This is Awesome!, the Mick thought to himself, surging through the Ocean Dragon forms with a glee and enthusiasm he had not felt in decades.
The Blooded were a powerful race. Although outwardly human, they naturally became Tomb-Tainted when they reached maturity, and their physiology began to emulate those of the vampires their ancestry was tied to. Although they didn’t gain the life-draining touch of a vampire, they could eventually learn and gain most of the magical powers of a true vampire... and when they did, if they died, they arose as true vampires if their bodies were intact.
The Blooded Clans had lived in secret among humans, magic and the very nature of the world subduing any belief in them, and in general, things had been quiet and humans oblivious to their existences, except for fanciful tales few believed.
Then the Shroud had come, and everything had fallen apart.
He had only been a wee lad when the Shroud swept across the sky, and he could still vividly recall the sensation of power swelling as it swept past him, as well as the sense of doom falling upon him and everyone he knew.
Mild glamours couldn’t hide their appearances now, and the clans of the Tomb had been slaughtered along with all the truly undead creatures that had started to rise in the fear and horror of the masses. Sure, they were tough, and strong, stronger than any normal human... but with the rise of magic came the Priests, the Paladins, the Wizards, the Sorcerers, the Witches, springing into existence full force, and suddenly their massive physical advantages were just advantages among other advantages.
Worse had been the opportunists of his own people, taking advantage of the chaos to settle grudges centuries in the making.
He had escaped the slaughter of his clan and the ancestors who rose from their silent crypts, swollen with a thirst for blood and a mad fear of the Shroud, and who were highly unprepared for the new Powered... armed with guns. The mobs had been egged on by agents of other clans, who had contributed to the slaughter with murders of their own against those of Clan Fynnachl who had escaped the rise of humans.
He had used the fact he was young and hadn’t fully matured into his power to survive that backlash, and fled first his native land, and when the last of his clan members were slaughtered in New York, flee this land too, heading for Australia, where he had fallen in with the remnants of the Japanese who had managed to flee there after their homeland was overrun.
That was where he had learned to use a sword, and use it well enough to inspire fear in others. He had a keen memory, and had marked all the clans that had turned on them to settle their own past grudges, and was determined to get revenge for his family: all three of his brothers, two sisters, his mother, father, four uncles and two aunts by blood, his grandfather, so many cousins and kin...
Hearing that a motley clan of Blooded survivors had managed to assemble themselves in Detroit, right next to the auspices of the new Heavenbound Hall rising openly there, he had quit Australia and returned here, joining them as the sole survivor of his clan. He took a job as an enforcer against Blooded who stepped over the line, and distinguishing himself rapidly.
He had learned what magic he could, but it was a difficult task, as any studies in magic that didn’t involve developing the natural gifts of his people were annoyingly hard to master, and the easiest path, necromancy, was a path straight to damnation. He wanted more than that, more than the path that led to the grave and unlife beyond it... and then, likely very quickly, a death by outraged normal humans who refused to act like oblivious, meek prey anymore.
This... this was more progress than he’d been able to make in years.
Smior was starting to come to life in his hands. As the essence of his ki changed and aligned to the Ocean Dragon, the blade became more fluid, livelier, eager to attack and quicker to pull back to proper guard. As he whirled through the katas with his Blade, he could feel them burning into him smoother, cleaner, sharper, surer, fusing into the blood surging through him, pure and sure and eager to move.
He was rediscovering a joy for the sword he had not felt in years. It had devolved to just a tool for him to get his work done, bereft of the elegance and fascination he had once felt for it. Rediscovering it was like being young again.
He couldn’t wait to kill some of the bastards with it!
As he moved through all the katas for the hundredth time and more, he could feel every little surge of improvement, attunement, and alignment, and with the great feral patience of the Blooded, and the glee of a returned devotee, he began again...
------
Sama watched the Blooded swordsman start again, and nodded to herself.
She had already moved his car around from the front of the forge to the back and out of sight, expediently lifting the front end off the ground and dragging it back here while The Mick was doing katas. That had been about 2 AM the first morning, when he was repeating the basic katas for the fiftieth time.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
She’d shown him the advanced katas yesterday, a six-hour process he had devoured with obsessive need, leapfrogging and hurdling past stages of accomplishment and comprehension that should have taken months to cross with the wondrous miracle of a whole damn lot of backlogged Karma devoted to the sword that he wasn’t able to spend, because he didn’t know what to spend it on.
The Mick was a Racial Eight, an impressive achievement, putting him at the elite of the neo-vampire clans of the Blooded, but his Melee Levels had naturally lagged behind with the seductive ease of advancement of natural fighting skill and craploads of Stat advances and potential magical abilities that made the pseudo-undead more and more like vampires.
He was Tome-Tainted. It almost goggled her mind to think of it... in other words, he was more like a normal human, with none of the true affinity for negative energy and death magic that a neo-vampire would have. Oh, he was still drawn to it more than a human would be, by the very nature of the power of his blood, but true undead were drawn to necromancy like moths to flames.
He was also extremely resistant to negative energy, Sama could feel the defiance in the air around him. He had committed to his path, however quietly, and was walking it in anger and disdain for those of his own kind. It made him singularly focused, and also represented a LOT of repressed anger.
No wonder he was such a good swordsman.
In gaming terms, she was helping him take two Battlemad Levels, which closed the one hole in the ¾ MAB of his eight racial Levels and his Melee/2, going from +7 to +8. He’d also be able to take a Wizard Caster Level, bringing him to a Two, and then another one out of the fourth Level of the Theurgic Class, which would get him to Three... once he shifted focus to more magic.
Three wasn’t great, but usually only Blooded who ignored their Racial Class could get there, so it was a thing. Breaking the grip of their Racial Class was as rare as a Human breaking Six, as it were...
Spending Karma could be an intense experience, as she usually found it, basically ‘recovering’ knowledge and power that the Rantha Curse gave her access to, and which she had to ‘power up’. It was like flipping a switch, and yowza, look what I can do!...
A person gaining what they had not had before could experience it differently, a gradual enlightenment that rolled into place over hours and days, meshing into their fighting style and comprehension organically, as if it had always belonged, accumulated time and experience catalyzing into actuality.
That generally only happened if there was no immediate combat and great need, of course. Desperation helped speed a lot of things along, naturally enough.
The Mick had a solid 26 strength, definitely more than human, and if she was right, he’d bled at least one elder vampire dry to get it. Vampiric lightness of pace gave him a workable lightfoot, although his heavyfoot needed work. He was preternaturally coordinated, and had definitely worked on his self-healing tremendously, doubtless using it in his training and to his advantage in close-combat. The same healing ability gave him hypertrophy, ensuring that he never lost any of his physical conditioning, and there was no doubt that he’d undertaken inhuman levels of training to artificially inflate his Stats and keep them at peak Levels. The body-building meant he had a working Might of 28, which would doubtless be an unwanted surprise to his opponents who weren’t as diligent about keeping up their physical prowess...
And it definitely meant he was able to handle a Heavy weapon without a problem.
She was going to have to arrange some decent opponents for him. The Blakhamar brothers should be up for it, although she’d have to arrange for Mercy Tassels so nobody was really hurt...
------
This Hagchild smith was freakishly strong. She could match him blow for blow without a problem, and her lightfoot and heavyfoot were just incredible. He had not been taught by someone who was actually better at fighting than he was in literally decades, and definitely nobody as physically powerful who still paid attention to melee combat.
She didn’t have any chi whatsoever, but that hardly mattered, as his vanished the moment it approached her. This left him free to focus on the essence and foundation of the technique, instead of the fancy power-ups and add-ons.
She wasn’t just a good teacher. She was a master of the sword like no one he had ever seen before!
If she didn’t want to be hit, he literally could not hit her, no matter how hard he tried, or how fast he moved... or even with some sly magical boosting, which got him nowhere. If she wanted to hit him, she would, moving through his best parries and dodging to nick him here and there, just enough for him to acknowledge that she could slice him apart around the edges.
There were so many layers to her swordsmanship, baffling levels of profound influence on her skills, of which the Flowing Waters was only a small portion of a deliriously deadly whole.
With Mercy Tassels, there was no fear of killing or permanent harm... and she could heal as quickly as he could. So full-blown combat, no holding back, was the full order of the day, a learning experience he’d never had outside of full-blown deadly combat. Of course, realizing he was going to live through it all regardless meant his tactics did change somewhat, but it was still so wonderful!...
------------
“You don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to go,” Sama mused over steaks and French fries. The Mick’s was served very rare, of course, while he watched her slice hers up with her nails with a thoughtful expression.
“I’m just taking a long-earned vacation from my duties. The clan lords won’t say anything.”
“Really.” Her complete lack of faith in his words should have raised a smirk on his face, but he found he couldn’t hold it under her gaze.
This is truly a dangerous woman on all levels, he mused to himself with a sigh.
“I have a target in this area,” he admitted, and she just lifted a prompting eyebrow. He’d seen how respectfully the dwarves and those three hulking adopted brothers treated her, and her being a Hagchild and not even kin meant she was getting a huge amount of consideration from them. The people knew her, acknowledged her, and treated her with the same care and caution as a lot of people treated him back home.
It was, in the end, not a good idea to lie to her, and might even be useful.
“Werewolf.” Her expression was resigned, and she just gestured for him to continue. “Night Prowlers. Apparently, they have an old feud with Clan Lerch, who are a neo-zom family in good standing in Detroit. They hit the Lerch compound and killed nearly twenty members of the clan, of all ages. I was dispatched by Ruilcroi as a gesture of good faith, as the Blooded are nominally the protectors and rulers of the neo-undead.” Which essentially mimicked the status of power of their undead Ancestors as the lords of their kind, much as the Illuminati persisted in trying to say otherwise...