Ado was surprised to receive such a quick escort through the city. She had half-expected to be shot out of the sky before they’d even landed Shaiagrazni’s new vehicle, and the fear of being taken down some alley and skewered did not quite leave her until she was already making her way up the steps to King Dazarick’s palace. She was, Ado realised, getting quite accustomed to being placed in front of danger. Every conversation with Shaiagrazni was one in which she took her own life in her hands, and Baird often seemed like he might fly into a murderous rage at any given moment. Ado needed a holiday.
King Dazarick seemed to favour more elaborate decoration than his nephew, for Ado found herself surrounded by an interior almost over-designed with excess. Every step she took brought her past a new tapestry, sculpture or painting, every corner she turned revealed a new corridor-turned-display.
She wasn’t sure what it told her, but somehow the sight was comforting. It humanised the man, in a way. Made him smaller and less distant. Ado could understand greed, or the urge to show off. She’d spent enough time among her family for that.
Dazarick was better guarded, though. That much Ado saw shortly, as she was brought deeper into the keep and past thick doors, thicker walls and large men clad in steel and wool. She shivered at their passing, finding an unpleasant sense of imminence hovering suddenly over her. A holiday, one day. But not soon.
At last she was ushered through a pair of broad doors and into a room just as exhaustively indulgent as the rest, centred on it, seated in a towering chair, was a man she could only presume to be King Dazarick. He had a bathrobe on, legs uncrossed, and his cock on proud display.
One day, Ado told herself, she would get a fucking holiday.
Collin did love breaking into the homes of royals, there was just something so satisfying about it. Bypassing their defences, slipping around unnoticed, making himself at home in the place they were most desperate of all to force people like him from occupying. It made him feel all giddy and warm inside.
There wasn’t so much time for enjoyment, these days, and his father had always said it was important to enjoy the smaller pleasures of life. Collin felt the crushing weight of remembering him, and knowing that they’d never speak again. His smile dropped, and he sped up his path through the building.
Clearly Dazarick was anticipating some sort of malfeasance; assassination, most likely, or else just spies. His palace was well guarded. Fortunately Collin wasn’t trying to murder the owner, yet, and had an easy enough time getting someone important-looking on their own. The poor bastard almost pissed himself as he dragged him off to pin him against a wall in some remote storeroom.
“Hello.” Collin breathed, smiling in that way he knew always left nobs fearing for their lives. “I have a few questions for you, and if you answer them you don’t need to spend more than a minute in my presence. How does that sound?”
He was scared, this one, but not cowardly. An unwelcome surprise, as Collin saw steely hardness congeal in his eyes.
“I’m no traitor.” The man croaked, throat tensing as his lungs prepared a more substantial noise. Collin interrupted them, tapping down on his chest with carefully measured strength to knock the wind from him, and just about leaving all the ribs intact as he did.
“Yes you are.” Collin told him, taking his measure more carefully as he did. “Everyone is, particularly when their family comes into play.”
He was a man in his middle years, and wealthy enough that it seemed likely he’d gotten himself a young wife. Sure enough Collin’s guess proved right, he tensed in that way only family men could, fear suddenly returning, and far stronger than the courage.
“Okay.” He whispered. “Alright, I’ll answer your questions, I’m sorry I-”
“The Prince.” Collin cut in, before the man could start panicking. “Where is he being kept, what are his guards’ positions and quality, what else might be relevant?”
Instantly the man froze, caught in a strange mix between confusion, reluctance and horror. Clearly he’d not been expecting royals to be brought into the conversation, whatever answer he gave now was likely to fuck him down the line.
Collin felt bad for the man, really. But not that bad. Poorer people than him were forced to make worse decisions every day, and nobody spared them any thought.
He left him there with a headache and a hasty binding which ought to have kept him silent and still until he was found, then tore off to find the Prince.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
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Swick watched the Vampire move, remaining stiller than he’d probably ever been in his life. He’d heard stories of them, and as of a day ago seen one himself, but even he was not a man able to claim himself expert upon their kind. Vampires were elusive, dangerous and, above all, paranoid. One of the few mysteries the world still had left for him.
The quality of Vampire hearing was quickly made rather less mysterious when it paused, tilted its head, turned its face and stared directly at him. Swick had about half a second to make a decision, and he made it in one quarter.
“VAMPIRE!” He roared, as loudly as he could while dragging his thumb along the blade of his knife and flicking his hand out to spray the globules of blood. Something whipped through the air, black and jagged, and he translocated to the flying path of a fleck of his blood just in time to see the shadestuff splash over the floor where he’d been. It ate the stone away within moments, proving in an instant that Swick would not be getting far by relying on his bodily resilience for this of all fights.
The Vampire stepped forwards, closing in fast as a sling bullet, and Swick translocated again to bring himself at a sidelong angle to her. His lunge was wicked sharp and perfectly aimed, borne from a lifetime of deadly combat, a body full of Vigour and the months-long lapse of so much as a whisper of alcohol. He saw the creature’s eyes widen as his dagger dragged along its arm, snatching a drizzle of ichor out to run down the limb, sending it back.
Caution, now, shone from those crimson eyes. And the Vampire started circling him. For one moment Swick let himself bask in the satisfaction of having warded off such a predator, if only for an instant.
Then all the rebels around them started closing in with a vengeance.
Had Swick fought them all alone, he might have been in trouble. He was a Hero, after all, but not one specialised in direct combat, and not particularly armoured or well armed. One hundred angry, blade-wielding people was less than he’d managed before, but never while fighting a Vampire, and never easily. Fortunately he was not alone.
The Necromancer Sphera announced herself by barging in through a door and waving an arm out in an arc, where her fingers flexed and dragged through the air they gathered shadestuff, then flicked it out. An entire row of men dropped to the ground, headless, as the magical fluid ate through everything above their necks. One moment later she was gesturing at the corpses, which climbed up to their feet and threw themselves at their former allies.
It was amazing, the amount of chaos a half-dozen suddenly reanimated corpses could bring about by jumping into a mass of people. As far as distractions went, Swick had rarely seen better.
The Vampire was focused, though, its eyes remaining heavy and concentrated atop him as they circled each other. Swick lunged, the Vampire sidestepped and he translocated himself to a position just feet away where he’d left spatters of blood a moment prior. The Vampire was quick enough to avoid most of his next swing, but still lost half the lobe from one of its ears. That, apparently, was enough to let it know that a purely defensive fight was not to its advantage.
Swick was retreating quickly as the Vampire came on, blood coiling out from a newly-opened gash in its wrist, thickening and hardening until it formed a great tendril akin to the ones used for flank-defence on Shaiagrazni’s grotesqueries.
It came at him, he translocated, and it came on again. An attack of infinitely dynamic length, trajectory and speed, like fighting a whirlwind with teeth. Swick backed off, sidestepped, danced around and winced as he saw the bloody limb gouge chunks of stone out of the floor, even rip a man in half on its backswing at one near-miss. It was all he could do to stay ahead of it, all he could do to keep backing up.
More were emerging, pooling around the Vampire, congealing and elongating. He had minutes, maybe, before they joined the first and overwhelmed him. Sphera interrupted that.
Two lashes of shadestuff, one barely missing, the other perfectly on-target. The Vampire had no time to dodge, instead widening and spreading their blood outwards into a broad shield and catching the Necromantic attack. Swick watched the sizzling liquid drop down, eaten away in an instant, then he was running.
Behind him, the Vampire drew more blood outwards, this time from nearby humans and undead, working it rapidly into a devastating array of blades and bludgeons primed to strike out. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the first attack coming, then translocated just an instant before it landed to close in.
There would be no more defensive fighting for him than there had been for the Vampire, he knew, and now he had Sphera’s power on his side.
Swick went low, and the shadestuff went high. It boiled away a length of the Vampire’s gory weaponry just as Swick closed in to stab through the newly made hole, driving it back and into a bundle of reanimates. They fell upon the enemy, forcing its attention back around to batting them away while Swick himself leapt high, then translocated back to the ground. He opened the Vampire’s arm up as it raised to strike where he’d been, cutting deep enough that he might have nicked a tendon and drawing a pained snarl from the creature. Superhuman durability or not, undead flesh or not, that one had hurt it.
The Vampire slithered back, pausing, thinking. Then it turned, breaking out into a dead sprint for the window. Swick hesitated only a moment before tearing after it, and he heard the footfalls of Sphera joining him. Human bodies fell away, scrambling into and over one another in their desperation to avoid the path of movement, and the Vampire had quite the clear path towards the nearest exit. Swick translocated in just as it dove outwards, both of them breaking down into a corridor leading deeper into the earth with a flight of steps.
He’d never chased down a Vampire, either, but their speed, Swick knew instantly, was no exaggeration of hearsay and rumour. It was pulling ahead with every extra step, and disappeared down the far corner before he was even close to the bottom.
He swore, drew more blood from another finger and flicked it out, translocating the distance away and redoubling his efforts.
This, he thought, was going to take up quite a lot of his time.