Jishu once again felt as if everything was slipping away from him. What was happening? How had his ghouls not noticed anyone coming close? There were so many! An army larger than any he had ever commanded! This… this was utterly ridiculous. Was his toying with fate by refusing to die that brought him this? Was it something else?
“Way to introduce us… What if you traumatize him with your crude ways? And do you think this is the guy? He looks worn out, like an urchin’s sock. Ugh, so ugly. Seriously, I went through all of that for this… I’ll quit. I swear I’ll quit.” Another voice joined the first one. Male. Annoying. “Look at him, scared out of his mind. A high ghoul. The only reason he's not pissing himself is because he probably doesn’t have what it takes. I don’t think that’s him, but the sands are reacting…”
A sigh of defeat and sorrow came from the male voice following the insulting words. Where were they? The voices were echoing all over. No, it was something else suppressing his abilities. Even his connection to the ghouls was growing weaker by the minute. He wanted to call back the main bulk of the horde, but he couldn’t.
“Ah, the humiliation… we could’ve avoided so much of this if we hadn’t gotten lost. I mean, slaying giants is one thing, but that curse was something different.” the male voice continued. “I still feel icky. Seriously, who knew they were capable of that? I’m a creature of the night! I should be impervious to such low-class magic.”
Jishu was afraid to move. To try and see where the voices were coming from. Behind him?
“And whose fault was that you little whiny leech? Huh?”
“You wanted to—alright! Alright! It was my fault. Sorry, damn. It was my fault,” the male voice said. “Just saying it could’ve gone better. He could be a handsome princely corpse or something… human would’ve been the best, but then again, human champions take a while to develop. All that nasty birthing business, ugh. Hey, what are you—”
A woman. Beautiful like a heavenly vision, and with eyes that screamed violence with each mote of moonlight reflected in them, appeared before Jishu. She eyed the girl, and then him. He knew terror, then. Like standing before a beast of legends. Like his existence was but one of her whims, and it could end just as easily. She held out a black velvet pouch, and inside it were black sands swirling in a hypnotic pattern ever so slowly.
“You are not him, but the sands move in your presence. You, at the very least, are similar or connected. What have you done, cunt? Three seconds to tell me everything, or I start cutting.”
Jishu tried to hold that gaze, but something inside of him buckled. He tried to force the ghouls to move, to attack, to shred this lunatic woman to pieces. And yet… his authority as a high ghoul seemed worthless against the sheer presence of that being.
Or perhaps her companion? She was a wight. A wight couldn’t have such a heavy presence as to make thousands of rot-eating ghouls shiver in fear and suppress his birthright to rule them. Another could do that… a corpse from the burial grounds, or something even worse than the ghouls. A vampire. A vampire so strong and old that the creatures of entropy itself were scared of him. Preposterous.
“Look at all this mud. A swamp of all things. After all, we went through a swamp. Isn’t this supposed to be some heroic tale? A moment of clarity and joy? Ah. Anyway, I don’t think this is the guy. Him, slay a god? Come on now. Be reasonable for once.”
“Shut it.”
“Yes, m’am.”
An ancient vampire listening to a wight. No, he was afraid of her too. What the fuck was happening?
“Will you speak, rot muncher, or do I start the taxidermy process?”
Jishu weighed his options. On one hand, dying here would result in an incomplete and weak new body which would be his last. The spell needed time to form a seed for his reincarnation. The inferni’s absolute refusal to speak with him, to engage in any way, or to listen to his threats, was an issue as well.
He had taught Sunday. He had shared arts similar to his own. He had given him his very spell. It was a bond—not the best, but the best was based on things impossible to Jishu. Human things such as love and companionship.
“Who are you, and what do you want of me?” he finally asked, finding his voice.
Pearl was sitting on the ground to the side. They didn’t seem to care she was an inferni, apart from a few pointed looks. The vampire spoke first.
“Why do you appear to be like the chosen? I think you smell of him, don’t you? Like the dust of a thousand dead gods. Hm? Did he take a piss on you when he cut off your hand? Or did you eat him? I swear if you ate him, I’ll—”
“I said shut it,” the woman spat. “The sands don’t seek out the chosen by a sense of smell, you fucking moron.”
“A vampire, whimpering before a wight? How pathetic.” Jishu barked with a smile. Maybe he could wedge a divide between them? Anger them into killing one another? He knew quite a few ways to utilize bodies as precious as them. The wight was a walking miracle. “Are you so weak as to humiliate yourself and the kin so?”
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The vampire simply blinked in his direction as if he were mad. And he… remained silent.
“You’re not saying what I want you to be saying,” the woman whispered, voice like the whispering steps of a thousand ghosts. A blade shot out and wedged deep into Jishu’s belly, forcing a scream out of him. It hurt like the teeth of the accursed hound. This was not simple truesilver, but something else! Something wicked and worse! The curved long dagger cut deep inside, affecting even his soul.
“I met a corpse…” he said, panting from the pain. “I met a corpse, taught him, made him into a mage, and he betrayed me.”
“Lie,” the vampire said from the side. “Partly.”
He was crouched, playing with one of the plague ghouls. Testing its teeth with his bare finger. A scratch would be enough to wipe out a village. With a bit of force, the vampire managed to break one free, and the ghoul shuddered but didn’t dare to do anything else. Even those who had chased Jishu to this cursed swamp hadn’t been capable of such feats. What had the world come to?!
“Are you friends of the demon?” a tiny voice asked from the side.
Jishu closed his eyes.
***
There was a particular smell carried by the winds when thousands of ghouls rushed as one toward the city. A smell of rotting meat, earth, and something dark and sludgy. It was past midnight, but Sunday’s eyes made it possible for him to see the utter terror of what was happening.
If he didn’t know better, he would’ve run to the lake and gotten on the first boat away from here. The magi from the Arcanum were efficient though. Their spells fell like rain, decimating numbers of the disgusting creatures each time. Still, there were too many.
Thousands.
A red circle appeared behind Sunday’s head, then slowly grew. He could feel the gazes of the vampires around. Their whispers. Their strange feelings toward the Visage of the Berserk Moon. It was not their god, nor their symbol. It was a gift by Mera, a spell he had tamed, and an asset even greater than the moths.
What they thought was irrelevant, as long as it didn’t put him in danger.
Three months came out of it, black and red, and shining with trails of almost imperceptible essence.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Oswald replied.
He had donned an armor of leather and iron. It was not bulky, but stylish and ornamented. It made the vampire appear like a knight out of a fantasy, the only thing marring the image being his hawkish nose, and the smirk on the corner of his lip. His sword was a large thing, almost as tall as Sunday, and serrated at the base.
Some of the nearby vampires were similarly donning armor—all the lords had a personalized one.
A moth flew to him and burst after making contact with the body. All of the essence flowed into the vampire, with nary a cloud lost.
“More,” the vampire said after a moment. His dark red eyes were now glowing, similarly to the Berserk moon, and dark veins had appeared on his face. “This is the power I crave indeed. Give me more.”
Sunday obliged, allowing the second, and then with some reluctance the third moth to enter Oswald’s back. He hoped the vampire wouldn’t lose himself, but a few lords were waiting nearby just in case. They all had been very enthused by the proposition. It seemed vampires and magi rarely worked together.
Then, Oswald jumped. A few of the soldiers on the wall exclaimed with wonder, but the vampire lord quickly disappeared into the darkness. Human eyes wouldn’t be able to follow him, but some magi and the rest of the vampires could. Sunday too, saw the result of his little experiment.
The lord was a fury of movement, and of death. He moved with speed and grace Sunday’s undead eyes could barely distinguish, and the effect of his charge was like that of a truck ramming straight into the ghoulish lines. Sinister laughter reached their ears a moment later, and Sunday found his free hand occupied.
His left was being squeezed by a nervous Elora, while a vampire lady was hanging on the right. The one who had mocked Rubien earlier.
“Can you do that for me too?” she asked sweetly. “I promise I’ll pay you back later.”
A very weak sense of compulsion brushed against Sunday’s mind, but he shook it off. She was old and strong, then.
“Sure, I’ll do it for a few of you, but not all. I don’t have the essence and I want to participate myself.”
“This boon you give us is more than we deserve, undead.” A large lord said from the side. “Know that some of us have honor, and remember gratitude, despite our rotted-out hearts and sinister nature.”
“Oh, Brevien, stop with your dramatic ways,” the female vampire said.
Sunday wasted no more time and boosted the two vampire lords as well, then stopped. His reserves were large, but things were growing tense. Many of the ghouls were focusing on the lords that were tearing through them with laughter and bloodlust unlike any. Pairs of glowing red eyes under, moving like fireflies and sowing death. Sunday could almost feel the three lords. A connection so ethereal and thin it was probably a figment of his imagination. Could he bind them with the power of the Berserk Moon?
Some of the regular vampires were joining carefully too. It was a sport to them, not a life and death situation. All the while the human soldiers were shivering on their posts on the wall.
One of them neared Sunday and the vampires looked at him strangely, before allowing him through. He was all smiles.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr. Sunday.”
“You have?”
That was the plan, wasn’t it…
“I’ve heard a lot…” the soldier moved quickly and a blade sank into Sunday’s stomach. It was a normal sword, hardly doing any damage other than that to the clothes.
His eyes had grown vacant, and the smile on his face was the ever-creepy grimace of madness.
“He comes. He—”
The man’s head flew off in the distance as a backhand took it completely off the body.
“Pesky worshippers,” Rubien said. “You should pay attention, worm. The Baron has tasked us with keeping you safe, but that doesn’t mean I won’t turn a blind eye if you keep being stupid.”
Sunday pulled the blade out of his stomach and dropped it. He had no time to return the insults to Rubien as his eyes grew wide.
Men and women dressed in strange robes and followed by laughing horrors were pouring out in the streets below and forming small circles. There were not many of them, but their smiles were telling.
Why now? Is this planned? Can the prophet control the ghouls?
The ghouls unimpeded by vampires charged the walls and started climbing. The divine’s monsters came from the direction of the city too, attacking magi and soldiers alike. Rubien cursed and drew his sword. The cultists had started bleeding their arms in unison, cutting from wrist to elbow, and chanting.
Far in the distance on the rooftop of one of the inner-city guard towers, stood a lone figure. It was too far to see any details, but it drew Sunday’s attention like a lighthouse during a stormy night.
The eyes seemed to penetrate space and time and met his own. And they were filled with joy.