by Hugo Huesca
The section she was studying was an account of the creation of the first Oldblood vampire during the Age of Myths. Obed-Ax-Tish, the Unholy Cleric / Bard that had penned the book, theorized that it had been Murmur’s first attempt at designing a Champion against his eternal enemy, and had done it by mixing Necromancy and Witchcraft, so Lavy knew her goal had historical precedence. Of course, she wasn’t a god, and no mortal could deal with the unfathomable divine energies a god could muster at will.
Her Rolim didn’t need be as powerful as the first Oldblood. Only powerful enough to make a difference. Death had taken so much from her already. It was only fair that this vanquished enemy would help her protect herself and those she loved. But if divine energy was a requirement for creating an intelligent undead and not just Murmur going for as big a threat as possible, she was screwed before even starting.
She struck the table in frustration, making Rolim’s sewn-together hand jump, and throwing a silver scissor down onto the floor.
Having a rough time, dear? You should really check out the section “Beings Beyond the Veil,” Brief Introduction recommended in a friendly whisper. I bet my index page that you find the extra oomph you’re looking for there.
“Is that so?” Lavy asked. Beings Beyond the Veil’s pink slip was marked as requiring 10 ranks in Heroic Witchcraft. “You would like that, wouldn’t you, bad boy?”
Mmmh, purred the tome, oh yes. Come on. Just a quick peek. What’s the harm? Trust me, that chapter is going to clear up so much about what’s going on in your life, Lavy. You really should give it a try.
Lavy rolled her eyes and flicked the tome hard on the spine with her thumb and forefinger, getting it to yap in surprise. “Don’t distract me while I’m working, or it’s back into the hell chicken manure bucket with you, dung-face.”
You are no fun.
“And I thought you were supposed to be full of steamy, mind-bending powers of Darkly seduction, but here we are, neither of us having any fun whatsoever.” She crossed her arms.
The folds in the book’s cover bent in something almost resembling a pout. My powers of Charm grow the more corruptible a potential victim is. You, girl, are pretty much as corrupted as you can get, so I’m running on fumes here. How about you read Beings Beyond the Veil and max out your damn moral decay already so I can be on my way? I’ve got responsibilities, you know. Places to be, empires to topple, virgins to chase after with an axe.
“Nah, I’m good,” Lavy said after a moment of consideration. “I’ve seen fully corrupted Witches before, and they are always ugly crones. Warts and stuff. That would be a waste of this—” she made an ample, downward motion with her hand. “Besides, if I cannot achieve my intellectual pursuits without abusing the magic of cursed tomes, am I truly a genius? I don’t think so, no. So.” She shrugged and picked up the fallen scissors, ready to get back to work.
I don’t like you, said Brief Introduction.
Lavy activated her Witch Sight and set to work on the magical system of Rolim’s hand, using her fingers to trace delicate runes and calculations into the enchantments already there. Perhaps if she could harness a powerful-enough energy source, like some kind of massive explosion, she could force the conflicting Tormegris Discus to synchronize with the Colcotar arrays… She toyed with the idea for a bit. She would need to build the mechanisms from scratch…
This is boring, Brief Introduction whined after a long moment of blissful quiet. Are there any unsullied youths around? Maybe I can like… let you get away with reading a small glimpse if you lend me to one for a day.
“Oh, I don’t think there are any left. It would be easier to smack Alita with you in the face than finding a virgin these days,” Lavy said, smirking.
Really?
“Maybe if you and all those other Dark assholes hadn’t gone around for years sacrificing them, people wouldn’t be in such a hurry to no longer qualify for the description.” She ran her finger down a specially challenging section of enchantment. “Perhaps try your luck with Alder? That’s as close as you’re gonna get, really.”
The book’s pages ruffled in a way that sounded vaguely like a long, weary sigh.
The Dungeon Lord sat as still as a statue, covered in shadows and draped in a cape that left visible only the two green pinpricks of light that were his eyes. One by one, the Court of High Minions, as Jarlen called them, arrived in the War Room and took their places at the stone table.
Chronicler Alder, Head Researcher Lavina, Klek Adventurer Slayer, Executioner Jarlen, and finally Marshal Kessih. The air in the room hung heavy with gravitas, and Alder even took out ink and parchment to register the incoming debate.
Kes was the first to speak. “There you are, Ed. So good to see you didn’t get into a fistfight with King Varon on your way here. Or you do that only during dinner?”
Alder snickered and his feather scratched on the parchment. So much for gravitas. If Ed had had a throat, he would’ve sighed.
“Leave our brave leader alone,” Lavy said. “Getting his ribs carved in by an angry Vaines was his plan all along. He’s probably courting her favor. She did send me back my carriage, after all.”
The carriage had appeared one night through the Portal. After the Diviners had cleared it from curses, they had found a handwritten note that simply said:
- Nice try. AV. -
“We aren’t letting this go anytime soon, are we?” Ed asked, his voice a distant, cavernous rasp.
“Of course we are, don’t worry about it,” Kes said, her expression a perfect poker-blank. “By the way, Father Zachary is holding a ceremony to Oynnes during the Spriveska festival, if Oynnes shows up please try not to get into a haggling match with him.”
Even Jarlen’s silky veil fluttered as if hiding laughter. Ed clapped his hands, which made no sound because he had no skin, and he tried his best not to crack a smile himself. On one hand it was easy, because he didn’t have any facial muscles, but it was also impossible—the skull of the animated skeleton he was inhabiting was always smiling.
“Okay, I get it. Dueling overpowered Dungeon Ladies at dinner time is a bad idea. Whatever reproaches you have to make, Andreena has probably already voiced them. Loudly. Over and over.” The Herbalist had used terms like “internal hemorrhage,” “how are you even standing, really,” and “another hit in the same place and you would’ve spent eternity as Lavy’s undead skeleton.”
Kes crossed her arms and looked almost smug. “And what did she have to say about you possessing a pink skeleton to go around instead of resting?”
“She… doesn’t need to hear about that,” Ed said. Then, the light pinpricks of his eyes blinked. “What do you mean pink?”
“Your cape, Lord Ed,” Klek pointed out shyly. “It’s one of the Main Hall’s drapes. I thought you knew.”
Ed looked down. The skeleton’s gaze was terrible, which was no surprise, given that it had no eyes. It mostly saw the world as a black and white, low-res, grainy video feed. He bent around to take a look at his back and saw that his “cape” had a lasershark sewn there.
“Huh.” Ed said. He had worn the cape to differentiate himself from other animated skeletons going around. “So that’s why the drone that brought it was snickering.” He made a mental note to find the imp and send it to shovel hell-chicken-dung. “In any case,” he went on, crossing his skeletal hands together, “We are here to discuss a few important matters.”
“Right,” Alder said, looking down at his notes. “In order of ascending importance, the Spriveska festival is only a few weeks away. Then we have the Raventa Situation, and most importantly, our preparations for the Endeavor.”
“Let’s start with the fun part,” Ed said. “Klek, how is the Spriveska going?” The Dungeon Lord had missed the start of the week-long festivities because he had been too drugged up by Andreena’s concoctions to know in what world he was, so Klek had taken over while he recovered.
The batblin crossed his tiny hands in an unconscious imitation of Ed.
He bent forward, his black eyes shining with the same intensity he put to everything he did, from training to party prep. “All the villages and towns connected by the Gray Highway are coming to celebrate with us. A few of the more distant ones stay home, but they may be scared of the horned spiders of our mounted batblin delegations. Undercity is sending us food, mostly fish, and the butchers slaughtered and salted enough gray hell chickens for the feast. Drusb and the others are foraging Hoia for berries and insects for the side-dishes, Oscor and the smugglers promised a casket of pepper and maybe a smoked ham from Galemoor.” Klek licked his snout, as if already imagining the banquet. “Xovia’s taverns are sending us a cart full of barrels of wine so we don’t empty our storages.”
Lavy raised an eyebrow. “How did you manage that?”
“Well…” Klek looked ashamed. “At first they laughed when I proposed it, but then it slipped that the Monster Hunters may want to have another tavern rampage like last year’s. The innkeepers agreed to send the wine if I convinced the kaftar to spare their business.”
“So you blackmailed them,” Lavy said. “That’s terrible, Klek.”
“I learned it from you,” the batblin said sullenly.
Lavy coughed. “Let’s forget we said anything. What about security?”
“The Monster Hunters don’t celebrate Spriveska, so they agreed to keep an eye on the tunnels in exchange for a day’s leave in the Citadel,” Klek went on. “Empress Laurel shall protect the Haunt. The Thieves said work is best during this kind of festival so they’ll be active in Undercity, anyway. I think we’re good there?”
Ed nodded. “Thank you, Klek. You did an excellent job.”
The batblin beamed a smile and relaxed placidly on his chair. “I’m glad I could help. Picking the food was my favorite part.” He patted his belly, which seemed slightly rounder than usual.
“Now, Kes, your turn,” Ed said. The jovial ambient of the meeting almost vanished. “Raventa.”
Kes caressed the pommel of her sword, as she often did when deep in thought. “Good news and bad news, as always. The good news is, with Shrukew and the other carrion avians, we can observe the city from above, so their damned Initiative against our spiderlings is useless. The bad news… the city is better defended than we hoped. Only Galtia has more Inquisitors buzzing around. Shrukew is not the best at counting, but he says at least fifty Militant soldiers, a score of Raventian men as garrison, two dozen adventurers, four griffin riders, eight Inquisitors. And the Heroes, of course. Alas, Shrukew cannot tell who among those are Clerics or spellcasters.”
“Ah, Wetlands,” Ed said. The few spiderlings that had been active in Raventa had estimated two thirds of those numbers. Of course, their scouting was outdated—the Militant Church had since deployed the supremely irritating “Feline Watch Initiative” in all its controlled cities. Hordes of cats roaming streets and rooftops sounded silly unless you were a spiderling trying to avoid being devoured by a creature that, in their eyes, was as invincible as a dragon was to a person.
The soldiers the Haunt could take, but the Inquisitors, the adventurers, and the griffins, those were another matter entirely. Inquisitors could easily dispatch most fiends from the Netherworld, adventurers were like a swiss-army knife, decent at everything, and griffins were a hard counter to the horned spiders. They could simply find their commanding Queen and dispatch it from above and there was little the spiders could do about it. Sure, the Haga’Anashi could trap and dispatch a griffin, because that was what they did for a living after all, but the angry, armored nobleman with hundreds of experience points and expensive magical equipment that rode atop one made matters more difficult. In short, a griffin and its rider were the Ivalian equivalent of a flying tank. The Haunt had developed the witch’s fireball rune as a counter, but it simply wasn’t enough firepower.
“That’s a lot of warriors eating on the backs of a few thousand farmers,” Alder pointed out. “Way more than Raventa can support by itself.”
“Yes, the Militant Church is feeding them food from the villages of the other holds,” Kes said. “If we could cut the supply, perhaps by extending the Gray Highway, we would force them to redeploy or at least spend a fortune delivering provisions through summoning circles.”
“We cannot afford the wait,” Ed said. “Even if they bleed the countryside dry, time is in their favor. The Militant Army is less than two years away, along with a supply line from Heiliges and provisions of their own. If we siege each city, we won’t even reach Galtia in time to face the army, much less unite Starevos.”
“Without the monsters of the Nightmare Factory we cannot take Raventa without terrible losses,” Kes said. “I would rather we take the city sooner, though. It’s a strategic dream for us. It borders with Galtia, so we can pressure the Inquisition directly, we can easily defend their walls with an underground dungeon, and we can use the rivers that border Mitena and Caranus to threaten those cities too, forcing Heiliges to divide their forces further.”
“So we take it by trickery?” Alder asked. “That won’t look the best in the ‘Chronicle of the Haunt’ but… I guess it’s better than to end it abruptly with a splash of my own blood.”
“We could try an undead uprising, but their graveyards are protected,” Lavy said, scratching her scalp. “Mm. Maybe I could try something with a few cursed items—”
“I can take it by myself,” interrupted Jarlen loudly.
“You can?” asked Klek, eyes wide.
The vampire made a wide gesture with her arms, in a grandstanding motion. “Without the Factory, I am the Haunt’s only siege weapon. It’s true that Raventa’s walls are protected against me just misting in, but the carrion avians are not undead. Buff them against detection, then have them fly me inside. Afterward, I can turn the population against our enemies. Keep the Inquisition distracted and in five nights half the city could be newborn Nightshades under my command. The Inquisitors would run out of spells long before dealing with all of them, and even if they do, the Haunt can just join the fight and win it easily.”
“You’re right that it may work,” Ed said, trying to keep a level voice because in her fucked-up way Jarlen was trying to help. “But those people are innocents, Jarlen. Further, they are future citizens of my damn kingdom, so I refuse to curse them with vampirism. I have already explained my reasons why.”
“The blood issue,” Jarlen said. “Yes. I’ve pondered about it. Although the idea utterly disgusts me, perhaps Head Researcher Lavina could develop through alchemy an alternate means of sustenance, so we could support a contingent of vampires without them turning loose on the population. Of course, any true vampire would still drink the real thing, but the arrow-fodder rabble can take whatever. Their immortality is more of a curse than a blessing anyway, so who cares?” Certainly not her, was her unsaid meaning.
The challenge was enough that Lavy forgot her enmity with the Nightshade. “Artificial blood, huh? I’m not an Alchemist, and I suspect even then we could need restoration magic for it to work… but maybe it’s worth looking into. Researching it definitely won’t be fast enough to take Raventa in time, though. Sorry. It sounds like something that would take years.”
“Wait a second,” Ed said. Something in Jarlen’s wording had caught his attention. On Earth’s modern depictions, vampirism was a disease transmitted by blood. However, there was no biological virus that allowed a reanimated, intelligent undead to transform into mist and back. Ivalian vampirism was a magical status change forcefully imposed on a recently dead person. “Vampirism is a curse,” the Dungeon Lord realized aloud.
Jarlen looked offended. “By the most strict definition, then yes, Lord Wraith. But that’s not how a real vampire would—”
“Jarlen, remind me how do you create a new Nightshade,” Ed said.
“Simple. I just feed a drained victim some blood and some essence. Essence is our equivalent of experience points, and we only get it by emptying a human prey. The more essence we invest during the creat
ion of our child, the more powerful she shall be. But few are willing to part with a part of our power. Most of the time, we feed them whatever essence we took from them in the first place.”
Ed rapped his fingers along the table, thinking on the possibilities.
“I really don’t like it when you get that look,” Kes said. “It means you’re about to come up with something dangerous.”
“That’s why I love it,” Alder said, his feather hovering at the ready over the parchment. “Come on, Ed, give me a dramatic revelation. Shall it be hell chicken vampires? Because if it isn’t, you should really consider hell chicken vampires.”
“Lavy, you specialize in curses. What if Jarlen gave you a vial of her blood to research?” Ed asked.
“Wait,” Jarlen said, suddenly tense. “Do you intend to create a cure? Even if that were possible, which it isn’t, I would never help such a thing.”
“No,” Ed said heatedly, talking in the same fast, excited tone that most software developers on Earth had when someone was bold enough to ask them about their open source GitHub contributions. “Not a cure. A different strain of the curse. A tamer version—scratch that, a tailored version—that better suits our needs. Maybe we can eliminate the need for human blood altogether. Or get rid of the… ah, sociopath part. If we can develop a controlled version of the curse, we could even have volunteer minions carrying vials with them. In case they fell in battle, they could come back and only have to deal with a mild aversion to sunlight. The medical benefits alone are worth it, not even taking warfare into account.”
“It sounds impossibly dangerous,” Kes said. “But Lavy is the expert here. What do you think?”
“Again, even if it works… that’s years of research, so we won’t use those Haunted vampires against Raventa,” Lavy said, but clearly only going through the motions of being a responsible magical scientist. Her eyes glinted with excitement. “It is dangerous. The curse of vampirism was created by Murmur himself—we call them Oldbloods. However, experts consider Nightshades and the Heiligian clans to be mutations of the original strain. Either by chance or by design, different strains can happen.” She flicked her hair back and smiled savagely. “Oh, certainly dangerous. To crack a divine curse would require someone beyond talent. Beyond genius. Someone with experience, a savant, one of a kind student of the arts. Of course, I’m talking about—”