” one of the warriors shouts out for me, drawing my mind out of the shell that I’ve been holding myself inside. I shiver, kicking back away from the last flickering flames still in the yard.

There is nothing left of Pharisa, even the ash is scattered.

“I… I…”

“Where’s the knight? That was one of the undead! They said she was fighting a knight!” The mage shouts to the others. “Where’s Syr? Where’s the knight?”

Syr?

“The knight left some time ago,” I say pointing to the gully that he’s left in the earth. My blackened flesh is already recovering, which one of the men is focusing a little too much on. What does it matter if he knows what I am at this point?

“We need to go,” the mage shouts.

“You nearly killed her, Adeleya!” Another woman shouts. “We need to get her some help.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Reeve Lewark steps out from the mansion, kneeling by my side. “You go after the knight. We can’t have him coming back for us. If your friend was the one fighting him… go fast.”