Victor stood in his chambers before a huge table with a detailed map of the human lands spread on top of it. This room was usually a place hosting cozy strategy meetings with his subordinates, but this time the feeling in the room was all but cozy with the one standing in front of him being Count Waldhaiss with his fiery red hair flowing down on the part of the map where oceans were marked. Based on Victor's sour expression it was apparent that this was more of an unplanned visit than a scheduled strategy meeting and it was not going well.

  Their argument was starting to get more and more heated, as Victor was trying to mitigate the damage that would come after he had fulfilled the Count's unreasonable demands.

"It is suicide, that region overflows with forces affiliated with angels. The loses will inevitably be disastrous, angels will hunt them down like rabid dogs for daring to venture so close to their main temple!" Victor spread his hands wide in a gesture of indignation. "At least let me share the burden with others, Baron Hallroyce has much more troops than me and has one of the safest regions."

"You say that sending your subordinates near the north coast is too dangerous, but the task will be done by them whether you like it or not." The Count tapped on the northernmost place on the map.

  Victor just stared at the Count angrily without any words, he knew that he should not oppose Count Waldhaiss openly, but it was better to challenge him now than after his lesser vampires would have been massacred by angels with only a few of the lucky ones left.

"I will not accept this. You are being unreasonable." Victor placed his both hands on the table and stared unblinkingly at the Count. He knew well that he had just crossed the line, but the moment would come sooner or later as the two of them were like a pair of lions locked together in a small cage of the Waldorf Castle.

"Yes, I think that this is as far as we go." The Count sighed and nodded, placing his hand on a red sleek handle of a weapon hanging at his side.

"You were always too nostalgic and inflexible my old friend. . . ." The Count positioned himself in a way as if he was about to duel Victor with his sword, sending a clear nonverbal message. " . . . and ambitious. If you think that I do not know about your little search, you are mistaken."

Victor's face hardened even more, his hostility no longer concealed.

"No, just tired to serve you all the time. You think that I have not noticed that you have used a part of the Silverback Brigade back then to purge those who openly opposed you or were just strong enough to threaten your position? They have turned Lilian's death into a spectacle, but those with good eyes saw the accidental collateral damage, It was almost funny how one of badgers' elites went after Henry, knowing exactly where he was, but everything was covered up by the final spectacular execution of Lilian." Victor stared directly into Count's eyes, he had expected this moment to come and was mentally prepared.

"You and your Waldorf puppet were working in tandem for too long. Your tricks are hidden no longer and after me, more will come to replace you with a true vampire count that does not bow to the human livestock, making deals with them like they are best buddies." Victor spread his legs wider, placing his hand on his weapon as well.

"I see, you are the same as Lilian, too inflexible and proud to adapt." The Count shook his head, his voice full of disappointment.

"I never understood how someone so weak could have ruled for so long. You are one lucky bastard." At this point, Victor looked around to map their future battlefield. He knew that this would not end with his victory and his eyes were searching for the best way to escape and fight another day. He did not have to search for long, as he had prepared long ago for this moment.

"You call luck what you cannot understand Victor. In the end, the ones to be feared rarely make a move in full force unless you cross their bottom line. What you call weakness, I call balance and it is the key to stability." Red hair of the Count streamed down his shoulders, no longer touching the map as his posture straightened up and his eyes burned into Victor.

"You have no pride!" Victor slowly drew his sword, its silver blade reflecting the moonlight coming into the room through a sleek window.

"And you have no future!" The Count angrily unsheathed a blood red rapier that hung at his side with a single violent movement.

"Still, It would be a waste to just erase you. I have to admit that you had some use as a vampire." The Count stepped forth with incredible speed, his body leaving lingering afterimages behind that shone with the color of blood and stabbed Victor through his heart before he had any chance to defend himself. He tried to move, as this kind of wound should not be fatal for a vampire of his level, but found out that he could not. He could only watch his blood dripping at the world map that was still spread on the table under the red, lethal weapon. He realized that the rapier was no ordinary equipment.

"So that is why you have been so calm, you seem to have gained a favor with Morgul. To think that the famed Fang of The Usurper will be used on me this night. One day, I will return to repay you with interest." Victor's eyes widened when he saw the Count's weapon up close, he could tell that there was an illusion spell cast on the weapon to make it look ordinary. He knew what it meant.

"I doubt you will, let the rest of your years be filled with service to out common cause." He stabbed the rapier deeper though Victor's heart, Victor's body unable to move and his mind paralyzed, he had been defeated the moment the rapier pierced through his body.

* * * *

  Nitarja walked into Victor's chambers without even knocking due to their familiarity with each other and remained standing in the doorway dumbfounded when she saw the scene in front of her.

  Nitarja watched in shock the argument of the vampires and nearly screamed when a thin blade pierced through Victor's heart, she knew very well that his death would mean her own. Strangely, instead of burning to ashes, or shriveling like a corpse under the effect of dark arts, Victor just gave the Count Waldhaiss a long look before he disappeared.

The Count turned to face her and wiped off the blood on his weapon with the end of a curtain as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

"I know what you think. Victor will not die, he loves his unliving existence too much and if I wished for his death, I would not have dealt with him in such a roundabout manner." The Count faced her, his red eyes staring at her, making her feel uneasy.

"However, I do not intend to be sheltering those who have remained for free. Gathering of the Gifted is crucial, Victor's subordinates will be teleported to regions close to Tyr'Adriael to steal directly from under the nose of our enemy. That way, the incompetent ones will be culled without any effort on my part." He smiled at her with insincere smile.

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  She could only nod and leave the room, the sudden change of liege not filling her with confidence. She preferred an evil she already knew, but she was not the one choosing her cards to play.

* * * *

"Well, we will see how many will remain." The Count had intentionally not told any of Victor's subordinates that their master-slave bond had been shattered the moment the Fang of The Usurper pierced Victor's heart, he would announce to them their freedom only after they had delivered the Gifted. He had no time to train the new vassals that would replace Victor and even further bolster their ranks.

  There was always a wave of insubordination when lesser vampires realized the blood bond was lifted, turning them into full vampires. He had no time to deal with troublemakers. It would be for the best to let them think for a time that they were still bound to Victor, it should prevent them from doing anything funny before all the mess with the Gifted was over.

  He had originally wanted to postpone the final solution of the problem called Victor, but he had been sniffing around too much and the last thing he needed was a runaway rebellious vampire count in the middle of him directing the chase of heroes, how some of the Gifted liked to call themselves.

"To think he had even tried to turn a badger into a Silverback." The Count shook his head, he would have never guessed that the timid Victor from centuries ago turned into such an ambitious beast. "A futile attempt, in the end the mutation experiment failed and he had to put down the deranged beast with his own hand."

  He knew it well, because he had been spying on Victor for some time and had seen through the eyes of his spy the body of the badger that had been buried deep in the woods to cover up Victor's failure. He clearly remembered her white hair turning black towards the back of her head, her head that stood next to the grave before one of Victor's lesser vampires threw it in.

it was a waste.

"Victor, you have learned to be ambitious, but only death comes when ambition arrives without the smarts to back it up." His expression soured when he saw the blood stains on his world map, good hand drawn maps were unreasonably expensive. The Count clicked his tongue and left Victor's chambers with the stained map in his hand.

* * * *

  She remembered the silvery substance entering her veins, it was sparkling with its bright color. She wanted to resist when she felt her body screaming with pain as soon as the first droplets entered her system, but for a lesser vampire an order from their master was absolute. She looked at Victor before the silvery liquid reached her brain and that was her last clear memory.

  Then there was only pain, lights and confusion mixed with voices that had strangely modulated pitch that changed constantly. She knew the voices, but she was unable to think clearly anymore. Every thought fleeting like a snowflake in summer's heat.

  When the pain suddenly ended and she expected something better to come, something awesome, something that she surely deserved after all the pain and slavery in the service of the bloodsucking beast with a human face, there was only a dark forest.

  She looked at her hands that were white and transparent. She felt incredibly light, but when she tried to jump, she found out that she could not, somehow sticking near the ground with her white feet barely touching the grass underneath her. She wandered only for a moment, but before she even had a chance to begin to panic because of her strange state, she felt a peculiar pull that called her to a place nearby. It was irresistible and so she ran, only to realize that it was more of a slow flight.

That mattered not, only the pull that drew her irresistibly to one single place was important. She floated above it and instinctively dived into the ground.

Then, she could feel again and to her horror the pain returned!

She wanted to die, to end the agony, but knew that it did not help much the last time.

How could she even revive? Vampires were supposed to be dead!

No, she could not think, the pain was overwhelming, crippling. There was living fire circulating through her veins, the silvery substance was still there.

She screamed inside as her mouth was blocked, full of dirt.

* * * *

"It will not despawn? That is fucked up!"

"Where is the loot?"

"Is this some sort of a virtual reality?"

"Screw reality, give me loot!"

"Fuck loot, where is my penis? I want my penis back!" A skeleton with a deformed jaw pointed down below its rib cage.

"Hey guys, look!" Jerry had been staring at the carcass of a wolf in front of him, but the scene nearby forced him to ignore his skeleton mates and focus on a hand.

  A hand suddenly emerged from under the ground and soon a whole body followed. He could not decide if it was an animal or a woman when she finally emerged from her grave and looked in their direction, he saw a black horizontal line on her neck. She did not look alive at all and was moving in their direction.

"What is that?! It looks dead, run!" One of his mates seemed to forget that he was a skeleton himself and started running away. The fact that the overly hairy person began to scream as soon as she spat the dirt out of her mouth did not help much to reassure them of her peaceful intentions.

However, she did not seem to care for them much, her disinterest calming them down.

  The strange person stopped a few meters away from the carcass and sliced her carotid arteries with her claws, her blood squirting out in a grizzly fountain. Her arteries began to heal, but she kept slashing them open while she jumped at the corpse, biting it with her fangs.

"My grandma's ass! What is this?!" All of them jumped back, vary of the rabid animal-like humanoid with the hobby of severe self mutilation. Although dangerous, it was obvious that she was exhausted and had barely enough strength to hold herself latched onto the wolf's carcass.

Her weakness seemed to embolden some of them tremendously.

"But this is not a bad situation." The skeleton with the deformed jaw stared at the back of the newcomer. No, the skeleton was definitely not staring at her back, but lower. "God dammit, where is my penis?! I will need it soon!"

The skeleton began inspecting one of its femurs, clearly trying to find some sort of a substitute, but its femur held firm in its proper place.

"Rogir, you should not speak the name of god and penis in the same sentence." A skeleton without teeth rebuked his fellow undead.

"Why? What if he decides to help? And you just did by the way." Rogir now seemed to be measuring the diameter of his skull.

"Rogir, just don't. You should pull yourself together, I keep telling ya that this ain't some fucking game! This shit's for real!" A skeleton that had no thumbs yelled.

* * * *

"This shit's for real!" Ratel heard a voice, she was finally able to perceive something other than the torturous sensation of fine grains of silver circulating through her body. She had no idea about how long she had been out, but due to severe hallucinations that began some time after Victor had injected her with the mutagen, she was unable to tell apart reality from the nightmares. She had no idea what she did or how long it took, but it surely felt like an eternity.

"Victor, I will kill you!" She grumbled through her teeth, her mouth still sucking blood of the dead wolf. The substance was still not entirely out of her system and she would probably need a few more feedings to get it out completely.

  However, the lingering pain was incomparable to the original. Only a reminder of what she had to do, skin Victor alive. Despite her anger, she knew that her vengeance had to wait as long as he could stop her with a single word. She had to find something to protect herself against his control first, there had to be a way and she was eager to find it, as he probably thought that she was dead.

"Hey, Eight Fingers, where are we?" She shouted at a skeleton nearby, everyone could tell that they were just trash. She would have been long dead if they were a real threat.

"There is a castle nearby and this bad boy young lady ain't . . " The skeleton began while pointing its non-existing thumb at itself, but had been cut off by Ratel.

"I do not give a fuck who you are! That has to be the Waldorf Castle, just wait for me Victor, my love!" She sneered ironically and stood up, furious because of all the pain she had to suffer, a rivulet of blood trickling down her chin.

  She stopped for a second and looked at the skeletons around her. Having her ghostly state still in her fresh memory, she could not but chuckle when an idea came to her.

"Eight Fingers, Teethless, SkeweMug, Flawless, don't you want better bodies? Vampire bodies?" She asked them, naming them based on the body parts they lacked. She had noticed that something had changed, all of the graves she had passed while being in her ghost form had been empty and she remembered seeing others like her when she had been in her translucent self.

"Sure thing!"

"Of course!"

"Hell yeah!" One particular skeleton shouted with enthusiasm and kept switching its focus between Ratel and its lacking body while stepping closer to her aggressively.

She paid him no heed.

He was cute.