Aurelian dismissed his System prompt with a frown at its particular wording, and then nodded to Tarixi to confirm it was done.

He needn’t have bothered.

Even as he was signalling the goblin’s spirit, energy thrummed throughout the cavern and a soundless rumble—as paradoxical as it seemed—vibrated down to his bones.

Aurelian raised his eyes towards the top of Bael’tharax’s body when a flare of blue light ignited at the zenith of the dragon king’s central mass, and a colossal blue dome flashed into existence around the creature’s body.

Aurelian only barely noticed that the dome actually consisted of millions of tightly packed runic combinations, densely formed into what appeared at a glance to be a solid layer.

Then the entire construct started to dissipate.

It began from the top where the light had first flared.

Runes flashed red and erupted into motes of mana that fizzled into nothingness, creating a systematic pattern that looked like red light eating into the beautiful harmony of the blue runes, while the shield was decimated from the top down.

Aurelian stood transfixed at the sight, and only barely noticed Tarixi moving forward to hover at his side as the stasis field was steadily obliterated by the System’s hand.

When at last the final layer of runes had been cleared, Aurelian waited with baited breath for what would come next.

When nothing further happened, he turned to Tarixi to ask if there was something else… and then the cavern shook.

For a wild moment Aurelian looked down at his feet and wondered if they were being struck by a sudden earthquake. Then a deep and pervading rumble filled the chamber loud enough to rival the ignition volume of an interplanetary rocket, and Aurelian’s eyes slowly lifted to face Bael’tharax.

The dragon king’s golden eye stared back from much closer than before.

Iron Will is now Level 22!

You have resisted Condition: Terrified (Extreme)!

Aurelian stopped moving, stopped blinking, and stopped breathing.

He only had eyes for the golden light illuminating the cavern floor, sourced by the perilous and ancient golden eye locked on him, its radiating power as ferocious as if someone had pulled down and imprisoned the sun. The cavern shook again, and Aurelian realised belatedly it was the dragon’s breath being pulled in and released.

His breath, and nothing more.

The rumble came again, and Aurelian found himself swallowing reflexively.

“WHOM IS IT THAT HAS AWOKEN ME TO DIE?”

Aurelian wanted very badly to say ‘nobody, this is a mistake, and I am leaving right now’ but the words would not form.

Either because he knew they were the wrong words, or because he simply didn’t have it in him to be quippy in the face of a creature that still looked like he could literally curbstomp Godzilla.

Aurelian swallowed again and looked with wide eyes at Tarixi’s ghost.

She gave him a thumbs up and smiled.

Aurelian felt himself go pale.

“THE GHOST IS NOT THE OBJECT OF MY INTEREST, WHELP.”

Aurelian squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face back towards Bael’tharax, his mind telling him that if he couldn’t see the personification of the apocalypse, he certainly couldn’t fear it. Even with Iron Will essentially overclocking itself to keep him from collapsing into a defecating, urinating, gibbering mess of terror; it was difficult to believe his own thought processes.

Yet still and in spite of everything, a part of him railed against the idea of being cowed.

He had come into the world fighting, and beaten the odds to survive when they had been thrown against him. He’d become stronger, overcome challenges, and survived Tarixi’s sadistic training regime, and was on the path to kill an honest-to-god necromancer or lich or whatever was controlling the mindless hordes of walking corpses.

Damned if he was going to let a giant Goanna scare him.

He would not break. He would not break.

I WILL NOT BREAK.

Iron Will is now Level 23!

Aurelian snapped open his eyes and squared his shoulders at the blazing eye of the dragon king.

Then, with an inhalation of breath, and utter disregard of his better sense; he spoke.

“Listen here you overgrown, ancient, Godzilla-looking scaly twat! I am Aurelian Lucis Imperius, Nephilim and Reclaimer of the Elysean Empire, and I am not fucking afraid of you!”

He emphasised the point by jabbing his forefinger towards the eye more than big enough for him to stand in.

Another rumble shook the cavern, this one powerful enough to actually cause several stalactites to crack from where they’d formed in the ceiling over the millennia and crash down into the ground in an echoing shatter of stone.

Aurelian forced himself to remain completely calm and still despite the sudden eruption of noise. Perhaps he was about to die. Perhaps this was how it ended, but damned if he hadn’t gone out while spitting in the proverbial eye of—wait, was the dragon actually…?

The realisation hit Aurelian like a bucket of cold water, and he stared at the slitted golden eye in blatant disbelief. Rage replaced fear, and his paled cheeks coloured with fury as he worked his jaw in silent consternation at his sudden realisation.

The giant scaly bastard was laughing.

“Are you laughing at me?” Aurelian demanded.

“IT HAS BEEN CENTURIES SINCE I HAVE BEEN INSULTED SO THOROUGHLY.” The ancient dragon responded with a bone-shaking rumble as he shifted his weight and lifted his head high. His two colossal front legs moved to rest at the forefront of his body, claws shearing through granite in a mind-boggling imitation of a stretching cat, and Bael’tharax turned to regard Aurelian with a tilt of his bus-sized head.

“IT IS MOST AMUSING THAT THE RECLAIMER SHOULD BE THE ONE TO DO IT NOW, AT THE TWILIGHT PRECEDING THE END OF MY LIFE.”

“I…” Aurelian found himself speechless for a moment, and then turned to Tarixi in realisation. “Wait, you can see her?”

“YOU SPEAK OF THE ECHO OF TARIXI FIRESOUL?” The massive beast’s eye moved to regard the spirit slowly, and then rotated back to Aurelian. The single organ was so incredibly huge that Aurelian could actually hear it moving in its socket, like the faint slosh of a wet rag.

Aurelian just nodded.

“OF COURSE I SENSE HER, RECLAIMER. EVEN WERE SHE NOT MOUNTED IN THE SIMULACRUM I WOULD SEE HER AS CLEARLY AS A MORTAL SEES THE SUN DURING SOLUM. SHE BURNS BRIGHT WITH THE POWER OF HER REMNANT SOULFORCE.”

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Tarixi took that moment to speak up at last, and Aurelian had the distinct impression she’d been partially overwhelmed, but also partially curious as to how he handled himself. It certainly explained the thumbs up, which he hadn’t even been aware she’d figured out was a gesture of support.

“Hello again, Bael’tharax.” Tarixi said warmly. “Though I am an Echo as you said, the remnant of Tarixi that I am remembers fondly our times conversing. It is a great regret that we could not speak further before ruin descended upon us all, but I am heartened to know I died so that this meeting between you and the Reclaimer might occur,” she smiled brilliantly, and with a touch of bittersweet memory. “It was a worthy death for all that it was senseless, and one I am proud to have had.”

“YOUR SACRIFICE WAS NOT WITHOUT PURPOSE, ECHO. THOUGH YOUR TRUE SELF HAS PASSED BEYOND, KNOW THAT MY GRATITUDE FOR YOUR ACTIONS APPLIES ALSO TO THIS REMNANT YOU NOW ANIMATE.”

Aurelian couldn’t tell if Bael’tharax was being kind or insulting, but judging by the look of joy and gratitude on Tarixi’s face he had to assume there was a nuance or context to the interaction he simply failed to grasp. He looked from the towering head of the dragon—much easier to deal with, now that the colossal thing wasn’t barely two metres away showing off its person-sized teeth—to the diminutive figure of the goblin’s ghost and then cleared his throat.

“I don’t intend to be rude, but we are on something of a timeline here.”

“WHAT IS IT YOU SPEAK OF, RECLAIMER?”

“There are reanimated dead in the palace.” Tarixi answered before Aurelian could think of how to articulate the concern, and he passed her a glance of appreciation. “The nature of their animator is yet unknown, but it only appears—thus far at least—to be the Godsworn that are called back. My suspicion and inclined belief is that the infestation is the work of an Absolum-aligned Ravenor. Potentially a true Vasiri, but I cannot be certain.”

Who the hell is Absolum? Aurelian wondered without interjecting. Sounds like some sort of demon name. She’s been holding out on me.

“I SENSE SURPRISE IN THE RECLAIMER, AND SUSPICION,” Bael’tharax rumbled with what sounded like ponderous interest. The dragon’s large eye shifted back to Tarixi when he said it, and he addressed her directly with his next statement. “YOU HAVE WITHHELD KNOWLEDGE FROM HIM.”

An accusation, though it was one that was phrased and delivered as incontrovertible fact.

Aurelian hesitated at the realisation, and was unsure whether to thank the Dragon King or be suspicious of his insight. For a moment he was worried Bael’tharax could read minds, and worked to scrub the ‘angry grandpa dragon with a cane beating away undead hooligans’ from the image gallery of his mind.

Then he realised that if the dragon could read minds, he’d have already seen the imagined imagery. On top of that, a cursory re-examination revealed that perhaps he had been hasty in his summation regardless. The dragon had specifically stated that he ‘sensed’ surprise, not that he heard it or saw it or tasted it.

He sensed it.

That sounded more like very powerful empathy than it did telepathy.

“I admit to obfuscating,” Tarixi said with a clear voice, though to her credit—and as a mild balm for Aurelian’s sudden feeling of betrayal—she sounded decently conflicted and guilty about it.

He listened while she continued.

“The Intent impressed upon this Echo is to protect and guide the Reclaimer, even if it means protecting him from his own better nature, and his weaknesses,” she turned and looked at Aurelian quietly, and he met her gaze levelly with his own while she spoke. “If he had known what I suspected: that the manner of the raising was consistent with the actions of a Ravenor, or more dangerously, a Vasiri… I feared he would have either raced off to do combat with it… or even worse, been too terrified to try.”

The dragon let loose a cavern-shaking sound Aurelian eventually recognised as a hum of consideration and thought, and he took the chance to ask the first question that had come to mind: “What the hell is a Vasiri?”

“A FORMERLY NOBLE SPIRIT, OFTEN A HEALER OR EVEN A WARRIOR POSSESSING SUCH MAGIC, TAKEN AND TORTURED TO MADNESS AND RUIN BY THE INSANE ADHERENTS OF THE SO-CALLED GOD OF DEATH, ABSOLUM.”

The Dragon snarled ‘quietly’ when he spoke the name of the god—which of course meant another localised earthquake—and his tail lashed the air with a violent crack of force.

His wings flexed out like two monolithic canvases capable of blocking out the entire sky from where Aurelian stood, and the sight was a wonder he doubted he would ever forget.

In that moment he caught a glimpse of what Bael’tharax must have seemed like to those that had stood against the Empire when the Dragon King had been hale and capable of war. He felt like he understood, with sudden clarity, why armies would have surrendered the minute the dragon king’s shadow had fallen across the battlefield.

It was a suitably sobering reminder of the creature’s immense power.

It was Tarixi that continued the explanation, perhaps after noticing that Bael’tharax had become preoccupied with what she had described as a racial hatred for the so-called gods. “Their natural impulse to renew is twisted into a desire to consume, and they are plagued by a thirst for vitality that cannot be sated.”

Tarixi shook her head in what appeared to be sadness and disgust with equal measure. “They are ‘blessed’ with an eternity of undeath, the greatest and most alluring beauty and charm, and may transform ten percent of the attributes of those they consume into additives to their own power.”

“I HAD THOUGHT THE KNIGHTS OF THE ORDO DRACONIS HAD FULLY PUT THE LAST OF THE CREATURES TO REST. EVEN THE SOLARI, FOR ALL THEIR ZEALOTRY AND MADNESS, DESPISED AND HATED THE CREATURES.”

Bael’tharax turned his massive head and shifted his gaze between Aurelian and Tarixi in thought and assessment as he spoke, his thunderous voice filling the cavern and setting the massive walls to trembling consistently.

“IT IS A SURPRISE THAT THE SELF-TITLED GOD OF LIGHT WOULD ALLOW HIS MAD SUBORDINATE TO CRAFT SUCH MONSTROSITIES ONCE MORE.”

Aurelian had already lost focus by the time Bael’tharax had started speaking of Solarius and his apparent disdain for… well, probably everything, in truth. What he was stuck on was the description of the Vasiri.

Undead? Check.

Supernaturally attractive? Check.

Killing machines? Check.

Ridiculously powerful? Check.

He looked up suddenly and spoke, completely uncaring for if he were interrupting. “Hey, uh, Bael’tharax?”

“YES, RECLAIMER?” The dragon thundered in his normal hurricane-like volume.

“These Vasiri. How do they consume vitality? As in… what’s the ideal method?”

“HMM… A PRUDENT QUESTION. THE ANSWER IS REPULSIVE, HOWEVER. THE VASIRI GAIN THEIR FILL THROUGH THE BLOOD OR, IN THE CASE OF THE TRULY DEPRAVED, THE FLESH OF THEIR VICTIMS. THEY CONSUME UNTIL ONE OR BOTH IS GONE ENTIRELY.”

Aurelian sighed in resignation at the answer, and turned his gaze towards Tarixi.

“Listen, I am pissed you held out on me, and I intend on having a serious talking to you about mutual trust, but I just realised that what you and grandpa over here—” he gestured to Bael’tharax, and chose to believe the rumble he heard in response was a laugh “—keep referring to as Vasiri? Well, where I come from, we call them Vampires.”

Aurelian narrowed his eyes as he continued.

“They’re quite prevalent in our folklore and mythology, and I can tell you that most people from my original world—Realm—whatever would be very on-board with killing them, or re-killing them, or whatever,” he waved a hand. “But more importantly, there are different variants, and some are more powerful, some less. What you have here sounds like the Romanian Strigoi, though I know that means nothing to either of you. However!”

He took a moment to draw in a breath and calm his thundering heart—fuelled both by fear and excitement—before continuing. “There is one specific type of these creatures that is universally reviled above all others.”

He looked towards Bael’tharax, noticed the dragon watching him with curious intensity, and then turned back to Tarixi.

“So, I have one very critical and important question for you, Tarixi.”

The goblin ghost eyed him warily, but gestured for him to proceed.

Aurelian clenched his fists, locked his jaw, and focused his eyes directly on her.

“Do these motherfuckers sparkle?”

Tarixi stared at him in bewilderment, and even Bael’tharax rumbled in confusion.

“Sparkle, Aurelian?” the Echo asked with a nonplussed expression. “Is that some sort of jest?”

“No.” Aurelian said firmly. “Where I come from, there is a story about Vampires—Vasiri, whatever—that have diamond-like skin that refracts sunlight. We just call it a sparkle to be derogatory.”

“That sounds absurd.” the Echo responded with a frown.

“AND HIGHLY IMPRACTICAL FOR SUPPOSED PREDATORS.” Bael’tharax agreed.

“You won’t hear any argument from me,” Aurelian said with growing relief, “but you told me that worldshards, or Realms, or whatever the hell my original home is—was—whatever—can often reflect the Prime Material in many ways.”

“Ah,” Tarixi said with dawning understanding, “and you worried that these ‘sparkle vampires’ may have been one such instance.”

“Worried, hoped, it’s much of a muchness really.” Aurelian said with suppressed guilt and mild evasiveness. Perhaps he had just wanted to kick the shit out of some terribly conceived pop culture Vampires. Who could really blame him? Everybody he knew would have wanted a similar opportunity.

“THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THAT EVERY EVENTUALITY UPON A WORLDSHARD REFLECTS THE PRIME MATERIAL IN TRUTH, RECLAIMER.” Bael’tharax rumbled with earthshaking certainty. “MORE LIKELY, IT IS AN ORIGINAL CREATION BY A DENIZEN OF YOUR REALM THAT POSSESSES AN OVERACTIVE AND STRANGE IMAGINATION.”

“Fair enough.” Aurelian conceded with a mix of relief and disappointment. “So I guess Vasiri are just run of the mill undead monsters, then. That’s cool. I’ll just go full Van Helsing on them.”

“Is this another reference to your source realm’s culture?” Tarixi asked warily.

“Oh. Oh. It very much is, and this time you are going to like the story behind it.”

When Aurelian launched into his recount of the various iterations of Van Helsing, one thing became quickly apparent: Tarixi and Bael’tharax did not, in fact, like the story of the Vampire Hunter’s deeds.

They loved it.