GLASS 4.4: LODUS
“It is a sorry Dracohost you bring to shadow me, yet I soar alone and still you will not set upon me, will you? Am I so fearsome, son of no cousin of mine? Whence this wretched ideology, this accursed democracy that makes me share in the blame of despotic leaders? I no longer care for this world. I reject it and all its wiles! Remove all constraint! Radical anarchy. A rule of one. It is how we were. It is how we shall be again. The strongest shall rise at my heels – the Empire shall reawaken. Do you hear me? I am about its business even now! You do not banish me – I reject my princedom! But I will keep my crown. I earned it. Take it if you will try me. No? No. I thought as much.”
– from Prince Deathwyrm’s rebuke, upon his exile
Fifteen minutes later, we left the pub and headed for the ‘alley’ – the perfectly-clean, perfectly-traversable walkway we’d passed on the way here. (So clean and traversable I would’ve had my doubts as to its utility as a place to safely change into our robes, were it not for our illusionist friend accompanying us.) Em must’ve been warming the air around us – either that or it was the beer – and it might’ve made for a pleasant experience, walking down the street in a group of my peers, enjoying their company. But before we reached the corner I could sense the people gathered there, sense the eyes on us.
Whispered words of violence. Body odour, and onion-breath. The gentle chink of weaponry.
“Trouble,” I said under my breath, just loud enough for the others to hear. I didn’t slow my pace.
“Only if we react the wrong way,” Killstop replied.
“S’only ten of ’em,” Spiritwhisper sniffed, moving ahead of me to the front of the group, swaggering brazenly.
“Should I…?” Em pointed a finger at the sky, only a hint of her drunkenness in her voice.
Killstop shook her head. “Not needed – trust me.”
“Hmmmm.” Nighteye sounded a little concerned; the druids were at the back of the group. “What’s going on, Feych-?”
The sound was smothered as Fangmoon pressed her hand over his mouth.
It was too late for more discussion anyway. We were there, the rogues’ shadows unfolding from the edges of the path, figures moving to stand in our way.
“Well well.” It was the voice of a Lowtowner, hard and merciless. “What ‘av we ‘ere?”
Almost a dozen of them. Short blades and clubs. Eyes that gleamed with greed and impatience.
“Been waiting long, Mr. Onion Breath?” I asked archly, looking around at them; they might’ve been standing in darkness but I fancied I could’ve counted the hairs in their beards if I’d had a need to.
I figured I could draw out a shield faster than they could attack, and I knew I could summon a demon faster, but I had several beers in me and –
Something was off. The looming shadows of the ten strangers had frozen unnaturally, barely wavering, as though they were branches being stirred by the night-time breeze.
Spiritwhisper drew back an arm, then carefully reached out a single finger, poking the thug who had spoken right in the middle of his forehead. Hard.
Hard enough to throw the hireling off-balance, send him crashing back to the ground, stiff as a board.
None of the others reacted – they were eerily still, eerily quiet –
“Guess that’s handled,” Spiritwhisper said merrily. “You guys wanna mess with ’em?”
“Uh… what?” Fangmoon said.
“You know…” The enchanter spread his hands, smirking.
“Leave them in a compromising situation?” I asked.
“Bang on! I knew you’d get it.”
One of the rogues pirouetted out of the shadows on his tiptoes, hands held above his head, fingers interlaced. The others followed. Within seconds they were dancing elegantly in a ring about the fallen form of Onion Breath.
I smiled, the tight smile of one who is amused but knows he shouldn’t be.
“Just put zem to sleep, and ve vill call ze vatchtower before ve leave.” Em didn’t sound particularly amused.
Spiritwhisper looked wounded.
Fangmoon seemed to take a different perspective. “Or, make them curl up together and go to sleep, their arms and legs all lovingly tangled-up. The looks on their faces when the watchmen wake them…”
“Or just make them go hand themselves in to the watch right now?” I suggested.
Nighteye’s face had lit up. “There are, hm, a large number of possibilities, but I think you’ll find all of them are, hm, criminal to say the least, and the last thing we want is someone examining their memories, as, you know, hm, all of our identities are right there, and unless we track down the ones who sent them, removing our faces from their minds isn’t going to stop them –“
“You’re right,” I said, holding out my hand. “You’re right, and someone could come by here any minute.” I couldn’t sense anyone approaching, yet. “Killstop?”
She sighed. “The sensible way?”
That was the Tanra I expected.
“Please.”
She looked at Spiritwhisper. “Put them back in the shadows, give them a fifteen-minute countdown till they come around. Make them remember chasing us north, then east. We split up and got away in a crowd leaving the Fountains. They reconvened here to disappoint each other with their news.”
“Give me a minute,” the enchanter said with a shrug; if he was let down, he didn’t show it. He turned back to look at the ten miscreants, staring at each of them in turn.
Tanra’s eyes twinkled. “They’re very worried about Guildmaster Strolt, the serial philanderer with the moustache back at the Mare, discovering their failure.” She didn’t mention why or how his rakish behaviour was relevant – I got the impression from her off-handedness that it was probably just how the arch-diviner had chosen to categorise the snob the moment she’d delved into his past. “They’ll make excuses to each other and go home. Chances are within two weeks their sad little gang will be no more. One of them will even end up working as a nurse.”
“Seriously?” Fangmoon asked. “You can tell – all that –“
“Oh, sure,” Tanra said and shrugged. “They don’t run into diviners on a daily basis, you know? This one – he’s got a cancer living in his tooth, or he will have in a few years – that one – he’s going to be killed by a worshipper of the Blade-Lord –“
She didn’t quite seem to notice, amongst all the billions of details she was processing in her brain right now, the look of abject horror on Fangmoon’s face.
“Haven’t spent much time around diviners yourself?” I asked quietly.
The druidess just shook her head.
“– die of old age, but with a swollen thing in his side the size of his head –“
“Oooookay, Killstop.” I threw out a hand. “I’m not sure if it’s gonna be me or Fangmoon who starts throwing up first, but I know at least one of us will, so for Celestium’s sake could you…”
“Fine.” Tanra bared her teeth. “Had enough to drink? Think you’re fit to fly?”
“I can outfly you,” Em said.
Tanra gave Em an arched-eyebrow, ‘are you sure about that?’ look.
At the same time Fangmoon was staring at Nighteye, who was looking a little green.
“It might be time to sober us up,” she said warily.
“Think I… hm… forgot how,” he slurred, slouching against her.
She smiled sympathetically, and placed a hand against his head. Almost at once his skin returned to its usual complexion – he took a deep breath and stepped back on steady feet.
“Can you do that for the rest of them?” Tanra asked.
Fangmoon nodded.
Spiritwhisper had raised his hands, fingers splayed and pointing at our would-be-assailants. Now he lowered them again and turned back to us.
“Hope you all had a good planning-session while I was working,” he said, smiling smugly.
Fangmoon sighed, then shook her robe and wig out of her knapsack.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
“Feel better?” Stormsword asked me, barrel-rolling and flying face-up directly beneath me, so that I looked down into her masked visage. “Zis is preferable to being Kas?”
“Immeasurably,” I said. How could the two worlds compare? I was riding on the wave of the dark night wind, my fellow champions around me. My wings were hanging at my back more for reassurance than out of necessity. The removal of the alcohol from my system thanks to Fangmoon left me with a pleasurable feeling without any of the lethargy or giddiness.
And we were on our way to the heart of the brand-new vampire community of Mund.
“But you vere surprised I vonted to stop being Em.”
“Gee,” I put on a gormless voice, “that Stormsword, she sure sounds like an Onlorian –”
“Oi! You git –”
I dodged the little pointy rays of light she flicked at me, then drew up my shield when she didn’t stop – it absorbed them, spreading a white radiance across its ring, almost making the force-barrier visible to the mortal eye.
“Coming up on Welderway now!” Spiritwhisper sounded more nervous than I’d anticipated, given his earlier bravado.
But his mind-tricks don’t work as easily on things that aren’t from Materium, I thought. And things like vampires are probably hard to fool with illusions – there’s more than just sight and sound to consider. You’d need to give your fake creatures heartbeats, sweat on their skin…
Even now we were, according to our enchanter, ‘invisible to our enemies’ – another vague thing like ‘protected against ill-will’ that was still poorly understood, from what I’d read. Would a random Mud Laner who didn’t like Kastyr Mortenn be unable to see me? Would someone merely set to spy on me find themselves unable to do so, or was that passive-enough to classify them as a non-enemy?
We drew up in a loose formation on the other side of the street from the assassin’s guild-hall, and I felt distinctly visible as I floated there above the rooftops. I still had enough of the illusion-piercing, brown-tinted sight left in my eye to bring it back into focus if I wanted to – but it wouldn’t help here.
“What do you sense?” Fangmoon asked.
When no one replied I realised she meant me.
“I, uh… Give me a second.”
I looked down at our target. An innocuous wooden door, one of many in an innocuous row of terraced properties that would’ve looked like a single long brick building without them. A small grille was set into it, so that those within could scrutinise their visitors, a metal mesh through which no light was currently being emitted. The thin windows spread across the three storeys of the property were criss-crossed with black iron bars, and heavy curtains or some other more-permanent means had been used to block all sight.
What do I sense?
Sense. Like Morsus lying there in the apartment.
Like my parents.
It hit me, and a wave of bile rose in my throat. I managed to swallow it back before it was too much for me, but I still bent over, choking.
“Feychilde!” Em cried, streaking to my side, putting a hand on my shoulder –
I waved her off.
“It’s okay. Thanks. I’m okay.” I looked up at everyone grimly. “I… yes. This is definitely the place. There are… many dead bodies in there.” If it weren’t for the nearby forges stinking up the place and the general condition of this part of Oldtown, it would be odorous-enough that even passers-by would be able to sense what I now could sense.
“I get that,” Fangmoon said. “Millions of flies in there, do you think?”
Nighteye nodded.
“But anything else?” Spiritwhisper pressed. “Anything… undead?”
I sorted through the bodies with my mind. I could feel them as I threw out my consciousness over the building like a wave crashing onto a beach – they were the cracks and dips in the rocks where the water could pool once the wave drew back, the corpses where my thoughts, my will could reside –
And one that was already full, swirling with purple fluid. A crack into which my will would not fit.
Not at this range at any rate.
“I sense one. Only one. Second floor, I think.“
“I‘ll take the door off,” Fangmoon said, immediately drifting down towards the target.
She wasn’t exaggerating. We were still only landing behind her when she reached out, sank her fingers into the solid wood of the door, and then casually ripped it free of its hinges, laying it aside against the wall.
“Or maybe we should’ve, you know, just opened it,” I said. “If we want the others to come back, trap them –“
“Honestly, Feychilde,” Killstop said, “this isn’t going to make that much of a difference.”
I wondered why, if she knew as much about how this expedition was going to pan out as she clearly did, she let me answer the question about the number of undead in here. She surely knew?
But diviners can miss things, I reminded myself. Their visions are incomplete. They aren’t all Arreath Ril.
We stepped inside, with a few murmured curses at the stench of rotten flesh which was now overpowering; I imagined it flowing out like a noxious green mist into the street behind us. Em’s power surged in with us, quickly making the air more breathable, and her light illuminated our path.
The short hall opened into what looked essentially like a small pub. A well-stocked bar, bottles on the shelves; sturdy tables, many comfortable-looking chairs.
Everything covered in blood, bits of flesh.
And a crashing sound coming from upstairs.
We crossed the room in a flash, propelled by Em’s constantly-streaming wind; bursting through the far door, I saw the stairs heading to both the upper and lower floors.
No time to investigate the corpses down there in the basement, I plunged up the stairwell – I could pinpoint the vampire from the noise it was making.
It was trying to claw its way through the masonry on the back wall of the building – it knew we were here – and by the sounds of things it’d only need a few more seconds to rend the bricks apart –
Fangmoon tore through the next door, and I could see our prey in the darkness.
This room looked like it must’ve been used when the assassins were conferring with clients – there was a single large table, several big, deep chairs. Windowless.
And to my right, on the other side of the table, a pale man with pale hair was standing, clad in form-fitting black. He was frozen in place, as if my gaze alone sufficed to pin him there, halt the frantic motions that had left the wall behind him in ruin, bits of brick-dust still clinging to his fingers.
His purple eyes stared back at mine through the slits in my mask.
They’re too powerful for the invisibility, I realised.
“Begone from here.”
He intoned the words, speaking slowly and forcefully. He wasn’t just trying to hide his pain. He was attempting to reflect my silent assault, put me under his power somehow.
I shook my head. Whatever he was trying, it wasn’t getting through my barrier.
“I’m afraid things are going to work a little differently from the last time you ran afoul of the law, Mr. Pointy-Teeth. How about you start by telling me your name and swearing me your everlasting service? Then we can get onto your full report.”
He glared at me only for a split-second longer before a shudder passed through him. Then he dropped his gaze to the nearest chair in defeat.
“I am Lodus Phertaine. I swear…” He choked. “Sw-swear you my everlasting service. I…” His voice fell to a whisper. “It all went wrong.”
* * *
Nighteye sensed someone alive downstairs, and he and Fangmoon went on a trip to the basement to apply whatever healing they might to the poor wretch who’d been abandoned in a roomful of corpses. The rest of us stayed upstairs, listening to the vampire’s tale.
Lodus had been your average assassin trying to keep his head down and his belly full when he’d been ‘begotten’ by this overpowered vampire king (or whatever Timesnatcher had called him). He was the first of many to be so created… He had enlisted Shandarah and Kirian when searching for their creator, to learn from him or kill him – it seemed they hadn’t quite been sure which. But the magisters had interrupted them, and inadvertently awakened the latent thirst within them in an attempt to bring them under the effects of an enthralling spell.
Em’s hands clenched as she listened to the torrent of information pouring out of my newest minion’s mouth.
The trio had intended to find the worst of the worst to kill, emulating the heroic vampires of legend, to appease their own consciences, if not do some actual good. But that had quickly devolved into a nightmare when Shandarah tried to turn her recently-estranged husband and son into creatures like her.
“Sometimes all you want is control, and no matter what you do, it eludes you,” Lodus said in a quavering voice. “All the power in the world is the thing you want most, and the thing you need least. It’s hollow. All it does is change the battlefield. I –“
“You let her change her husband. Her son.” Stormsword glowered at the vampire from behind her phoenix mask. “And they became ghouls. There can be no excuse for it.”
“That’s not on me,” he snarled at her, then, as if experiencing a sudden pain, he snapped his head back to gaze at me. “She had her own will. She’s… She…”
“Had?” I asked gently.
“She took her own life.”
“She was not alive,” Stormsword said coldly.
“Unlife. Whatever this thing is. Them first, then herself.” He shook his head, eyes wide and despondent. “I can’t control them. Kirian started changing my friends, and with some it even stuck. And when I tried to stop him, his… children took his side. He found others – and they’d already fed, they flocked to him. I… I let them be. I just… There’s nothing I can do.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “They’re assassins. Trained to kill. There’s nothing I can do.”
I shook my head, smiling. “That may not strictly be true.”
“Feychilde?” Spiritwhisper said quietly, not taking his eyes off Lodus.
I looked at him, the swirling blue mask covering his upper face, coloured metal shaped like trails of flame rising off above his head.
“Can I ask it a question?”
“Erm – well, of course…” The question baffled me. “I didn’t mean to give the impression you couldn’t.”
“How many did he turn? This Kirian bloke.”
Lodus went through them, muttering under his non-breath, ticking them off one by one. Some had escaped, a poet and a huntress, it sounded like – which made no sense to me whatsoever. Others – a phantom, and a lady? – had become something else…
“Six,” my minion answered the enchanter at last. “Six became vampires, ten became these horrible, gaunt things. Ghouls, I guess. All of them under Kirian’s sway.”
“And how many of the others, turned the same night as you, did he bring in?”
“Eight or nine… I think. Maybe more, by tonight.”
Killstop hissed. “There were seventeen turned by the vampire elder. Remember, the map?”
I frowned. “Damn. Damn damn damn.”
“So…” I could almost hear the cogs turning in Spiritwhisper’s head. “So Timesnatcher was wrong?”
“It would look like it.” Stormsword still glared at Lodus, fists clenched.
“He thought more of the vampires sheltering in this place were changed when Lodus was,” Killstop said. “We’ve got eight or nine of them based here, which means there are eight or nine of them out there. Lost.” She sighed. “See, I didn’t see this…” She opened and closed her hands nervously, started pacing.
“You’re wondering what else you missed?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Don’t. There’s a million things you missed. Diviners aren’t unlimited, or so I’m given to believe. You can be wrong. You can misinterpret. And you can only see so far. Even if the others don’t get in the way, there’s still a horizon, right?”
She stopped pacing, stared at me for three infinite seconds, then resumed pacing again.
“Feychilde.” Stormsword’s voice was almost unrecognisable as Em’s, not just because of the accent she was putting on – but because she practically growled my name. “You must turn it over to me now.”
I caught the dangerous glint in her eye and I knew what she intended.
I hadn’t ever actually resolved myself on the question of joining with undead creatures. Demons, no, never. But the undead were different. They were almost human, even if all hope of true humanity had been irrevocably lost. Netherhame and Shallowlie used them, and they didn’t seem so bad. Dustbringer used them…
I admitted it to myself – I felt sorry for Lodus.
“Isn’t it better if I keep him?” I asked. “I can use him. Make him fight, or make myself stronger, faster…”
“I saw you,” she said, voice low, brittle. “I saw what you did to that demon, when yours was being hurt. Now all I want to do is kill one. You know what he did to those I am sworn to defend. Those humans.”
I looked from Stormsword’s hard eyes to Lodus’s pitiful purple ones.
“I don’t think they can be permanently destroyed like this,” I said. “I think, from what I’ve read, his spirit’s just going to linger in the nether-world, and if there’s some ritual to avoid it, it’s something I’ve not read anything about. I…”
If we destroyed him properly, would he pass on? To Celestium?
No – he’d be Infernum-bound, surely…
“I’ll take my chances,” the wizard said, staring fixedly at the vampire again.
I sighed inwardly. This was why we’d come, after all. It wasn’t just to catch the killers – it was to make Em feel better. Give her some closure.
“I’m not responsible for whatever you think I am,” Lodus said, trembling. “I don’t want to die, not again – please, I don’t wanna go back there – please, Master…”
I ground my teeth together as I hardened my heart.
Have to give her the choice. Have to let her make the decision. If it had been my friends…
“Okay,” I said, nodding to her, “of course, but if you –”
I wasn’t expecting her to put her hand out and funnel a beam of lightning from her palm straight into Lodus’s forehead.
She approached him, the blinding tongue of flickering energy that connected them only growing in intensity as she stepped closer, then closer again – his head smoking, he flung out his arms wide and sounds were pulled from his throat… horrid, wet, bleating sounds.
“Mortiforn,” I heard Killstop say in a hushed tone.
The wizard got close enough to finally clap her hand right down on top of his head – and in a burst of white light the vampire exploded into dust.
“Awesome,” Spiritwhisper intoned.
She let the wind flow about her, keeping the wisps of smoke from nearing her, steering the dust away from her clothes, her shoes, as though even in death she didn’t want anything to do with him.
Then she looked back at us. “So – where next?”
“Follow me,” Killstop said. “I could use you at the front door.”
She turned and started heading back down the stairs, Stormsword and Spiritwhisper on her heels.
I left the room and its gently-drifting dust, closing the door behind me.
I hadn’t anticipated Em’s pure rage – I’d seen her angry before but not like this. I almost felt hesitant about proceeding. I knew catching the vampires and ghouls was a good thing, even if that meant wiping them off the plane, but was this really going to help Em get over what she’d seen?
I couldn’t make that decision for her, even now, and I couldn’t deny her the right to see them dead as recompense for what they’d done.
They’re dead already, I reminded myself. This is just putting them out of their misery… Just like the Body Brigade…
“How’s it going down there?” Killstop asked as we descended.
“We’ve got two breathing,” Fangmoon reported. “Major blood loss, necrotised extremities. Can’t stabilise one of them, though. I think they’re dying.”
“I might be able to help with that,” I said.
While Killstop, Stormsword and Spiritwhisper exited the stairwell and headed back to the bar area, I continued, floating on down to the floor below, my wings providing me just enough light to see by.
The steps over which I flew were coated in red, blood both dry and wet, the latest puddles slowly congealing into an awful paint. The stench was like that of a slaughterhouse.
Which was basically what this place had become – except the only livestock these creatures fed on was human.
I couldn’t forget the look of horror in Lodus’s amethyst eyes, no matter how hard I tried.
The steps terminated at an open door, beyond which a macabre sight greeted my eyes. A room, twelve-foot ceiling, walls of roughly-hewn stone. Twenty-five, thirty feet in diameter. A large space, for a structure such as this.
The large space was filled, its unmoving occupants strewn about carelessly, broken like discarded toys.
I saw everything, and there was no unseeing it. These accursed eyes of mine pierced the darkness, uninhibited, falling on every grisly detail.
Instead I focussed my gaze on the druids crouching over their patients, in one of the only empty spots on the floor. I picked my way through the… mess to reach them, and ejected Avaelar at the same time.
“Master!” he moaned, quickly averting his eyes from his surroundings, staring up at the ceiling. “This is a bleak awakening!”
“Sorry, er – I’ll try to be gentler next time,” I said. “Can you do anything with these two?”
Fangmoon and Nighteye shuffled aside, looking worn and weary to my eyes.
The sylph breathed in the faces of both the dying people. A charcoal-skinned young woman and a white-skinned old man, both pale as sheets. I purposefully kept my eyes from their lacerations.
Avaelar breathed again, and then looked up at me, shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked the druids.
“Vampires,” Fangmoon spat.
“We surmised that the wounds themselves are laced with, hm, nethernal poison, I suppose you’d call it,” Nighteye offered, “so after several attempts to heal the affected areas we, hm, employed a spell of great efficacy to remove and reform those areas –“
I shook my head. “Get to the point, Nighteye.”
Fangmoon sighed. “We can’t do anything with them here. We need L-”
“-Leafcloak,” I finished her word.
I’d hoped to do this without involving the senior champions, but if lives were on the line, what choice did we have?
“I can try again –” Fangmoon said, looking down at the comatose victims they’d been treating.
“Nay, madam,” Avaelar interjected, “yon noble sir has it aright. Betwixt ye there is neither will nor wisdom sufficient to accomplish this deed.”
“You’re pleasant,” Fangmoon said blandly.
“He gets nervous around people,” I said and, ignoring his protests, continued: “Are you going to get in contact…?”
The druidess pulled out her glyphstone and held it up – there was every chance she was already mentally calling out Leafcloak’s name.
I handed Nighteye my healing elixir. “Give this a try?”
He nodded, accepted it, then held it up to scrutinise it. “Thanks. These can have a lot of, hm, juice in them if they’re of a quality – rank six, essence of mjolwort –“
From upstairs I heard a muted thump, and then another.
Followed by growls, screams.
“Feychilde!” Killstop snapped suddenly. “Get up here!”
I quickly waved Avaelar back into my body, then lifted a foot off the ground and sped back up the stairs, sprouting my wings as I went.
In the bar area several tables had been tossed around, and there were two vampires trapped halfway up the wall, pinned there by a thick sheet of ice. Their limbs and torsos were covered, leaving only their necks and snarling faces exposed.
One, female, spat incoherencies about wanting our blood, while the other brooded, merely emitting a low growl from his throat.
Opposite them, the three champions were standing well back, three pairs of eyes trained on the captives.
“Look out,” Killstop said, pointing, even as I soared into the room – the female vampire managed to get an arm free, cracking the icy shell, but Stormsword was instantly on the case, pouring another half-ton of freezing air and water onto the creature with one outstretched hand.
I floated up in front of the vampires.
“Be mine.”
They looked at me. It was only a young boy and girl. Their faces were distorted by the fangs hidden beneath their lips, by their pallor, by their strange eyes…
Eyes they now lowered deferentially.
“You can let them down now.” I turned to face Stormsword and waved my hand at the ice.
“Should we?” she asked, looking about with a frown on her face.
“Yes,” I said aloud.
These were… just kids… Did we have to destroy them all in the most horrific way possible? Would she be satisfied with no less?
“Yes,” Killstop immediately echoed me. “They might have more information on our targets.”
“Yeah, bring ’em down,” Spiritwhisper said, “so you can fry them into little piles of dust again.”
Stormsword flashed him a grin, and for a moment I rather detested the enchanter.
She melted away the ice to steam, allowing them to fall to the ground, where they landed like cats, wary, purple eyes on us.
“Feychilde,” Killstop said, “bind these things to tell only the truth and then go over to the doorway. We’re going to get a couple more visitors in a few minutes.”
“As you say, your highness.”
I waited in the shadows of the doorway, halfway between Em’s silvery radiance and that of the full moon, brilliant enough to even pierce the clouds covering Oldtown, flooding Welderway with light – to me, at least. I could hear Killstop questioning the poor boy and girl, but I was training my supernatural senses on another sound.
Footfalls – stamping feet – approaching over the rooftops opposite us.
Twenty. Thirty. Maybe forty things, breathing heavily, slavering.
I peered up, and I could make them out. Ghouls, their clothes ripped from pointless injuries the pain of which they no longer possessed the intelligence to feel, their heads swollen, jaws open wide like those of yawning lions. They went hunched, arms hanging low, hands fixed in claw-like positions. Their fingers and chins looked painted black in the moonlight.
Painted like the stone steps to the basement were painted.
“A couple?” I cried. “Lodus said they only had ten… there’s way more than that here.”
“What? No – no, I didn’t see this… Guys, get up here!”
“It’s okay, no rush. I can handle some ghouls. They can’t be tougher than little demons, right?”
“Alright.” The diviner sounded sceptical. “Let me know when the vampires show up. Less than two minutes.”
I dragged my reinforced circle with me, leaving behind a triangle-square-pentagon combination that covered the roadway near the door. Nothing would get in behind me.
I flew up – I could catch the ghouls before they descended –
They pre-empted me, hurling themselves bodily down the thirty or more feet between the roof and the road. It looked like some of them dislocated their shoulders, twisted their ankles, even inverted their knees – but that didn’t stop them thrusting themselves back onto their feet, loping towards me at a run, gibbering.
If they couldn’t see me, they could definitely smell me – my warm flesh.
I floated into the centre of the street, readying the blades of force surmounting my shield. I wouldn’t need my demons for this, or even Flood Boy – not anymore. They would destroy themselves on my barrier.
Ten yards away the ghouls came to a sudden stop, the ones at the back halting before they crashed into the front row who’d already frozen, staring towards me with hungry purple eyes.
I had a sudden sense of foreboding.
“Thou art as once I was, necromancer: Founder-kin.”
I couldn’t move until he finished speaking – the words moved lethargically in the air between us, some chronomantic effect that slowed my thoughts.
I turned, taking in the man just beneath me, skin and hair and clothing all devoid of colour, white upon white upon white – except for the eyes – the eyes that burned with alien, nethernal intellect.
“And thou hast taken it upon thyself to win from me the get of my bloodline.”
“Killstop!” I tried to scream as he took a step straight into my blades of force – they snapped off in his flesh and dissipated.
I went to fly, turning my face and pressing myself forwards with both wizardry and wings –
He must’ve lunged right into my circle because I saw it fade, my stars winking out – I felt the crunch as he clutched my ankle.
Felt the sickening pain as his grip intensified, splitting flesh and crumbling bone so that my foot flopped like a dead fish.
He swung me like an oversized bat, bringing my head and shoulder down into contact with the ground. A drool of blood and teeth exploded from my face.
“In recompense for thine insolence I owe thee less than thou shalt receive – be still!”
My fingers released the explosive dagger’s hilt, but not because of his words – because he leaned over me and lashed out with one red hand, gripping my fingers in his own.
Bands of excruciating iron.
Zel!
“I owe thee only death, and my miscreants lust for thy flesh; yet I shall offer thee undeath.” His face was before mine, awful in its beauty, its scent of rose-petals and blood. “I shall bestow upon thee the power that is the mantle of mine office, and take thee with me into the shadows cast by thy Mund. Shall that suffice as punishment?”
“Kas!” my trusted advisor shrilled between her screams. Could she feel what I could feel?
I’d tried to do it without her. I’d failed.
It was too late. The vampire-lord’s free hand flicked out and struck me, the motion faster than Em’s lightning, more forceful than Fangmoon’s fists.
He raked his fingers through my flesh and took hold of me by the ribcage.
Searing agony exploded through my torso and my mind. My head swung back and my lips parted. I felt disconnected. It was like an animal had climbed in my throat to roar as I felt the air burst from my lungs. Only some through my mouth.
I caught a glimpse of Killstop, two wooden stakes in her hands, hurtling through the air towards me. Somehow, as if there weren’t other things to worry about, I found myself wondering where she’d got them from.
Trying to clutch at normalcy. A line of thought that wasn’t just despair.
Then there was the sensation of weightlessness.
I wasn’t falling. I was flying. He gripped me by the hand and by the bones inside my chest, and flew with me.
Not like a wizard, with wind rushing. Not with wings, like a giant bat from the kids’ stories. No.
Like a sliver of the glass moon, moving effortlessly through the night sky as though it were only the darkness that moved about us.
Only the darkness that moved…
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