INTERLUDE 3B: THE VENDETTA APPLIES
“Each form of undeath carries its connotations for the sorcerous adept. Each form is distinct in its dangers and value. As the entities mature, they adopt new powers. From this categorisation we exclude skeletal and zombified revenants, to whom only a meagre fraction of the former will is given, and ghosts, whose transient nature forces them into a special classification. Yet the wraith, the banshee, the spectre. The vampire. The lich. Take, for an example, the infamous deathknight. Only one who lives by the blade may become one. In the fullness of their power, their nethernal weaponry attains a clarity the edge of which few sorcerers’ shields can endure. Take for another the common wight, defined by its formerly innocuous existence, by its purposelessness and the abject state in which it transitioned. To those of this classification who persist into the categorisation of elder, no such barriers even exist!”
– from Mistress Arithos’s Lectures to the Neophyte Assembly
The voices of the gravediggers rattled on and on, coming closer and closer as the hours of the night passed by. He lay there, warm in the soil, listening to them as they approached.
Gradually, the terror of the nightmare receded. Shrill wind cutting across a wasteland of glittering glass. The single, endless scar wending its way through the landscape, the river of blood in which he was reborn.
The memories faded.
By the time the gravediggers’ work was done and the sun was rising he could understand almost one in three of the words they spoke.
It was troubling. He knew he should feel panicked at his current situation. He knew he shouldn’t be under the earth.
Yet he was here, without any idea how or why, and it felt natural. He didn’t need to breathe, didn’t want to breathe. The very idea was a bit sickening – the same as the thought of drinking, or eating. His innards recoiled at the very consideration. They needed nothing from the outside. He didn’t even want to open his eyes, didn’t want to break out of his earthy cocoon. He was fine, as he was. He was perfectly still, perfectly content – in body, at least.
In mind, less so.
What happened to me? Lodus wondered.
He couldn’t remember. He could remember the Infernal Incursion beginning. He could remember helping to barricade the door of the inn with the spare furniture, piling it high to cover the windows. He could remember the way the barkeep and barmaids had joined them at the tables, turning to drink, and letting the patrons help themselves.
He still wore his gear; he could tell from the feel of his clothing. There were eleven blades upon his person – some were plain to see upon his belt or in his boot, while others were concealed, sewn into the soft, inner material of his hardened leather jerkin, accessible to no one but him. Most of them were made for throwing, and he was getting pretty good with them.
But whoever had killed him hadn’t even bothered taking his weapons away.
By the time he’d come to, the Mourning Bells had stopped. At first he’d thought that, perhaps what with being buried and all, he simply couldn’t hear them – but he soon realised that was wrong. He was able to perceive so much more: he knew where the owls were in the trees of the graveyard by the sounds of their wings before they mewled; he knew the number of gravediggers by their footfalls and the patter of their spades, even when they were over fifty yards from him.
But what did it mean that he couldn’t understand people anymore? He could tell he was still in Mund, in Sticktown. The words they’d used were easily comprehensible, when they were comprehensible. The rest of the time it was like squawking coming out of their mouths, but not birdlike – more like the gibbering and hooting of those monkey-things he’d once seen in Firenight Square, yes, that was it…
Day heated the ground, even though it rained heavily. He could smell the corpses of the dead – not dead like him, but really gone. They were rancid bags of gas and rot or charcoaled twigs of bone. He focussed his senses on the scents of peat and clay instead, the patternless patter of the falling rain and worms wriggling, moles tunnelling… He tried to ignore the whispered and wailed words of the grieving.
But something must’ve sunk in. When evening trotted along, Inius and Tall Tarry returned with the rest of their gravedigging crew – Lodus recognised them by their voices, and found he could reliably follow their speech by this point.
“Were another bad ‘un,” Tall Tarry said.
“Never we ‘ad so many Sticktowners perish in a night, I ‘eard Loany Rones say. Is good fer the ol’ coin-purse though, eh?”
“Yer right, Inius. Fink if we ‘ad an Incurvesion every week?”
“We be rollin’ it in!” Inius crowed.
“Though we might as like run outta space too soon. Suppose we could chop down some of the trees…” This was said dubiously.
“Bah! That’er be too much work, even if they let us. Just re-dig a space, shimmy up them ‘eadstones… We could do it ferrever, Tall Tanny, my long-droppin’ man!”
“But what’er we do with them ol’ coffins?”
“Stack ‘em up, like.”
Sticktowners, Lodus grumbled. All the same.
He was from Karamar, but he’d spent half the years of his not-long-enough life in Mund. For most of those – close on ten years – he’d lived in Oldtown, and he was an Oldtowner to the core. But the life of an assassin in a city filled with mages wasn’t a relaxed one, and in order to survive he’d slunk below their attentions, keeping his dirty deeds off-the-books, all payments under-the-table, every meeting ‘clandestine’ – all looked after by the guild.
One of the consequences of being picky about jobs was that he wasn’t rich. But his restraint was more about ensuring he kept his freedom, that he stayed alive, when so many others stepped over the line and got death-warrants put on their heads, got magister-bands hot on their heels in their pursuit of King Money-Bags. Sure, the watch had looked for him a few times, but he barely took enough jobs to pay his way in the guild, give him enough change for bed and beer and brothel. He never killed women or children, never took the big hits with the massive payouts for eliminating Lords of the Arrealbord and such like. Not that he’d have been able to achieve something like that anyway. He only had one magical dagger, and that was on the way out – it only worked half the time these last few months.
It was part of what Dirk Danten always called his ‘cloak of anonymity’. Lodus was average height and build, his hair mud brown and mid-length, and his heritage was mixed-enough that he could pass for a pale member of the dark-skinned human tribes, or a tanned member of the light-skinned ones. His face was blander than a pint of Blackrush – his age was impossible to guess when he was unshaven, despite his youth.
He’d picked the right profession, that was for sure.
But what had happened? He’d left the guild-hall when someone reported magisters seen in the area… As usual they’d fled, and he’d gone across the bridge, went drinking in Sticktown… None of the others had followed him as he’d hoped…
Then what?
It must’ve had something to do with the Incursion. Something came here from the Twelve Hells that made me into… whatever I am.
Inius and Tall Tarry finished the grave they were digging, moved closer. And finished the next, moved closer still.
He still felt relaxed, even when he realised they were going to be digging him up soon. Unless whoever had buried him had supplied a gravestone…
Should I let it happen? Or should I try to get out of here now?
He didn’t want to get out of there. He wanted to stay.
He didn’t even know if he could get out. What did all the packed soil on top of him weigh?
His hands were clasped on his chest. Experimentally, he tried to move the left hand, the one on top.
His flesh… reacted differently.
Faster. The response-time of the motion was incredible. It was as though he’d spent his whole life swimming in honey, and was only now released to move freely through the air. And he was currently buried in the ground.
Powerful, too. The decision to move his left hand in a small arc, swinging back at the wrist to test the firmness of the earth above him, had resulted in his whole arm moving at least six inches, ripping right through the ground.
That decided it.
He stood up, and sprang clear of his makeshift grave, wet soil and torn-apart sod cascading around him.
The night was clouded – he could sense the moon rather than see it, yet it somehow felt like this was his daytime. Shadow occluded nothing – he saw his surroundings in stark relief. The moonlit clouds welcomed him to his new home: the darkness. But it wasn’t unusual to Lodus. He was used to sleeping the day away.
He was aware of the gravediggers, no farther than thirty feet away.
He was aware that they were aware of the sounds he’d made.
Now that’s weird.
He felt their heads turning his way, felt the way their eyes would soon fall on him.
By the time Tall Tanny and Inius swung their heads around, there was only the earth, showering down – then a rending, cracking noise and the sudden wings of birds filled the air.
Lodus had leapt, shooting up into the branches of a nearby copse of trees.
When he grabbed hold of a solid-looking limb he just tore it from the trunk. He braced himself for impact with the ground, but, although he didn’t noticeably slow, he didn’t speed up either, and he landed light as a leaf.
No, no – that’s weird.
The Sticktowners climbed out of the hollow they were digging, staring up at the trees for a solid thirty seconds before going to investigate his abandoned nest – but they’d find nothing more than a sunken pit.
Lodus had already remastered his rolling gait, and plunged through the shadows of the graveyard’s trees with the absolute silence only an undead assassin could muster.
It must’ve been Thornsday, unless he’d completely lost track of time while he was buried, and by the looks of things it was approaching midnight, going into Fullday. The weekend was here – party time. And he was no longer human. Would that have to interrupt his usual habits?
That probably depends on what I am, exactly.
The wind moaned, and he halted, shivering. He felt a response, something inhuman on the tip of his tongue – he could almost understand the whispering of trees, almost taste the judgement in the very atmosphere. His flesh was cold, and that alone should’ve been enough to confirm that he was cursed. The night welcomed him, but he knew that he was a wrong thing now. The very opposite of what he’d always tried to be. He was going to stand out of the crowd now. He would be a hunted creature, an ‘evil entity’ to be put down like a rabid dog.
But… it suited him. The night had always been his home. He might’ve become a ‘wrong’ thing now, yet it felt so right. He could see and smell and hear everything – beetles and birds, moths and mice, foxes and frogs – they were everywhere, their motions standing out to him like they were waving flags and blaring trumpets.
He was glad he was able to get used to his new senses while he was somewhere relatively quiet. If he’d woken up as a… thing for the first time back in the headquarters, he’d have been driven mad with the noise.
He wandered for a while, studying his surroundings.
There were hundreds of freshly-covered graves in this graveyard – small wonder his had gone unnoticed – but none of the others had burst open to spew up their gods-damned contents…
He crossed through a row of trees, into a more heavily-wooded section of the graveyard. It wasn’t long before he heard another set of spades going into the ground, but these gravediggers were far quieter than he’d have expected, given the crew he’d already run into. It sounded as though they were using their tools carefully, so as to make as little noise as possible.
He emerged from the little dell between two slopes and saw the four gravediggers, then saw –
Sorcerers.
There were three, robed in black, with low cowls hiding the majority of their faces from him despite his perfect night-vision. They were standing under the cover of the trees, a good twenty feet from their four lackeys – these men were dressed in tattered Sticktown clothing, spades in their hands, working under close scrutiny to dig up bodies for their masters.
Lodus skirted them, glad that he’d been able to perceive the magic-users there in the shadows of the branches before they’d perceived him. If he’d gone anywhere near their hired help, they might’ve been able to… do something to him. As far as he knew, anyway.
So I’m not the only one to rise from the grave tonight – but I’m the only one like me.
What am I?
But then it came to him like a realisation:
No.
The memory started coming back, and he halted.
No… no,there could be more like me…
He was in the tavern – it’s called the Lost Albatross, that’s its name – he was there, and he was drunk. Not too drunk, but pretty drunk. There was a cute woman with dimples sitting by the bar for hours with her friends. And a cowled man was in the corner. This stranger hadn’t gotten up to aid the others when the Incursion started and they blockaded the entry-points. He hadn’t partaken in the drinking – in fact, Lodus couldn’t remember seeing him drinking anything at all. Couldn’t remember him entering…
The stranger had waited until they were even more drunk, at least an hour after the demons started their attack on Mund. Then he’d stood, and cast off his cloak. Lodus had been sitting in a chair which faced him, faced the window as it shattered, and the assassin got the full treatment.
The stranger was radiant, even in the gloomy corner.
A snowy ermine cape made it impossible to see where the long, pearly-white hair ended; his brow was clear of age-lines, and his strangely-pursed lips instantly made him alarming to Lodus, who wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t spot danger.
It was the piercing lavender-coloured eyes, only now visible, that had really sealed the deal.
“Undead!” he’d cried, pushing back the table and reaching for his knives as he got to his feet, stepping in front of the young serving-boy –
But that’d been his last free action until he woke up undead.
“Hold, sir,” the white-haired man said in a strange accent, raising a single pale hand, palm-out in warning. “Stay thy blades, ye one and all. We are friends here, and yet more.”
That had been all it’d taken. He remembered loosening his grip on the one dagger-handle he’d managed to get hold of, wondering why he’d ever thought this ally was dangerous.
Everyone in the pub froze, but not in a panic, not out of fear. No, it was curiosity on their faces – curiosity, and a peculiar kind of recognition. The way someone would look when they suddenly realised that a stranger was a long-lost loved one.
He made us his friends.
The vampire had walked amongst them, caressing their faces with long, ponderous fingers, stopping at the assassin’s side.
A cold nail-tip snaked its way from Lodus’s temple to his chin.
“Knowest thou not that we shall be kinsmen?” he whispered. Lodus had felt himself shaking, and the vampire smiled, baring his fangs. “That you are as my get, and I your begetter? From father to son, let my words speak to ye. Let my blood flow in ye, people of Mund. Out of mine eye, to thine; this is the last and first twilight thou shalt e’er see.”
The lavender gaze approached, enticing.
He barely felt the fangs enter his throat, barely felt as the life left his body – the blood was drawn out of every part of his flesh in a single long, luxurious whirlpool draught.
He remembered being tossed aside, thrown to the wooden floor, only a husk of a person remaining.
And that was it – the assassin stood there in the darkness of the graveyard, terror and not an insignificant amount of fascination coming over him all of a sudden.
So it was him. He killed me.
He went to a nearby puddle, staring into its surface, and seeing only the majestic night sky for his reflection.
He touched his face. Tugged his hair across in front of his eyes. Wiped the mud from his hands, inspecting the skin.
The scowling, pouting lips of a vampire extending over the fangs.
The pearly moonlight hair.
The pallor of death eternally imbued in his flesh.
I’m not just some zombie thing. I’m one of them. I’m a vampire.
He clenched his fist and grinned.
This is going to be so gods-damned useful!
* * *
He gave the secret knock then stood back and waited, pulling the kerchief he’d stolen tight about his head.
It was only a matter of seconds before he saw a shadow behind the grill, set at head-height in the door.
“Who comes disturbin’ us at this late hour?”
“Alright, Bonkers.”
“Eh?”
“Come on, Bonkers. It’s me.”
“Oh, Lethal! You look ill, man. Where you been?”
“You going to let me in, Bonkers?”
“You gotta say the password, Lethal.”
Lodus sighed. “If you can tell it’s me, what point’s the password?”
“Boss’s rules, you know how it is. Ain’t nothin’ gets past him.”
Fair enough. Bonkers Brell wasn’t wrong, for once.
“Myrielle white?”
“Password’s changed.”
“But it’s not supposed to change till Moonday! It’s not Moonday, is it?”
“We had them magisters in the area, didn’t we? Oh, hang on…”
The latches were released, the door swung aside, and Bonkers dipped his balding head in acknowledgement as Lodus entered.
The reception area was a small bar, complete with leather seats, tables and benches. There were fewer than a dozen people here at this hour, which for many Mundians would be well past bed time – but, for those in Lodus’s line of business, this was the middle of the working-day. Most of his colleagues would be out doing their part to fill the guild’s coffers and line their pockets, picking off their marks while they slumbered. If you were careful about where you entered their body with your knife, you wouldn’t even have to wake them up. Easy money.
Behind the bar was Lady Litania, second-in-charge of the guild. She wasn’t a real lady, of course, but that was what they called her, as a symbol of their respect. She had to be in her fifties given the way her dark hair had greyed, receded, but her brown skin was still uncreased, her eyes still flashed with the keenness of a far more youthful woman.
She’d killed plenty of women and children in her time. You could see it in the curl of her lip, sense it in the slightly-detached air about her. She didn’t care about anything, unless it brought her immediate pleasure or the funds to procure such. Her indulgence of choice was wane, and she was clearly under the effects right now – you could tell from the way she wasn’t stabbing people indiscriminately and screaming in a rage.
Lodus had seen her at all hours of the morning, afternoon and night – there was never a time she hadn’t just had some of the magical herb. Except that one time. That very stabby, very screamy time when Lodus had been roped into dropping not one, not two, but three bodies in the Blackrush – and he hadn’t even been the only one heading back and forth with a blood-drenched wheelbarrow that night.
“Where’ve you been, boy?” she asked him immediately, stepping through the already-lifted flap at the end of the bar and coming around to approach him. Her tight leather clothing revealed her stringy thinness, and she probably had way more knives concealed on her person than he did. “You go missing when the magisters arrive, and now – ach, boy, are you sick?”
She’d had a hand half-reaching out as if to tear the kerchief from around his head, grasp him roughly by the hair or ear – but when she saw the state of his (literally) soiled clothing, his blood-drained, almost greyish skin, she dropped her arm.
Muttering filled the room.
“I don’t want any of you to go crazy here, okay?” Lodus looked around until he saw the face of the small-framed, blond-haired Dirk Danten, and met his friend’s eyes.
“No one’s going crazy,” Lady Litania said quietly.
“Something happened to me. Something bad. Sort of.”
Dirk sat back in his chair, putting down the cards he’d been holding in his hand. “What in the Twelve Hells, Lethal? Take that thing off your dropping head and –“
Lodus removed the bandanna, revealing the glimmering hair, letting the lantern-light fall on his slightly-adjusted features.
“Mortiforn,” Dirk breathed, looking him right in the (what he assumed were) purple eyes.
“’What in Twelve Hells?’” Lady hissed. “You mean the shadowland!”
Lodus glanced at her as she flexed the muscles of her forearms, sending a stiletto-blade shooting from beneath her leather bracers and into each hand –
He could’ve moved aside or disarmed her, he was sure. But he wanted to let her try it. It could make things go more smoothly, here.
The weapons hadn’t even fully-emerged from her cuffs as she lunged forwards, gripping the handles and stabbing him in the heart and the throat.
Her aim was true; the neck was an easy target, and she’d got the tip of her other knife right through a buttonhole in the centre of his jerkin. They both penetrated his skin but the blade buried in his chest snapped off on one of his ribs, and the one in his throat got stuck in his changed flesh.
She tried to yank both weapons free, stab again, but neither wanted to budge. Not while he willed otherwise.
He gave her a grim smile, keeping his teeth hidden.
“May I?” he asked in a pleasant tone.
He gestured; she stepped back and, with a benign expression on his face, he reached up to twist each stiletto loose.
He leveraged his immense strength, ripping them free and letting them clatter on the boards. He took a moment to open his jerkin and explore the hole in his torso with his fingers – he soon found the broken shard of metal, slick with his weird, oil-like blood, and pulled it out. It joined the twisted daggers on the floor.
He could already feel the holes in his flesh itching as they knitted back together. He wiped his hands on his mucky vest.
“’Something bad. Sort of.’ I think I get it.” Dirk had a wary smile on his face. “You’re still you, right, Lethal? You still suck at fortify?”
“By Kultemeren, I’m still me,” Lodus replied. This time as he smiled he couldn’t help but display his teeth, and grinned yet further upon seeing his friend’s eyes widen. “I still don’t see why you ever take the Geomancer.”
“It’s a controversial choice,” Dirk replied tightly.
There was another moment of silence as the two stared at each other – everyone else in the room, even Lady, seemed to be eyeing the pair – then Dirk bowed his head in a gesture of acceptance.
“What are you?” someone asked in awe.
“A vampire, I think.”
Hushed exclamations rippled through the assassins.
“Don’t go picking any fights with trees, then,” Huntress Habitha suggested, her lips twisting. “Or kids with wooden swords.”
“Damn it,” Lodus muttered. “And I had that pencilled-in in my diary – Starday morning, duel a forest to the death…”
“Ouch,” Huntress replied. “Morning? No can do for you, anymore.”
“I think the greater take-away from this is that Lethal keeps a diary,” Dirk said, grinning; he leaned forwards again, putting his elbows on the table. “So what happened, mate? Last I saw, you were headed towards Sticktown…”
Lodus sat down at his table, and explained.
By the time he was done with his little story, two more assassins had joined the impromptu meeting, and none had left their places, everyone listening with rapt attention.
“That’s why I came back here.” Lodus sat back in his chair and spread his hands. “I know the way it’s supposed to go down. I run and hide, leave behind everyone I know, everything I had…” He looked around the room wistfully. “But I’m already a night-walker. Maybe, for me, the rules are different.”
“Yer look bloody ‘ard to kill now, Lethal,” said Charnel Charves, leaning forwards with an eager, almost envious expression on his bearded face. “What’s it like?”
Lodus raised an eyebrow and smirked. “You want to try it?” He put the thought of what that’d actually involve far from his mind…
What does it actually involve?
He couldn’t remember anything past being drained of blood. Had the vampire fed him its own afterwards? Was it that simple?
Dirk laughed, raising a hand as if to stop the idea in its tracks. “Don’t tempt them! They’ll be lining up to die.”
Sounds of amusement and not-complete-disagreement echoed around the room.
“What about drinking blood, boy?” Lady cut in; there was no humour in her voice. “What happens when you –“
“I can eat my marks,” he replied, to a general uproar of laughter.
He still didn’t like to even think about eating and drinking, and he was doing his best to ignore the odours of cider and pork pie lingering in the air, the slurping of ale and stew, disgusting distractions offered by those having their ‘midday’ meals. He looked down at his lap for a moment, composing himself; when he raised his head again, he glimpsed Lady’s eyes moving across the crowd, assessing the situation.
She knows I’m right, he deduced. The majority agree. It’ll go ill for her, if she tries to move against me.
“But you’re dead, right?” Dirk asked, with an unusual gentleness to the tone of his voice. “You can’t go out in the day?”
“I don’t know,” Lodus replied, frowning. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see?”
Lady had folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not letting you work until you know… how you work. And that’s final.”
She turned her back and stalked towards the bar. He opened his mouth to protest, but Dirk leaned forwards, saying, “Let it go, mate. She’ll come around once she’s had a chat with the boss-man. A vampire in the guild could be good for business, if we play our cards right. Speaking of…”
Dirk held out the deck of cards for Lodus to shuffle, but he shook his head, smiling.
“A game of fortify instead?” he offered.
“So long as you don’t give me any drop for taking the Geomancer…”
The guild had a fine fortify set, crafted from pewter, silver and glass, pilfered by one of the thieves’ guilds a couple of years back and traded in exchange for a discount on a contract. It was heavy, so they kept it on the bottom shelf of the cupboard near the door that led to the stairs and the meeting rooms.
Lodus crossed the room and hefted the thing as though it were made from wicker. Before it had taken two hands; now he used two fingers.
He returned and placed it down carefully on the table – he was still getting used to this new form, its new capabilities. Then he beamed at his old friend, baring his teeth once more.
“My dear fellow, don’t you know that is what’s called a ‘controversial choice’…”
* * *
Dawn was approaching. He could feel it – his skin prickled all over, as though he stood before a furnace without sensing any actual heat.
It was obvious that Dirk could feel it too – Lodus’s friend was yawning every ten minutes like clockwork. Most of the others had already retired; they wouldn’t be back till mid-afternoon.
The third game of fortify was drawing to a close, and Lodus was going to be victorious once more. It was the Geomancer, again. Too static. Too slow. Too defensive. It could never win. He’d put an innocent expression on his face during the first game when he employed a Vampire Lord to invade Dirk’s Northern Hold.
But now as he moved his hand, he could feel a sudden lethargy sneaking over him – not his mind, but his flesh. Where before his motions had been swift, powerful, he was now halting, shuddering. Like his prickling skin was tightening.
Something he hadn’t noticed in his grave.
“You could be one of those tragic vampire-killing vampires. There’s always one of those in the stories,” Dirk observed, tipping over his Geomancer for the second time of the night.
“Technically, the vendetta applies. He did kill me, after all. But you guys can’t do it – I’d have to hunt down my maker… We could even get Poem Pethra to write something.”
His back was stiffening now.
He tried to ignore it. It would go away, right?
“Now that sounds fun. I’d be up for something like that.”
“You’d back me up? Against a vampire?”
“Why not?”
“We’re not just unkillable. We’re strong, and fast, and –“
“With all due respect, Lethal – you know I respect you – but you’re not unkillable. Not even close. You’re just… unusual.”
The vampire smiled. The teeth still had the unsettling effect on his friend.
“You…” he stirred, neck muscles locking “… think you… could take me?”
“Honestly? No, of course not. Not in a fair fight. But when we take down your murderer – remember, that’s what he did to you – your ma and pa ‘made’ you, not this thing – when we take him down, we’ll do it our way. Not his way. No fair fight.” Dirk drew in a breath, then matched his smile. “And don’t you forget it either. I don’t want you thinking you’re unkillable. That’s a liability someone in our profession can ill-afford. Especially my mate.”
The little assassin’s eyes widened. “Lodus?”
Lodus couldn’t move. He was frozen, smiling, sitting slouched in the chair.
Panic swelled and receded, swelled and receded.
“What’s up, mate? Talk to me.”
He couldn’t even breathe. How he’d ever spoken since returning from death was a sudden mystery to him. He wasn’t able to force breath between his lips, like he’d always assumed he’d be able to if he’d been paralysed. He wasn’t alive.
At least he didn’t need to breathe, blink, or perform any of the other bodily functions as far as he could tell.
This was it. This was the price he’d paid for his powers.
This was the price of death.
And it completely sucked.
Day, he discovered, wasn’t fun without a few solid feet of earth above you.
The prickling sensation continued, intensified, reintensified, over and over. People came and went, talking to him. Talking about him. Looking at him. And all the while he just felt like writhing but with even that simple pleasure, the contortion of his flesh, entirely denied to him.
Whenever the front door opened, while no shaft of sunlight even entered the room in which he sat languishing, the prickling would redouble for as long as it was kept ajar, such that he felt like screaming at them to just – shut – the – dropping – door! – but there was no way to activate that magic that let him emit sounds.
The boss-man came himself to look at what had happened to “one of our best” (his words). Phantom Phinn wasn’t one to waste his time; the wire-thin, white-bearded old man said he’d return at nightfall which, everyone guessed, would bring Lodus back to himself.
Then, when he thought he was out of earshot in a meeting room upstairs, the boss-man told Lady to look into methods of “offing the vamp” with “zero chance of him coming back”.
Lodus wouldn’t bear a grudge. He’d have probably done the same thing himself. He’d just have to convince Phantom to give him his shot at proving himself.
At noon it was at its worst. Everyone was asleep upstairs or had left for their own lodgings, except for Bonkers Brell, who was asleep in a chair on the other side of the room.
Lodus was thankful he was alone. He felt two great, thick tears well up in the corners of his eyes.
He didn’t need to blink, couldn’t eat, didn’t even sweat – but it seemed he could still cry.
Slowly, the tears dripped down his face, burning tracks of acid into his skin.
I just have to outlast it. I can bury myself again tomorrow. Or at least find somewhere more sheltered to rest, and actually, you know, lie down. You dropping idiot, Lodus. You complete, dropping idiot.
Dirk was more right than he knew when he said what he said. How simple it would be to kill me now. A child with a twig could do it.
There was a temptation to fall into the depths of misery – he knew he should, that he ought to regret the life he’d lost – but what had it been worth, in the end? He was a trained killer. Not so much that he was an expert fighter, or even particularly knowledgeable about poisons or other exotic ways to take down a mark – neither was he a savage, enjoying the slaughter for its own sake. He never worshipped Yane, never prayed to the Blade-Lord for assistance like so many did. But he was trained to kill. He didn’t give himself away. He bided his time. He watched and waited. That was what he enjoyed. And when the time came, he moved relentlessly into position and delivered the stroke with precision.
What is death, to me?
There was a part of him that welcomed this as a natural conclusion. This was his fate. This was what he’d been working towards.
He had his own stupidity to blame for this mishap today. He should’ve learned from the myths, should’ve brought a coffin filled with earth to slumber in. This wasn’t a setback. It was a lesson learnt. He would be stronger for it.
But what other lessons were there to learn?
He could slay his maker, the one who’d done this to him against his will. He could find a way. Track him down and get Dirk to do it by day.
But did he want to?
Who else was going to give him answers, teach him how to live like this? Who else could be better than his ‘begetter’?
Minute by minute the prickling sensation diminished. He felt his freedom approaching, and for the first time since he was petrified the smile frozen on his face felt right.
More than two dozen were gathered – almost the entire guild – when it got close to seven o’clock, and Lodus started to move.
“A-h-h-h-h-h-h-”
“Lethal.” White-haired Phantom was standing across from him, the chair having been moved aside; his hands were on his hips, his stance and gaze more than a little intimidating, even to a vampire. “You’re back with us?”
“I nev… never left,” Lodus moaned. “Oh-h-h, that ser… seriously wasn’t fun.”
He managed to blink. Twitch a finger. Tense his calf.
Relax his mouth – oh, that felt good.
It wouldn’t be much longer now.
“They told me what happened to you.”
“I heard. Everything you all… said, all day.”
“I see.”
The thin old man stroked his beard.
Did I let too much slip out? ‘Everything you all said, all day’…
“And you want to kill the one who did this to you?”
“You’ve been sp… speaking to Dirk.”
His little friend walked around and into view. He’d known Dirk’s exact location behind him from his voice, his footfalls, but he didn’t want them to realise that.
Dirk’s face told him everything. Smiling, sickly.
The thing he could sense in Lady’s hand, ten feet behind him, was a crossbow levelled at his back. Presumably the bolt was wood-tipped.
The back of the chair in which he was sat was far too thick for a single bolt from a handheld crossbow to penetrate. He couldn’t rule out an ensorcelled bolt, but those were expensive…
More likely she was aiming at his head.
Every second she didn’t pull the trigger was a second he gained in vigour.
He’d have to make her wait.
Of more interest to him was the question of Dirk’s sickly smile.
Has he deliberately let his mask of cheerfulness slip? Or is he trying his best to pretend everything’s okay, and I’m seeing through him?
Has he betrayed me too?
It was impossible to say.
Or was it?
“You’ll forgive us if we have misgivings, Lethal,” Phantom was saying. “Have you been, ah… feeling hungry, at all?”
He rode a wave of nausea, fought the urge to spring to his feet.
I died. Died! And this is how you treat me? I should be eating you, old man!
“No,” Lodus answered calmly. “We’re… we’re all friends here…”
It didn’t work like he’d hoped. It was too weak. Phantom just nodded, and muttered off-handedly, “Of course, of course – but that hardly reassures me. I –”
“No,” he repeated himself, more forcefully. “We’re – all – friends – here.”
There was a brief moment where Phantom gazed into his eyes and blinked, when Lodus almost thought it had taken hold, that he’d successfully enchanted the guild-master.
Then Phantom’s gaze shot up over Lodus’s head, as though to meet the eyes of Lady – he was going to nod to her –
Lodus got out of the chair, and turned in time to see the wooden bolt leave the crossbow-string – twisted in time to let the missile pass under his arm, trailing a soft silvery radiance in its wake.
It would hit the table or wall behind him, assuming Phantom got out of the way –
Then there was an ear-splitting snap, like a tree struck by lightning, and he whirled again.
The glowing bolt had changed direction mid-air, wheeling about to dive at his heart –
So he caught it in his fist and crushed it instead.
He hadn’t thought-through the consequences of spellbound splinters in his hand – wincing from the pain, he growled at her:
“Don’t ever shoot me again.”
He met her gaze, furious. She met his, glowering.
And in that moment he knew the connection was made.
Lady’s face creased in horror and she let the crossbow fall from her hands, staring down at it where it clattered to the floor, nothing but complete disbelief at what she’d just done now shining in her eyes, contorting her mouth.
Fury, surety… pain… it was linked. He could access it now.
He looked back at Phantom, smiled winsomely. “As I said, we’re all friends here.”
Phantom smiled back, and Dirk visibly relaxed. The tension in the room eased.
There’d been a time, not long ago, when he’d thought being a vampire would be useful. That was the worst understatement ever conceived by a man’s mind.
“Dirk, what’s a word for something that’s useful, but like, just really damn useful?”
“Uh… something auspicious? Propitious… commodious… convenient…”
Convenient. Gods-damned convenient.
“Yeah, that’s it. Now, Danten, tell me the truth: were you up for shooting me in the back, right then?”
His friend lowered his face, and shook his head softly.
Lodus grinned as toothily as he could manage, and hissed, “I think it’s time for a change of leadership.” Phantom stared back at him, cringing like a scolded child. “Lady, come pick these bits of wood out of my hand. That’s the least you owe me. Poem – you’re gonna want to start coming up with some vampirey words for this one. I’m going out tonight, and it’s gonna be one hell of a story…”
* * *
He was only hunting for half an hour before he sensed another of his kind.
He wasn’t precisely sure what it was about the person he started following that’d given the game away. There was no single element to it: the vampire didn’t have a particularly unusual odour – certainly nothing like the actual corpses Lodus had been able to smell back in that Sticktown graveyard. Nor did the vampire really exhibit any of its speed and power, make any overt supernatural motions.
Yet he knew what it was. It was of his kind. Just like a pet-owner picking out their loyal animal from a line-up of identical creatures, Lodus could pick out his brethren.
Or at least he hoped he could. He’d been following it for almost ten minutes by this point, and it would be embarrassing if he’d got it wrong.
The figure, bent against the wind, was hooded and cloaked, making its way through the crowds teeming outside the Undernight’s bars, brothels and bazaars. The throngs of strolling customers were impeding its movements, the smiling faces of people out enjoying their Fullday evening, unaware of their proximity to a deadly entity.
Still, his quarry was agile. It slipped through gaps in the horde with an ease, a fluidity that bordered the unnatural, making its way towards the lower streets, the less-travelled alleys that were farther from Firenight Square.
He supposed it could’ve been a diviner, but it wasn’t dressed properly. They were giving the game away if they were undercover. No, a vampire made the most sense.
From his rooftop vantage point, Lodus followed, watched, and waited.
Is it my maker? he wondered. The general stature was right, but it was impossible to say for certain without going down there and ripping the hood off the vampire’s head. Is it my murderer?
My teacher…?
It was simpler to use the roofs, even if it made identifying his mark a little trickier. Here he could leverage his strength to cross wide distances with no one below any the wiser – as a rule, Mundians had little reason to look up over their heads, and Lodus readily took advantage of this oversight. He’d done his fair share of roof-hopping as an ordinary assassin. Now he could almost glide over the roadways and passages, leaping lightly over expanses in feats of acrobatics the likes of which he could’ve only dreamt in the past.
If he was wrong about his chosen target, there wasn’t anyone here to see his mistake. He’d left Dirk and the others behind, politely requesting that they go on about their business as normal. They were definitely in thrall to him. He had no idea how long it would last or how far he could go with it. These were things he’d test over the coming days.
First, he had to do this. Find the one who killed him. Hear exactly what had been done to him.
But do I unmake my maker after interrogating him?
Perhaps. It’ll have to depend on the quality of his answers.
When his quarry moved into a secluded alleyway – that was when Lodus drew back his hood and pounced.
The wooden bolt gleamed in his hand as he arced down, streaming its silvery residue through the air –
Just as he was about to land, pierce the vampire’s shoulder with one of Lady’s projectiles – it spun around to face towards him.
He knew, right from the first instant, that this wasn’t his maker. The shape of the chin, visible under the hood – all wrong.
But it’s still a vampire, right?
He landed a little more awkwardly than he’d been intending, and that was all his prey needed to turn the tables.
A hand closed about his wrist, trapping his weapon. Another hand pressed against his chest, slamming him back against the brickwork behind him.
The powder of crushed bricks and little chips of material showered down about him as the other vampire forced his resilient body into the masonry.
“Who are you?” it – she – asked urgently. “What do you want?”
He was close enough to penetrate the shadows of the cowl with his vampiric eyesight.
“I remember you,” he murmured.
She released him, stepped back.
“You were in the Albatross,” she said in a thick voice. “You – you were the one who was going to stop him…” Then her tone became angry. “Why? Why didn’t you stop him?”
She never even cast back the hood of her cloak. She gripped his jerkin with fingers that wrenched holes in the leather, flinging her arms about him and weeping.
And she explained.
Shandarah had been spurned.
Whilst Lodus had surrounded himself with degenerates, outcasts from society, killers-for-hire, Shandarah had lived an ordinary life. She had a husband, two children. She’d been out drinking with four women from the rug shop where she worked, when the Incursion occurred and the vampire entered the pub, entered their destinies, warping them all forever.
Her husband had rejected her outright, she explained. Lodus knew she’d been a woman of not inconsiderable attractiveness – he’d remembered her in the first place because she’d been the most striking woman in the bar – but the minor change in her appearance had obviously clued her husband into the, well, major change in her circumstances. And it had been enough to cause her husband to drive her screaming from the house in which they’d lived for almost a decade.
“He said, that I couldn’t, be around, around the k-kids anymore,” she said as though the words were being dragged from her chest. “I wandered… I got as far as, as the Square, and then everyone was around me, all the noise, all the… everything. A-and then d-day came and I hid under some crates because I was scared the light of the sun would hurt my eyes – and then I couldn’t move, and if someone had moved the boxes I don’t even know what might’ve happened to me…”
“I understand,” Lodus said. “Much the same happened to me.”
“But what am I?”
The assassin looked around the alley – sniffed around, checking they weren’t being spied upon – then said, “We’re vampires. I came after you hoping to find out more, to be honest.”
“V-vampires… But – but I don’t want to dri-“
“Drink blood? Tell me about it.” Lodus sighed, straightened his shoulders. “I think there’s something wrong in the myths. Vampires aren’t just evil monsters. We’re the people we used to be, but… a little changed, that’s all.”
Shandarah touched her face, the features which to Lodus had merely been enhanced by undeath’s caress. Her hair was now a luminous white, like his, and while she’d gained the otherworldly eyes and pointed canines of the undead, she’d retained the roundness of her face, the dimples in her cheeks…
She was probably twice his age, but that didn’t stop Lodus considering her a possible future vampire-paramour. What were a few years to a vampire? He had eternity to enjoy.
“So, Shandarah… I was out here tonight looking for our begetter. I want answers. And if I’m not satisfied,” he brought the undead-slaying bolt into view, weaved it between his fingers, “he might just end up as a pile of dust at my feet.”
“Oh, I’m in,” she said at once. And for the first time since he met her Shandarah stopped quivering, and bared her beautiful fangs in her own deadly smile.
* * *
Vampire team-up time was in full swing. Two hours had passed. The thick crowds of mildly-inebriated, happy-looking revellers had thinned out, replaced with the thick crowds of heavily-inebriated, hostile-looking yobs. Where before most moved in couples or small family groups, now everyone was moving in large packs, gangs or wannabe-gangs of useless layabout scum. Lodus didn’t see any violence, but he could sense it brewing there, under the surface of almost everyone he passed. Then, slowly, even these crowds petered out as a light drizzle started to fall from the clouds.
More so than violence itself, he found that he could sense the comings and goings of others of their kind.
They moved together across the rooftops, Lodus and Shandarah and Kirian.
They’d found Kirian in the back-alleys of the Square, and brought him with them on their quest. He’d been the serving-boy at the Lost Albatross, and he more than any of them, Lodus reflected, seemed enraged by what had been done to him. Lodus was plenty mad, but his madness was an abstracted thing of cold steel and silence; Shandarah’s anger was emotional, but unfocussed, liable to distract her more than serve her; but Kirian was berserk.
He’d have to be held back until they got their answers.
Lodus had gifted one of the ensorcelled bolts to Shandarah, but had claimed he had no more, the other two tucked away inside his jerkin, their radiance thereby dampened. He didn’t think he trusted Kirian with one – not yet, at least.
The boy didn’t just want their begetter dead. He wanted him extinguished from all the planes forever.
That, however, was probably out of their reach. It would require sorcery, and probably a higher calibre of sorcery than the guild’s coffers could afford. Until he found a way of leveraging his newfound abilities to allow him to rob a noble…
It’d be simple, actually, wouldn’t it? Lords and ladies get protected, but do their staff? I could just bewitch the servants, and wait there shining my shoes in the trees beside the manor while my new lackeys bring all the most precious, expensive items right out to me…
Or have them brought to another associate, while I wait in the headquarters…
I could assassinate the same way too…
“Lodus!” Kirian hissed.
He hadn’t been paying attention. The assassin looked at the young, heavy-browed serving-boy in his grey tunic and leggings. He was crouching near the edge of the roof, indicating the street below.
Lodus bent his ear. There were lots of conversations taking place in the street, but he rifled through them rapidly, even though they were several storeys up.
The posh voice stuck out like… well, like a mage in a street full of lowborn.
“… better get those new eyes looked at if this is what you saw in our future. Alley-crawling?”
“They’re here. It’s close.” This voice was different. Lowtown, if he was correct, though the man was trying his best to mask it, sound all prim and proper. “Laintor, can you get Orvati to do a sweep?”
“I’m on it.” A new voice – highborn again.
“Osselor, I’ve got something.” Another highborn. “They’re – oh, yeah –“
The posh-boys’ voices cut off suddenly.
Dropping magisters! Lodus cursed silently.
“Quick!” he whispered. He took Shandarah by the arm, and moved towards Kirian…
But it was already too late for him by the time he heard the sonorous chanting, a sound that should’ve been drowned out by the crowd’s chatter –
It wasn’t just a sound. It was a scent. A caramel, cinnamon-like fragrance that should’ve been imperceptible over the crowd’s odours…
Oh, it was too late for all three of them.
The words were something… something…
Something I knew when I was dead.
That was it! That was his true tongue! He understood –
Dark-dwellers of the altered hour
Come hence, and sense this subtle flower
That by my spell thou shouldst abide and
Forget all dreams thou hadst of power
And the three vampires descended, the lethargy of their thoughts befitting the languor with which they moved through the air, falling, sweeping down softly to stand on the ground before the magisters. The sorcerer’s incantation resounded in Lodus’s skull, a perpetual lullaby that set him adrift, dulled his violent urges.
Fat magister in red; bearded magister in blue; little magister, also in blue –
But the mage right in front of Lodus was a tall sorcerer, wearing a grey robe that was marked on the right side of the chest with its gold, ten-pointed star. A tiny winged imp, no bigger than a kitten, was curled up on his shoulder. The sorcerer held a purple rose in his upraised, gloved hand – a rose that dripped with a fluid that was thick like paint, strands and globs of wine-red, fuchsia and grape-coloured material pouring off it, pooling on the cobbles.
It smelt like food – it smelt edible.
The vampires were transfixed, staring at it. Lodus sensed it as home; it reminded him of… reminded him…
Shrieks and jeers filled the air, and the remaining crowds parted, giving the mages and their opponents a very wide berth. By the time Lodus stirred the fog in his mind enough to let the noises through, they were almost alone in the street – some drunks loitered about fifty feet away outside a disgusting-smelling, all-hours fried-fish place; there were a few faces murmuring at windows…
“… believe it worked as well as it did,” the fat magister in red was saying, drawing a wooden dagger from his sleeve; and Lodus returned his attention to the sorcerer standing in front of him, the beautiful flower…
“They’re supposed to be kneeling,” the sorcerer said. “They might not’ve drunk before. Hurry. You’ve got to… pierce the heart right through, not just stab it.”
It was the worried quiver in his voice that did it.
Nothing triggered the parts of Lodus’s brain that detected peril, even as the fat magister drew his vampire-killing weapon, but this… this tremble in his voice did it.
And not just for him.
It was Kirian who moved first, taking the sorcerer’s upraised arm and, with a snarl of spite, twisting it into a knotted mess.
The sorcerer shrieked; his imp disappeared in a flash of crimson flame, and something was suddenly lost… The sweet, desirable scent vanished – the echoing song in their skulls faded away to nothingness.
Something new was there instead, diverting all attention.
The scent of the magister’s blood, pouring freely from the mangled limb.
“Celestium,” Kirian breathed, sinking his teeth straight into one of the finger-stumps.
Oh – oh no –
It wasn’t a case of temptation. It wasn’t something you could just resist. There was a reason that the vampire in the stories, the one who could live peacefully amongst humans, was always presented as one-in-a-million.
This was resistible in the way that the man lost in the desert could resist plunging into the long-sought oasis, cleansing his body and soul in its depths.
This was a temptation like that of the drowning man, tempted to break the surface of the sea, take his first live-giving breath after minutes that lasted years.
In the moment that the sorcerer’s skin split open, Lodus realised. He understood. Why the myths were true. Why Shandarah had to be driven out of her home. Why it was lucky she hadn’t yet figured out how to bewitch her husband, persuade him to let her stay.
She would’ve eaten her children alive the first time they had an accident.
As swift as darkness closing in on the last candle when it was extinguished, and well before the aghast magisters could even take one step towards aiding their colleague, Lodus and Shandarah joined Kirian in his feast.
The blood consumed him as he consumed it – they were as one, and he knew who he was at last.
I walk the glass plain. My spirit has flesh, flesh that falls apart like ribbons, heals back in the same manner. But not without the pain.
The pain.
As minutes turn into hours, I shiver under the many moons – but I cannot lie down, cannot subject myself to that; so I stumble on, sacrificing my feet, over and over.
And when I find it I fall into the red river and drown myself.
The relief.
It is as I arise from the river that I am reborn.
Even one of them on their own would’ve drained the sorcerer dry in seconds – with the three of them, he was a husk before his heart could beat twice. They let the corpse fall down, grey and floppy as the robe it wore.
Lodus knew it now. He was death. Death was his purpose.
The fight was incredibly brief, considering their enemies were the much-vaunted magister-defenders of Mund. The sorcerer had been the only real threat, and he’d made mistakes.
The flames that burst into life in the fat man’s hand vanished just as quickly as he went down to his knees in a puddle of blood, his throat not just torn open but torn off. A female magister at the rear started chanting a spell, and she swelled up, ten, fifteen feet in height; by the time she arrived, swinging her massive fists, beard-mage and small-mage had joined the others on the cobbles, dying.
By using her druidry to increase her size, the magister had merely increased the amount of blood they could drink from her. When she toppled, the tall glass window of a nearby ground-floor shop shattered, and they lay like leeches upon her body, taking every drop.
The horrified sounds of the onlookers and their flight from the vicinity mattered little to Lodus and, as far as he could tell at least, the other members of his small but burgeoning cabal of vampires were similarly disinterested.
They’d found what they’d really been seeking all this time. They’d been empty inside, and now they’d been filled. They were complete.
They hadn’t needed answers. They needed this.
He withdrew his fangs and cleaned off his mouth on the still-enlarged druid’s still-enlarged robe.
“Let’s not linger,” he said. “That little demon disappearing – it doesn’t bode well. There might be more.”
Kirian and Shandarah broke off too, following his example, wiping their gory chops on the sail’s-worth of fabric.
“Let them come,” Kirian said. There were little bits of flesh in his teeth as he grinned. “Man, I feel like I can fly!”
The vampire-boy sprang into the breeze from his crouched position, and, while he wasn’t actually flying, Lodus could see the way the air seemed to catch him even more than before, carrying him up almost to the height of the surrounding buildings in a single bound.
Kirian sort-of hovered as he slowly descended again.
“They’ll be even more prepared next time,” Lodus warned as the boy reached the ground once more. “We came really close to dying, just then.”
“We’re already dead,” Shandarah whispered.
She was staring down at the marks on the magister’s robe left by the blood on her lips… Lodus could see she hadn’t even come close to getting all of it off – her cheeks and throat remained slathered in the red stuff.
“I’m still me,” he said firmly. “We’re still us. Just…”
“What?” Kirian snapped. “You saying we won’t do this again?”
Because the man in the desert will abandon the oasis after a mouthful. The drowning man will take just a single breath before diving back beneath the waves.
“But… it felt so good.”
Lodus shuddered, hearing the words come, not from Kirian’s lips, but Shandarah’s, knowing she was right.
He led them away from the killing-ground and, exploring his own increased abilities, moved lightly to the rooftops in order to take them to their new home, where they would be safe.
He got it now. He understood.
Their begetter was gone. The vampire would have easily dug him up, dug them all up, if he’d wanted to have a chat with them about their recent transformation. Every day that passed made finding him less and less likely. And the magistry would’ve been after him, the trail of destruction he’d left in his wake over the last few days, if he was still around. Not after their little trio of newborn vampires.
They would learn the lesson from him all the same. They would go into hiding, and grow stronger. They would figure out how best to survive the day, and how to make more like them, eventually. Figure it out on their own. Trial and error.
It didn’t take long for them to get back to base. Lodus halted on the corner of Welderway, on the roof of Strippey’s Plate-Merchants, not fifty yards from the entrance to the headquarters. His headquarters, now, he supposed.
He knew it wouldn’t matter – they could just enchant the mortals as they saw fit – but even still, he didn’t want to bring this argument in with him when he introduced his vampire-fellows to his assassins for the first time.
“Look, Shan, you’ve got to let it go,” Kirian was saying. He sounded almost placid now. “We killed them. They were about to kill us. Did you see what they did to us? Casting a spell to turn us into animals, all trussed-up for the slaughter…”
“Did you see what we did to them?” Shandarah asked, gleaming eyes downcast. “You wouldn’t treat animals like that.”
Lodus didn’t have the same misgivings as either of them.
“I know what we did,” he said softly, and they both shut up, turning to him. “Murder. I’ve got no illusions, no delusions about it. It wasn’t self-defence, and it wasn’t wrong, either. We could’ve fled from the mages as easily as kill them, couldn’t we? But did they deserve to live, trying to return us to the grave, just like that?
“No. We drank deep, and we were at peace – you felt that, right? Our maker be damned – we had the power, tonight, and we murdered the murderers. Well, you know what? We will do it again.”
He looked at them, and even Shan met his eyes.
Emboldened, he went on, “We’ll do it right. No butchery, like that was, bleeding them out in the street. We’ll find the bad guys, the wrong ones, and we’ll eat them. Keep it real nice and quiet. I’m going to show you how. And we won’t be in danger, we won’t be causing harm. Just removing the vermin from Mund.”
There was a pause, then Kirian asked, his voice halting in its eagerness:
“W-when, Lodus? When can we do it again?”
The assassin smiled, and picked a surprise piece of magister from his own teeth with his tongue, spitting it aside.
“Soon.”
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