Uther Quinly
As Camille and I floated down towards Thadrick and Alfred, it became clearer why Camille couldn't detect whatever was inside the castle. The entire outside of the castle was covered in a dense veil of pure mana, so thick it blurred the air when stared at.
Every person produced pure mana, almost always with an affinity for one of the mana forms it can take, but pure mana was not only useful for conversion into other types. Pure mana could be imbued with a purpose, and it would continue to serve that purpose until it was overwritten by someone new. The density of mana changes depending on the user, and whoever had created this barrier had much denser pure mana than any of us.
By observing pure mana serving its given will, you could feel out what it was intended to do by interacting with it using your own pure mana. However, this was typically communicated through an impression, not spoken or outwardly said. So while you could tell its general instructions, you could not discern exactly what it was doing.
This specific veil was meant to keep things out, which included mana. This meant that the mana inside the castle when the barrier was cast is the same mana in there currently, preserving almost everything inside.
It was pretty clear at this point we had come across a major discovery. The Great Forest of Atron was largely unexplored and known as one of the most dangerous places the continent had to offer, proving that a civilization once lived here was incredible news for the rest of the continent.
The only problem was finding what wiped them out.
After walking up to Thadrick and Alfred, I put a hand up to the pure mana barrier protecting the castle and tried to get it to let us through. My pure mana, imbued with my will to let us cross, clashed with the barrier. It seemed I may have been successful for a second, but after making some progress, my mana was violently booted out.
After another unfruitful attempt, we all put our pure mana together and targeted the same point in the barrier. With so much mana combined, we finally had the strength to break through and create a doorway.
After stepping through the entrance, I was instantly hit full force by a torrent of blood mana. I stumbled and nearly fell over before shrouding myself in a barrier of wind. Unfortunately, turning on my mana sight proved to be a mistake, as the bloodred mana clouded my vision, completely drowning out everything else. I promptly shut off my enhanced sight and looked to make sure my party was safe.
Thackrick, Alfred, and Camille had all created barriers as well, theirs out of pure mana due to the nature of their affinities.
"Everyone okay? What the hell gives off this much blood mana? It's like an entire country died inside this castle!" Thadrick's voice had fallen an octave deeper, his dwarven accent giving his words a grave tone.
Camille looked shaken up; her senses were much more sensitive than ours, so she was hit harder by the blood aura.
"I can't sense a thing in the direction of the castle; everything is drowned in blood mana, I can't see anything past it, and judging by the density of blood mana, it's possible a strong spirit could form."
I hadn't thought of that yet. Spirits tended to form in high-density mana areas of one form, and this place was so dense with blood mana it would be incredible if a spirit hadn't developed. The denser a places mana and the more time it is exposed to it, the higher the chance it gains full sentience and a humanoid form, and humanoid spirits were infamous for their intelligence and strength.
There was once an entire country that had been destroyed by the clash of two particularly powerful humanoid spirits of Light and Dark mana.
As we made our way towards the castle entrance and the source of the intense blood mana, I felt something change in the air. We had tripped a small wire imbued with mana. When nothing of note occurred after the mana around the trap flared and disappeared, we continued onwards. We got in formation once more as we approached the gate, with Camille, our healer, in the back, Alfred and I upfront for firepower, and Thadrick between us for support.
The castle was dark, so Alfred lit a ball of flames and had it float in the air beside us. We'd cautiously approached the first rooms, but despite the overpowering aura of blood and pristine condition of the castle, all was silent. It felt wrong for such a massive castle to be so very quiet; nothing but the sound of our footsteps could be heard.
After traveling the rooms in relative silence, we followed the blood mana into the throne room, where the intensity was upped once more. The entire room was tinted a dark shade of red, blood mana so thick in the air you could almost touch it. And yet, sitting undisturbed on the throne was a pristine crimson crown, adorned with jewels of black and white. It was difficult to even look in its direction, the air blurred and twisted from the sheer mana it emitted, a lesser party would have been knocked unconscious by its presence alone.
We moved as a group towards the throne, which stood slightly too tall for a normal human to sit on. The throne itself was a shade of red so deep it looked almost black with a circular symbol of a white bat taking flight centered on the seat.
We stayed quiet and grouped up our mana once more, creating a barrier similar to the one surrounding the castle, but much smaller. We centered the blood crown in the barrier and were able to breathe a little easier. It felt repulsing, none of us wanted to touch it, but it was beautiful, a crown fit for a conqueror. It was clear that the number of human deaths needed to create an artifact like this was close to or greater than a million. The creation of that crown may very well be the reason for the destruction of the civilizations that lived here in the past. The barrier we cast was our strongest, it repelled sound completely and was impenetrable as long as we kept our attention focused.
"Think anything else of worth is around here, or should we head back?" Thadrick's voice echoed through the large throne room.
"I'll try opening my senses again now that we have the source of all that blood mana under control," Camille closed her eyes as she spoke, the light of Alfred's flames dancing on her pale face.
After a second or two, her eyes snapped back open and her ears and tail twitched. "There's something underneath the throne, and it's massive."
We circled back around the throne, and Thadrick broke through the ground beneath it, revealing a shadowy stairway down even further. Alfred lit the stairway, and we made our way down as a group. We were let out into a large shadowy hallway, wide enough for the four of us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, lined with portraits and texts in a language I still to this day did not recognize. The portraits portrayed the various races of people living among the continent, but all seemed to have a dark, foreboding tone. Moreover, all of the pictures were drawn in blacks and whites, with no room for color, making everything depicted seem depressing.
At the end of the hallway stood a massive door, similar to the one we had opened when entering the throne room. The difference, however, was the meter-long black shield with the symbol of a white bat taking flight built into the door. It looked like an insignia of some sort, probably representing the people who used to live here.
After opening the sizeable door, we were let out into a colossal room; this one had the appearance of a church of sorts. Black chairs lined the room on the left and right sides, set up in rows facing towards the stage at the front. They parted in the middle of the room/church to leave a pathway to the stage. If that wasn't ominous enough, the front of the room had a massive ivory portal-looking structure. Two pure white pillars reached into the air, connecting in an arc at the top. Directly above it was another shield with the same symbol as the one on the door but at least three times larger. It commanded a presence and radiated blood mana, not nearly as much as the crown, but still impressive on its own. I felt like I was being watched.
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The four of us had walked up the middle row in silence; only the tap-tap-tap of our shoes could be heard echoing throughout the room. The crown still floated behind me, my party giving it a wide berth as I led the way to the portal.
Then, as we were about 20 meters away from the sweeping ivory portal, it began to glow, starting small and getting brighter and brighter. Turning on my mana vision, I watched as the mana surrounding the portal disappeared; it wasn't being destroyed but being displaced. This had been my first encounter with space mana.
My group and I tensed and began gathering our mana, it was possible that the portal could explode, or a beast could come through. What we did not expect was a lone man walking out of the now ultra-bright portal. All at once, the light it had emitted was extinguished; the portal was back to being a fancy decoration.
Right after that came the pressure. It was a technique just about anyone could use, spreading your mana out across the room. While harmless at the weaker ranks, it could be a powerful tool for the strong. The mana pressure he had exuded that day surpassed even that of my current self, nearly fifty years in the future. I doubted I would last long in a fight even now.
The man was covered in a red and black coat that covered his figure but did nothing to conceal his height. He was at the very minimum seven feet tall, with deathly pale skin and glowing red eyes that seemed to look right through us. A mane of blonde hair fell around his face. Each of my companions reinforced their bodies with their respective mana affinities. No one was messing around; we could feel he was strong, stronger than any of us. The only solace we could take was that he was not as strong as whoever had cast the barrier around the castle originally.
Camille, as team leader, immediately called for our retreat, her nature mana growing a small forest between us and our new enemy. We got into formation once more as we retreated, Alfred and I facing him while Thadrick provided support.
It was a basic formation, but the basics worked, at least they normally did. What the basics did not expect, was an enemy who could teleport. I'd watched as he was caught in Camille's vines, only to disappear without a sound. I looked to my left and saw him reappear behind Alfred, but before I could call out to him, he swung his clawed fingers towards Alfred's back.
I summoned a gale of wind but knew I would be too late, he was too fast and I was too slow. I watched as his hand inched closer to his open back, and I thought I was about to watch my friend die. That was until a thick formation of rock materialized in between the claws of the enemy and Alfreds back. The teleporter's fingers went through the rock but bought enough time for Alfred to turn around and blast him back with a torrent of flames.
He seemed surprised we were able to react to his attack and took a step back, evaluating us once more. The flames had blown back his hood, so we were able to get another look at his face. . I looked once more at the lock of blonde hair that extended down to his shoulders, V-shaped eyebrows, and sharp upturned nose. His most striking feature I still remembered vividly to this day was his eyes. Where humans had white sclera, he had pitch black, with red pupils.
I had loved Camille at the time; she had saved my life a few times with her miraculous healing arts and was a great friend to boot. At the time, her death was so sudden I'd refused to believe my eyes. How could something so precious be stolen so easily? She had been killed so fast there was nothing we could do. Our normal formation relied on Alfred and me being on the front lines, with her in the back. There was no way we could have known he would teleport. After all, it was nearly unheard of for anyone to be able to utilize space mana.
Camille's eyes widened in surprise before her body slumped to the floor, lifeless. In the time I took to force myself out of my stupor, he had moved on to Thackrick, who was also unable to react in time before meeting a similar fate. He had snapped out of his daze faster than the rest of us, instantly bringing up and multilayered wall of stone in between him and his opponent. I watched in horror as the blonde man brought his clawed fingers to the mana-made wall and plowed through it. With his bare hands, he had broken through multiple layers of stone and pierced Thackwicks heart. He ripped his clawed fingers out of Thackrick's heart and let his body hit the floor with a thump.
He turned his head to look at me and Alfred, who, like me, was still shocked by the sight in front of us. He blocked our exit now, as we had been behind Thackrick and Camillie to stall him as long as possible. Despite all that, his most terrifying feature came to light when he smiled at us, flashing his pearly white teeth at us. This, however, included the four long and sharp canine teeth extending out farther than any normal teeth would've. He kept his eyes trained on us as he brought his bloodied fingers to his lips and licked off the blood. He swallowed lightly with a pensive look on his face before his smile turned upwards even further, accentuating his large canines.
"Tas-ty, yes!" the blonde man managed in what sounded like broken Athian language.
I hadn't been able to muster a reply in confusion, grief, and shock all at once. He licked off his other fingers in a similar fashion, looking pleased with himself. Never breaking his eyes off of the two of us until he looked behind me. The only thing that should have been behind me was the crown. The crown that exuded blood aura no less. His face lost its amused expression and shifted into anger.
"MINE!" He screamed, pointing his clawed fingers behind me to the crown.
His face changed once more, taking on the expression he had before teleporting. I had learned my lesson by that point; it was clear he needed to focus to teleport. I willed my mana outwards and let loose a barrage of wind blades towards him, sharp condensed wind with great cutting power. Alfred, beside me, created a violent torrent of flames; it was much different than his usual refined and controlled fire, these flames were filled with the rage and loss of losing his two comrades. I combined my wind with his fire, bolstering it even further before we shot it at the tall blonde man.
The wind blades had interrupted his focus, forcing him to use pull his fingers free from where they had been clenched and slash each blade of wind with his claws. When he saw the enormous fireball heading his way, a bloodred shining sword materialized in his hand. He brought the glistening blade down onto the fireball, where it split in two, one side grazing his left arm while the other crashed into the four-meter shield that hung over the portal. The shield began teetering on its stand and was starting to tip over onto the ivory pillars. Despite the edges of his left arm being destroyed and his still on fire cloak, when he saw the shield begin to fall, he sped up and ran towards it. I nearly suspected he had teleported again from the speed he moved towards the portal and realized that he was toying with us. We had zero hope of winning this fight.
"We need to run, escape this place alive and warn the country; if this monster gets loose, we'll need our very best warriors to have even a hope of victory," I said to Alfred, fighting hard to keep my voice from trembling. I took one last look back as the enemy grabbed the entire shield out of the air and threw it down at the seats lining the room. One last look at Camille. One last look at Thackrick. Then we ran for the door.
Once we reached the door to the hallway, I turned on my heel and gathered nearly all my mana. I spread it out at key points that held the structure up, pillars, ceilings, support beams, whatever looked important. I summoned even more refined blades of wind and cut down the support network before summoning a tornado in the middle of the room for good measure. Once I got it going, I didn't need to feed it mana more mana for it to continue, it would eventually die out on its own, but it should buy us some time. The church-like building began to crumble and collapse.
I saw the man summon a sea of blood mana, giving it a corporeal form and deploying it to the various crumbling structures. Wherever my wind blades had sliced were being quickly filled in with hardened bloodstone. As for the tornado, it was enveloped in Dark-type mana, one of the rarest forms on the planet. I had no longer wanted to stay and watch the building crumble, opting instead to chase after Alfred, who was waiting for me on the stairs.
As much as I wanted to go faster, I was drained of mana, my core near empty and with little wind mana or water mana in the atmosphere to absorb. The rumbling that had accompanied the room being destroyed suddenly ceased when we were outside the fortress walls. That was when Hubert had come to us, offering us a ride out. I remember when he descended from the fortress walls with his five-meter long-form, looking majestic as you'd expect a descending angel, or in this case griffin, to be.
He had briefly spoken telepathically before he allowed us onto his back and flapped his mighty wings, blowing away the dust in the surrounding area. He had almost reached the cave we'dyou'dyou'd come from when the blonde man appeared at the entrance. He looked around and locked eyes with me, and I knew right away. Even on a griffin, we had zero chance of escape unless we were further away. It was also not lost on me that his left arm, which had been partially destroyed by fire, was back to pale, unblemished skin; he had regenerated. So, I did what any sane person would do. I hurled the crown halfway across the underground forest. He looked briefly between myself and the crown before dashing off in the distance towards the still-falling blood crown. The last I saw of him was when the man once again locked eyes with me and smiled, exposing his canines once again, holding the crown in his hands. I watched him place the crown gently atop his head, and the man, no, the vampire, looked like a true king.