Victor wasn’t sure where to go when he walked out of the library. He wanted to find Valla and talk to her, but at the same time, he wanted some space to think—to breathe. With that impulse taking control, he meandered back to the main parlor, dark and quiet at that hour, and then slipped out the door to the rear deck. That close to the lake, the night air was always a little chilly. Victor hadn’t been there long enough to know if that changed with the seasons or if there even were seasons on Sojourn, but he supposed it didn’t matter; he was never cold, and conversely, no amount of heat in the air seemed to make his hot blood uncomfortable.
He stepped toward the railing, found he had too much anxious energy to stand and think, and turned to walk along the house to the side deck. He caught a glimpse of Dar through a window, still sitting in the library, writing into a book on his lap. It felt strange to peer into the room after wandering through the house, like he was purposefully being sneaky or something, so he hurriedly looked away and hustled down the steps to the pathway that wound through Dar’s manicured gardens. Nightbirds chirped and sang, and the breeze through the trees rustled the leaves in a melancholy whisper, making it easy for Victor’s mind to wander and drift.
After a while, he’d passed by the “sparring ring” and entered a part of the garden he hadn’t explored. Night blossoms bloomed, and the cloying scent of orange and cherry filled the air. It was peaceful and relaxing, and Victor found his earlier irritation melting away. What did he have to be upset about? A woman who loved him was angry—it wasn’t the end of the world. He’d accomplished something tremendous earlier that day. He, a middling iron ranker, had conquered a steel seeker! Victor grinned and, spying a small bench on the hillside, sat down to look out over the terraced gardens to the starlit lake below.
It was a beautiful view, and to his heart’s relief, he found himself wishing Valla were there beside him. A tree to his left rustled, and Victor looked up to see a black feathered bird with a long, fanning tail perched on one of the lower branches. A shock of bright yellow plumage atop its head drew Victor’s eye, and when it felt Victor’s gaze, it spread broad wings and fluttered away into the night. As it went, it uttered a trilling cry that sounded like a stuttered question, “Wha-why, wha-why?” Victor chuckled at the funny sound, then, as he turned back to the big tree with its drooping branches and pale, birch-like bark, he remembered Arona’s bone.
He reached into the storage ring Dar had given him and pulled out the thing. It was heavy and felt colder than before. Seeing it reminded Victor of when Arona had passed it to him in a cave even darker than the night where he now sat. Glancing at the moon, Victor chuckled. To his eyes, it wasn’t all that dark; things were still shaded in terms of moonlight and shadow, but he could see the leaves in the trees, the tiny night creatures rustling through the undergrowth, and even the gentle waves lapping on the distant lake shore.
He rubbed his thumb along the silvery runes in the bone, noting how they shimmered, and he wondered if they’d been like that before. Had they been so bright with Energy? Arona had said her undead creature needed rest, that he wasn’t “ready” for another fight. Had he recovered? “Guess we’ll never know, eh, hermano?” Victor chuckled as he carried the bone over to the tree. “You’re going to sleep until another Necromancer finds you, I guess.” He thought about that word. “Is a Death Caster the same as a Necromancer?” He shook his head, smirking at his mumbled rambling, and knelt on soft turf, summoning a knife from one of his other rings.
He'd just stabbed the blade into the grass when a cold shiver ran down his spine, and a raspy voice whispered, “It would be accurate to say a Necromancer is a type of Death Caster.” He recognized the voice, so he didn’t respond violently, but Victor whirled around, all the same, scrabbling backward so his back rested against the tree trunk. A ghostly, luminescent version of Arona hovered in the darkness near where he’d been kneeling. “You returned more quickly than I feared. I’m pleased you survived your battle, Victor.” Her lips didn’t move, but she seemed to sway with the words as they hissed through the night air to him.
“The hell? Are you a ghost now?”
“I suppose so. More precisely, I’m a disembodied spirit bound to that bone—my first phylactery. I prepared it as we lay in that cave ‘sleeping.’ Thank you for bringing it here and for not mentioning it to anyone. You didn’t, did you?”
Victor shook his head. “Nah, I only just remembered it. I wouldn’t have, though. I promised you.”
The spirit wavered, shifting oddly in the moonlight. “You don’t seem very surprised to see me.”
“You’re not the first Death Caster I’ve messed around with, and this isn’t the first phylactery I’ve held. I should’ve probably guessed what you were up to. I take it you didn’t explain your plan because you didn’t want Ronkerz to overhear?”
“That’s right. I was afraid he’d force you to give him the phylactery so that, even in death, he could bind me to his service.”
Victor nodded as he grunted, climbing to his feet. He held the bone out toward the glowing, faintly translucent figure. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you aren’t, like, totally dead. Uh, what do you want me to do with this thing?”
“Thank you, Victor!” The spirit drifted back from the bone, and Victor felt a sinking sensation as he anticipated her next words. “I have another favor to ask—well, perhaps several favors.” When Victor sighed and lowered the bone, a faint smile flickered over her ghostly features, and then her disembodied voice came to him again, “I asked you to bury that bone here, in Dar’s gardens, because I knew that once you removed it from your storage device, my spirit would be drawn to it.”
“Yeah?” Victor was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Yes. However, I’m still quite helpless and at the mercy of your willingness to aid me.” When Victor only frowned, she continued, “I told you in the dungeon that I wasn’t undead yet. That wasn’t a lie. My master, whom I shall not name in the air of the world where he walks, had tried for years to get me to complete the process, to create a phylactery and perfect my undead vessel, becoming a lich like so many powerful Death Casters do. I…resisted because I hate him, Victor. I hate him and every other Death Caster I’ve ever studied under.”
Victor moved over to the bench and sat down. When Arona’s spirit drifted closer, he motioned for her to continue. “But?”
“Yes, well, when I saw that Ronkerz would make us fight and I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t win, I devised a scheme to escape both Ronkerz and my master. Again, please don’t say his name; I don’t want to draw his attention.” She paused, and her ghostly black eyes stared until Victor nodded. “When a Death Caster typically becomes a lich, they must spend time preparing their phylactery, then, after they’ve voluntarily forfeited their mortal life, an ally prepares their body to accept the undead spirit and death-attuned Energy, completing the process.”
“Your body isn’t exactly in one piece or, you know, here.”
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“Yes, which brings me to the favor I would beg of you. I cannot seek aid on Sojourn; my master is too well-known, and he’d likely get wind of my efforts. I beg you, Victor, will you bring me to the next world you visit? The ring where you stored my phylactery is sufficiently advanced to hold my spirit without making me mad. Once I’m free of Sojourn, if we could find a Death Caster to aid us—”
“We? Us? Arona, I’m not so sure I’m up for all that. I’m not exactly fond of Death Casters—”
“Victor! I beg you!” Her spirit flickered as she shifted to a kneeling position while still somehow seeming to float in the air. “I’m at your mercy! I beg you not to think of me as a Death Caster but as a friend. I didn’t want this, but I saw it as the only way I might free myself. My master has lived for thousands of years, and I owed him centuries of servitude. He is not a pleasant man.”
“Well? Why did you owe him?”
“My family sold me to him when I was young. On my homeworld, my father is a king, and a Death Caster to boot. He bargained with…the man I seek to flee, and I had no say in the matter!”
Victor sighed, then gestured to the bone. “So, what? You get into the bone, I put the bone in my storage ring—the good one—and then you just ride there quietly until I take you out again?”
“Precisely! Once we’re in a different world, I can help guide you to a Death Caster who may be able to help me construct a fitting vessel—”
Victor groaned and set the bone on the bench beside him. “You mean a body, right? You’re going to need a body, aren’t you?”
“Yes—but, Victor, people die all the time! We needn’t kill anyone.”
“I’m not excited by the idea, Arona, but I did think of you as a friend, and as long as you don’t ask me to do anything messed-up, I’m willing to help you out.”
“Hear my vow, Victor: I will never act in a manner you find vile or wrong, and, as soon as I have a vessel with which to turn the pages of texts, I will search for a way to rid myself of this death-attuned Energy! I hate it!”
Victor watched the specter floating before him, still in a kneeling position. The ghostly version of Arona looked very much like she had in life, only washed out and gray-tinted with faint luminescence behind her flesh that made her seem transparent. It was a trick of the light on the eye, though—when he tried to see through her, he couldn’t. Curiosity got the better of him, and Victor reached out to touch her sleeve, only to find his fingers passing through what felt like cold water. When he pulled back, he found no residue on his fingertips. “Why do you hate your master?”
Arona shivered, her ghostly figure flickering with the motion. “As I said, he’s vile. He counts his apprentices as his property, and he knows no boundaries of the flesh. His hands grasp and touch where he wills, and to defy him is to face confinement for years, bereft of all but the slightest trickle of Energy—a harsh lesson to mold an unruly student’s behavior. Of course, his nature isn’t so plain when he courts a new apprentice, and the contracts are cleverly worded. My father wouldn’t have cared what it said, in any case. He convinced me, the first of his seven daughters, with lies and promises, to go along with…my master, to sign the document with blood and seal it with Energy. Too late did I learn…"
As she continued, detailing the cruel practices of Vesavo Bonewhisper, Victor could hear the emotion in her voice, and it touched a nerve. He wanted to help her, but more than that, he wanted to remove a potentially potent Death Caster from the universe. If he could help her to find a way to convert her Core from Death Energy once she’d recovered, what sort of precedent might that set? Were there other Death Casters trapped by cruel masters? What about Dark Ember? If he went there, intent on freeing the humans of that world, wouldn’t whatever he learned in his quest to aid Arona help with that goal?He realized she’d grown quiet, and he’d utterly missed half of her tale, so lost had he been in his own thoughts. “All right, Arona. I, um, I agree; it sounds like you got a raw deal. I’ll be traveling away from this world in a few months. Can you manage to wait that long?” Victor meant his trip to Ruhn—there was no way he’d unleash a tier-nine Death Caster on Fanwath.
“I can! I wandered the Spirit Plane until I felt my phylactery’s pull, but, within that bone, I have a rudimentary home; I surreptitiously transferred many of my belongings into it before I passed it off to you. Moreover, I can pass the time by improving it as I await your summons.”
“How? Wouldn’t that require Energy? Can you draw Energy while in a dimensional container?”
“The ring you stored the bone in allows the flow of Energy, Victor—how else could you store powerful, conscious objects within it?”
Victor realized she was right as his mind flickered to the fear geist he had stored in that ring. Did that mean he could, theoretically, put Lifedrinker in there? He slowly began to nod, then locked his eyes on Arona’s. As he stared into those depthless pools, he had a shiver of doubt. With a slight scowl, he demanded, “Swear to me again. Swear that you’ll never betray me. Swear it on your spirit because I swear, Arona, if you’re somehow scheming against me, I’ll rip apart what’s left of you and scatter the pieces all over the Spirit Plane—I’ll feed it to the angry spirits I find dwelling there!”
“I swear it, Victor! I swear that if you’re true to me, I will always be true to you. I already owe you a great debt, and know I ask much.”
Victor nodded, then held up the bone. “In you go, then. I should get back to the house.”
“One more thing, Victor. Please don’t mention this to anyone! If Ve—my master were to learn of my continued existence—”
“I won’t tell any—” Victor started to say, but then he remembered Valla and the secrets he’d already kept from her. “I’ll only tell Valla. I have too many secrets from her already.” Arona began to object, but he shook his head. “You have to trust me that she’ll keep your secret. I won’t help you otherwise.”
After a long, silent second, as her ghostly figure wavered and flickered oddly in the moonlight, Arona’s raspy voice came to him again, “I agree, Victor. Thank you.” With that, her image seemed to burst apart into mist and pale light that streamed directly into the bone. Victor watched the last of it disappear into the vessel. The silvery runes flared briefly, and he was sure the bone felt even heavier and colder than before. Sighing, he returned it to the storage ring with his other valuable possessions.
He sat in the resulting quiet for a few minutes, determined to find the peace and relaxation he’d felt before Arona’s spirit had made her surprise appearance. After a while, as the moon dipped lower and the eastern sky began to lighten from midnight black to deep blue-gray, he felt his stomach gurgle. Victor knew he didn’t have to eat—he could go weeks without food—but he liked to do it, and the idea of some breakfast sounded good. He wasn’t too sure he felt up to going into the house, however. There were a lot of early risers staying in the lake house, and Victor didn’t feel like talking.
As he contemplated the dwindling food supplies in his storage containers, Victor felt his mind’s eye drawn toward the heart he’d pulled from Loyle. Rather than feeling repulsed by the raw, bloody organ, he felt his mouth begin to salivate. As his hunger quickened, Victor chuckled at the dominance of his savage Quinametzin greed. He withdrew the heart and held it in the palm of his large hand. “Why not?”
Victor canceled his Alter Self spell, expanding to his natural size, but he didn’t cast Iron Berserk; the heart wasn’t overly large. In fact, in his broad palm, it looked more like a turkey heart than something that had come out of a man. Victor lifted it to his nose and, as the coppery scent of blood generated more saliva, plopped the entire thing into his mouth. His eyes had almost been bigger than his mouth—he had to tilt his head back as he chewed to avoid juices sluicing out, and his gluttony made him laugh, further disrupting his attempts to masticate the tough meat.
Even so, Victor found the taste and texture intoxicating, and the euphoria of the Energy escaping the flesh as he began to swallow the chunks of meat his teeth tore from the organ made the morsel all the sweeter. There really wasn’t anything like it—no other food, as far as Victor’s Quinametzin palate was concerned, could compare to the heart of an enemy. When he swallowed the lion’s share of the organ and heaved in a deep, cleansing breath, he felt the fire roiling in his belly—something was happening.
Energy, hot and roiling, spread from his stomach into his body. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine his body had been frozen, and he’d swallowed an ember that slowly thawed his flesh. Of course, that wasn’t anywhere close to the situation at hand—his body was hot already, so the heat rushing through him, from his gut to his fingertips, toes, and the top of his scalp, was something different. It was alive, tingling with Energy and purpose, and, unlike some other instances when Victor had consumed something potent, almost pleasant as it did whatever it was doing.
When the sensation had passed through his entire body, and he began to feel normal again, he received some System messages:
***Congratulations! You have gained a new Feat: Blood Supremacy.***
***Blood Supremacy: Your blood, already potent with the might of an elder species, has gained the ability to carry your aura and will. Species and individuals with the ability to infect, consume, or subvert another’s blood will have to contend with your innate willpower and the effects of your aura. Moreover, those who come into contact with your blood will feel its weight until it has been cleansed. This effect would be particularly daunting to any individual who consumed your blood.***
As he read the message, Victor couldn’t help imagining a vampire drinking his blood and suffering the effects of his new feat. He laughed, despite himself, especially when he pictured some of the vampyrs and wampyrs that had invaded from Dark Ember, most notably the reaver baron, Eric Gore Lust. “Yeah,” he laughed, “try drinking this shit, pendejo!”