You are not in your ‘proper’ station as king because you are a petty, childish, entitled fool who wouldn’t know where to put a crown if it contained arrows and writing reading “scalp goes here” around the edge. The only reason you are even a General is because Shaiagrazni was forced to acknowledge that your arbitrarily assigned title of birth gives you political weight, and by extension your subordinates, which does not exist for lower-born individuals whom he may promote to the same position. You are situationally useful for this single task, and once that has passed you will be put back where you belong. At the bottom of the fucking pile, you stupid, drooling cunt.

She did not say any of that, of course, because telling powerful men the truth was somewhere between pissing on their shoes and kicking them in the groyne on the list of things likely to elicit a positive reaction. Instead, Ado smiled soothingly.

“I don’t know, brother, why don’t you tell me?”

“I will tell you!” Folami snapped. “Because he has a bias against royalty, that’s why. This damned wizard is nothing but an up-jumped commoner taking his resentments out on innocent people and stamping on primogeniture.”

Ado did not tell him that, according to primogeniture, she would have been monarch before him anyway as the elder. That would have been telling a moderately powerful man the truth, after all, and the feelings of powerful men had to be handled carefully, like a tiny little baby hummingbird.

“Then prove him wrong, brother.” She soothed. “Prove him wrong.”

----------------------------------------

Hexeri steeled herself, as she had found increasing cause to do in recent times. Questioning her Sire was always an exercise in…Will. She would have had it no other way, of course, for only a creature as innately masterful of the Vampiric Glamour could so wholly deserve her fealty. Still, it made for inconvenient conversations. Bad enough to keep her focus just looking at Lilia, bad enough already by far.

The Vampire Queen was keeping to her own quarters, for now, and Hexeri took another moment to appreciate the remarkable fact of their very existence as she made her way down into them.

Silenos Shaiagrazni had not been given long to set them out, Hexeri knew that much. And he had started, as he started most things, with his grotesqueries.

She shuddered at the memory of them. These ones had been strange, half-formed, she thought, and elongated in their bodies. Like giant, warped snakes. Squatter, stronger, capable of tearing apart tons of earth with each passing moment and ripping open great furrows in the ground. It had taken them only half an afternoon to excavate the tunnel systems which would become her kind’s sanctuary.

Of course, Shaiagrazni himself had made sure to reinforce the caverns as they were made. In his words, the very thought of a collapse offended his sensibilities.

It was this handiwork Hexeri strode past now. Hasty, she thought, but not hurried. Casual, but not lazy. She saw the support beams which had been first placed, and around them were the encasing layers of mineral structure. Fascinating things, those, Shaiagrazni had been persuaded to explain the mechanism by which his organic constructs could remain intact and whole while placed underground- where so many other things decayed with frightful speed.

He’d cheated, of course. Tweaking their biology to do a number of things she hadn’t the knowledge to truly grasp, all of which culminated in…Something. A new form of life, too small to see, which lived atop the surface of their catacombs’ very building material and ate the minute organisms responsible for rot itself.

So far, the structure was too young to test the limits of its apparent imperviousness. But Hexeri was already impressed enough by its scale. She followed the winding pathways, heading down low, lower. The rooms were lit by strange, glowing growths from the walls. Bioluminescence, Shaiagrazni had called it. Yet another thing Hexeri couldn’t hope to comprehend, and once more it was used for petty convenience. The stable glow of the exotic organoids was more than enough for her undead eyes to make out every detail of her surroundings.

Walls, smoothe and perfected. Thick keratin- added to the list of unknowns- protected them with sufficient volume to withstand siege weaponry, even if all the surrounding dirt were excavated to permit direct fire. The floors were similarly reinforced, and the ceiling, Hexeri had been reliably informed, would have withstood the entirety of Arbite suddenly materialising atop the dirt over their heads.

All of it was made of the same strange, half-bone-half-else substance Shaiagrazni made most of his armoured materials from. Though different. It lacked the dark colouration which betrayed his most careful work, Hexeri had been sure to watch out for that. Were Shaiagrazni capable or inclined to wrap all of his creations in material of that quality, they would have beaten the Dark Lord already. She imagined it took more time for him to make. A worthwhile hint.

But Hexeri was not left simply considering the limits of her ally for long, she soon reached her destination. One great, towering door with one great being on the other side. She did not even need to knock, her Sire felt her presence through the blood.

For her part, Lilia did not even need to instruct that she enter. Hexeri felt the command faster than any sound could have carried it to her, and obeyed without the slightest hesitation. She stepped inside.

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Silenos Shaiagrazni did not care much for indulgence or waste, which meant that it had probably been Lilia herself who had managed to secure such large accommodations.

It was no less than she deserved, of course, but Hexeri still felt a stab of disbelief at the sight. A dozen yards from one side to the other, and even deeper than it was wide, the chamber was lit by a chandelier repulsively grown like some natural protuberance of bone, and generously covered with cultivated tissues displaying the bioluminescent effect Shaiagrazni described with a considerable intensity. They illuminated a chamber already filled with some of Lilia’s possessions, but not all.

Hexeri suspected further renovation would come, eventually, or else her Sire’s faculties of research and development would be heavily limited during their stay in the warcamps. However temporary that proved to be.

“My Child.” Her Sire smiled, lighting up the room more completely than the growths within its chandelier, and fully obliterating any thought straight out of Hexeri’s head for a moment.

Without hesitation, she dropped down to her knees, waiting for Lilia to gesture that she come closer. Fortunately, she did so quickly. Hexeri was soon mere inches from the Ancient, and felt the comforting touch of her hand at the back of her head. So strange, that, always. To exist as a Vampire was to exist in a world made for weaker, fragile things. Stone was like dried mud; wood delicate paper, and even steel offered no more resistance to beings of their strength than did thick leather previously.

Hexeri, as an Elder, felt all of that and more. But now, with Lilia’s hand resting on her, she was the fragile one. She was the delicate thing to be handled carefully. How much exertion would her Sire need to crush the very skull she now caressed?

It was a morbid thing to consider, but so close a proximity to so great a power demanded such consideration. Fortunately, the Ancient soon distracted Hexeri from it once more by speaking.

“You have come to me with concerns.” Lilia noted. She spoke as she usually did, not asking so much as telling. In Hexeri, she had seen questions and uncertainty. In that much, she had been right.

“I have.” Hexeri admitted, motivated in her truthfulness more by loyalty than practicality. Though she doubted any lie from her lips would have fooled the Ancient to begin with.

“Then speak them, we are now settled, and there can be little done until night in any case. We have a few hours. I would spend them with you.”

As always, the flutter of delight left Hexeri briefly speechless.

Briefly. She would never have been much use to her Sire, without the ability to actually formulate a sentence in her presence.

“It is about the caster, Shaiagrazni.” She replied. “I…I am uncertain of our alliance with him.”

Lilia moved at that, drifting over to her throne and taking a seat. It was a large thing, carved of black bone extracted from a long-slain dragon, with its base specifically made to permit seating for its owner’s numerous progeny. Hexeri followed her to it eagerly.

“You think he will turn against us?” Lilia asked, poignant as ever.

The question didn’t leave much necessity for elaboration, so Hexeri just nodded. Her Sire sighed. Apparently Hexeri was irritating her.

“I understand.” She told her, and Hexeri looked up. Lilia’s eyes were on her, and they were…Sad. Regretful, even, but not uncomprehending. As she had come to expect, she truly did feel her Sire’s understanding. Just that alone was enough to melt back the ice of her worries, somewhat.

“You have suffered from the humans as few among our kind have.” Lilia continued. “And you are still young, I understand that you are hesitant to trust any of them.”

It still felt strange to be called young by anyone but Lilia. Hexeri supposed that was only to be expected. Her two centuries had been long and hard-lived, but by the end of them her Sire was only one tenth older than she had been at the beginning. The difference between them was one of ages.

And so she listened, carefully, like always. To miss even a single thing from Lilia’s lips was to watch a precious treasure pass her by. Hexeri sometimes wondered how many Vampires were denied their eternities by the simple failure to heed wisdom from one who had lived through more of it than almost any other.

“But Silenos Shaiagrazni is not like most of their kind. He’s scarcely even human at all, I would say. His mind has been warped, partly through culture, partly through Fleshcrafting. He will work with us for as long as he sees a benefit to doing so, and, given our powers, I imagine he will never not see a benefit. The only thing which would change this is if we were to begin acting against him.”

Hexeri did not miss that her Sire had made a warning of that last remark, lowering her gaze and nodding. It was a fair point in any case.

“If you’re sure.” She replied. “Then I’ll heed your advice.”

“I am sure.” Lilia smiled, patting her head. “And I appreciate your concern for me, my dear, but I will not end like your family.”

It was a punch to the gut, and a reassuring caress all at once. Hexeri spent one long moment recalling the scent of burning flesh, then nodded.

Lilia would not end up like her family, not if all the armies in all the world assembled to try and make it happen. She’d existed for two millennia in spite of humanity’s best efforts, if they had it in them to put an end to her, they’d have managed it long ago.

“Thank you.” She whispered, and leaned into her Sire’s embrace as she gently pulled her face closer against her.

“Always.” Lilia replied.

Hexeri was gone, soon, to seek out her job. The day was still burning outside, sun doing its best to engulf her in the foul light and strip away flesh and bone alike, but its vicious rays could not penetrate the opacity of Shaiagrazni’s command centre. In that regard, Hexeri was at least pleased to be working with him for the time being. Even Lilia could not assemble so expansive a shelter able to stave off the light, not as quickly as their new master at least.

Its size made finding Collin Baird somewhat tedious, but she managed it with only a brief delay in any case. He was easily tracked by scent. Hexeri had rarely ever encountered such a distilled hatred in any human as pumped through that man’s blood.

“You’re awfully lax.” She noted, as she came up behind him. “You know the last man who kept me waiting, I drank dry.”

Baird didn’t even look at her, nor did she hear any circulatory jumps which might have indicated he’d been in any way surprised by her appearance. He simply replied.

“If you want to get a belly full of iron dust then by all means, go ahead. That’s all you’ll get from my family’s blood though.”

He looked up, then, meeting her eye. They both broke out into a smile at once.

“Ready to go?” She asked.

“I’ve been waiting on you.” He grunted, getting to his feet. They set off together shortly.