I twisted the bottle of blood in my hand, cold to the touch in the quiet, humid room buried under the castle.

There was nothing trying to kill me. Sure, there was a rogue vampire hiding somewhere in my giant basement, but there was nothing trying to kill me actively.

It was just me and Cody.

“I can tell you where each bottle came from.” Cody said.

“So you don’t know what skills they’ll give me.” I said. “Tell me about this bottle.”

None of the bottles had labels. They were instead filled with blood of varying shades and thickness. Cody hovered close, letting me see the ridges and filigrees embedded into his book cover. Light stretched out from him and filled the bottle.

“Oh, valuable. This is the blood of a monster hunter — a vampire hunter, especially. Probably high perception and agility to track and hunt prey.”

I slid the bottle back into the rack and paced the room. Ancient stone tiles made up the floor, far older than I was.

“It’s not what I need.” I said. All I could think about was the taste of Dan’s blood. The taste of Jason’s blood.

The power that every human represented.

I needed to resist it.

“I need Willpower. Something stronger. Like…”

“Like magic!” Cody said, whirling around the shelf.

One of the bottles had thick, viscous blood that seemed to bubble up as Cody passed by it.

“What is this one? The boiling blood?” I asked.

“That is — oh. Oh Catalog. Don’t worry about that one. In fact, you should destroy it!” Cody said.

“It’s not a mage’s blood?” I asked. It certainly looked magical. Or maybe just evil. The blood was turning over itself, bubbling up in huge splashes of red that stained the outside of the bottle. As I stared at it, mesmerized by the beauty of it, I had the passing thought that I wouldn’t have found it beautiful at all.

“It’s monster blood. Blood of one of the many terrible aberrations that slip into our world through the thin gap where the System touches on Unreality.” Cody said the words like they were something he had repeated a hundred times.

I let the bottle slide back into the rack, staring longingly at the bubbling blood.

Cody continued down the rack, the soft light glowing off of him touching each of the bottles like a soft caress. Their glass surfaces glittered. It occurred to me that Cody was the only source of light in the room; I was starting to not notice the dark. It was becoming comfortable.

“Ah, here we are. Magic blood!”

Cody stopped hovering over a bottle that sat alone in the rack.

“This will give me willpower?” I asked, picking the bottle off the rack. It didn’t look like magic blood. It wasn’t glowing or bubbling or fuming.

“Is Willpower all you want?” Cody asked.

“No.” I said, leaning down to sit on the floor with my legs crossed. “I want magic.”

Real magic.

This was the end of the world. It was terrible. My life had been threatened almost a dozen times in the last two days. I had undeath foisted on me. And terrible, dark powers which enticed me to drink the blood of the living. And empowered me to rip monsters apart with my bare hands.

That was badass. But it was linked to my new, monstrous nature.

“Hey, did you say that vampires are immune to aging?” I asked, looking up at Cody.

“Indeed. Vampire’s live for millennium, only growing stronger with time. The cost is merely the blood of the Catalog.”

“What is the Catalog? Like, the system? Or a book…?” I looked at Cody.

“The Catalog is the dynastic plutocracy that freed the universe from the shackles of the Empire.” Cody said. “Before the Catalog, the trillions of people in the universe never had a chance at rising to true power of their own.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I stared down at the bottle of blood in my hands. I wanted power that didn’t come from a vampiric nature. I wanted magic that felt human.

“Is there anyway to change or predict what skill this will give me?” I asked.

“Nope!” Cody said. “Well, maybe if you drag a vampire into here and interrogate it. Even then, this blood is ancient. At least a century old. It will have lost a lot of its potency over that time.”

I sucked in a breath. Did I even need to breath anymore? Or was it just a reflex from years of conditioning? Each bottle on the shelf represented another power I could gain. All I had to do was level the power once while I had it, and I would keep it.

Real magic.

“My dad wanted me to be an architect.” I told Cody. “That’s what I was in college for. He lost his sight early on in his own career, but he passed his passion onto me.”

“Ah, is he in another city?” Cody asked.

“No. He passed before I started college.” I replied as I worked the cork out of the bottle. I dug my nails into it and started tearing it out. “I’ll just drink half of this. It should be plenty, right?”

“Yes. If you can stop yourself.” Cody replied. “But — ”

I ripped the cork out. The scent of the blood filled the room instantly, bright and powerful beyond comprehension. Before I even knew what I was doing, I tipped the bottle back.

“ — With particularly powerful blood, and especially aged blood, you might also get a surge of the host’s memories.” Cody finished.

The room disappeared from underneath my feet.

Void ships rained death from the sky, masses of steel wrought from space, laying waste to the world’s only bastion of resistance. The Catalog had come in full force.

I was on a battlefield. The rush of blood in my ears fought for space against the sound of erupting magic and all out war. I was Eli Gray, riding passenger seat in a mind. And I was someone else entirely. I was the living castle, I was the Archmage of the Last City, and I would not let my city fall.

“It’s done.” The Archmage said, panting. He rose from where had he pressed his hands to the ground, swaing on his feet as he depleted his mana. An assistant ran to him, pushing blue potions into his hands. He drank. They tasted like the extract of berries, like raw power flowing into his body. He swallowed hard, mouth dry, tongue aching.

Out of half lidded eyes, he watched as the fist sized ball of magic flew out of the earth, flashing before doubling in size. It started out as an infinitely complex ball of blurring lines, unravelling into hundreds of circular sigils that flew out around the battlefield. The largest of them hovered directly above the city where the Archmage stood.

The city’s walls began to grow upward even as the city itself sunk, beginning to encase itself in the earth as the bombardment continued.

Distantly, the world itself sundered. Not everyone retreated fast enough as chasms as wide as canyons opened in the earth. Great walls of stone and metal shot upward, slamming into the void ships that haunted the horizon beneath an orange sky.

The Archmage smiled, drunk on his power as one of the void ships tilted sideways. Its engines roared to full power, brightening the horizon as the sun began to sink, trying desperately to maneuver and change its course. It failed.

One void ship began to accelerate into another. When they collided, explosions choked out the sky.

The Archmage knew he could win this battle because he knew that their enemies weren’t one force. They weren’t a monolith. One void ship accidentally crashed into another, killing hundreds. But they wouldn’t blame the lowly mages of a forcefully uplifted race for those deaths.

His smile widened, teeth wide as one of the void ships opened fire on another. The battle in the sky turned to chaos. The last thing the Archmage saw as the stone dome closed in the city and sunk it beneath the earth was the sky ablaze with a hundred spells as the army turned on itself.

He staggered forward a step, turning to his assistant.

“We did it.” He said. Then he stumbled, falling to his knees. He coughed. Then he spat blood on the stone floor.

His assistant looked down on him. He had soft, brown eyes, ringed with a lack of sleep. The Archmage didn’t notice the hate burning in the assistants eyes. But I did.

“And how many of our own did you kill this time?”

The Archmage stared at the blood. He didn’t think he had used that much mana.

“We’ve talked about this. Your sister died a hero.” The archmage said. “We have to preserve… to preserve our way of life.”

The Archmage started hacking blood, coughing and spitting onto the floor. He realized too late; he had been poisoned.

He reached out to the healing skill he had. But he was out of mana. Completely out of mana. He fumbled for the potions at his side.

The assistant kicked him, shattering the glass bottle on his side. The Archmage staggered over.

“What?” He asked, staring up into the eyes of his assistant from the ground. His mind blurred, chugged, barely moved.

The assistant’s eyes turned red, glowing in the dark. Two more figures stepped out behind him, barely visible as the stone dome brought the city into darkness. Their eyes, however, burned.

“Excellent work. Exactly as promised.” One of the vampires said, slapping a hand on the mage assistant’s shoulder.

A hot knife of horror stabbed into the Archmage’s stomach as he stared up from the ground. His family was here, in the city. And so were these bloodsucking monsters. He had delivered his own city to them. He choked out the sun, casting the city into darkness.

If he could just cast heal on himself, he could blow them both away with ease. But he couldn’t move. He could barely think.

And the Archmage died, alone. Killed unexpectedly. Just like the ships he had brought down. I felt his regret pour over me, the single strongest memory he had, more than any of the skills, stronger than the mana.

I staggered back to awareness with the sound of shattering glass. My veins screamed with power.

[Title Unlocked: Inheritor of the Last City]

[Inheritor of the last city: +10 to one stat while inside of a city you have defended against Threat. Selected stat may be changed once per day.]

[Temporary skill gained: Move the Earth VI]

[Adaptive skills have converted to Earth]

[Eli Gray, Early Adopter][Progenitor Vampire][Level 5]

[Dread General III]

[Health: 31/31]

[Blood: 100% Earth Archmage][+50 WIL]

[STR 17][CON 31]

[INT 41][WIL 72]

[AGI 14][PER 6]

[Skills:]

[Progenitor’s Will XI][+11 CON, +11 WIL]

[Sandworm’s Veil I](Crimson Veil)[+10 AGI]

[Obsidian Scythe I(Wicked Implement)][+10 STR]

[Beyond Death I][+10 CON]

[No Rest For The Wicked I][+1 INT]

[Blood of my Blood I][+1 WIL]

[Shadow Step I][+1 PER]

[Move the Earth VI(TEMP)][+30 INT]

[Titles: Early Adopter, Lord of (Nothing)]