Chapter 24
Escape Velocity
Retaking the dungeon fortress from the vampires took my familiars and I less than a minute. Only commander Talon was a true elder vampire. The other eighty-five were all recently turned and compelled to follow his orders. I had Angelica take control of him with her armour and then used him to make the rest surrender. After that, a few old chairs turned into wooden stakes was as effective as keeping them under control as an army of guards.
We were so quick that I had time to spare before the other’s caught up. I decided to use that time to answer a few questions.
Angelica finished repeating my instructions to Talon, bringing him entirely under our control. The quick and sloppy commands she gave during battle weren’t what I needed right now. What I needed was an informant who would try to help us to the best of their ability.
“Remove your equipment, Talon,” I instructed.
He pulled off his gauntlets and dropped them on the fortress cafeteria’s stone floor. His belt and weapons followed next, before he removed his helmet, and began on his breast plate.
Talon had short light brown hair and a dense beard which hid a strong jaw. He looked to be in his late twenties, but the scent of his blood told me he was old. Not as old as the owner of the leg I was holding, but old enough to make the other true elder’s look young.
I needed answers and I didn’t have much time, so I accelerated my perception. “Are you a member of the vampire queen’s outer court?” My words came out in a fast sharp string that would make a speed rapper jealous.
He tossed his breast plate aside and accelerated his mind to match. “Yes.”
“What does that entitle?”
“It means the queen respects my capabilities enough to compel me into her service.”
“You act autonomously?”
“Only in small matters like this fortress. Usually, I am under the command of a member of the inner court.”
“Why did her court attack Darksmith?”
He stopped undressing and reached into his storage pouch to pass me a newspaper cutout. It was Murdell’s end of year exam announcements. He’d circled the divination results and the name of the student who had achieved 100%.
Celest.
The moment he’d handed over the paper, he went back to removing his equipment. “Two weeks ago, the queen informed the inner court she wished the seer to join her kingdom. Members of the outer court was sent to investigate the seer, and we discovered her familial connection to the Darklord. We established that her ability to see the future was inherited from her father, not her mother, and that taking her would risk a confrontation with him. The outer court could not contain such a threat, so we brought the matter to the inner court, and the inner court decided to go to war with the Darklord to fulfil the queen’s wishes. We are here to collect the seer and turn the students at the academy so the next phase of the plan can begin.”
The door banged open behind me, and Luke rushed into the cafeteria carrying the bodies of four headless vampire elders we’d captured at Darksmith. He had two on each shoulder and a sack filled with heads in one hand. He dumped them beside me. “Learn anything helpful yet?”
“They’re after Celest and are willing to start a war with the Darklord over her.”
Luke paused and then his hand went to his sword. “Will it stop a war if she’s dead?”
I didn’t like how quickly Luke’s mind had turned to murder, but it was a valid question. I turned to our informant as he began removing his boots. “Will it?”
“No. The inner court is currently spread across Murdell executing the Darklord’s generals and allies. Killing the seer will only result in the queen’s displeasure and the killer being turned into an example for the new generation.”
The way he said, turned into an example sent an excited shiver down my spine. It spoke to the demon in me, carrying far more meaning than it would if spoken by anyone else. The sentence represented a horror beyond horrors.
Luke needed to be reminded that I was the exception not the rule when I came to vampires.
“What form would this example take?”
“The killer will be captured. For the rest of their life, they would be compelled to spend each day torturing a friend, family member, or ally. At the end of each day, we would restore their mind so they can understand the horror of what they have done. This will continue until all of those they cared for are tortured beyond madness and broken enough to become Unseen. Finally, these Unseen will be released from their bondage and allowed to drag their soul into hell where they will torture them for all eternity.”
Luke swallowed.
He’d learned his lesson, so I moved on to my next question. “How many ancient vampires serve the queen?”
“The inner court is made up of sixty-six ancient vampires and the outer court made up of six hundred elder vampires. Each member of the court has their own scourge at their command, along with allied scourges they can call upon.”
“Fuck,” Luke whispered.
“Language, Son.”
“Did were hear different numbers, Old Man? Fuck seems appropriate.”
I didn’t have enough time to argue the point. “Are the number of members in her courts fixed or do they fluctuate?”
Talon shrugged. “I can’t say. And I imagine no one else can either. She’s been asleep for longer than any of her court has walk this world. Even the most ancient of us don’t have memories of any myth or legend that mentions her. And no being as powerful as her falls into obscurity without ten thousand years of silence to let mortals forget.”
“Do you know why she’s awake?”
“She sensed the rise of The Broken King.”
“Is that a name, title, or description?”
“It is the name, title, and description of a vampire king who should not exist. A being of contradictions, who brought about a new age of curiosity within our queen, awakening dormant intrigue to once again dragged her attention into the land of the living.”
“If she’s looking for The Broken King, why is she after Celest?”
“The rise of The Broken King ignited her curiosity and pulled her from her grave. Satiating that curiosity is not high on her list of priorities.”
“What’s her goal then?”
“To leave an impression on this age.”
Another shiver ran through me at his words. She intended to do to the world what her court would do to Celest’s killer. It was a tide of terror that would leave everything broken.
I pushed killing her to the top of my priorities list.
Thankfully I wasn’t at the top of hers.
I took the sack of heads from Luke and turned back to Talon. I needed to keep this conversation moving. “Why haven’t you become an ancient vampire? You’re more than old enough.”
He paused for the slightest fraction of a second, showing the first signs that his servitude wasn’t all encompassing, and that he was still in there fighting to be free. “I prefer to exist in the world than to watch the centuries stroll past from my grave.”
He was talking about the Curse of Sloth. The curse was stronger for ancient vampires than elder vampires.
“Are you saying, elder vampire can choose not to become ancient vampires?”
“Yes.”
“Can an ancient vampire choose not to become a primordial vampire?”
Talon tossed the last on his armour down and stood before me naked. “Yes. Becoming full demon is not a choice any vampire will take unless they have to.”
“Why?”
He smiled. “We sit the top of this world, but we stand near the bottom in hell. Transforming to a primordial vampire is an act of desperation. It is only to be taken when certain death awaits you and descent into hell is your only escape.”
I pulled a notebook and pen from my storage pouch and quickly wrote out something I couldn’t say aloud, and risk being overheard.
“Don’t speak about anything you read in this note,” I said, before showing it to him.
The note said I knew nothing about using my innate vampire powers, and that I needed to know how I could feed on the elder vampires at my feet to learn what I needed.
He finished reading the note and met my gaze. “During a spontaneous feeding, our kind is only capable of gaining miscellaneous knowledge. This knowledge is always related to performing actions or skills.” He pointed to the strongest of the four elder vampires we’d defeated. “Sod has mastered the arts of giving and taking knowledge from our kind. It’s how he grew so powerful. Restore his head to his body and then compel him to transfer you this understanding. Due to his advanced skill, there will be a complete transfer upon his death.” He pointed to the female vampire I’d first defeated as we left the VIP dorm. “Tarla, has mastered how to mesmerize, charm, and compel despite not being able to perform the third action. Use the skill you gain from Sod to take that ability from her.” He pointed to one who’d surrendered. “Prog has a passable ability for controlling animals.” Finally, he pointed to the one who had recognised my sword. “Olont, is the outer courts most skilled telepath.” He then pointed at the leg I was holding. “Once, your understanding is sufficient, you can extract the knowledge of shapeshifting from Lusor’s leg.”
“What about telekinesis?”
“It is the least valuable of our powers. I could offer it to you, but you would lose me as a source of information, which I believe is more valuable to you.”
That was true.
I didn’t have time to consider if my next action was the right decision or not. I’d already been talking too long, and I needed to understand my enemy better. This would allow me to do so. I gave Luke and Angelica orders as I bent down and stripped the elder vampires of equipment.
Davina was moving through the fortress resurrecting the students who were here when the vampires attacked, and the princess and the other VIPs had just arrived outside. Carolyn’s guards were following my lead for once. The fact that all I wanted to do was take my children and run frightened them into submission.
If it wasn’t for Kathrine, I’d already be on my way to the Abyss. The monster in me knew I could save her and Luke if I took them and ran. It also knew that I could probably save her and Luke along with everyone else if I tried hard enough. However, getting my children to safety would eventually result in Kathrine asking me if I could have saved everyone else. Answering truthfully would end any relationship we had.
I wasn’t willing to lose her.
And I wasn’t willing to lie to her either.
That left me with only one choice.
I had to save the survivors.
Luke dashed out of the room as I tossed the last piece of equipment away and upended the sack of heads. Severed heads don’t roll across the ground like soccer balls, they just rock back and forth.
I scooped up Sod’s head and shoved it back onto his neck as Luke ran in with a staked elder vampire. He placed it on ground next to Sod and then shoved its wrist inside Sod’s mouth. Sod’s decapitated head instinctively bite down and the wound at his neck began to visibly heal as he drained the lifeforce from the staked vampire.
The recently turned elder vampires had all sorts of mundane skills that would have been helpful for me to learn, but I could also learn most of what they knew with time and effort, so I didn’t mind sacrificing them for the lifeforce they carried.
A few seconds after Sod began to feed, his eyes opened, and Angelica began to compel him into submission. Her instructions were much shorter than with Talon. Sod only needed to do one thing, pass on his knowledge and die.
When she’d finished explaining what he needed to do, Sod turned to me and glared.
He was barely under Angelica’s control. “To do this properly, I need more lifeforce to replace the blood I’ve expended.”
He was trying to buy himself time, but he couldn’t lie, so what he said had to be true. Luke ran out of the room for more vampires.
I turned to Talon. “What’s the correct method for feeding on him?”
Talon turned to Sod and smirked.
He was fighting against Angelica’s control and enjoying the other vampire’s predicament. “First drain him of blood, then use your vampiric touch to feed on his lifeforce. The knowledge will transfer as he crumbles to dust.”
Sod grimaced as he took hold of the elder vampire Luke gave him and began to feed. Three meals later, he bent his head back, exposing his throat. He stepped forward so I could feed on him, while still glaring daggers at Talon.
As gently as I could, I bit through his flesh and began to drink. I didn’t want to trigger any instincts that would overwhelm the command’s Angelica had given him, which was why I was taking this slow. He had far too much freedom. He was close to breaking loose from Angelica’s control.
I swallowed mouthful after mouthful of unappealing but nourishing blood until it stopped flowing, at which point, I used my ancient vampiric soul touch on him. As his lifeforce fled, he regained some control and tried to run. I didn’t let him, holding him in place with my vice like grip.
It took eight second for him to crumble to dust.
Before the dust reached the ground a lifetime of knowledge and experiences rushed into my head. It was every time Sod had ever fed on a vampire to gain knowledge and ever time, he fed his blood to another vampire to impart knowledge. This wasn’t like when I’d triggered a memory cascade. This was fast, complete, and whole.
I immediately understood what the knowledge transference ability was, how I could use it, and the extent of its capabilities. It was all there, like it had always been a part of me.
I could now organise my mind and allow a weaker vampire to experience one of my memories by projecting it into their consciousness while they drank my blood. This was a more powerful form of telepathy and was mainly used to show a vampire how to use their innate abilities for the first time.
I could also now steal another vampire’s memories by feeding on them. This would allow me to experience their memories the way they had experience the events. It reminded me a lot of how Amelia saw my life in her dreams, but the two weren’t exactly the same. She saw my memories without me expending any energy.
The only problem I saw with this method for stealing memories was that it was much slower than what I’d just done to Sod. However, the benefit of this method was it didn’t require anyone to die or to have an entire body.
Because of Sod, I now had close to a thousand experiences of stealing memories from other vampires as I killed them. He’d used this skill to great effect, opening his mind to absorb more information as his telepathic ability tore what knowledge he wanted from them.
“You okay, Dad?”
Luke was looking at me with his hand on his pommel, but his heartbeat was accelerating from worry, not fear. He’d heard about what happened when I experienced vampire’s memories.
I waved away his concern. “The personality changes I experienced in the past were a side-effect of incorrect knowledge transference and extreme circumstances. Eating Denton and the others in such a starved state caused their knowledge and personalities to overlap and merged into a single insane hyper competent personality which made it difficult for me to draw upon the knowledge I gained. The temporary changes to my personality were caused by my cunning being too low for my consciousness to remain dominant when I unpack the insane consciousness and absorb its experiences. I’ve sectioned off the rest of the unincorporated memories so that they won’t inadvertently be triggered again.”
“I didn’t understand most of what you just said.”
“It means that I’m okay, Son. We need to move on to the next one.”
We repeated the same process with Tarla, only this time I opened my mind to absorb more knowledge and attacked her consciousness. Everything she knew about mesmerizing, charming, and compelling people rushed into my mind as she crumbled to dust, which was when I discovered they were three parts of the same psychic ability.
Mesmerizing was surgical strike where you captivated your victim through manipulating their nervous system and hormones. We could psychically make our victim’s bodies release the chemicals we needed for them to lower their guard. It was the first step for charming a person, which involved flooding the victim’s brain with other hormones that made them like and trust us. The final form was compelling our victim, which was where we used the first two steps and telepathic commands to overwhelm their freewill, until they did what you wanted.
These abilities existed because when we became vampires the structure of our brain’s changed unlocking psychic abilities. As we evolved forms, our brains would change again and again, giving us a larger range of psychic capabilities.
That meant, vampires could mesmerize.
Elder vampires could charm.
And ancient vampires could compel.
These abilities were not separate abilities, but a single complex psychic ability used in multiple ways. They could be compared to how your body was capable of playing piano, dancing, painting, fighting, or performing gymnastics. All of these actions were just your body in motion, but being skilled at one didn’t mean you could perform the others.
And like a body, you needed to learn to crawl, stand, walk, and then run with your psychic abilities. Just because vampires had an innate psychic ability, it didn’t mean it didn’t require effort to learn.
Tarla’s knowledge had expanded on Sod’s in a way that made me understand why I was supposed to consume the other two elder vampires before I consumed Lusor’s leg. Each set of memories would give me insights into the other memories that came before them and expanded what I could do with the earlier abilities those memories had given me.
Consuming Prog gave me the ability to control animals. This was similar to what Tarla did, only it was applied to simpler but more variety lifeforms. There wasn’t a huge improvement to my psychic control, but my understanding of animal anatomy exploded, and I had a feeling that would be important for shapeshifting.
Eating Olont and gained his knowledge of telepathy resulted in significant improvements to all my psychic abilities. He had a level of control that put the others to shame.
I slid into Talon’s mind and experienced his racing thoughts as he tried to overcome the compulsion he was under and find a loophole in the instructions. If I wanted to, I could start a conversation with him. He was a vampire so two-way communication was possible. Human brains were limited to receiving messages, but if I had their psychic signature those messages could be sent over any distance.
Telepathy was both a big asset and a big liability.
I turned to Angelica. “I can now send messages to you telepathically. Until I say otherwise, you’re to ignore any command I give you telepathically and use your best judgement for any suggestion I send you telepathically.”
Angelica raised an eyebrow. “Why do you want me to ignore commands?”
“I want you to ignore telepathic commands, because telepathic commands can be made to sound like they come from anyone, which risks another vampire pretending to be me and ordering you to do something I don’t want.”
“Like freeing me?”
“Like murdering Davina.”
“Oh.”
I turned to the bleeding leg I was still carrying.
Without the rest of Lusor’s body, I couldn’t kill him to steal his memories of shapeshifting. What I could do was relive his shapeshifting memories through drinking his blood. Demonic parasites were like a soul in that they recorded every experience their host had. I was certain that it was them, not the blood, that allowed vampires to experience another vampire’s memories when they fed on them.
The memories I’d gained from Sod told me that even if I didn’t feed on my victims lifeforce, they would still lose it very quickly. He didn’t know why, but I assumed it was because the psychic attack, we directed at their blood, destroyed the demonic parasites in it, which forced the other demonic parasites to replace them.
It meant I had a limited amount of time strolling down Memory Lane. I had to focus on what was important.
I put the leg back in my mouth, focused my mind on the memories I wanted, and then forced the demonic parasites inside the leg to give me that knowledge. The flashes of memories transformed into a single memory of Lusor feeding on me as Angelica and Sir Trent stabbed him in the back.
The world fell away as I experienced Lusor’s arrogance and amusement at their pitiful actions. I felt his intrigue over my vampiric touch which was far stronger than his own. He wanted to understand how I was doing what I was doing and was willing to consume me to find out.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
He didn’t notice as more weapons struck him or when the spells began. From his perspective, they were insignificant.
Then Davina’s spell struck him.
It wasn’t the holy magic that scared him, but the familiar feel of an angel’s grace mixed through it.
Lusor was five thousand years old, and he knew the burn of a saint’s holy gift. His arrogance vanished as he recognised that he’d taken the bait and let himself be surrounded, while a saint was nearby. Every survival instinct kicked in as he tore himself through the weapons, shattered the barriers, and leapt over me.
I experience what it felt like as his legs were cut off and then experienced him instinctively change his shape to gather himself back together. It was an overriding through, a command of mind over flesh, a complete restructuring of all that he was.
I sensed his horror as he realised a part of him was trapped by me and felt him decide to shapeshift to a smaller form that would allow him to concentrate his strength and defence as he escaped.
I lived through every thought every process that he had to do to achieve the transformation. I felt what he felt as he became the bobcat and crashed through the wall and then I felt what he felt as I hit him with a destruction spell. He blurred down the hallway, through a side room, and then exploded through a balcony door, before shifting his form back to his original human form, only this one was slightly smaller than the last.
Once again, he tried to pull his leg to him during the transformation and once again he failed. Concern for the saint and what they would do with his leg replaced his frustration, and though he was loathed to give up some on his strength, even temporarily, it was preferable to death. I felt him reach out with his vampiric aura to his missing limb and relinquish the connection to the power trapped within it.
The memory stopped there.
I was once again standing in the fortress’s cafeteria, only now I knew why he was so strong. Lusor didn’t have an attribute aura. Somehow, he’d used his shapeshifting ability to transform his physical body so that every attribute could be physically incorporated. His attributes represented his physical capabilities as opposed to the limits his aura could push him to. It had turned his peak performance into his general operating level.
I needed to figure out how he’d done that.
I dove back into his memories searching for how he started the process.
A very old memory of him walking to his sarcophagus began to play out. In the memory the sarcophagus was half filled with dirt. I felt the grave calling him as he approached, but he ignored the call, even as he climbed inside and lay down. Once there, he let the grave call him just a little and sank below the surface of the dirt.
I felt his annoyance over his grave dirt no longer being capable of letting him fully sleep away from his grave now that he was an ancient vampire. It was a fleeting thought, but one that told me so much.
As the thought faded, he reached out with his vampiric aura in a way I’d never even considered, reopening gaps near his grave which led to hell. The gaps were so small that only soul energy could pass through. I instinctively knew they were the gaps that had opened the night he was turned.
Using his vampiric aura, he bathed his body in the soul energy that came through the gaps and because of his connection to his grave this accelerated his recovery. A day of doing this would restore him as much as a month of sleeping in his grave.
In his mind, this improvement in recovery did not make up for being tied to his grave. It also wasn’t easy. Without a conscious effort, this speedy recovery wasn’t possible. But natural rest only opened a few of the gaps not all of them, so he had to endure.
While he lay there bathing in soul energy, he began to practice the technique he’d stolen from a monastery. The technique used soul energy to strengthen the body and he was intrigued to see if it would work on him.
I pulled myself out of the memory with more questions and some answers. Apparently, elder vampires could sleep outside their grave, which was something I needed to investigate, but only after I understood what I’d seen.
Lusor clearly didn’t know about demonic parasites, but I was almost entirely certain that those gaps to hell that he opened were made when his demonic parasites had first crossed over to turn him. The only reason I could see for those gaps opening when he slept was that our third stage demonic parasites needed soul energy to recover. And if they needed soul energy to recover, it made sense that they would be programmed to recover while we were in our grave, because that was where they could open these gaps to draw soul energy through.
These days, my demonic parasites were almost always surrounded by soul energy. Would that accelerate my recovery time when I returned to my grave? Based on what Lusor knew, it probably would.
Curiosity sated, I turned to Talon. “Can elder vampires sleep outside their grave?”
He rolled his eyes. “We can through the use of grave dirt. Grave dirt is created by filling your grave with dirt and sleeping in it. Should you need to rest outside of your grave, surrounding yourself with this dirt will allow you to rest. The more often and longer you sleep in the grave dirt before you remove it for use, the longer the effects will last away from your grave. Two years in your grave for one year away is what you should expect unless you sleep more or less often.”
“What’s the limit?”
“I once slept for three centuries outside of my grave, as I waited for a church order to die out.”
The limit was the effort you were willing to put in.
“Could I use grave dirt?”
“Grave dirt would allow you to rest away from your grave, but it won’t allow you to recover. It will be like catching your breath after running, as opposed sleeping.”
He'd answered my immediate questions which meant I didn’t need to use the leg for those answers. I lifted the leg to my mouth and slid into the memory of Lusor reading the technique.
This time, Lusor was in a library filled with scrolls surrounded by dead monks and scholars. There was a burning sensation coming from a cursed brand on his chest and he was searching the shelves for the information he needed to remove it.
He snatched up the next scroll on the shelf and read through. It was the body strengthening technique he’d used in the last memory. He tossed it aside when he finished.
He picked up the next scroll and read it front to back before I could pull myself from his memory. The scroll contained a soul strengthening technique and one that wasn’t like any I had read. It was so interesting I let the memory continue. The next technique was just as interesting, so was the one after that.
Lusor’s gaze skimmed over a gold plaque as he worked. Etched onto the surface was the image of a crane standing on a lake under a crescent moon. The plaque explained why every technique was so interesting. He wasn’t at a monastery like the thought. He was at the Dancing Crane sect.
There were references to the sect in one of the books Father had given me to read. If it was accurate then this memory was nearly four thousand years old. The Dancing Crane sect had been a place of research. Their members travelled to every corner of this world searching for those who practiced soul arts to convince them to entrust them with their techniques. They then sought to improve these techniques, before returning them.
The sect existed for three hundred years and the century before its disappearance was considered the golden age of all soul arts. Two centuries of accumulated knowledge and insights let them push the arts to heights not seen before or since.
The sect’s disappearance was a mystery.
A mystery that had now been solved.
I experienced Lusor reading the rest of the techniques in the library, before pulling myself from the memory and going back to the beginning to read the techniques I’d missed.
Lusor had thoughts referencing the head of the sect’s teachings which caused me to shift to his memories of going through her private library. It was an odd memory. Her dead body lay in the middle of the room with her disembodied soul standing over it. She spoke, but no sound came out of her lip. She tried to step away from her corpse but couldn’t move from the place she stood.
Her situation began to make sense to me as Lusor read through her library. She’d strengthened her soul to where it could survive outside her body, but she hadn’t reached the point where she could travel. It was astral projection and she’d tried to use it to save her life. The result was her trapped exactly where she’d exited her body.
He finished reading her library and moved on to the head disciple’s private library to see if it had the answers to his problem. From there he went through the various branch heads private libraries. He was almost done reading the head of the soul healing branch’s library when the memory faded.
I returned to the cafeteria clutching a handful of dust.
Only a few minutes had passed while I was observing the memories, but half Darksmith’s survivors were now inside the fortress. I put that out of my head as I focused on what I’d learned.
The Dancing Crane sect’s knowledge was vastly superior to my own and showed me how much I’d failed to grasp the basics. The technique I’d created for strengthening and restoring my soul worked, but its structure was ineffective, inefficient, and fundamentally flawed in a very dangerous way.
I walked over to the pile of staked elder vampires that Luke had brought in to help revive my recent meals. I picked one up and began making changes to my soul. My soul guzzled my lifeforce in a rush until I used my ancient royal vampiric soul touch on the elder vampire I was holding. As it crumbled to dust, I picked up the next.
The changes I needed to make to my soul were drastic and would normally have been done over a lifetime of slow meditation. That was how long you needed to gather that much lifeforce to create the soul energy. I didn’t have a lifetime to get this done and I preferred to steal the lifeforce I needed anyway.
The vampires in the pile had all killed and eaten the students guarding the fortress, so they were full to the brim. That was good because I needed all they had. Luke and Angelica ran to get more elder vampires as the pile grew low, pulling others in to help them.
My soul currently looked like a network of vines woven into a vaguely human shape. The soul vines had done a wonderful job of keeping my demonic parasites under control. They were constantly feed and evenly distributed throughout my body, so they didn’t need to move to do their work. This immobility stopped them from eating something I didn’t want them to eat, which meant they were more efficient.
The Dancing Crane’s teachings told me that efficiency would last exactly up until the point where I gained a serious injury. The moment I did, they would move out of their local habitat to regenerate the injury, causing immense soul damage in the process.
What I hadn’t known when I created the technique was that souls liked to keep their structure once they had them, and that my soul would consider my demonic parasites part of its structure after them being in the same places for so long. Once they started moving to heal a serious injury, my soul would try to push them back to where they had come from resulting it a lot of unnecessary damage to my soul.
It would take something like a limb being disintegrate for them to move in this way, but right now that was a serious possibility. I’d just been holding another ancient vampire’s leg.
Removing the soul vines wasn’t an option. They were designed to survive demonic parasites feeding on them nonstop, so resilient didn’t begin to describe how invasive they were. They would always come back. So instead of removing them, I brought order to the chaos.
I made it so they grew in the shape of my bones, muscles, and organs. I gave the clusters of soul vines different densities and structures depending on where they lay within me and what they were supposed to mimic.
Anywhere where blood moved was now flooded with soul energy. It moved in and out of the structures as it flowed around me, freeing my demonic parasites to move where they wanted with as little damage as possible.
I finished the changes by the time I was three-quarters of the way through our elder vampire prisoners, but I decided to keep feeding on them to strengthen my soul instead of stopping. Time was short and I didn’t want to take them with us and risk something going wrong.
Prisoners dealt with, I flicked the last of the dust from my hands and began tossing their equipment into my storage pouch.
Luke raised an eyebrow. “What just happened, and do I need to be concerned?”
“I fixed a mistake made from ignorance.”
“Did it make you stronger?”
“Not against what we’re running from.” I turned to Angelica. “Bring Talon with us, I have more questions for him, but we need to move.”
I left the cafeteria as Angelica ran over to get our informant. Outside, I walked through the crowded courtyard to where Kathrine was waiting with Princess Carolyn and her guards.
Luke followed a few steps behind, until we got closer, and Carolyn rushed past me. She threw her arms around Luke’s middle and stared up into his eyes giving him the biggest smile. “I can’t believe you went off on your own to secure a safe path for me to escape.”
Luke blinked several times trying to understand what he’d heard in a context of what was currently taking place.
Kathrine grinned at her brother. “Dad told her what you did.”
Luke sighed as he realised, I’d set him up again. “You’re welcome, Princess.”
I grinned at him and then stepped in front of Rupert.
Rupert didn’t wait for me to start the conversation. “What’s your plan?”
“We wait for reinforcements and then we run?”
“Did you send your shade to retrieve our people?”
“No. What’s happening down here is happening up there. They’re coming to us.”
Rupert swallowed and then gripped his staff tighter. “Running from vampires at night in open country is suicide.”
“I know. That’s why we’re not running that way.”
Rupert swallowed again. “I was really hoping we were here for a different reason.”
Rupert needed to laugh. He was about to crack. “For a prisoner of war, you’re far too optimistic.”
He chuckled softly. “What do you need me to do?”
“Based on their speed, Gregory is bringing civilians. We need to move fast, but not everyone can fly. Marin has a flying palace in his storage chest, but we can’t use that until we’re deeper. He’s going to have to lend us his collection of flying carpets to get the civilians to safety. It’s your job to convince him.”
“That shouldn’t be hard.”
“He’s a collector.”
Rupert winced. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He hurried off.
Sir Trent took his place “Is there anything we can do to slow them down?”
The ancient vampires attacking the town would be waiting for news of the one’s attacking Darksmith’s success. When they didn’t receive it, they would continue to wait. They would only come down here once they had finished their task and their underlings had proved it was safe.
I might be able to slow them down by scaring their underlings, but I needed Gorgath for that.
I shook my head. “You can’t do anything to slow them down, but your people can clear the monsters around the fortress so we can have a staging ground. Anyone not helping with that can help me organise everyone to escape through the Abyss. That means getting those who can’t fly to go to Marin to board his flying carpets.”
Sir Trent sighed. “We’d travel faster alone.”
Gregory blurred through the crowd and appeared beside me catching Sir Trent’s comment. “I wish you the best of luck with that, my friend. My advice is don’t go that way.” He pointed the way he’d come.
I turned to Gregory. “Make it quick.”
“We spotted them coming over the wall and because of their arrogance we were mobilized before they reached the entrance to the dungeon. We were moving to reinforce you when we got word of the second group moving towards the families responsible for the towns defence and pulled back for more information. That was when the people upstairs sent Mother a message. The message was run to the necrosaint and take as many as you can. I figured since they’d taken the trouble to send the message, it would be rude to ignore them.”
“I can’t fault that logic,” Sir Trent said.
“We mobilised and pushed outward until we made contact. The moment the first group was engaged, they sent the signal and Delilah roared so loud she shattered every unenchanted window in town. She went a little off script while informing everyone that the town was under attack, but she eventually got the point across. Everyone outside our parameter ran towards us and everyone inside followed our directions. That’s when the vampires stopped play nice. They hit somewhere before they came here and created a ghoul army. There must be twenty thousand up there to go along with the thousands of elder vampires.”
This was too much unnecessary information. “Did you get everyone out or not?”
“Everyone we could, but we only reached a few thousands of the nearby townsfolk before we ran into an ancient vampire. Lucky for us, it wasn’t expecting to deal with a pair of archbishops or the hundred clerics they had backing them up. Mother and Father drove it off which terrified them because they expected to kill it.”
I’d actually meant did our people get out. I didn’t care that much about the townspeople. “Did you recover our injured?”
He nodded. “The vampires preferred to use their necrotic magic against Davina’s people, so we managed to recover all the bodies.”
“Good. Make sure the injured are rushed ahead to be healed. There are magic carpets outside the fortress wall waiting for you to load children onto them, and then those who can’t fly. We’re moving the moment the last of our people reach here and I expect you to hurry them up.”
“That’s not a lot of time.”
“There are twelve ancient vampires coming after us and I’m the weakest one I’ve seen by a significant margin.”
Gregory’s optimism and cheerful attitude ended. “We’re leaving the moment the last of our people arrive. You don’t need to tell me twice boss.” He blurred back the way he’d come.
Sir Trent had run off while Gregory was talking and his people were shouting orders at the students, breaking them into groups, and getting them to move outside the fortress walls. The first time a student protested Sir Trent loudly told his people to leave the girl behind for the vampires. That statement was repeated just as loudly for any other student protest. The first student that tried to force them to listen with magic lost his head.
That made the message sink in.
I decided it was time to save my son from Carolyn. “Luke, I need you to find Dalin for me. He’ll convince the faculty to work with us, but only if we ask him too.”
Luke disengaged himself from the princess’s tearful embrace and ran off as fast as he could to find Dalin. Carolyn had managed to hold it together, but she’d fallen apart when she saw him. Luke made her feel safe and that let the horrors of what had happened come loose from their emotional restraints.
I turned to Kathrine. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head, and her lips began to tremble. “She killed Riza, and she was going to kill me too. I wasn’t strong enough to fight back. I couldn’t even hurt her.”
“I’ll fix that shortly.”
“How?”
“With a lot of dead monsters.”
She took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me I was still weak?”
“I didn’t want you to live in fear.”
The sound of heavy footsteps final reached me. Gorgath was on his way, and we needed to talk.
I reached out and squeezed her shoulder, using the open heart technique to share how much I loved her. “Stay close to Carolyn, Sweetheart. If this goes poorly, she’ll survive where others won’t. I need to get back to organising our escape.”
I turned to Talon. “Can the outer court travel through the third floor of the Abyss?”
That deep, my aura would act like a dinner bell rather than threat. The auras of the floor bosses would overshadow mine, and common monsters were as strong as dungeon bosses, so every step would be a battle for survival.
“The outer court have the skill and strength to survive moving that deep. However, while we might be able to survive, we would slow the inner court down. If you are willing to flee that way, they will leave us behind.”
That was valuable information, and it might change our plans depending on what Gorgath said.
***
I hadn’t seen Gorgath since our last hunting trip to the Abyss, so I hadn’t seen what he looked like without his spikes. I heard several students comment on his new appearance and the fact that he’d chosen not to take the mana crabs exoskeleton bloodline despite months of talking about it at length with anyone who would listen.
Gorgath now stood much straighter. Not having bone barbs spread across your back really improved your posture. Their absence freed up his movements and made the enchanted staff he carried much easier to wield. He looked a lot less ferocious than he had before, but possessed a magical density that was unmatched with anything I’d felt on the first floor.
I stood in the middle of the tunnel where I’d come out of the Deadlands as the kid peered down at me and sniffed. “You smell of blood and battle, Professor.”
I raised a soundproof barrier across the tunnel behind me, hoping that there were no ancient vampires in the tunnel to town to overhear us.
“My kind attacked Darksmith. I need to evacuate everyone through the Abyss to the nearest dungeon. Speed is the most important factor.”
Gorgath frowned. “How deep will you go?”
“Third floor.”
“Dangerous going that deep.”
“What’s coming after us is worse.”
“Worse than ant territory?”
“Worse than me. You need to get your people to retreat to the sixth floor. What’s coming after us will kill them.”
Gorgath nodded. “Gorgath will call for the retreat while leads his academy through the Abyss.”
Until this moment, I wasn’t entirely sure Gorgath understood that being part of the academy meant protecting it, but then again, nothing close to the strength of a dungeon boss had been seen in the dungeon since he’d joined. So, I’d hoped he did. “This is the way.”
Gorgath hooted his agreement.
***
A few minutes later, Gorgath was standing beside the fortress wall directing human traffic. People were running through the fortress gate or flying over the walls with their mouths open. They had all heard about the monster who attended Darksmith, but no one outside the academy had met him. Both groups of escapees were being directed to where they needed to go, entirely unwilling to the towering gorilla.
It wouldn’t be long until the last of the stranglers arrived. We needed to get moving.
Dalin floated above me in the middle of giving a speech, explaining what was going to happen. He didn’t have all the details, but he understood we were going to make a run through the Abyss. He understood it was the only way we might survive.
Sir Trent finished giving instructions to his men and then blurred to my side. “Did you get directions?”
“Better, Gorgath agreed to live up to the standards of the academy and help guide his fellow students to safety. The downside is the path we need to take involves heading into ant territory.”
“We’ll deal with that when we get there. You probably overhead, but we’re going to be moving in a snake formation. My people will take the lead with Davina’s support. Gregory and Davina’s people are holding the rear with Luke. The faculty are holding the centre with Angelica and her dracolich and the townspeople who can fight. Our pace will be set by the slowest of the flying carpets which I’m told is capable of an advance fly spell speed.”
“With this many people, the rear will be too far from my aura. I want a third of your people back there.”
Sir Trent shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Then I’ll send Davina back there and move her archbishops to the front. The back needs to either be strong enough not to take heavy casualties or capable or recovering from heavy casualties.”
“Move her back then.”
His answer surprised me. I thought he would send his people back. “You’re that concerned about what we will face?”
“I’ve hunted on the first floor of the Abyss enough times to know it’s relatively safe for people like us. I’ve been to the second floor a few dozen times, even fighting a floor boss. A running engagement down there is going to negate a lot of the effects of your aura. We’ll reach monsters before they have time to run. It’s going to be a mess. I’d pull more people to the front if I could.”
I left him standing there, blurring through the lines to Davina. She was casting buffing spells. “Davina, you’re swapping places with Mother and Father to help cover Luke.”
She gave me a relieved smile. “Finally, someone who can see reason.” She blurred through the crowd heading for the back.
I heard Dalin finished his speech and turned to see him lowering himself to the ground.
I was standing in front of him by the time he landed.
Moving this fast and this often was starting to make people comment, but I couldn’t stop. There was too much to do and Dalin and I still hadn’t talked.
And I needed to him to trust me.
He looked me in the eye, his gaze shining white. He took a deep breath, and then he dropped to one knee. “I pledge my life and my soul to the Hero.” His words carried to everyone, amplified by spell he’d used so all of them could hear his speech. “Let his path be my path and his fate be my fate.”
Holy light surrounded him as he once again rose into the air with a flight spell and then those that heard the call copied him.
“I pledge my life and my soul to the Hero. Let his path be my path and his fate be my fate.”
I felt a bond with each one snap into place. Most of them were from the Undead Fight Club, but some of them were people I had never met. I had to save someone’s life either directly or indirectly for them to hear the call and I’d done a lot of both today.
The number who made the oath would have surprised me once upon a time, but Sir Trent had told me the call I gave was the call of a father who wanted to make the world a safe place for his family. It was a call that was easy to get behind because it was not a call that required them to serve or protect anyone. It was a bond that helped you do what you knew was right.
I didn’t want to be responsible for more people, but to get Kathrine through this alive, I needed every advantage. The ones who made the oath all moved to the outside of the group, suddenly having the courage to protect the others.
Dalin looked down at me. “Hero, would you like to say a few words.” There was unmistakable trust in his gaze.
I levitated into the air beside him and looked down. The sea of faces showed fear and terror. They had come face to face with why grown men feared the dark and didn’t know what to do now that they had. They were one loud noise away from screaming. The sight and sound of so much fear in once place was exquisite.
But I couldn’t let that fear grow.
Not if I wanted my daughter to love me.
I reached out to the most fearful in the crowd and mesmerized them one by one. It was just a little push to catch their attention and if they pushed back, I stopped. Next, I pushed a little harder to those that were receptive, telling their bodies to release the happy chemicals they needed to calm down.
A long sigh spread across the crowd as the most afraid grew calmer. Those that weren’t as close to hysteria interpreted this as a sign that they were temporarily safe. It made them relax, which relaxed others, leading to most falling into a heightened alert state.
“Let me make one thing clear,” I said gently. “I don’t expect all of you to make it through this alive. You need to accept that you’ll have to fight for your life if you’re going to have any chance of making it through this night. Accept that the people standing next to you will be torn apart. Accept that you will see them die. Accept that you might die as well. If you can do that for me, you might have a chance of survival.”
I pushed their bodies to remain calm.
“We’re going to escape through the Abyss. It’s a place I’ve been many times and is a place that holds not terror for me. As we travel, we will fight and die. Mark the bodies of those who fall with an orb of light and leave them where they lay. You’re not professional killers or healers and we’re going to a place that scares them, so don't be a hero. The professionals will recover anyone they can, your job is just to remain alive. To do that, don’t save mana. Throw the biggest and most dangerous spells you can. We are going to a place where the ambient mana will allow you weave spells endlessly, so I expect you to do so.”
A little girl standing on one of the flying carpets shouted. “Momma says we can’t escape.”
“There is a hero, a saint, and some of the most dangerous killers two kingdoms have to offer protecting you tonight. You and your momma came from the town, so you have my people to thank for getting you here. Those of you who came from the academy, have me to thank as I’m the one who lowered the barrier. We got you this far, continue to follow us, and keep escaping until this is just a bad memory.”
Gregory ran through the outer gate and raised his hand to signal that he was the last one out. His people rushed to the flying carpets carrying crying children and placed them anywhere there was a space.
I turned and signalled Gorgath.
Gorgath lifted his staff over the wall and shoved it through inner gate that connected the main tunnel to town. A moment later, there was a pull like gravity as he drew on his mana and gathered the ambient mana in the air. It was like he was down, and all mana should fall towards him.
I could see why he was so adamant he needed to raise a mana crab. That bloodline ability was intense. Blue sparks rose from his fur as he wove the mana into the spell we needed.
“Inferno,” he roared casting his largest 6th rank fire spell.
A wave of magical fire exploded from the end of his staff. There was so much mana involved that everyone could feel the spell burning its way through the tunnel with the speed of a bullet. We all felt the second that the spell erupted from the confines of the tunnel and expanded through town above us, because it disappeared from our senses.
I realised I may have underestimated at which point Gorgath would become a level Nuclear Threat. I’d asked him to cast the spell to remove our scent from the tunnel and hide information about us. The only reason I’d told him to give it everything he had was the spell needed to reach the academy.
He might have just destroyed the town and everything in it. Gorgath had been hiding his strength from me. After that display, even I would be extremely cautious about coming down here.
Gorgath retracted his staff and then stepped back, pointing the at the fortress. “Inferno,” he said, casting the same spell with much less mana.
Fire poured from his staff, engulfing the fortress, removing every trace of our presence.
I turned and looked at those waiting below. “Move out.”