The Grim Legion

by Kindred Ult

  The next person on the right, the one with shock-white hair, spectacles, a long robe for a uniform, and also the one who had wielded the small stick, stepped forward next and bowed deeply. "My name is Ezekiel. I am the fifth unit's captain, as well as the impromptu leader of Arts Magickal in our society. I'm sure that we will be able to cooperate fully in the future, and I wish you long life." He did not offer his hand, so Demenn bowed as well. He wondered what the small stick was, though, so he decided to ask.

  "Is that small staff you carry magical then?"

  Without any discernable movement, the stick was in his hand, and he twirled it playfully. "Oh, it has some magical abilities that I've put into it, but that's not its main purpose. I can assure you that it is a purely combative weapon I've invented. Maybe I'll get the chance to show you some time." Then, with just as little movement, the stick was gone.

  Next was the other female, who had dark, short hair, and who had cut her uniform until it was a small vest and shorts. Her bladed whip still hung around her body, and what was bared by her minimal clothing showed her to be a well-muscled but still petite woman. She almost seemed to smile as she stepped forward and let her hand leave her side to stay suspended in the air before being met by his. "I am Diana, captain of the sixth squad, and I would like to add that I've heard a lot about you. I'll be looking forward to seeing you in battle Demenn."

  "And I you." He did not mention that he thought a bladed whip would look ridiculous on anyone save a vampire, and even many of them would still look like fools, but it seemed to fit her more than he could ever truly express.

  Next was the male who had the strange sword that had many blades sticking out from it, although at the moment it was not visible. He had many pockets stitched into his uniform, and most seemed to be comfortably filled. His hair was dyed bright orange with streaks of blue highlighted into it, and the only remaining evidence of his strange sword was in the shape of his hilt and guard on the outside of a small sheath. Demenn noticed that it was like his own sheaths, but still wondered how he was able to fit his large, ungainly sword into such a normal-sized sheath. While he was at it, he noticed that the grip on the hilt was studded, rather than being smooth. He did not smile when he stood forward, but he did not seem unfriendly.

  "I'm Bilal, and I'm the captain of the fourth unit." He did not offer his hand, or bow, so in return Demenn introduced himself and nodded.

  The circle came fully around with the last captain, who had the too-large and strangly-shaped stick with the spike in its crook strapped to his back. His head was shaved, his shirt was sleeveless, and his pants had been cut off at the knees. These all served to simply accentuate his enormous figure. Muscles rippled from inside and outside of his clothes, and he stood at least two feet taller than Demenn. When he stepped forward, he grinned very wide.

  "I'm Samael, and I'm the second units' captain. I like being in my Other form more than this one, which is why I had my scythe here resized to that scale." Demenn did not think that it looked like a scythe. "I just love ripping, well, just about anything, apart. We should spar sometime, so that I can see if you're strong or not. Doesn't that sound like fun?" He stuck out his large hand, still grinning, and Demenn placed his own in it.

  "Yes, that does seem like it would be entertaining." After he said that, Demenn found that Samael's grip had become like a vice on his own hand, and then he was being pulled forward and upwards into a bear-like hug that crushed the wind out of him.

  "Really? You mean it?" Samael sounded ecstatic.

  "Y-Yes," was all Demenn could gasp out.

  He was released, and fell two feet or so before his feet hit the floor again.

  "I hope you did mean it, Demenn, no one's ever agreed to spar with me for a long time, ever since I accidentally killed that one guy." The fact that it was accidental did little to put Demenn at ease.

  With introductions completed, the captains quickly dispersed, but only after they had all left did he notice that one of them had been missing. The captain who had carried the sword-scimitar hybrid, and who had seemed fairly normal. He had been there before, but was not among them when they went towards him or circled him, and he was forced to wonder where he had gone. A quick count in his head said that the other captain was the captain of the first unit, since all others had been accounted for.

  He was about to follow their example and retire back to his room, but then he noticed that N'colto had not moved from where he had been standing when the council ended, and that he was staring at him. Demenn returned his gaze with curiosity, which was only strengthened by N'colto walking to him and addressing him.

  "You are Demenn, are you not?" Her looked down at Demenn with his red eyes.

  "I am." Demenn stared up at him.

  "Then I wish to speak with you privately."

  Demenn did not like the sound of those words, but the tone was unthreatening, and he had no reason to expect that N'colto would jeopardize his newly formed treaty just to kill him, whom he had never met before. "Alright, we have rooms here that are sealed with spells so that no sound enters from the outside or escapes from within. If you will follow me, I will lead you to one."

  N'colto grunted his approval, and so they walked out of the chamber, through hallways, corridors, and a few rooms before they came to the door that Demenn was looking for. He opened the door and beckoned for N'colto to walk in. He followed after him and closed the door after him. He heard no sound as the bolt fell into place, which reassured him. There was a table and two chairs, to which Demenn beckoned N'colto while taking one of them himself. N'colto tried to sit on the chair, but found it was too small for him to comfortably sit on, so he tossed it to the side, dragged the table to where he was, and sat on it instead. His feet dangled in the air over the ground, and, if it was at all possible for him to look anything but powerful, he would have looked a little cute at the moment.

  "You are sure no one will hear us." N'colto spoke in a whisper and looked around cautiously.

  "Quite." Demenn spoke at a normal volume to be reassuring.

  "Very well, how much do you know of my people, Demenn?"

  Demenn thought. "Barely anything. I do not even truly know what your people are, in truth."

  N'colto looked disproportionately pleased with his answer. "Well, suffice to say that we are the Chiroptera. We are considered to be cousins of you vampires, but we have been around for far longer than your race. In fact, our race has survived for so long that we do not know how or why we became so. The only thing we all accept as fact, for some reason, is that we were all normal bats at one time. Anyway, we were content to live out our lives in this forest, but then came the humans, who were not bad, as far as your races go, but they began the problems for us. You see, it was not long before Lucifer came to our forest and decided to create the vampires. At that time, we usually kept in our bat forms, so few knew about us, but some did know us. Even with the vampires, though, it was fine, at least then.

  "Unfortunately, that fool of a vampire Lucifer had to steal the princess and eventually cause the werewolves to be created. The werewolves of that time had no rational thoughts, but they were ferocious, and they could somehow tell what we were even when we were in our bat forms. Because of them, we allied ourselves with the vampires and fought with and for them. We were fighting a losing battle, but at least it was better than fighting separately. It was around then, though, that true misfortune struck my people. Vampires began to eat the hearts of those of us who died fighting alongside them, as is your perverted tradition, and when they did, they instantly obtained their Other form, no matter how powerful they were.

  "News of their new power flooded through their country, and so they began to turn on us, even as they tried to fight off the hordes of werewolves that eventually ran them over. Even though we fought together, and even though we are more powerful than most of your Other forms, they still hunted us in order to be stronger than ever before. The vampire Lucifer himself hunted down my brother, def
eated him in single combat, and drank him before eating his heart. Eventually, our numbers were so drastically reduced that we were forced to flee from the battle altogether.

  "Still, it was having their Other form that allowed them to defeat the werewolves. All vampires in the final battle between the two races were in their Other form, except for Safiria, that is. They won, of course, and you know the rest from there. They have constantly hunted us since then, sometimes with disturbing success, and other times with less so. We could defeat them, though, even in their Other form we can usually defeat them, but they came in squads, sometimes in two or three at a time. There have only been three times when a vampire without the Other form has killed a Chiroptera in single combat, those were Lucifer, another elder, and Vladimir, who hunted down and killed my wife. They slowly cut our numbers down, then backed off to let us grow more, then hunted us again.

  "The werewolves, when they regained their sanity and discovered how the vampires achieved their Other form, at first tried to do the same, but their anatomies were completely different from each other, so werewolves only gained strength from our deaths, and not a total explosion of power. As a result, they decided to kill as many of us as they could, so that the vampires would have fewer powerful vampires amongst them. They tried to destroy us completely, and at one time they almost did.

  And so we constantly flee from both races, one of which call us Werebats to try to distance themselves from us and another who call us Vampire Bats for the same reason, trying to form a society while at the same time trying to simply not become extinct. We have been forced to eat the flesh of humans, scavenge food from greater beasts' kills, and now ally ourselves once more with the very power that hunted, and still hunts, us."

  When it was clear that he was done. Demenn took a moment and thought about everything he had just heard. He had never heard of Chiroptera, although all of the other council members seemed to know about them. He had always assumed that one gained the Other form once one became a first class vampire, and that Preatias had the ability too, but never chose to use it. It made sense to him, though, that they would keep the information a secret from all of those under a first class' power save for those who went on hunts. It would not do to have random hunts of weak vampires being formed. Refocusing his attention to N'colto, he wondered out loud.

  "That is truly a sad story, and I am glad that your people are now protected, but what does all of this have to do with me?"

  N'colto locked his arms on the top of the table, leaned forward, and even swung his legs back and forth like a child. "Don't you see? You are the first vampire who has claimed the ability to turn into your Other form without slaying one of our people. If you can somehow teach this to other vampires, there will be no reason to kill us. We could live in relative harmony, and none of us would have to die needlessly. You could, in fact, save our race. In truth, we are not safe from death right now, as I'm sure you're aware. The treaty with Vladimir is purposefully in his favor, and will be of no effect once the war is over, but we had to do it so that we could meet you. Please Demenn, say that you will do everything in your power to save my people." His face was a mixture of happiness, longing, and trepidation.

  Demenn took another breath, let it out, looked around the room for no reason, and then looked back at the man-bat before him. He could not tell N'colto, who looked like Demenn was his last hope, that he suspected the only reason he achieved it before any of the normal parameters was that he was favored by Lucifer. He wanted to, but he simply could not. "I will do everything in my power to help save your people."

  N'colto's smile cannot be described with words.

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  Nasoren at first had no idea where she should take the information Brand had procured for her. She knew that she should either go to the vampire slayers or the Paladins, but she knew not which one would be best served with the information. Finally, she had decided to visit the vampire slayers, since they were closest and could best respond to the problem at hand. Luckily for her, the two sects were very similar in their aims, and as such had grown very close in their years of existence. The paladins had existed for far longer than the vampire slayers, but they were admittedly best at slaying the undead, while superior beings like vampires and werewolves were harder for them.

  And so, after some deliberation, she had decided to go to the vampire hunters and hope that they would believe her based solely on her affiliation.

  Stone Wolf, for his part, was somewhat happy to see her leave. When she came from his mouth, he smiled. It was a strange thing to see a completely stone being smile, its teeth bared as rock lips bent upwards in a grin.

  "Ah, the freedom of youth. I wish I was as fortunate, or as free, as you are now Nasoren. Good luck on your journey."

  "Thank you." Nasoren had smiled back. "And I promise that, if we win this war, we will come back to release you."

  Something of a sigh had emanated from his throat. "Promises, promises, now you'd best get away from here now, before anyone gets suspicious."

  All that was past her, now, as was the spell taught to her, before she had left to return to her home, by the paladins. They had made sure to give her a few good pieces of advice in what to do if she were alone in the forest, and the most relevant of those involved teaching her a spell that would instantly transport her to the vampire slayers if she ever needed protection. So, she had not been as helpless as she had claimed when making Brand take her with him, but she regretted nothing.

  All of those experiences led her to where she was now, and that was approaching the vampire slayers' castle. She had been told that the spell would send her to the castle, but it turned out that it actually sent her to a large flat stone that was in sight of the castle. Still, she was very close to the castle, and was at that moment wondering what would happen if the vampires or werewolves discovered the warp point, when two crossbows were pointed at the sides of her head and a sharp point was placed on her back. From behind her, a voice spoke softly.

  "A dark night. Too dark for humans to be out."

  She did not try to look behind her, but replied. "The dark of night must always give way to the light of day."

  "And what makes this happen?" The speaker had very little inflections in his voice. It was almost monotone.

  "It is natural, but if the night refuses nature, then it is necessary to use force."

  The crossbows were lowered, and the blade removed from her back so that she could turn around. Her aggressors all looked marginally identical, with their large brown hats and cloaks like Brand and Janije had worn, but they each had little things that made them unique, as all do. The one in front of her sheathed his sword and kept his face placid as he apologized.

  "Forgive us, paladin, but times are perilous, and precautions must be taken. One never knows what is coming."

  Nasoren smiled just a bit. "A paladin always knows what is coming."

  Now the vampire slayer smiled back at her, and tipped his hat in a bow. "Well done, you are indeed a paladin. But tell me, who are you, and what are you doing so far from your home?"

  "My name is Nasoren, and I have been living with the werewolves for longer than I care to recall. I have come here to give E some very important news from Brand."

  "Brand?" The vampire slayer looked astonished. "He's still alive? We all thought he was dead. What happened to him?"

  "My information is important enough to change this entire forest, so could I please be admitted to E?"

  He calmed down immediately, and he swiftly nodded to the other two next to her. "Take her to E."

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  E sat in the chair, with his feet on top of the desk next to him, when Nasoren entered the room. He wore the same dress as all of the others, but his seemed so much more personal, while most of theirs looked like uniforms. He was a handsome enough man, she noticed, although nothing c
ompared to an elf like Brand. What struck her, though, was that he looked like he was in his early thirties instead of more than one hundred years old, like she had heard he was. She had heard that he was older than he looked, and rumors of it were many, but they did not do him justice. Some said that his unnaturally long life and vitality were due to a gift from God, while other claimed that it was due to his heritage, and some even claimed that he was half-vampire, although those never did so to his face.

  It was also said that, even though he rarely went hunting for the undead personally any more, he could still best any of his men in single combat with ease, and that he could also defeat any single undead in the woods, save, perhaps, their leaders.

  All put together, along with his Sword of Office, which no one she had ever spoken with knew what it did, made for an intimidating sight. She could not help but feel small in his presence, but he smiled warmly at her.