“Listen here, boy. Them folks hollerin’ for war against the bloodsuckers ain’t never faced one in a real fight. ‘Cause those who did, well, they ain’t around to tell the tale. I’m lucky that Vamp I crossed wasn’t after my hide, else I’d have lost more than just my legs and arm. And them fuzzies? Hoo boy, they ain’t no easier. Picture, boy, a thousand-pound rabid beast, all claws, fangs, and fur, chargin’ at ya with murder in its beady eyes. It don’t die, no matter what you throw at it. You can cut it, stab it, blow it to bits, it’ll keep puttin’ itself back together and comin’ at ya ’til it’s gnawing on your bones. So sit your ass down, finish your drink, and go back to your mama.”
–a retired veteran of the Two Dragons Army to the young patriarch of Noble House Bumboodle, 1st century AK.
-
Remembrance 2, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport.
An emaciated girl stared with vacant eyes at the ashen ruins of her home.
The log cabin had burnt almost to the ground. From below the blackened timber heap, a reed-thin arm was reaching out, bony fingers with carbonised skin buried in the sooty earth. Its owner had tried to drag herself out of the blaze until the very end.
Soot, burns and splinters marred the girl’s forearms. Dried blood and dirt crusted her chipped fingernails. Tears long dried had drawn black trails on her dirtied face. With mechanical movements, lacking any strength or awareness, she pulled at the heavy scorched wood and dug the hard ground with bare hands, trying to free the corpses from their cooling pyres.
Behind her, black pillars of smoke rose lazily from the husk of a once peaceful village.
A shadow fell upon her. The girl’s empty brown eyes gazed up listlessly at the dark titan who knelt by her side. Others lurked behind the mountainous, tenebrous man, but the girl saw only his black eyes, wet with the tears she had exhausted. “They will pay for this,” the man spoke with the certainty of Fate in motion. His large, solid arm scooped up the unresponsive girl against his broad, solid chest, and the powerful beat of his heart lulled her tired soul to sleep.
-
A lean young woman was fussing over a blocky alabaster altar encased in old ruins.
The clean-cut stone slab sat inside a dark, once-forgotten cave. Its white stone, almost holy in its purity, pulsed with an inner gleam to the rhythm of an unseen heart. Teal and purple gems pustulated along its sides like organic growths, and its finely chiselled ornaments, depicting totemic bears—symbols of Belhad, Goddess of Life—seemed to shift imperceptibly whenever the woman looked away.
Parchment notes lay scattered about, black with dense scribbles, magic circles, and diagrams of the human body detailing organs, systems, and aetheric pathways. The woman’s manic brown eyes surveyed them through her large spectacles. Thin fingers smeared in ink pushed back her untamed locks as she added yet more feverish notes to the sprawling piles.
Heavy footsteps announced the man’s arrival. The young woman greeted him with a tired smile born from genuine affection. She had grown a lot since their first meeting, and the old soldier no longer towered so far over her. Years of toil and grief had sunken his kind black eyes that belied a harsh, brooding face. However, his broad shoulders stood tall and unbowed; to her, he was still a mountain that would never crumble.
Their gaze met. In those tormented black eyes, the young woman saw the same wrath, the same vengeful thirst that moved her, a rageful light so bright it almost eclipsed the dark rings eating down her sunken cheeks. A large, calloused hand brushed an errant lock off her face as the man inspected her with concern. “Have you slept?” he asked, though knowing the answer.
The young woman leaned into the old soldier’s familiar touch, his solidity ever so comforting.
“Soon, I won’t need to.”
-
A pale woman stalked into a ruined throne room with predatory grace.
Her appearance and gait exuded confidence, sensuality, and danger. Blood not her own dripped down her soaked hands and chin, leaving a spotted red trail in her wake. The tiling of the room was shattered and scattered with rubble as if a natural disaster had raged through. Armoured bodies dangled from the walls, brutally embedded into the stone, their metal shells crumpled inward, and the flesh inside pulped into a gory paste that dripped below them like morbid tapestries. The actual tapestries were on fire, alight with unearthly black flames that already started spreading to the castle’s stone walls.
Her gleaming ruby eyes found the tenebrous man looming over the fractured remains of a shining throne, reduced to a heap of glowing pebbles. The old soldier’s broad back looked at once larger and smaller than ever. His bloated muscles quivered with inhuman strength under his darkened skin, covered in esoteric tattoos that pulsed with arcane power. The thin, coiling lines down his cheeks like tears, down his throat, and under his torn shirt. He had forgone armours years ago, metal unable to contain his growing form. Yet, the woman could see the cracks in the mountain she once thought unbreakable.
“The wolves found their scent. Northwards,” the woman spoke calmly.
“North?!” the man thundered, facing her. His once-kind black eyes now bled red with distrustful hatred. The demands of their crusade had crushed his kindness piece by piece, and too many knives in his back had closed his heart.
But not to her.
Never to her.
He was her family, her best friend, her general, her master. He had held the whole of her being through her death and glorious rebirth. He knew her every thought and that her loyalty was more solid, unchanging and eternal than the Shmavahal’s Everfrost Glaciers.
It did not stop her from shivering when the General’s rage flared. It exploded and rolled over her, choking her although she no longer drew breath, and dimmed the world with churning, burning, hungering, all-consuming Darkness. “North!?” his baleful roar shook the walls. “That coward would rather run off to those point-eared vermin–!” He noted her flinch. With visible effort, he reined in his power and wrath. His serpentine tattoos pulsed, and the world released its breath. “I’m sorry. My anger is not for you.”
“I know.” She embraced the old soldier, holding him close as he once kept a little girl from breaking apart. Pressing her head to his chest, she listened to the thundering heartbeat hers now lacked. “But we almost got them. We’re close now. Soon, it will be over. Just a little longer.”
But she did not believe her own words anymore. That too, he knew.
-
“Please! There has to be another way!” The one they called the Vampire Queen, the Blood Nightmare, the Red Death was begging, distraught tears streaming down her alabaster skin. Her pleading ruby eyes stared at the creature hunched at the back of the gigantic, battered tent. Roars of agony made the very aether quiver as the deformed, bloated shadow held its horned head with clawed fingers. “Let me help! I’m begging you! I can fix this! I just need–”
“I said, get out!” A voice like a rock avalanche struck her with almost physical force. “There is nothing to fix! I will do what must be done! They will pay! All of them! They will all pay for what they did! They will burn! All will burn.”
The Queen’s voice fell on deaf ears. The mountain had become a volcano, devouring its own solid flesh to scorch the land around it, indiscriminately burning all that came near. The once-kind black eyes, those that once shed tears for a little nobody who had lost everything, had become lava pits of roiling, boiling, unquenchable hatred, snake-like pupils narrowed in a bestial, feral rage, blind to all but the Enemy.
They stared even at her with all-consuming bloodlust.
“Please…” she begged again, stepping closer and laying a hand on his scaled shoulder.
The monster attacked.
-
Kaydence almost failed to dodge, rooted in place by the spectre of a memory, of ruby eyes identical to her own, of Seifer’s closest friend—she whom he let down most.
But this was not Zerina.
Kaydence’s brain caught up to reality with the enemy’s spike mere inches from her eye, piercing through her Shadow Cloak.
She dropped, flattening against the ground, and spun into an instinctive low kick. Her foot caught the Vampire’s ankle. Life mana rushed down her calf to bolster her muscles, breaking the undead’s footing. Simultaneously, a basic Fire rune flared between them. The crude spell exploded. With a flash and a bang, the Vampire was toppled, blinded, and blasted away, careening disgracefully down the street to crash into a distant wall.
Kaydence did not wait to check on her foe. She ran. Her counter-attack was barely an inconvenience, she knew. Vampires were annoyingly tough like that. But she was no slouch either. She rushed into the maze of Greyport’s backstreets at an inhuman speed. Life magic pumped down her legs, healing her muscles forced past their breaking point with every step.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Overzealous necromancy, now this? Who are these traffickers? Kaydence never seriously believed the Ruby drug was made from actual Vampire blood. Now, she was reconsidering. I might have been entirely too casual about this. But, dammit, she had been seeking a distraction for the night, not a fight to the death!
As a silver lining, this Vampire was definitely not Zerina Amaneth. Seifer’s old companion would have annihilated the current Kaydence. Not only that, but Vampires grew stronger with age. Who knew how monstrously powerful the Vampire Queen might be if she survived millennia to the present day? No, this attacker was much, much younger—less than fifty years turned by Kaydence’s reckoning. Sadly, young did not mean weak. No Vampire was ever weak.
A high-pitched whistle tore through the air behind Kaydence. Already?! She lept into a narrow alleyway, bounding off the wall to keep her momentum. The metal spike whizzed past, tearing bits off her Shadow Cloak, and stabbed into a stone wall with a thunderous crack, leaving a small crater. Kaydence held back a swear and revised her age estimate upwards.
Without breaking stride, she heard the weapon wrench free from the wall and zip back to the assassin’s hand. Her foe moved soundlessly, but Kaydence sensed their faint presence constantly snapping at her heels as the two weaved through the labyrinth of tight, cluttered, and deserted alleyways. The Vampire was relentless, as her race was designed to be.
Another spike whistled past Kaydence’s ear. She ducked and dashed into yet another dark alley, spreading her Shadow Cloak to obscure her position. It barely helped. The Vampire was gaining in accuracy, analysing her movements to pinpoint her within the Cloak.
This situation was untenable.
Kaydence knew she could outlast the Vampire’s endurance. The blood-powered undead’s strength was high-maintenance. Sooner or later, her foe would need to disengage to feed. Meanwhile, Kaydence could keep this pace virtually indefinitely, as her mana regeneration outpaced the expenditure empowering her legs.
It was not enough. Against her current foe, Kaydence could not afford a single bleeding wound, not even a graze. One drop would let the Vampire track her anywhere in the city—and beyond. Kaydence was an excellent fighter, with decades of experience, but far from infallible. If anything, her over-reliance on physical regeneration did her a disservice here. She was unused to avoiding damage at all costs. Let her foes bob and weave. She was the immortal, unstoppable juggernaut who ploughed through enemy lines.
Not anymore, Kaydence reminded herself.
More than anything, she was out of practice. It was only a matter of time before she slipped. It would happen sooner rather than later.
Those spikes are a problem. Kaydence dodged again. The weapons had no mana signature and apparently disrupted spellwork. Perfect assassination tools. And they flew, too. How do they fly if they disrupt spells? An annoying conundrum. Yet, her attacker wielded the precise stabbing implements with the finesse of a berserk Orc warchief swinging a club. For all their elegance, the Vampire’s every move radiated unchecked fury. Kaydence lamented. What did I ever do to piss this one off?!
Behind her, the cowled figure veered soundlessly in hot pursuit. Again, the thin metal stake shot at Kaydence. She ducked, letting it fly overhead, but the weapon suddenly changed direction in mid-air and stabbed down. Hoy! That’s cheating! Kaydence hurriedly rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding impalement but losing her short lead. The Vampire was on her.
A second spike appeared in the assassin’s hand, already striking down toward Kaydence’s chest through the Shadow Cloak. No hesitation. No wasted movement. Kaydence might have been impressed if her life was not the one at stake.
She conjured an explosive attack. This time, her foe was ready. The downward spike diverted, striking the Fire rune as it formed, defusing the spell. But Kaydence had anticipated this. Her second spell exploded beneath her, hidden by her Cloak. Launched up by the blast, Kaydence gritted her teeth against the pain. Instant healing did not make broken ribs any less painful.
Pushing through, she spun high over the Vampire’s head. Her feet touched briefly against the alley’s opposite wall, and she leapt back onto the rooftops.
Fleeing through the backstreets had proven confining and useless. Kaydence would take her chances across the rooftops. She dashed across the slippery shingles, but the Vampire launched up from the street, instantly on her tail. Did he feed recently? she wondered, recalling the dead prostitute she had found days ago. Her brows furrowed.
No time to worry about that now. The Vampire was gaining on her. Though not inherently slower, Kaydence struggled to navigate the iced-over, sloping roofs. Her pursuer seemed to disregard the tricky footing entirely. How many enchantments is that damn cheater wearing?
From her observations, Kaydence believed she could kill the Vampire in a straight fight, but not quickly or discreetly. A clash would attract unwanted attention, and if the Vampire decided to run away, Kaydence was unsure she could catch up. Escape remained the least bothersome option, but her would-be murderer seemed disinclined to give her the chance.
“I don’t suppose we can talk this out?” Kaydence called over her shoulder, her voice distorted by the Shadow Cloak. The answer was a spike whizzing past her head as she quickly leaned aside. Guess not. It had been a long shot anyway.
Refocusing ahead, Kaydence swore under her breath. She had lost track of their position during the mad chase through the backstreets, and it had brought them dangerously close to Main Street. Admittedly, losing the Vampire in the dense crowd might be her best bet, but there was no telling how much restraint the enraged undead would exercise in ploughing through unrelated civilians.
The question was: did Kaydence care?
Annet’s face flashed in her mind, her mother looking at her with infinite gentle patience.
…Damn it.
Her mana shuddered. Hesitation gnawed at her as she slowed. A quivering Fire rune spread from her feet, sublimating the ice around her. Footing secured, she spun, hand outstretched, gathering more Fire mana into strands of glyphs. Words in the gods’ tongue branded the air before her, eager to destroy and devour. Beyond the magic circle’s fiery glow, the Vampire’s red eyes widened in shock, maybe even fear.
A town aflame. Taste of ash in her mouth. The smell of burning flesh. Her family’s calcinated corpses piled in the streets.
Kaydence’s breath hitched. Her mana faltered. The spell lost cohesion.
The trice-damned spike tore through her circle, ripping apart its fraying strands and carving a bloody furrow across her outstretched arm. Void dammit! She pulled back with a hiss. The wound closed instantly, but the damage was done. The spike flew back to its owner. A short tongue flicked out from the cowl’s darkness, tasting the red-stained weapon, along with a glimpse of fangs. The Vampire’s angry eyes widened again, this time with hunger and triumph.
“No more running, fiend!”
“Oh, now you want to talk.” Kaydence could not swallow her angry sarcasm, though startled to hear a female voice. “Fancy that.”
“I shall talk to your corpse!” The Vampire threw herself forward, her silver spikes poised to strike like twin fangs.
Instead of dodging, Kaydence flipped out the short dagger she kept sheathed at her ankle. She parried the spikes in quick succession, grabbed the Vampiress’s collar with her free hand, pulled, and smashed their foreheads together with a sickening crack. The undead stumbled, not entirely immune to having her brain rattled. Kaydence’s vision blurred, her balance offset, but she pushed through. As her skull mended, she stabbed at the Vampiress’s neck, aiming for her spine.
A flicker of mana warned her. Kaydence aborted her attack to parry a crystalline shard, glittering red in the moonlight. More flying crimson darts assaulted her, forcing Kaydence to retreat. Allowed to recover, the Vampiress held up her spikes, her stance more guarded, eyes narrowed, while the shards of crystalised blood orbited her like a swarm of angry wasps.
“Nice parlour trick.” Kaydence’s deep, distorted voice dripped with condescension, even as her eyes searched the swarm for an opening. Her Shadow Cloak writhed around her, expanding to triple her apparent size. “Is that how you control those pesky spikes? Hollowed out, filled with your blood? Ever considered a career in puppeteering?”
“Where is she?!” the Vampiress snarled, gloved hands clenching the spikes.
“What are you even talking about?”
The Vampiress only replied with an unintelligible shriek, charging forward. Kaydence met her halfway across the slanted roof, and they clashed in a deadly, brutal dance.
The undead assassin attacked with reckless rage, often leaving herself open. Yet, the relentless barrage of her spikes and swarm of blood weapons kept Kaydence from capitalising on it, lest she be turned into a bloody pincushion. Shrouded in her Cloak’s obfuscating darkness, Kaydence deflected each attack with her dagger, but she was not gaining any ground. Her muscles screamed from the inhuman pace she was forcing on them, and her bursts of explosive fire and devastating strikes that would pulp a Human barely made the Vampiress stagger. Locked in close combat, she had no room to cast more complex spells.
The situation had become far more volatile. But, once again, Kaydence found herself trapped in an untenable stalemate. Something had to break, and by the Void, it would not be her.
With so many attacks flying around, some inevitably slipped past Kaydence’s guard, especially when she went on the offensive. And yet, she was unprepared to feel the Vampiress’s Darkness mana infiltrate her veins, reaching for her thoughts and trying to assert dominance. Gaping at the blood shard embedded in her arm, she followed the thin, red tendril extending from it like a fishing line, leading back to the Vampiress.
Incredulity filled her. “Are you really trying this?” she blurted out, her distorted voice coloured with disbelief. Why was Kaydence unprepared for such an attack? Because it was idiocy. At least, to her, it seemed obvious. Am I missing something here? But no. She sighed. “You're younger than I thought. Or maybe just foolish.”
With a casual flex of her internal mana, Kaydence shattered the Vampiress’ hold and infected the connection the foolish woman had opened between them. “Attempting to enthral a Darkness mage? How clueless can you be? Did you think I wouldn’t resist? Or that I couldn’t resist?” Along with her pitying words, Kaydence’s own Darkness flowed back to her foe, invading her exposed mana channels.
For all their sophistication and sapience, Vampires were undead at their core. They were vastly superior to the vulgar meat puppets Kaydence had evaded all evening, but ultimately built on the same principle: a corpse puppeteered by a construct of Darkness mana.
In a heartbeat, using her intimate knowledge of Vampires’ inner workings, Kaydence usurped control over the soul-substitute. Triumph abruptly bled from the Vampiress’ eyes, turning to sheer terror as she realised the depth of her mistake. To her credit, the undead woman immediately tried to send a mental distress call to her sire—the Vampire who had turned her, forever planting a kernel of themselves into their scion’s shade, to monitor and command their progeny at will.
Of course, Kaydence was one step ahead in this case. “We’ll do without that. Thank you very much.” Her tone was chidingly mocking as she swiftly shut down the connection, appropriating its authority for herself. That, more than anything else, seemed to rattle her foe to her core. And how could she not be, when suddenly deprived of something that must have felt as certain as the eternal cycle of night and day?
Shadows oozing around her spectral form, Kaydence glided over to the petrified undead.
“Kneel.”
The verbal command was unnecessary, but Kaydence was making a point. Unable to resist, the Vampiress crashed down on her knees, and with a casual wave, Kaydence pushed down the woman’s hood, revealing a youthful face contorted in abject despair.
Kaydence thought she might have felt some joy at besting the troublesome assassin, but she really did not. She concealed her discomfort, however, and allowed only imperious disdain into her warped, whispy, deep, echoing voice.
“Now, little bloodling, let’s have that talk.”
* * * * *