Eighteenth of Lau, Month of Glory. After I trapped the soul of Gwyneth Armin in the maw and fell upon the deck of the Atonite, the little blood that remained to me was insufficient to sustain consciousness. I was without sight or hearing, without memory. Even my name was lost to me, but one thing remained, the thirst. In thesoundless dark, it was the only thing I knew, and so I came to know it intimately.
My experiences with vampirism thus far have led me to believe that I am my blood, that all the rest of me is merely a vessel which can be broken and reformed with no harm to my true self. It is the blood that compels me. It is the blood that grants me strength. When it is weakened, I am weakened. When it rages, my power flows. And yet, bound in the dreamless black of perpetual agony, a darker truth revealed itself. I am not my blood, or at least, I am not
only my blood. The deepest identity of a vampire, its elemental nature, is thirst itself. And the thirst does not abate. It does not weaken. It is deathless and eternal, immune to even oblivion. In a way, blood is the only thing that protects me from the truth of what I am. It is my armor against myself, each sip of fleeting denial of my name, Alaric the Damned. And so blood came to me again, bringing my name with it, bringing sight and sound and smell and taste crashing back into me
on a crimson tide. At first there was the flicker of many visions, many points of view lower to the ground than I am accustomed. Some saw the world as I would if I were squatting. Others peered through grasses that towered over them like trees. The visions swirled into one another unintelligibly, and places flickered by, always in the vials, forests, plains, warrens, all dissolving in the scorching ecstasy of the blood that spattered on my mouth and was compelled to flow down my throat.
The flameless fire stoked in my breast, creeping through my still and lifeless heart, down long dead passageways to each extremity. My eyes snapped open, my limbs thrashed, and I saw that I lay on my back beneath a torrent of blood that poured upon my face. There was no choice in devouring it, even as I realized from whence it came, for above me stood a mass of matted fur and writhing limbs and braying heads, a tangle of hooves and teeth and horns, dozens of animals warped and fused
together by torturous magic. It veiled in many voices as the lifeblood that was shared between them pumped from a gaping wound. I would have screamed if I could, but as it was, I could only swallow, reveling in the taste of beautiful agony despite my horror. Some eternity later, the many heads of the monstrosity, deer and hare and sow, began to sag in silence as the flow of blood petered to an end.
The abomination pitched forward, but by reflex I removed myself from its path, and it struck the ground where I once lay with a final slopping gurgle. "Ah, good. It seems you're all better." The voice of the liche echoed in my thoughts, and I found him hovering nearby. "All better? What in the Weaver's name was that?" "You needed blood. I brought you blood." this thing even come from?" "You were beginning to crystallize when I
retrieved you. I brought us back to Malorum and set off at once in search of living blood." "And you just found this… thing… traipsing about the forest?" "Well, you needed a great deal of blood, and all I could find were small animals." "That does not answer my question." "They kept running from me, scattering every which way. Difficult to measure like that, so I put them together to keep them organized." He said all this with complete detachment. He might as well have been
telling me about the weather. I realized there was no point in even questioning him further on this. To the liche, everything was a matter of true and false. A tool or an obstacle. "So where are we? Where are we going?" "South of the World Gate, headed to Sepulchrium." "Sepulchrium?" "The capital of the dead. It was called Ustilia once." The cold irony of this was not lost on me. I had long wondered what became of Ustilia after it fell. I suspected that the dead would inhabit its ruins, but to
think that they gave it a new name. A place of many graves. "Precisely." "Why do we go there?" "This maw now contains the soul of Gwyneth Armin." Amarax gestured to the maw, which lay beneath his feet. "With it, we may negotiate our pardon." "Why would anyone want that horrid creature?" "N’Gaztak will want it." "And who is this?" "Pentarch of the Shambling Hordes. He was called Lucian once." "Lucian? Lucian Armin? The Templar?" "A Templar in life, a revenant in
undeath. But we must not tarry. It is only a matter of time before the Darklight Enclave learns we have returned, and we've not earned our pardon yet." "Then we should take the Atonite." "Arks cannot sail in the primordial realm. I brought us back by other means. We must go by these vessels." He gestured to our bodies. And so south we went, with the maw closed and tucked under my arm and the liche carrying a blackened cage with a wisp inside.
Amarax insisted that we travel only by day, as we were most noticeable when moving, and rays would have less space to hide without deep shadows. This was a hideous prospect to me, but there was no other choice. The light of Novisol bore down on me, oppressing my blood and scorching the world in blinding gold. My steps were slowed, though still not so slow as a liche, which meant an even longer journey through the hateful daylight.
Amarax, of course, was entirely unaffected and drifted along like a shoddy kite, assuring me that the light could not destroy me. When I explained to him the pain it gave me, he merely said, "Irrelevant." I'm not sure if the liche is simply indifferent to suffering or can no longer understand what it means. When the sun would set and the shadows would lengthen, we would find a cave or some ruins, and Amarax would prepare a circle of symbols for us to wait in until that cursed dawn came again.
Unable to hunt by night and blinded by day, I had to go mostly without blood. So once I did spot a boar dozing under a tree. I reached for it and it was ripped from its slumber, hurtling and shrieking through the air to my hand, where I fed upon it as if it were as light and harmless as a pastry. For all its animal ferocity, it was powerless to escape my grip and my fangs. Other than that, however, I saw no animals on our journey. I suspect they sensed us coming from a long way off and
kept their distance. This would not have saved them at night. On the third dusk of our travels, we settled in the ruins of a new cillion outposts that fell centuries ago. I set the maw down, carefully eyeing its mouth, though I knew it to be closed and slumped against a crumbling wall beside it. Amarax busied himself with the making of his circle, carving it into the ground remotely with little maws in a series of gestures.
Those look like silent lines, I said, nodding towards the lichee's circle. Silent lines. His voice crackled, as if it struggled to reach my thoughts. I saw them around a nameless city beneath the writhing dark. Writhing dark? I felt a stirring in my mind, cold fingers running through my thoughts. The memories were made to surface, flickering briefly in my awareness. How? A seal of interdiction. It disperses the flow of magic. Wouldn't that affect you? Make you weaker? That is its purpose.
I don't follow. Harder to find me this way. The wraiths. Yes. Then a thought occurred to me. If the lichee was attuned to magic, the way I was to blood, would this seal not feel to him as a lack of blood would to me? Amarax, does this seal give you pain?"irrelevant", She can't get out of there, can she? No. Are you certain that Revenant got out? Revenants break many rules by sheer rage. Well, N'Gaztak is a Revenant. Wouldn't he be more likely to smash our heads and hear us out?
That is a distinct possibility. Why risk this then? Why risk consorting with me? If you had not, then you would not need the soul of Gwynyr Armin. You would not need a pardon if our paths had never crossed. Not this pardon, perhaps. Still, you do not answer me. The soul of the deceiver has more uses than our pardon. Why not just get it yourself then? You could have entered Anu Maht without incident for the maw. You could have
entered the veil yourself. I doubt she could have stopped you if I managed to capture her. This is true, but then I would be robbed of your friendship. As if you know the meaning of the word. I am no wraith. I cannot be in many places at once. As you had your tasks, I had mine. Such as? It is exceedingly complicated. You would not understand. Oh, of course, my feeble vampire brain. Research then into the nature of the awakened. You see, that's all you had to say.
Having finished with the seal, the liche floated down to the ground, not settling upon it, but hovering a few inches above it in a seated lotus position. He set the blackened cage down beside him where the vist moved in small circles. Why did we even have to catch that thing? It served no purpose in the realm of the dead. It was more of a precaution. One can never be too prepared. And what of the little shade? Somewhere aboard the Atanite. Amarax tilted his desiccated head
slightly. I could sense by our mental connection the perplexity that his face could not convey. It was of great assistance to me. It did as commanded. There's more to it than that. You underestimate it. A lesser manifestation of magic, mindless. He said, with another wave of his hand. From your lofty view, you may see far, but perhaps not low. Well then, I eagerly await your dissertation on the sentience of shades.
I smiled at the sour note in his thought while the sun set on our conversation and blessed dark descended. One can imagine my shock then when the light of dawn fell upon us just minutes after. I bolted upright in outrage and disbelief, only to find that I was being watched from above by so many lidless eyes upon so many wings. And at their center, one eye larger than the rest, smoldering with gold in judgment, piercing my very soul.
The Messenger! I shrieked and then my blood was forced to make my body kneel. Thrice hath thou prayed. Thrice hath thou been delivered. And now is the hour of thy destiny. My body began to lift from Malorum, bathed in golden light. I was weightless, drifting up toward the massive eye from which I could not look away. My limbs dangled uselessly, for the blood would not obey me in the presence of The Messenger. I thought it was the end for me then, that I would be cast into the gold and
reduced to ash. But Amarax, who had removed himself from the seal, raised his skeletal hand. A spiral of shadowy energy encased me, writhing around my body like many serpents. And I fell back to Malorum. What's more, I could command my blood again. You dare defy the all-fire corpse? The Messenger's voice thundered down upon Amarax, tossing his reignment about in its fury. Then its central eye began to glow brighter, spilling over with crackling gold that thrummed with
tremendous power. Amarax turned to me quickly and said, Alaric, I may have miscounted. And an enormous bolt of gold blasted from The Messenger's eye. My body moved me before the bolt fell, but I saw the brief flicker of a green sphere around Amarax as he was engulfed in gold. So I had dodged the bolt. The force of the blast hurled me through a ruined stone wall. I righted myself, still wreathed in shadowy serpents, and saw that there was a crater
where the liche and I once stood. Among the curling vests of smoke that rose from the crater hovered Amarax. His reignment seared and tattered. I cannot manage that a second time. The liche's voice echoed in my thoughts. What is the plan liche? I thought back frantically. Distract it. Without thinking, I leapt atop an ancient archway and shouted, waving my arms. "Hey!" But The Messenger continued to glare down at the liche. Its eye began to glow brighter.
No! I snatched one of the bricks from the arch and hurled it at the central eye. But one of the many smaller eyes upon its wings shot a lesser bolt of gold just before it struck, turning the brick to dust. The terrible thrumming rose in power and I leapt from stone to stone until I arced through the air near to The Messenger and I thrust out my hand, blasting it with telekinesis. It was utterly unaffected. The massive bolt of gold blasted down again and this time I rushed for Amarax.
In a single motion, I scooped up his frail body and bounded from the crater, propelled to greater heights from the force of the explosion left in my wake. I burst into a full sprint as I landed, weaving in and out of crumbled stone obstacles as the thrumming rose anew. This time the bolt did not fall like a hammer, but swept the ruins like a sickle, slicing through crumbling towers so that they were bisected by molten wounds and fell.
I had to leap to avoid the sweep of the beam, which was followed quickly by several eruptions of celestial fire along its path. What are you doing? Distracting it, I leapt again, soaring over another beam and fleeing from the debris that rained down from the explosions. Not like this, put me down. What are you going to do, slowly float away? Drop me. What? Don't stop moving, just drop me. I did as the liche asked, dropping him with no regard for his body at full
speed. I couldn't even see what happened to him, but The Messenger continued to pursue me. Though its power was overwhelming and its bolts moved at great speed, I was just narrowly swifter. I was occasionally knocked from my feet or thrown into stone, but the bolts themselves did not touch me. Then as I perched atop a fallen tower, I saw a pair of shadows shaped as serpents rise from
elsewhere in the ruins. They coiled around one another in their flight, a double spiral hissing towards the messenger at great speed. The servant of El Sabayoth turned in the air to face the shadow serpents, covering its central eye with its many wings. The darkness collided with The Messenger, snuffing out many of the eyes upon its wings, and molten gold burst from these wounds, spattering the ruins below.
Then the light of day that radiated from The Messenger brightened, and as it opened its wings once more, they were enkindled by golden fires. Wrath shone out of its central eye like the judgment of dawn, and all the stones and all the structures of the ruins began to lift into the air. I leapt down from my tower top, watching in bewilderment as
the entire ruins drifted above me. They hung there for a moment, so many constellations of stones, and then every eye from every wing shot rays of gold, and the entirety of the ruins were turned to dust. I saw Amorax floating where he once had been hidden, now utterly exposed as Ivar's. The Messenger swept across the sky, gazing down at the liche like the
sun. I heard the thrumming rise in pitch, saw the crackle of golden lightning arc across massive wings, but before the bolt could fall, Amorax burst into a swarm of flies. They surged as a blackened mass of droning wings, reforming the body of the liche some distance away from the messenger, who still focused its gaze where the liche once was.
Then, just before the bolt was released, The Messenger collapsed in on itself in an instant, vanishing from sight only to rematerialize directly above Amorax, seething with luminous wrath. (Growling) (...) upon him, and his body was blasted to dust. The Messenger turned its gaze to me, and the shadowy snakes that read me fell away, slithering into other shadows, emerging with them. To the gold art thou sworn, and to the gold shall I bear thee. Once more, my blood left my command, and
I knelt. Yet as The Messenger swept closer to me, there rose a sound from distant skies that I had heard once in a nightmare. A shuddering, wheezing hiss emanated from above, and washed over the open field. Then the clouds began to churn, whipped into vortices, and dispersed as a winged horror dove below them. I had seen it before. Twisted nightmare of death wrought in dragon's form, with wings like the ruined
sails of a drowned frigate. The Messenger's eyes were as if the sky had been thrown out of its massive body, parked in marred with decay, a skeletal frame to which moldering flesh clung in shreds. The lack of tissue on its skull laid bare rows of fangs, as if in perpetual grin. Yet from its hollowed sockets, their streaked blood-black ichor, empty eyes that ever wept above death smile.
The rising thrum of its power surged with the light in its central eye, and a crackling beam was loosed across the sky. The dragon corpse tilted its dead wings just before the beam burst forth, dipping beneath it. And though The Messenger swept its golden wrath to chase its prey, the rotted dragon swerved and spiraled unscathed. They collided mid-air, a thrashing battle of wings and eyes and claws, plummeting in their enmity.
Many bolts of gold were flung outward as they fell, piercing the dragon's putrid form with holes that glowed with molten gold along their edges. But so too did the dragon tear into his opponent, raking The Messenger's wings with his elongated claws, permanently shutting dozens of eyes. And so their massive forms plunged together as a golden gray comet, splintering light until they smote against Malorum, shaking the ground beneath my feet.
I could but kneel as the dragon wrestled with The Messenger. I watched as his fleshless fangs tore into its central eye, ripping visceral chunks of liquid gold free. I could hear a sound that must have been pain, thunderous and terrifying. Then the messenger began to glow brighter. Its thrumming rose so that it trembled my bones, and the dragon reared up upon its back legs, crossing its forelegs over its ribs and wrapping itself in its tattered wings.
From there The Messenger lay, broken and oozing with liquid gold, a conflagration of celestial fire erupted, brighter than a hundred suns. In that instant, control of my blood was returned to me, and I sprang back with all my preternatural speed. The blast wave struck me like the hammer of God, flinging me from the open field, scalding my flesh and exposing my bones. I crashed and tumbled over Malorum like a stone skipping across a pond, coming to rest at
last in a smoldering heap. My body jerked upright, trembling and broken, emanating smoke. I opened my mouth to scream, but could not, and so instead drank deeply of the night air, drawing it into my ruined chest. I sighed, and the mist poured from my mouth, blanketing my body in a soothing veil of gray, and then my body was no more. I spurred up from the ground as fog, then thought of drawing air in once more, though I had no mouth or
throat or lungs to do it. Still, the fog was drawn from my outer edges to my center, condensing, transmuting, until I stepped out from the lingering vapor as Alaric the Damned, intact and whole once more. I sped then to the field from which I had been flung, finding a deep crater in its place. Visin the crater, a single narrow plateau rose like a column, its surface
engraved with a seal of interdiction. I leapt to it from the crater's rim, landing upon it to find the maw and blackened cage undisturbed. Thank The Weaver, I thought. Thank me. Amorax echoed from within, and suddenly I was reminded. The month of hymn? Yes, yes. That's what you said. On the 15th night, The Messenger would return. I've told you I miscounted. Miscounted? I reversed the signs. I am not beyond error. That's a damned big error. You can allow me one for your many.
I can damn well count at least. One, two, three, four, you see? Beneath my outrage, I was vaguely aware of a sensation I had not felt from the liche before. Was this embarrassment? Oh, you wouldn't understand my research. It's far too advanced. Very well, Alric. My plans and understandings are beyond the lesser minds of the world, unless they involve what time it is? You have my sincerest apologies. Irrelevant, irrelevant. I can open doors to alternate realities, but I can't read a calendar.
The liche said nothing, and I scooped up the maw under one arm. Don't forget the cage. He offered meekly. Yes, we wouldn't want to forget something important now, would we? The deep sigh reverberated in my thoughts as I grabbed the cage and leapt down from the plateau. Quickly and soundlessly, I descended the slope of the crater. At its lowest point, I found a hissing mass of bubbling black ichor. It undulated,
shuddering and emanating black smoke. At length, the mass of ichor hissed away entirely and the smoke condensed into a black cloud. From out of that cloud emerged a princely figure draped in black. His features were angular and drawn, as pale and hard as ice, and his eyes shone like silver coins. I saw myself reflected in them, as I had once so long ago. Then the prince nodded at me and gave a courtly bow. What could I do but bow back? Alaric the Damned.