Romulus stood between two Dark Templars one line back from the front of his forces’ formation, watching the advance of the Blackstone forces as analytically as he could. The final formation that Zerachiel had decided upon relied on the natural walls provided by the closely-built buildings ringing the area to protect against flanking attacks, with the front line of tower-shields interlocked for bracing.
Each shield had a small, half-moon gap of metal cut out on the right side, just large enough for the Shades to slot their spears in without difficulty. He would’ve given his left arm for a line of solid pikemen instead of medium spears, but that was a consideration for the future.
Whoever had assumed command of the oncoming men-at-arms had realised the pointlessness of sending their heavy cavalry against such a formation, and had instead resorted to trying to find a gap in the shields through endless waves of arrows.
Against most armies, the eventual attrition associated with constantly absorbing arrow impacts would have resulted in inevitable casualties. Against an army of tireless, reanimated warrior spirits the effect was laughable. The formation from front to back resembled some monstrous, gargantuan hedgehog with the amount of arrows lodged within the obsidian tower shields… and not a single Shade had fallen to the volleys.
One of the advantages to his HUD was that it mapped out the distance between him and a target he focused on passively, which allowed him to track the exact metreage of the approaching soldiers as they encroached. The little 50m icon ticking down to 49m had no right being as intimidating as it was. He had expected some sort of overwhelming sense of zen or game-deployed calming method to avoid being subjected to the nerves of being a twenty-three-year-old from the information age on the front lines of a classical battle.
No such system seemingly existed, and it was all he could do to keep his face calm while his brain screamed at him to run like hell and not stop.
“I’ve never been in a real battle before.” The Templar to Romulus’ right said suddenly, her voice forcibly controlled. “I never thought my first time would be against my own bloody people. No offense meant Sire, I just never expected…”
Romulus glanced over at her as the range fell to 42m. “It’s my first battle too.” He said quietly. “And I have to agree, the whole situation is outside the realm of my desires. I had hoped to unite with these soldiers and take the city for its own people, with its own people. Instead we find ourselves here.”
“Forgive me my boldness my King, but how can you be so… calm?”
“A ruler can never show their weakness, Templar. Ours is to lead by example.”
She tilted her head at his words, and he smiled at her conspiratorially in return.
“That does not mean I don’t want to run like the wind. It simply means that our duty here, and what we’re trying to achieve, is more compelling to me than my desire to flee, hollering at the top of my lungs about the insanity of war until the city is a speck on the horizon.”
Mortarius snorted derisively at his side, but the Templar seemed to take courage from his honesty. Her eyes brightened beneath her conical helm, and she grinned at him. “Thank you, Majesty. That was….” She shook her head and turned back to the encroaching enemy. “Thank you.”
Romulus felt his own spirits buoyed by the exchange, and his right hand reached across his body to draw Lightsbane from its sheath. The blackened steel of the Revenant Runeblade seemed to darken the area around them further when it came free, and yet it appeared to have no negative impact on the two Templars with him. If anything, when their eyes darted to the weapon to consider it, they stood straighter and with more conviction.
In his hand, Lightsbane pulsed a mix of excitement and encouragement.
Romulus took strength from the sword’s clear lack of doubt, and the while his desire to run had hardly evaporated it had become markedly easier — after voicing his feelings and embracing Lightsbane — to ignore it. A space of about two metres separated him from the front line of the formation and as the blackstone forces crossed the 15m mark of the advance, he heard and saw the Shades slam their shields down to brace against the cobbles, and bend into them as they prepared for the charge.
The part that Romulus, the Templars, and the second line of Shades would play immediately became apparent as he joined the others in stepping closer and pressing his free hand against the back of the Shade before him. Even with the shields obfuscating most of his vision, he could hear the increase in pace as the blackstone soldiers — led by a line of heavily armoured ‘shield-breaker’ knights — advanced to a jog, and then to a sprint as they put on a burst of speed to close with the front ranks of the Shades. The steel of sabatons thundered against the stone under their feet, like the thud of a drumbeat.
Thud.
His heart beat in his chest.
Thud.
He drew in steady breaths as Mortarius had advised.
Thud.
He heard growls of anticipation across the lines as others prepared themselves.
THUD.
Lightsbane all but quivered in his hand in near-overwhelming excitement.
Zerachiel’s voice roared out over the noise. “BRACE!”
BOOM.
The impact against the Shades nearly threw Romulus backwards, if not for the bracing positioning of his legs. Automatically, his shoulder pressed against the Shade before him to hold the immortal soldier in position as the shield-breakers slammed into the front line, and the sounds of roaring voices rose to an instant cacophony. From calm to insanity, the storm of war washed over both sides and the Shades bellowed their spectral defiance in the same vein as the blackstone forces howled their aggression.
Romulus felt his pulse racing in response to the atmosphere, and something awakening inside of him as he smelled the coppery tang of blood in the air. His throat burned subtly, and he felt suddenly like a man in need of water after a long day under the summer sun. His grip on Lightsbane tightened as he prepared for the next phase, and he was barely aware of his fangs subtly elongating as he grit his teeth.
The Shades of the front line adjusted their footing as the line stabilised, holding themselves coiled and ready for what was to come. Romulus knew his part well, and stepped forward just behind the Shade before him, standing on the man’s flank. Seconds passed as the shield-breakers sought to smash apart the stubborn formation, and then Zerachiel’s thunderous voice once more penetrated the madness of the virgin conflict.
“PUSH!”
As one the Shades of the shieldwall threw themselves forward with a collective roar of determination, shoving back the shield-breakers in a long line of power before raising the shields upward and stabbing out with their spears. Romulus and the others of the second line took that moment, stepping forward and sighting their targets as the Shades injured or killed others. Romulus himself picked a staggering Knight, the man’s own height a head shorter than his own. With the haze of war overriding his balking inner self, he hefted Lightsbane and rammed it into the other man’s chest.
The Runeblade punched through the Knight’s steel like it were paper, and Romulus felt the sword drive in deep and out the other side. Realising his weapon was now stuck inside an enemy, Romulus instinctively pulled on the sword. His inexperience however meant that he also pulled the blade upward as well as back, and while a normal weapon might have been wedged or stuck at such an action, Lightsbane was no normal blade.
Romulus staggered as a result when Lightsbane arced upward and bisected the knight from sternum to skull, spraying blood and viscera in the act and causing more than one nearby combatant to momentarily freeze in stunned horror at the sight. The moment the hot fluid of the now-dead warrior’s body hit Romulus’ face, he felt something pulse inside of him. It rang him like a gong. He felt as if his entire body were vibrating with energy, and before he knew what was happening he threw himself into the melee.
Shouts for him to fall back fell on deaf ears as Romulus, face contorted into a rictus snarl of bloodlust, threw himself upon a man in boiled leather with linked discs of steel on his hauberk. The smaller soldier backpedaled as he approached, but it meant nothing. Aided by the speed and power of Lilith’s gift, he was upon the soldier in moments and Lightsbane seemed to hum with delight as it cut through the air to open the man from shoulder to hip. Instead of stepping back, Romulus seized the screaming man by the hauberk and pulled him forward.
The battle raged around him relentlessly, and in response to his reckless charge the Shades had ended up throwing themselves forward. What had been intended as an ordered, whittling phalanx had devolved into a vicious skirmish between both sides. Romulus barely noticed, however. Instead his eyes were fixed upon the throbbing vein in the man’s neck, which seemed to sing out to him with every pulse of the dying soldier’s heart. He didn’t even notice the fist weakly battering at him, the sword it once held long-since dropped from weakening fingers.
Something bestial and alien took a hold of him, something both terrible and glorious, and Romulus couldn’t find it in himself to care. He embraced it. He embraced the manner with which it washed away his subconscious horror and revulsion at what he’d done. He embraced the way it soothed the mortal desire to throw up at the smells of exposed organs, fear-loosened bladders and death-loosened bowels. His heartbeat synchronised almost automatically with that of the dying man. His senses sharpened in. His focus narrowed, all else rendered moot as his entire world reduced to himself, and the throbbing artery before him. Nothing else mattered. He embraced the Wrath within him, and his elongated fangs stabbed messily into the screaming soldier’s neck.
The moment the mortal man’s blood hit his palate, Romulus felt himself shiver in ecstasy. A primal and animalistic growl of satisfaction left him, and the nascent Avatar felt his thirst abate as he greedily supped from the punctured flesh of his foe. Power and vitality filled him like an elixir, spreading through his body like tangible energy as he felt the life drain from the morsel in his grip. The moment the man’s heart stopped beating, Romulus instinctively dropped him to the cobbles.
Blood coated his mouth and chin, coated his neck, coated his dark plate.
He couldn’t find it in himself to care.
Lightsbane sung its approval in his hand, and Romulus narrowed his eyes upon the battlefield. His own soldiers fought around him, and he felt himself wanting. He felt himself needing. The song of unbridled bloodlust within him demanded he take action, and he had neither the desire nor the capability to stand against its siren calling. He was vaguely aware of Lightsbane feeling stronger in his hand, of his armour feeling just slightly more flexible and durable in equal measure. How he knew these things mattered not. What mattered was the thirst.
Abandon reason. The bloodlust filling him seemed to whisper. Know only Wrath.
Romulus listened.
All thoughts of retreat or caution fled from his mind, and a shade of crimson overlaid his vision. A System alert directed his attention, if only for a moment, to what appeared to be a jagged rune glowing red next to his health bar. For some reason, rage seemed to seep from that icon. He had just enough lucidity to read its details on a cursory whim.
STATUS EFFECT
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/891434726437564416/916822150638366720/pngaaa.com-1546058.png] You have been Anointed by the Primal Sin Wrath.
What little capacity he had for reason faded rapidly as the words, especially the burning red letters of the Sin itself; seared themselves into his mind. Romulus fell into his primordial abandon, and his lips spread in a savage snarl as he bellowed his rage against those before him. With all hesitation abandoned in the face of an enemy he could sink his fangs into, Romulus charged.
The first foe he faced was adorned in steel, and wielded a massive claymore with both hands. Lightsbane arced up as he closed with the shorter knight, and where the runeblade struck silvery steel the colossal weapon stopped dead. Romulus felt his strength straining against the blow, and something deep within told him that he should not have been able to stop the strike so easily.
Not that it mattered.
A growl of primal fury pulled itself from his throat and he pressed the attack immediately, stepping into the knight’s guard and slamming his head recklessly against the conical helm the blackstone warrior wore. Heedless of the health that vanished from his own bar at the damage incurred, Romulus pressed against the claymore with Lightsbane and slammed his forehead into his foe’s helmet once more, leaving a small red stain and staggering the knight in the same breath.
A trickle of blood trailed down into his right eye, but Romulus blinked through it without concern. On instinct he pulled his blade away from the momentarily disoriented enemy combatant and flicked his left hand up to take the rivulets of vitae on his fingers, tapping into his Sanguimancy skill and morphing the globules of his own life essence into a pair of thin, long needles. Before the knight could properly react, Romulus speared these through the gap of his foe’s helmet and into his eyes.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A scream of agony erupted from under the helmet, and Romulus pressed his advantage with bloodthirsty ferocity. He dropped under a reckless swing of the claymore and snapped up Lightsbane as he rose in the aftermath, severing the knight’s wrists at the gauntlets and sending viscera, hands, and blade flying away. The maimed warrior stepped back in pained shock, and Romulus took the chance to grab his opponent’s helmet, and with a surge of blood-frenzied strength tore it from the other man’s head.
Flesh and hair came away with the hastily removed piece of armour, tearing strips from the warrior’s face and part of his ear to boot. The young man screamed like he’d been jabbed with a hot poker, but Romulus felt nothing for his wails. No pity. No remorse. Not even a shred of regret.
His right hand planted Lightsbane into the man’s foot, and his left hand gripped his remaining full ear to pull him forward. Another scream tore from the knight’s throat, and blood ran from Romulus’ gripping fist. Uncaring of the young warrior’s pain, the Avatar of Darkness swooped down and tore into the human’s throat with an addict’s zeal, shuddering in pleasure at the warm surge of blood flooding his gullet a moment later.
The screaming knight went rigid at the bite, and his body seemed to weaken immediately. His throat-rending cries turned to feeble whining, and some buried part of Romulus’ awareness released him just before he died. For a moment, the blinded man seemed to think he’d been spared.
Then Lightsbane was rammed into his chest, his soul was greedily consumed, and he knew only darkness.
Even before the final death rattle left the corpse-husk’s lips Romulus was already moving. The battle had become a buffet, and he was the exacting connoisseur. Amplified savagery and bestial rage drove him onward, and a red haze of wrath covered everything in his vision. Had he the awareness to notice, he’d have seen Mortarius watching him quietly, a look of mild concern on his proud features.
From the knight to a hauberk-adorned footman, and then onward to a city guardswoman. Romulus tore from target to target, heedless of gender, armament, or equipment. A blade through the ribs, a hammerblow to the chest, even a spear to the thigh. His wounds built as fast as they were regenerated by the life essence he stole from each subsequent foe.
A fist the size of his head tore the flesh from his cheek, a pair of axes bit into his breastplate, and a gargantuan foot crushed three of his toes… only for each wound, and the damage to his runeplate to be mended by the colossal amount of vitality and essence drained from the towering warrior’s body barely two minutes later.
Onward and undeterred he cut, stabbed, and tore; ripping and tearing through the mass of mortal enemies like a demon from Earth myth given form. No gentle beast nor self-loathing immortal; a Vampire Prince from the darkest legends of both worlds, given purpose and power by the Goddess he had freed from her unjust imprisonment. He was the icon of judgement for a deity scorned, and brought with him the fury and rage of his eternal mistress.
Dark Templars fought fiercely to stay with him as he cut deeper and deeper into the ranks of the men-at-arms, following the carnage he left in his wake with a mixture of grim comprehension and growing fervour. He had made no promises to them of mercy or gentle dealings. He had promised them no mercy to the enemies of their new goddess, and their new King had proven himself as good as his word. Where others saw a monster out of nightmare, they saw the incarnation of divine judgement.
They saw the Avatar of Darkness, and the terrible price of opposing his mission.
It wasn’t until Romulus cut his way through yet another knight eight ranks deep within the blackstone forces that he at last was given pause. Not by fear or reason, or dawning realisation at the gruesome trail of soulless corpses he’d left in his blood splattered wake. Instead it was the sight of a golden sunburst, burning in his gaze like a beacon of focus amid a sea of irrelevancies that was the cause of his suddenly arrested motion.
The cessation of his advance also served to allow Victor and four of his Templars to catch up to him, each one panting and covered in blood. Most of it was from their foes. Most of it, but not all.
“My King?” Victor asked between panting for breath, his blade planted against the blood-slicked cobbles beside the vivisected corpse of Romulus’ latest opponent, her sightless eyes staring hollowly at the Templar’s blackened-steel boot. “Why have you…?”
The Dark Templar trailed off when his eyes found Heinrich and Frederic beside him, and a growl of anger left his lips.
From within the depths of his rage, Romulus managed to find the ability to reply to the Templar for the first time in what seemed like minutes and hours equally. “The Solarian is mine.” He had no idea how long he’d been fighting, but the furnace of hatred inside of him cared little for something so irrelevant as time. All that mattered in that moment was the taste of hot blood on his tongue, and the satisfaction of the hunt before him. “You may have the accomplice.”
“It will be my sincere pleasure, Your Majesty.” Victor replied fiercely as he turned to his Templars. “Ensure nobody interferes! Justice will be done, for all those that have died for their duplicity, and for an end to Solarian lies!”
The Dark Templars snarled their approval, but Romulus barely heard them. His world had once more compressed inward, narrowed to a single focus: Heinrich Ziegler.
He started forward with purpose, Lightsbane gripped in his right hand and dark mana searing and freezing its way through his veins. He wrestled it to his will every second of his existence. He forced it to adhere to him, lest it run wild and rampant and obliterate him on the spot. There could be no weakness, no moment of hesitation when wielding the essence of the Dark: Only strength. Only power. Only domination.
It was both part of him and separate. Both his own blood and its own power. Shattering rivers of ice, collapsing mountains of fire, and pain and pleasure equal to nothing he’d ever known made up the corrupting and addictive nature of that which was the essence of the Dark. It was more wonderful, more terrible, and more potent than any drug or compound ever imagined by humanity.
It was his salvation and his damnation in this new and dangerous world.
It was part of him forever, melded and fused with his own lifeblood in Eternus.
“HEINRICH!” Romulus bellowed as he approached, lifting Lightsbane in preparation.
Heinrich’s reaction was far more pleasurable than anything that had come before.
࿇ ࿇ ࿇ ࿇ ࿇
Heinrich Ziegler was a man of faith. He was a man of principle, who had risen to his position within the Order of the Gilded Chalice with dedication, piety, and immense amounts of hard work. He had learned the deepest secrets of the Solarian Faith, and he had found nothing to sway his fervour in the God of Light. If anything he had only reacted with awe at the sheer brilliance of the deity’s deft guidance of mortals. Where others might have seen manipulation or arrogance, Heinrich saw and understood necessity. Salvation was not a business of gentle touches and patient nudging.
To save the many, sometimes the few had to be destroyed.
The greater good had been his guiding light for the years of service he’d given the Church, and he had regretted it not once. He had burned cultists, heretics, and unbelievers with equal impunity; purifying them in Solarius’ light. He had committed over a dozen wytches and infidels to the God of Light’s tender mercies, and been party to more than a dozen forays into the territories controlled by the lesser four deities. The following of those four was tolerated by his God, but only insofar as they understood Solarius to be the better of them all.
Those that preached against such inviolable truth could not be tolerated. Heinrich understood that. Such instances of misguided rebellion against the One True Faith were, of course, why Crusades were needed.
He understood that as easily and clearly as he’d understood that Knight-General Liam Carstaire had become an enemy of all that was good and holy the moment he’d even entertained the notion of kneeling to a servant of Evil. No matter what his accolades and irrelevant of his seemingly unimpugnable honour, the Knight-General had been mere moments from bringing damnation to all of Blackstone.
The fact that he was also ensuring a far weaker resistance to the faithful, Solarius-endorsed King’s inevitable reclamation of Blackstone, and disposal of its stubborn and increasingly separatist colonial leaders had merely been a bonus.
Thus it was that Heinrich pulled aside the young Sir Frederic, and in the act showed him as well the value of the greater good and all that it entailed. Despite his misgivings and nerves, young Sir Frederic had agreed, and with a deft hand had executed the heretical Harrison for his support of Sir Liam’s mad ideas of capitulation to a dangerous heretic. All had gone precisely as planned, and the dark forces arrayed against Solarius’ faithful were properly engaged in righteous conflict.
Which left the question, of course, of why.
Why despite all his faith, confidence, and iron resolve he was frozen.
Why despite all his careful planning and unshakable belief he was utterly immobile.
Why he felt nothing so much as bone-deep, blood-curdling, heart-stopping terror at the sight that held his gaze.
The heretics’ leader stood afield of him, attired in that forbidding plate and wielding a blade that seemed to project a darkness colder and blacker than the darkest of nights. His body was coated in viscera, wearing crimson fluid upon it like a cloak of hellish glory. The worked skulls on his knees and atop his forearms were disturbingly absent any stains, and shone silver in the unnatural light that illuminated the city.
His mouth, his chin, his neck… The sheer amount of blood staining the silver-haired man’s features was stomach-churning, and his eyes. Heinrich swallowed and felt himself shiver as he looked into the man’s eyes. A red beyond any shade he could describe that seemed to shine with dark purpose, framed by the thorns of moonlight silver that threaded throughout the scarlet hue of his irises.
An almost imperceptible aura of the same red hung around the towering, silver-haired warrior’s person. Heinrich doubted anyone but him could see it. It would take someone truly in touch with the divine to see such a thing, and someone powerful to divine its purpose. He only knew of one such thing that matched what he saw. One such aural effect that even had a chance of measuring up to the sheer, unbridled hatred that seemed to dwell in that cloak of power.
Wrath. The Primal Sin of War, Brutality, and Conquest.
“It’s not possible.” He muttered without realising as he stepped backward, and felt his control over his bladder turn tenuous.
Heinrich tried to summon the power of the Light, to infuse himself with Solarius’ radiance. He failed. Fear overrode all sense of self or faith. Terror overwhelmed all the discipline he’d accrued during his life of service to the Church and Order of the Gilded Chalice. He felt his fingers spasm outside of his control and he gripped his hands together, his heart thundering in his chest.
A smile on the monster’s face. Slow and deliberate, with as much warmth as a winter blizzard. Savage. Merciless.
Predatory.
“Stay back!” Heinrich shouted as he stumbled backward.
No reply came from the demon-anointed murderer that approached him, his terrible blade held almost casually in the blood-soaked grip of his right gauntlet.
“I—I am a faithful servant of Solarius! You cannot do this! I am p—protected!”
Still he came onward amid drops of crimson fluid, staining the cobbles red as his tongue slowly and deliberately licked at the coppery liquid staining his too-perfect lips, and flashed his fangs in the act.
A Vampire! Of course!
Desperately Heinrich lifted his right hand, and with all the resolve he could muster surrendered to the tidal current of Light Mana. He opened himself to it, and gave himself to the flow while welcoming that ocean of calm power to fill him like a willing cup. Warmth and peace radiated within him, bringing with it the rejuvenating caress of the Sun. It was uplifting. It was benevolence given form. How could anyone not see the glory of such pure, wonderful power?
Heinrich focused as that energy surged within him, and with the courage it offered he guided it — one could no more command nor dominate the Light than stop the Sun from rising — gently to the centre of his palm. There it focused, and there with learned skill he unleashed a beam of Solarian Light at the advancing creature. He knew the legends for the truth they were! Sunlight was the bane of the Night’s children, and Vampires were the greatest and similarly most vulnerable of the Dark Lady’s fell creations.
He felt a surge of hope as the beam of power bathed the monster, and the radiance of it banished him from view. He’d done it! He’d ended him! The threat was gone, and Blackstone could be saved and delivered to the King’s Faithful hands. All that was left was to destroy the rest of the abominations plaguing the land, and all would be—
Heinrich’s thoughts came to a screeching, terrible halt when he realised that a dark silhouette remained in the aftermath of the Solarian beam. A dark silhouette that, with a slice of a terrible blade, banished the remnants of the magical afterglow. It was impossible. It was impossible. He had used Solarian Light against the creature! No matter how powerful, no Vampire should have been able to survive a direct blast. Even with mitigations, for there to be no damage at all was… It was…
The Monk didn’t even notice his tenuous control over his bladder slip away, or fully notice the ebbing of the Light mana in his veins. He only had eyes and focus for the figure that finally came to a halt before him. Frederic’s desperate shouts fell on ears that no longer had the capacity to process the words. His pleas for Heinrich to do something, anything, no longer held sway on a man who finally understood a basic truth.
All the Faith in the world meant nothing, when confronted with Death itself.
That was what he had opposed. That was what he had railed against.
Death made manifest, come to claim Blackstone for its own.
The Monk’s body relaxed as the last of his resistance and the last eddies of strength abandoned him. He stared up into those merciless scarlet eyes, so filled with Wrath’s own fire that they seemed like red-silver suns, and he knew.
“I am ready to die.” He said simply.
“I know.” Death’s Avatar answered coldly. “But that, in this instance, would be a mercy.”
Heinrich felt fresh terror lance through him as the dark point of the Revenant-King’s Runeblade was pointed at his heart.
“And I am out of mercy today.”
The sword rammed itself home.
Heinrich felt corrosive and destructive energy fill his body to bursting.
Eyes that had been half-lidded in despair widened in realisation.
Cruel feminine laughter filled the monk’s ears.
His soul screamed into the abyss, and Heinrich Ziegler knew no more.
࿇ ࿇ ࿇ ࿇ ࿇
Far behind the battle’s front lines, nestled at the rear of the Revenant-King’s immortal army and guarded by a specially detached pair of Dark Templars and maniple of ten Shades; an armoured figure stirred upon the cobblestones. Awareness returned slowly as stiff fingers flexed with newfound strength, and life — fueled by a beautiful and terrible power — returned to a slain warrior.
Newly blackened steel creaked as silvery chainmail jingled with motion, and two muscular arms elevated a willing body to its knees. A grunt of effort was followed by a steady inhale of air, and a lifting of once-handsome, now breathtaking mature features. Streaks the colour of liquid silver where once they had been faded grey threaded through martially cropped, rejuvenated hair.
A smoothness of motion that defied human capability saw a towering frame rise to stand of a height with the watching spectre that was Zerachiel, and a wry smile form on lips that had only minutes earlier been twisted in shock and the realisation of death, albeit with a heavy hand of confusion. The wound that had caused such a fate was sealed by then, and the plate covering the once-shorn metal instead the proud bearer of an argent skull.
Red pupils ever-so-faintly woven with silver streaks fixed upon the flaming green eyes of the Shades’ General, and an empowered body settled itself into a remembered position of military ease.
“It seems you made your decision.” The massive Shade said calmly.
“So I did.” A once-mortal voice answered, its bass tones enhanced to hold a supernatural element of elegance, of finery to every syllable and each intonation. “Would that I had known such would be made available to me at the time of my presumed death.”
“Destiny works as it wills, my lord. We are but riders upon one of its countless ships, sailing the waves of Fate.”
A laugh was the reply, both deep and genuine. There was no hate to be found, only comprehension of necessity. They had all been duped, after all. “How goes the battle?”
“Poorly. There will not be enough left of either side for the Revenant-King’s objectives if it is not ended decisively, and soon.”
A deep intake of air came before the response, which was delivered with a wry smile. “Well then. I suppose it’s time to show my new King the worth of his investment.”
“Yes, Sir Carstaire.” Zerachiel said to the newest and second member of Romulus’ Midnight Court. “That would be most appreciated.”
The newly raised Death Knight grinned in response.
“Let’s get to work, then.”