by Garon Whited
“Give me a minute to think about it.” I thought about it. Nothing sprang to mind. My condition wouldn’t warrant a second look from a battlefield medic; he’d go after someone he might be able to save. This did not put me in a strong bargaining position.
“Nope, nothing,” I told Firebrand. “If they kill me, give my regards to everyone I like and try to be helpful to Lissette and my heirs.”
Okay, I can do that. You might not get offed, Boss. You’ve got Torvil, Kammen, and Tianna watching out for you. The twins, too, sort of. They weren’t ordered to kill you, only to keep you contained, if that’s any help. They answer to the Queen, not to Thomen.
“That’s actually pretty comforting. I feel better knowing it. Thanks.”
No problem, Boss.
“Let’s keep hoping—” I started to say, and everything went pear-shaped and sideways.
Ow.
Waking up painfully is a bad habit I would dearly love to break. I envision a pleasant morning, well on its way to noon, with a lovely brunch served as breakfast. Possibly in one of those motorized beds, the ones that can tilt so you’re almost in a recliner. Comfy pajamas. Maybe a big-screen television with the remote close at hand and a selection of suitable movies. I don’t necessarily need company. I’d settle for someone to bring me a pleasant breakfast and leave. Am I asking too much? I’m willing to pay, if it’ll help.
The sunset prickle started. If nothing else, at least I was alive and dying. I opened my good eye.
The room was about sixty feet square and done in a cross between Arabian Nights and Grecian Classical. Pearly walls ran from sculpted pillar to sculpted pillar. Recessed alcoves in the walls held statuary, basins, bowls of fruit, mirrors, and similar such. Silky drapes, predominantly red, billowed gently between the pillars, partially obscuring the alcoves. Two walls, to my right and left, seemed composed entirely of some opaque, golden glass. The ceiling was barrel-vaulted and high; the floor was black marble veined with red.
As for myself, I was naked—again!—and chained between a pair of free-standing pillars in the middle of the room. The chains and pillars resembled gold. At least someone left me enough slack to lie down on the floor. I stayed there while life, or unlife, crawled back into my charred and wounded flesh.
As my transformation continued, a small whirlwind arose, formed of swirling water vapor and air, and flowed over me. It was only about three feet tall, but it crawled all over me like an over-friendly elephant’s trunk. It kept sucking up the filthy results of my transformation until the transformation completed. Then it whirled faster and dissipated, vanishing, apparently taking the icky stuff with it.
Nice trick. I’d have appreciated it more if I wasn’t starving. My regeneration was already putting the burned bits back in order and my bloodthirst was growing more intense. I really need to get a chart and start graphing the types of damage and how much I can heal of each type per unit of blood. I’ll need a lab assistant with a strong stomach, my new pain-damping spells, and a variety of blood sources. Some restraints would probably be in order. The ones I already wore seemed adequate.
I sat up and tugged on my chains. No, they weren’t actual gold. At night, I can pull gold apart like taffy; it’s a soft metal. With slack to work with, even heavy steel chains won’t hold me for long. Whatever this stuff was, it held against my most violent pull—I braced my feet against a pillar and tried to yank a chain apart. No luck.
I stood up and scrutinized the room more thoroughly. Nothing new leaped to my attention. A quick check, however, revealed a massive amount of magic in the air. In point of fact, the whole place shimmered with an aura of power, as though it were all enchanted. Magical floors? Magical drapes? Magical fruit? That seemed more than a little unreasonable. It took me a couple of minutes to grasp the problem. It was an ultra-high-intensity magical field coloring my wizard-vision.
With a quick gesture and a word, I directed power at a link in my chains, intending to fracture it. Much to my surprise, the spell sparkled and vanished, grounding out through the chain. I’d never seen anything like it. What was this stuff? Some sort of magical superconductor? Or enchanted to be immune to magical effects? Either way, it made sense. If I were chaining up a prisoner in a magical environment this intense, I’d need something not easily broken with a spell.
As I wondered, there was someone in the room with me. I didn’t see or hear him come in; he was simply and suddenly there, as though appearing from thin air. He might have. The room was so charged with magic you wouldn’t want to accidentally make a wish. It might operate like a cranky genie and grant a twisted version of your desire.
We stared at each other across a space of four paces. I recognized him. Johann Fries, head of the Fries family of magi, but looking a good thirty years younger than the last time I saw him. He appeared to be a hale and hearty man of fifty, not a fragile old man of eighty. His hair was mostly black with a bit of grey at the temples, instead of white and mostly missing. He moved with confidence and strength. He wore several spells, all powerful enough to obscure each other, but I didn’t doubt there were at least a few defenses and a rejuvenation spell.
I didn’t like his soul. It was bright, inhumanly bright, and monochrome. Human souls are multi-colored things, constantly shifting and changing. The thing inside him was a soul-shaped bit of power, not a human being.
“Well, it seems we finally hooked our fish,” he observed. “Welcome to my home.”
“You could have sent a written invitation,” I told him. “Even a phone call would have done. I’d have made time in my schedule for a visit.”
“I couldn’t be sure, what with my family being one of the few devoting itself to the eradication of your kind. You might have declined. And I do so very much want to talk to you.”
“To me, or with me?”
“Let us say a bit of both.”
“Fair enough. What can I do for you, Mister Fries?”
“Please, let us not be so formal, Vladimir. May I call you ‘Vlad’? I believe you encouraged my grandson to do so before you killed him.”
This is not going to go well, I thought. I suspected it from the start, but having confirmation is sort of a relief. It removes all doubt, at least.
“Please do,” I said aloud. “And I apologize.”
“We may revisit that later,” he allowed, still smiling, but I detected a hard glitter in his eyes. “For now, let us speak of present and future matters.”
“Of course, of course. But, if this is going to take longer than a few minutes, I would like to bring up a near-future issue.”
“That being?”
“Blood. I have injuries still regenerating and that means my reserves are depleted. If I don’t feed soon, I won’t be rational enough to have a discussion. Right now, it’s merely a rabid badger trying to dig out through my stomach. It’s not a voluntary thing, and it will become a problem in fairly short order. Just letting you know, in case you want me able to answer questions.”
“Hmm.” He thought about it for several seconds and shrugged. “Well, never let it be said the Fries failed in their hospitality to a guest, no matter how degenerate.” He snapped his fingers and I saw the flare of power. It wasn’t even a full spell, merely a spell framework with rivers of power run through it—a highly inefficient way to do anything, but extremely versatile. Sometimes too versatile, even unpredictable, if you don’t focus precisely enough.
In this case, a young man in military fatigues appeared. He didn’t seem aware of his surroundings. A closer look revealed some sort of spell wrapped around his head, suppressing brain activity. It strongly resembled the headband-spell on the spirits I’d seen. Fries gestured him toward me and he did the zombie shuffle in my direction.
“You should have ample reach,” Fries commented. He was right; there was slack enough in the chains to put dinner within my grasp.
I thought hours of things in a matter of seconds. This guy wasn’t trying to kill me. He wasn’t even volunteering
to die. He didn’t have some terminal illness or a deathwish. He was some guy called up only to serve as food. Fries was probably feeding one prisoner to another.
I hate that.
An army invaded my mountain, once, when I was alone in it. The mountain made it possible to break them up into smaller units, divide them. I’m not sure I could have killed them all if they had remained a unified host. But I did kill them all, because they tried to kill Bronze. I didn’t need to eat them all. I could have stopped at any time. I made a choice and every last one of them died in the dark.
On the other end of the scale, a village disappeared one night. I was so hungry I lost control and killed everything. Men, women, children, pigs, chickens—even the rats in the thatch. Every drop of blood went down my throat like water down a drain. When I came to my senses, I got to wander through the ruins and count the frail, pale corpses.
What was worse, to me, this guy was obviously zombified by a spell. He didn’t know what was going on or why. He had no free will, no way to express his opinions or preferences. The last thing he remembered might be someone waving a hand at him. I doubted he volunteered for this. Defend his country, yes. He didn’t sign up to risk being captured, imprisoned, zombified, and fed to a fellow prisoner. That’s not usually mentioned in the recruitment literature.
I didn’t want to kill him. It was inevitable, though. I could try to take only enough to get by and leave him alive, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. The hunger pangs were becoming extreme. I could either consume him, here and now, to wait until I lost all control and the bloodthirsty monster did it.
“I’m sorry about this,” I told him, quietly, knowing it wouldn’t register. “I don’t see a choice.”
Then I bit a chunk out of his neck and drained him like a juice box. It was good. So good. I don’t generally let myself get hungry to the point I need to eat, to drink, but I needed it then. And he was a big, healthy guy with lots of delicious blood. I was lost in it for several seconds, feeling the taste of it spread through me, if that makes any sense. I wrapped him in tendrils, absorbing the light inside him even more rapidly than the blood.
I let go. The husk was empty, dark. It fell to the floor like a sack of laundry. I felt better, physically, although still hungry.
“Well, that was interesting,” Fries observed. I resisted the urge to yank on my chains, break them, and fly at him like a missile. I knew the chains weren’t going to give, and I knew he had to be warded from my tendrils. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to be unprotected in the presence of a vampire. The spells surrounding him were unfamiliar, but I had no doubt at least one of them was intended to keep me from eating what passed for his soul.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I replied, lying like a rug. If I found a good way to make him pay for that, I promised myself I would use it. “I’m not entirely satisfied, but I think I can hold a rational conversation for tonight.”
“Good, good. Tell me, do you require such feeding every night?”
“Not usually, but I’ve been damaged. The more I’m damaged, the more I require. I keep meaning to conduct tests to determine my hit points per gallon.”
“Logical. I’ll bear it in mind during your stay.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t find this situation entirely to my liking.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t,” he agreed, still smiling. “On to business?”
“Fine,” I sighed. “What do you want and when can I go home?”
“That depends at least partially on you.”
“And partially on you?”
“Exactly.” He sat down without a chair; a dark blue mist boiled up from the floor and supported him. Instant chair, just add backside. The mist slowly shifted and rolled, like clouds, but remained mostly underneath him as he settled back against it. A translucent female figure appeared, un-fading into view, bearing a tray with a large, golden cup. Once fully solidified, the scantily-clad woman knelt by the misty chair and offered the cup; Fries took it in his hands and regarded me over the rim. She remained kneeling, immobile as a statue. I didn’t see any life in her, only magic. I wondered if she was a corpse with animating magic or a purely magical construct. I tended toward the latter view; she didn’t seem to have a scent.
“What I want,” he mused, and took a sip before continuing. He viewed me with a thoughtful air while he considered his words. “What I want,” he repeated, “is to duplicate a feat of magic.”
“I don’t see how that’s a problem.”
“Ah, but I didn’t actually see how it was done. I’m not really certain how it was done at all.”
“That’s more of a problem,” I admitted. I wondered if he intended to leave the exsanguinated corpse lying there indefinitely, but I didn’t say anything. If he was prepared to ignore it, so was I.
“How, exactly, did you do it?” he asked.
“Huh?” I replied. Ever the clever comeback.
“Oh, now don’t be that way,” he chided. Current passed through the chains and electrified me. I went rigid and started to smoke. It really was quite a display of electricity. Alternating current, too, and at high voltage. I ought to know; I’m getting far too familiar with electrocution. Zappy things, even when they don’t actually do damage, still piss me off.
After twenty or thirty years—maybe ten seconds—he smiled at me and the current quit. I lay on the floor for a moment, twitching, before clanking and rattling to my feet. The electrical burns under the manacles on wrist and ankle were already disappearing. I hesitated to ask for more blood; the hunger was there, but I knew what was likely to happen.
“I’m convinced you’re serious,” I told him. “I apologize if I seem to be obtuse. I simply don’t yet understand what magical feat you refer to. If you’ll tell me what you want, I’m sure we can reach some sort of accommodation.”
“You’re surprisingly cooperative,” he observed.
“I get that a lot when I’m restrained and tortured.” I didn’t add, “…by a fanatical vampire-hunter with access to an overwhelming amount of power.” I only thought it. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh?” he asked, sounding interested. “You’re restrained and tortured on a regular basis?”
“You’d be surprised. I’m depressingly familiar with it.”
“Amusing. But, if all that stands in the way of getting my answers is a little specificity, it is an obstacle easily overcome. The feat I wish to duplicate is the opening of a nexus. Until now, I believed as all magi believed: a nexus was a radiant point of energy, nothing more. Since you can obviously open one and release the full potential of a nexus, I want to do so.”
“May I ask why? Not that I’m arguing,” I added, hastily, “but I’m curious why you would bother. It’s clear you have more magical power at your command than anyone else—possibly everyone else—in the world.”
“Oh, this?” he sneered, waving a hand. “My surviving children and grandchildren also draw on the same source. While I don’t necessarily mind, their magical escapades require frequent discharging and some tiresome safety precautions. They never seem to coordinate with each other, and sometimes their spells clash. One will want to transform a garden of flowers into a hedge maze, another will want it to stay a flower garden, a third will be trying to invent a new fruit tree, and so on. You see my dilemma.”
“So, let me get this straight. I’m paraphrasing to make sure I understand.”
“Certainly.”
“You want to open up some other... uh, power centers. That way your descendants can have their own domains and can stop making messes in yours.”
“Correct.”
“To do this, you sent out spirits to seek me in other universes so you could summon me here.” It was only a guess, of course, but if he was willing to confirm it…
“In a manner of speaking. I had an excess of mortals in my domain. With the heightened level of power, even they could sense and, to a limited extent, use it. Rather than allow them to clutter the
place with their infantile efforts, I made use of them.”
“Mortals in your domain?” I asked.
“My domain is everything within about three hundred miles of the nexus you opened. It was the largest shield I could raise, I’m afraid. Still, I think it was well done. It contains and concentrates the power from the open nexus, as well as acts as a primary defense against both magical and mundane interference from without.” He smiled wider. “It actually has some roots in your own work.”
“My own?”
“The Ascension Sphere you built. While I don’t pretend to understand the subtle aspects of it, the principle is all that matters, now that I have the power to raise one of my own by an act of disciplined will.”
“You’re welcome,” I lied. “So your mortals are the ones in, say, New York, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit…”
“Technically, not all of New York. Only about half of Manhattan Island is within my sphere of influence. I keep thinking I should expand the dome enough to get the whole thing, if only to make things tidy.”
“And how did you use them?”
“I called forth their spirits and sent them searching through the void for you. Since I had no real way to locate you, I had them do the looking.”
“Logical,” I agreed, shuddering. “Even several million people doing soul-searching would take a while,” I added. “You got lucky.”
The man grabbed who knows how many people’s souls and simply set them to the task of searching the proverbial haystack for the dark needle. Obviously, he was either very good at the focused wishing method or the formerly “useless” spells of the Atlantean Age were much more useful now.
“It was not luck. It was inevitable,” he replied, chuckling and sipping his drink. “I had some idea where you would be. Afterward, it was merely a matter of summoning you with the proper rite. To be frank, I am rather surprised it worked on the first attempt. I anticipated wearing you down with repeated attempts.”
“When your spirit-lady zapped the crap out of me, it kind of cut down on my resistance.”