“What do you mean ‘bonded’?” Aloram asked.

Emrys smiled, reaching his neck and head upwards towards the pale grey sky in a motion that couldn’t help but cause Aloram to think of a stretching cat. Despite the constant glances and outright staring of several of the other inmates in the courtyard, Emrys seemed to take absolutely no notice of his surroundings as he strolled along the wall of the depressed cobblestone square where the inmates were released to roam for one hour a week, brushing the wall with his fingers as he walked. A week, Aloram learned, was comprised of ten days, each defined by the moon or moons that were displayed on the following night. Ten days seemed more logical than seven, but Emry’s explanation of the moons made little sense at all.

Aloram walked beside Emrys with his arms crossed. He’d awoken to a plain, neatly folded grey shirt, which he now wore, and a bowl of broth with bits of potato and meat waiting for him on the floor just inside the cell. Emrys had offered no explanation as to where it’d come from. The guard certainly hadn’t dropped off food for an inmate, though, and when asked, Emrys just smiled. So it remained a mystery.

“I mean that I’ve placed a claim on your fate, as you have on mine. Consider it a contract, a statement of mutual obligation.”

Aloram stopped in place and stared coldly at Emrys as the vampire continued walking, tracing his fingertip along the wall beside him.

“And what obligation do I have to you?”

Emrys stopped walking. At the same moment, he pressed his finger into the stone. The fingernail punctured a hole in the hard cobble, and bits of rock flaked off to fall to the ground. Emrys turned towards Aloram, then surveyed the other inmates, all of whom immediately pretended to have been looking elsewhere. He settled his gaze on Aloram’s hard face and smiled.

“Think of me as your sponsor. Worry not; you’re free to act as you like. It’s nothing so limiting as you’re imagining.” Emrys pursed his lips in contemplation and looked up into the distance. “An alliance is probably closest. Those adept at analyzing rei will be able to sense my mark upon your signature, and vice versa.”

For a moment, Emrys looked past Aloram, lost in thought. He smiled a wry, self-amused, off-putting smile. Almost to himself, Emrys said, “Oh, how lovely.”

Aloram coughed, and Emrys looked back at him as if remembering he was there.

“And what do you get out of it? What do I have to do? You’re avoiding answering my question.”

Emrys made a dismissive gesture with his hand, flicking the air with his elegantly sculpted hand. Sliding his back against the wall until he was sitting, Emrys spoke again.

“Your youth is a budding flower, and your ambition is a sparking flame. I am wither and ember.” Catching Aloram’s eye from where he sat, Emrys continued. “I will help you blossom; I will stoke your fire until it burns new scars across this world. In return, you will entertain me. You will make me feel young again, my little paramour of violence.”

At that moment, Emrys appeared older than time itself. Weary, old, and utterly bored of life, as if he’d done everything there was to do, seen all that there was, and found the experience wanting. Pity was an emotion that Aloram usually reserved for the weak, when he felt it at all. He couldn’t imagine life in a prolonged state of helplessness; fighting that possibility was one of his prime motivators, but he’d never really considered what it might be like to grow old: to grow bored. His expectations for life never stretched that far into the future, and there was so much to do. Had Emrys abandoned his ambition? Or was there something else?

“I am old, and there are… restrictions… upon me.” His eyes gleamed. “There are certain people whom I would adore the opportunity to spite, and through you, I might come into the ability to do so.”

So fucking vague. Aloram noticed that the courtyard had grown almost completely silent. They weren’t speaking loud enough to be heard, but he cast a scowl over his shoulder anyway. Their oglers resumed a facade of activity. There were only thirteen minutes left of their one hour excursion, but of the forty-two inmates present in the yard, there wasn’t a single one who wasn’t watching them.

“So you’re using me,” Aloram said, still staring daggers at their onlookers, the tone of his voice making it a statement.

“Yes,” Emrys said, smiling. “Everyone feeds,” he muttered, lightly touching his collar.

Aloram harrumphed, then uncrossed his arms, put his hands in the pockets of his robe pants, and turned fully towards the open courtyard. It was a perfect square, with a few small trees set at regular intervals. There were benches for sitting and a fountain dominating the center of the square. Two statues occupied the middle of the fountain, the water rising between them: an ascending, humanoid figure from the heavens with wings outspread, and a ghoulish, skeleton-like creature below it, arms outstretched towards the fleeing angel. It was an odd, interesting statue, and the bottom figure made him think of the necromancer’s skull staff.

The square was sunken into the church’s campus, and to get there from their cells, they took a long, sloping tunnel. Flanking each side of the plaza were tall, straight cobblestone walls that rose fifteen feet into the air, atop which the rest of the church’s compound continued. Aloram had wondered why the priests let them come here at all, but now he thought he might have stumbled upon at least one of their motivations. Whatever. In the moment, it served him well to do this, too.

One of the inmates, Aloram knew none of their names, had been slower to look away than the others. And Aloram didn’t like the look on his face. The man’s back was turned to Aloram, but as Aloram crossed the plaza towards him, his friend touched his arm, and he turned around. There were four men standing together and a woman. The largest of them was nearly seven feet tall, and big too. Not muscular and shredded like a bodybuilder, but more of a bear in human form like a natural born strongman. He frowned at Aloram and took a step forward, pushing the man who touched him aside with an arm the size of one of the courtyard trees.

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“Wh–”

The rest of the word was lost as his teeth collided with each other, the tip of his tongue flying through the air to land on the ground a few feet in front of him, blood spattering the cobblestones. Aloram lowered his bare foot back down to the ground. The big man sputtered, spitting up blood and saliva as he felt at his face with overlarge hands.

Rage contorted his visage, and he moved to grab at Aloram, who stood only two feet in front of him. In a flash, Aloram’s other foot was in his stomach, and the behemoth went stumbling backward. Aloram was surprised he didn’t send the man flying into the wall. Rei must affect his strength more than he’d assumed. There were many questions that he’d like answered, but the thought of asking Emrys, even if it was the intelligent choice, prickled at his pride. As he dodged a haymaker swing from the giant’s tank barrel arm, Aloram swore he’d get strong enough to kill Emrys.

With his vampire sponsor on his mind, Aloram used the same move that had sent him to the ground last night and swept his opponent’s legs. The inmate landed hard, rolling onto his stomach with his arm pinned between his body and the ground. Two of the watching prisoners retreated, but the other two men and the woman stepped forward, encircling him. As the big man freed his arm and began to push himself up, Aloram stomped on his head, slamming his face into the hard stone, then he put his weight into his foot. When the man’s head was forced to turn and the side of his face was revealed, Aloram lifted his leg and stomped again, crushing the jaw, cheekbone, and eye socket under his foot with a satisfying crunch.

Blood gouted from the man’s mouth, splattering the dreary cobblestone with bright red flecks. It looked like spray paint, Aloram thought, as he began to turn in a slow circle to face the others surrounding him. On the ground, the man was silent and motionless. Aloram felt a shift in the air around him—a slow receding as the man’s life energy dispersed and the presence of his rei signature was washed away by the omnipresence of the ambient rei around them. Aloram could feel the man’s rei condensing, and with a flicker of dawning realization, he noticed that it was being drawn into the large collar encircling the dead man’s neck.

Everyone feeds… I see.

From his right, the woman lunged at him. Aloram caught her outstretched fist in his hand, a move he’d never even considered doing in his MMA bouts on Earth and squeezed. A smile tickled at his mouth as he felt the fragile bones in her hand shatter in his grip. The woman’s face paled as she realized what was happening, and Aloram locked eyes with her, his smile exploding into an animal grin.

Stepping sideways, Aloram twisted at the hips and flung her by the arm, swinging her like a father might swing their child. He tossed her into the next of his victims. Unlike the huge man on the ground, the woman’s weight was insignificant to Aloram’s strength, and when released, she flew through the air as if shot from a cannon. When she collided with the third inmate, they both went sprawling across the rough stone.

The fourth man turned to run, but Aloram was behind him instantly. Aloram tugged on his shirt to stop him, then casually wrapped his arms around the man’s head, laying one hand atop it and one hand under his chin.

The courtyard was awash in after-violence silence, all the prisoners still and hushed: waiting. Aloram stood with his eyes closed, breathing slowly through his nose. He was right; the collars were absorbing their rei when they died and most likely weren’t just blocking it while they lived, either. This was more than just a roadblock in his progression—someone was actively draining his strength and using it to their advantage. As distasteful as it was, Emrys was a partner. This, however, he could not abide.

“Bravo, bravo,” Emrys said from behind him. He whistled, clapping his hands.

Slowly, Aloram opened his eyes and prayed for the mental strength to resist temptation.

Emrys stood slightly hunched, hands in his pockets, an amused expression on his satin-smooth face as he examined the results of Aloram’s work. Two dead men lay on the floor several feet apart, one’s head an unrecognizable interpretive art piece of red, white, and brown, the other’s neck twisted almost comically backwards. The other two had recovered from their fall and made it to the safety of the furthest wall, where the other inmates stood in varying states of reproach.

“You’ve made quite a show, young Aloram,” Emrys said, beaming a smile at him. Aloram’s eyes lingered on the long, sharp fangs in Emrys’s mouth, where his canines should’ve been.

Aloram ignored him.

Turning to address the crowd gathered across the courtyard, Aloram gestured at the corpses on the ground.

“The collars are absorbing their rei; we’re being used like livestock, like human batteries,” Aloram said, raising his voice to be heard across the distance.

He didn’t even know if anyone here besides Emrys and himself knew what rei was or cared about their predicament, but he’d be damned if he was going to stay in this temple any longer. And he had been trained better than to waste an opportunity.

“Those corpse-fucking priests are going to take their bodies and use them for parts. If that’s what you want, then fine. But I, for one, am leaving.”

Emrys laughed, his voice sounding like chimes and clear brook water.

Across the courtyard from the gathered inmates, behind where Aloram stood near the center of the plaza, men in white-yellow furs and leather armor filtered in through unseen doors opening flush from the wall. Among them were two figures in long, black robes with hoods covering their heads and faces. Between the two stood a man dressed in flowing red and white, with long white hair pouring over his shoulders and down his back.

Aloram first saw the eyes of the inmates slide past him, their interest arrested by the intruders, then he felt them. Two distinctly powerful rei signatures, and one that overpowered them both. Aloram spun around, staring at the man in white. Even through the muddied senses of his collar, Aloram could feel the man’s aura. It was crisp, clean, and sharp as a knife. From it, Aloram received an impression of smooth stone, hard edges, and geometrical shapes like a cube of slate or marble. His eyes were a piercing sky blue, but to Aloram’s annoyance, they weren’t looking at him.

A hidden gate descended over the mouth of the tunnel from where they’d entered the courtyard, and the guards—twenty of them, Aloram counted—fanned out around the perimeter of the square plaza. The two figures in black stood next to one another, a few feet apart, with the man clad in white in front of them. Next to Aloram, Emrys’s grin turned ravenous. He touched a sharp fingernail to his neck, and the collar fell away, clanging noisily against the stone below. Oddly, Aloram detected no change in aura whatsoever as he did this, but dismissed it for the moment, turning his attention back to their new opponents.

“I suppose,” Emrys whispered, his eyes never leaving the man in white’s, “that It’s my turn to entertain you a little.”

Emrys drew his tongue across his dazzling white teeth, the red flaws in his eyes sparkling, then disappeared.