The Vampire problem was one with innumerable, nuanced issues all emerging from it, but a remarkably universal solution to most of them. Silenos’ fundamental issue was that his forces were designed largely around battles, not skirmishes. The Rangers had always served well enough in smaller-scale, tighter-packed conflict, and their dwindling numbers left them a poor match for any force which operated as the Vampires did on so large a scale. He needed units able to contend with them in assassination, infiltration and subterfuge.
Fortunately, he was not so far from accomplishing it. His newly-made grotesqueries, built from Rangers, had already come rather close. They merely needed specialisation.
Silenos had spent much of his sixth century around the oceans, while studying with House Shaiagrazni. He had no great fascination with them, merely suspecting that the extreme conditions to be found in the marine world would surely have produced interesting adaptive features. He had, of course, been correct. It was one of these he now drew on for his creations, derived from the cuttlefish.
Chromatophores were curious organoids found within the skin of the creatures, and several others. Containing careful balances of pigment, and controlled by precise nervous reaction, they could effectively change the colour of a creature within a fraction of a second, going so far as to mimic patterns and textures in surrounding materials with startling accuracy. Silenos recreated them in the Ranger-based grotesquery he’d acquisition for his work, and made some key improvements.
Some were made easy, even trivial. The higher-than-usual amount of neuronal tissue in the constructs meant that there was room for far finer control over the organoids, and Silenos was able to inure them to the more common weaknesses of temperature and pressure differentials through simply tweaking their surrounding tissues. Others were more complex. A critical flaw in the tissues was that physical impact could forcibly crush open the sacks containing pigments needed for appreciable shifts in colour, and he spent some time wrestling with that particular problem before finally stumbling upon a solution.
With a care he’d rarely even been called on to employ to his work, Silenos crafted musculature around the pigment sacks and left them tensing and toughening in time with the nervous signals. It took a lot of trial and error, time dragging irksomely slow, but eventually he perfected a layout which left the delicate tissues protected by layers of stiff, yet sufficiently flexible muscle. Upon hard impacts or great pressure, this would leave the sacks unbroken and protected, and when the time came for flexive movement they could relax and become as dynamic as their surroundings.
It was not a perfect solution, far from it. In the moments where his creations were required to bend a certain section, their pigment sacks would be vulnerable to impact regardless, and of course any particularly potent blow might depress the musculature enough to rupture them anyway.
Silenos worked to reduce these shortcomings. He added a honeycomb network of micron-scale keratinous cartilage formed in similar patterns to the steel links used so abundantly in chainmail among the New World, fusing the rings at one another’s edges to avoid the need for uneven distribution or vulnerabilities. With luck it would add a degree of resilience and rigidity at all times.
Even so, it was far from a perfect mechanism. That fact needled Silenos, but he was forced to compromise once more with his surroundings. They would do, for the time being.
Silenos got to work on updating the rest of his creations with their new adaptations, and coining yet more.
***
Swick really didn’t like chasing Vampires. It was a reminder, with every step he took, just how many years he’d spent drowning himself in booze. This one was fast, or perhaps they all were, and it was widening the space between them every moment.
Which didn’t mean it would get away, only that he’d have to get clever.
A man in Swick’s career learned to get good at tracking exits, turns and navigation just as a rule. One never knew when one would have to flee from guards, debtors, angry husbands- really, there was no shortage of unruly types who lived for the joy of attacking him entirely unprompted.
The Vampire sprinted, tearing down the tunnel. Faster than a horse, faster than a thrown spear. Faster than a thrown spear thrown from the back of a damned horse, and faster than Swick. But he knew where they were going. He’d been careful to study up on the city’s old sewers and catacombs, always a good habit to get into, going somewhere new, and he knew full well all the turns which would lead them down into a dead end.
They’d already taken one, which meant all he needed to do was ensure the Vampire couldn’t burrow its way out through the walls and into different tunnels once they reached it. To do that, he only had to remain in sight and close enough to be a threat.
His lungs burned. That might have proven harder than anticipated.
Sphera was far behind Swick, and growing farther. Necromancers were casters, after all, and though their reaction times and wits could increase as their minds expanded to channel the energies beyond, that meant nothing for their bodies. She was athletic and trained, which was why the number of yards separating them was still countable in only two digits, but he’d find no help from her until the enemy stopped.
With a nasty start, Swick realised that he’d likely be fighting the Vampire on his own for a few moments before his ally arrived. Possibly a lot of moments. He buried it, having no time for cowardice- not now- and nicked another finger. He flicked the blood out.
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Swick was ten feet closer, then twenty, then thirty. He saw the Vampire throw a glance over its shoulder, eyes narrowing, lip curling. The fight was drawing closer even faster than he was; they both knew it. A corner turned, Swick bounced heavily off the wall to keep his momentum, then threw himself down.
Had he not been such a clever lad, he’d have died instantly. Swick had no delusions to the contrary, the volley of gory javelins which shot for him would have bitten deep and left him bleeding towards a convulsive death. As things were, they missed entirely, mangling the brickwork behind him and spattering the tunnel with arrow-quick globules of semi-hardened ichor which took further chunks out of every surface they hit. A few even caught his skin, stinging where they left cuts and bruises.
But Swick had expected something similar, it was just the sort of trick he’d have played, and rather than scramble to his feet he just translocated up into the drop of his own blood he’d left in the air before dodging. He landed on his heels and bounced off them, lunging fast. Faster, clearly, than the Vampire had been ready for. Her next barrage was still half-formed and her hand came up too slow to stop him, catching Swick’s dagger clean in the palm.
Agony flared in the undead’s eyes as the knife dug deep, deep, deeper. It was like trying to stab through iron, and his thrust exhausted its momentum just exiting through the back of the hand by an inch, but Swick had all the advantage he required. As his enemy raised her other arm to lash out, he twisted. Agony again, more now, and the Vampire was twitching and seizing, body plucked from her control by the pain of metal against bone and forced into leaving an opening.
Swick didn’t manage to do much with it, sadly. He punched her as hard as he could do, but for all his skill and experience he was still, in the end, no warrior. His knuckles might have knocked down a tree, but they only sent the Vampire back a step, cursing and stumbling as Swick followed the blow by ripping his knife free and lashing it out. It cut a nice gash over her brow, leaving blood to trickle down into the eye, but otherwise made no great leap in progress towards his victory.
The Vampire wavered, caught between the instinct to flee and the knowledge that there would be no greater chance for escape than killing Swick now while he remained isolated. The hesitation bought him precious moments, and his own slight shifting, backstepping and crouching preparation, bought more.
Finally the Vampire moved, drawing up blood, more than before. Volumes greater than it should even have been capable of holding, all of it becoming edged and hard as sharpened steel, an array of death glinting and twitching in anticipation of contact with him. Swick stared at it, waited for it to begin its rush towards him.
Then translocated to the drop of blood he’d smeared along the Vampire while slashing her.
Swick barged into her, knocking the Vampire down and hurriedly moving into a grapple. His arms hooked around her elbows and joints, body tensing as he pitted every ounce of his strength against hers. Even with the position he had her in, it was barely within his capabilities to hold her in place. Like wrestling an elephant, with every struggle threatening to dislodge him and send them rolling apart along the sewer.
The Vampire’s struggles didn’t weaken, as Swick’s did, and her blood thrashed blindly around coming dangerously close to striking him on more than one occasion. He just held on. Seconds, a minute, an ever-closing end. Then footsteps reached Swick’s ears, and he let himself roll free.
By the time he and the Vampire were even halfway to their feet, Sphera was in the fight. Her shadestuff cut a notch from the undead’s side, sizzling and devouring the necrotic meat, sending it stumbling away. Swick chased it farther with a knife swing, and then leaned back from a hastily thrown punch.
He saw no strength behind it, and noticed the Vampire growing more sluggish by the moment. She backed away, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes narrowing with bitterness.
Then her hands raised upwards in surrender.
***
Diligent as ever, Collin had been careful to scrounge up some of the palace’s plans before furthering its infiltration. It hadn’t been hard, bloody nobs hadn’t the foggiest idea about proper security.
With them tucked safely away into his memory, he made short work of the path through its interior. He slid through it, darting around corners, avoiding sight. Rangers weren’t as good in a close up fight, but their speed and dexterity meant stealth was something they did even better than long-distance shooting, and Shaiagrazni had bolstered Collin’s own abilities across the board. He felt like a ghost, avoiding glances before they even turned his way and slipping by every face he encountered, sometimes even by a margin of inches.
It was deep within the palace, his destination, but there were no real impediments to getting there. Collin was standing before the doors in under ten minutes, hesitating before he pushed them in. Then he stopped, and hesitated more.
A library. A huge library, it had surprised him to learn that such a place was the new prince’s holding pen, and now it left him feeling somehow…On edge. Collin wasn’t a great proponent of gut instincts, but even he couldn’t quite ignore the pricking unease that was building by the moment in his belly. His mouth was drying, hands starting to tremble, body twitching and tightening with adrenal preparation.
Stupid, all of it. It was just a damned library. Collin pushed his fear down, the doors open, and made his way in..
True to what he might have expected, there were books. Some small, some thick. Shelved or strewn about, lining walls like decorations. Collin had never seen such a number assembled in any given place. The library of Kaltan had been opened for the public shortly after his father’s revolution, but much of it had been destroyed in the fighting. A lot more had been destroyed when one particular cabal of nobles had realised it would be permitted for the dirty peasants, and tried to ensure they couldn’t enjoy it. Just thinking about that made his blood boil, and he focused on more immediately relevant things.
Carpeted floors stretched out expansively, warmly lit by chandeliers hanging high overhead. Expensive furniture littered the place, and he found an undeniable sense of life to it all. Collin’s eyes were drawn more immediately, however, to the man seated at one of the well-carved tables.
He was a wiry thing, but tall. Delicate and thin, with a spectacled face framed by tousled brown hair, perhaps Collin’s age. He looked younger. Before him was a book, and across his face was an expression of frowning confusion.
“Prince Nemo?” Collin asked, taking a step forward. “You need to come with me, you’re in danger.”
The boy’s reaction was instant, and not at all what Collin had expected. There was no eagerness for a lifeline, nor indignance at being spoken to so by a man of his accent. He just frowned, backed up slightly in his seat and licked nervous lips.
“I don’t want to.” He replied, quickly. Collin’s temper shivered.
“There’s no time to argue.” He snapped, closing in. “You’re in danger and a lot of other people are relying on your safety for theirs, come with me now.”
“No.” He insisted again, standing now and backing away. “No, just leave me alone, you’re scaring me.”
It was like talking to some giant child, and that only irritated Collin all the more. This was the heir to a nation? Growling, he closed in more rapidly.
So rapidly, in fact, that he almost failed to notice the huge wall of fire sprouting up beside him until it was almost enveloping his body.