Blood Shaper

Book 3: Chapter 68

Eleniah once again tamped down on her burning desire to be out there as part of the search, actively looking for her friend with her own eyes. As much as she wanted to be doing something, the reality was she was more useful coordinating the growing search effort and being a terrifying source of motivation than she would be combing through the area herself. And to be fair, the level of coordination she was providing was doing something, even if it didn’t feel like it.

Ninety percent of the people that were taking part in the search effort didn’t need her as a scary motivating presence, but ten percent did, most of those members of the Shatterplate Order that wanted to respond the way their normal protocol called for. According to them, anyone lost to a vampyr that had been gone more than a day or two was to be considered a permanent causality, whether dead or turned. Eleniah’s very patient explanation that Kay, and to a lesser extent Lauren, had “fucking blood manipulation from their fucking Skills dammit, and if anyone is going to get over a dose of vampyrism it would be them, now keep fucking searching!”

They’d kept looking, despite their reservations.

It had been a total of seven days since Kay had left Avalon, and he’d been abducted five days ago. Eleniah’s rage and fear were a bonfire in her soul, but underneath that her hope was starting to die out form lack of fuel. She was still being a terror to anyone that spoke up about calling the search off, she still did her absolute best coordinating things and making sure no one missed anything, but she was starting to flag inside.

“This section here,” She waved a hand over a portion of the map in front of her, “Is being covered by squads-“

“Hey! Hey! Stop there!”

The sudden alarmed shouting had Eleniah looking up from the table in the direction she heard it from. “What’s that?”

The group of scouts, trackers, and officers started trying to peer over each other to see.

“Someone get Lady Eleniah!”

She stood up quickly and started pushing through the small crowd she’d just been giving orders to, “Out of the way please.”

A runner slid to a stop in front of her as she pushed past the last few people, “Lady-“

“I heard, I’m going.” Her heart dropped when she saw the fearful and anxious expression on the woman’s face. It seemed like something bad was happening.

It was only a hundred feet to the growing semi-circle of people, all facing the same direction with weapons drawn. With a few gentle elbow nudges and some not so gentle glares she moved people aside tog et through to the front. Once she was past everyone, she looked up at whatever had everyone so spooked.

Her heart soared, it was Kay! He was standing there with a resigned expression, covered in his normal blood armor, with Lauren and that missing Shatterplate hunter behind them. They all looked pretty ragged and like they’d been in a fight or two, but none of them looked like they had a debilitating injury or anything to worry about. All three of them were paler than normal but that could just be…

All three of them were weirdly pale, they’d been missing for days after being captured by a vampyr who talked about coming for Kay to “show him holy light” and “bring him to redemption”… They also all looked nervous and weren’t looking at the circle of their erstwhile comrades with confusion or annoyance, but with a slight hint of fear… She could even see a change in Kay’s stance and posture, normally something that would be missed at a casual glance, but she was the teacher who’d taught him how to stand and how to fight, and she’d spent hundreds of years teaching people, she knew what to look for. There’d been a dramatic physical change in Kay between the last time she’d seen him and now.

Her heart breaking, Eleniah used her Inspect Skill to get it over with and see the words in front of her that would condemn her to killing one of her best friends and the man who had long ago become her favorite student.

{////////////////////////////}

Target: Kay Davis (Personally Known)

Displayed Class: Lord of Spilled Blood (Tier V)

Species: Vampire

Status: Resigned, Nervous

Potential: High (Based on Personally Gathered Data)

Danger: Mid to High (Need More Data for Better Reckoning)

{////////////////////////////}

She felt tears well up in here eyes as she clenched her fist. Eleniah stepped forward to-

Wait!

She read the species section again, then a third time, then a fourth.

“What the fuck is a vampire?”

“Oh thank fuck you can do that, I totally forgot.” Kay sighed and relaxed, his shoulders dropping down and the muscles in his arms losing their tension. “It’s what happens when you take a vampyr and remove all the fucked up eldritch shit and madness that comes with it.” He chuckled, “Or if I’m right, it’s more accurate to say its what you start with, and the pouring a bunch of eldritch bullshit into a vampire makes a vampyr.”

Eleniah froze, her hope warring with her caution and experience. People lied, even friends and family members. Especially friends and family members that had just been turned into a horrible monster and thought that maybe they could withstand the vagaries of madness and transformation. Not that this specific kind of event had happened to her before, but still!

“I…” She stared at him with longing for him to be right and telling the truth, but also the horrible feeling that this could go horribly wrong in so many ways.

Kay sighed again, with annoyance instead of relief this time. “This better not be too expensive,” He muttered. He raised his voice and shouted to the whole crowd, “I swear to the World and by the System that I am not a vampyr, I’m a vampire, which is a different, if related species, and the whole evil and madness thing comes from the eldritch bit of being a vampyr, which I don’t have! I’m not insane, an agent of some other power, evil, or going to become any of those things due to the change in my species! All the vampyr shit that’s scary and worth being scared about isn’t in me, or in either of these two,” He gestured at Lauren and Hunter Ravenhome, “And what information I’ve been able to get from the System says that there’s no need to be worried about that!”

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Kay glanced at his notifications as all of the watching crowd in front of him stopped to stare at something that appeared in front of their eyes. “Oh, good, that wasn’t too expensive.” He’d only lost some experience from his Drawing Skill, not a whole level in anything, so that was good. He hated that he needed to lose anything at all, and planned to bug the System about what was up with that when he got another chance to talk about it, but he could deal for now.

He turned back to the group, “I-“

Eleniah’s tackle-hug was more of a body slam that smacked him into the ground so hard a huge portion of his armor cracked. He felt the air get driven out of his lungs and his shoulders and back burrowed a divot into the dirt. He let out a long wheeze as he tried to inhale and get some air back into him.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” Eleniah shouted into his shoulder.

“Can’t breathe!”

“I mean, what the fuck Kay!?” She leaned up and grabbed both of his shoulders, slamming him back down into the dirt and driving more air out of him. “I already told you to stop scaring me with big fights and shit when I’m not there! What part of don’t get abducted do you not understand!? That’s three times!” She held up three finger right in front of his face, “Three times dammit!”

“I only count two of them?” He managed to cough out.

“I’m counting the time you ended up battling an eldritch monster summoned by a cult as one of them!”

“I was there on purpose!”

“Don’t care, it counts!”

Kay sighed and let himself slip down into the dirt. Eleniah was thankfully herself enough to give him shit, which was a reassurance. He could see the fear and worry in her eyes just a moment ago before he’d made that Oath, and the sight of it had made his heart clench. “Can you get off me? You’re killing all of my dignity.”

“Kidnapping victims don’t get fucking dignity!”

“I rescued myself and killed the guy who took me!”

“What does that matter? He still got what he wanted and turned you into something else!”

“No, I beat that too! He wanted to turn me into a vampyr, I’m a vampire! All the strengths, none of the crazy!”

Lauren crouch down next to where Eleniah was still perched on his chest. “It’s really wonderful that the two of you can so happily reassure each other of your survival and the not turning into a monster and all, but can we get back to the making sure the nervous people with weapons don’t try to kill us part?”

Kay glanced around Eleniah’s body and saw that most of the crowd was still nervously staring at them with weapons out or magical attacks at the ready. He heaved Eleniah off of him, who yelped in surprise at his strength and rolled to the side. Standing up, he used his best “I’m in charge here” posture and looked around confidently. “Does anyone have a problem with the Oath I just made, or the information conveyed? I’m not a vampyr. I’m not human any more, and some traits I’m going to have are similar to traits vampyr have, but I promise that I don’t have any of the traits or behaviors that make vampyr into monsters.”

A person in Shatterplate Order markings started slowly making their way towards him. “This is a vampyr tester.” He held up a small faintly glowing orb on the end of a rod. “It’s designed to detect the presence of vampyr, and the orb will glow very bright if it touches one.” He slowly reached out to poke Kay with the stick, who just watched with more than a little bemusement.

The orb poked him in the arm, and did nothing. The hunter slowly nodded and poked him again.

“How does that actually work? What part of vampyr does it detect?”

“I… don’t know? I don’t make them, they just get issued to us.” He replied cautiously.

Hunter Ravenhome took a few steps forward, “From what little I remember when one of our enchanters tried to explain it to me combined with what you’ve revealed to me regarding the eldritch nature behind the existence of the vampyr, I believe it works by detecting the specific kind of eldritch energies present in all vampyr.” She held out her arm and let the hunter carefully poke her with the orb.

When prodding Lauren with the device once again had no visible effect, the hunter and the other Shatterplate Order members all relaxed, and most of the Sentinels and Blood Guard did too, taking their cue from the more experienced members of the group.

A moment of quiet passed as people lowered their weapons or dissipated spells or Skills.

Then someone rushed forward from the group.

“Alice!” A handful of Shatterplate hunters glommed onto Hunter Ravenhome, apparently her first name was Alice which was new info to Kay, and started chattering. That broke the last of the tension and people started to group up around all of them. Tyuah immediately started ushering people out of the immediate space around Kay and Lauren and started getting a cordon of Blood Guard keeping everyone at a safe distance.

“We’ll get the story of what happened going around once there’s some time for it!” Kay called out, “But for now, here’s a summary. Shit went down and the vampyr tried to turn me into one of them. I decided I didn’t want to be an insane monster and kicked that bullshit to the curb! Things happened and my race did get changed, along with theirs, but we're not crazy and we’re not monsters!” Kay wasn’t thrilled about having to repeat that line as many times as he knew he would have to, but he also knew it was going to be necessary. “I killed the vampyr, helped Lauren and Alice, then came back here! The rest of the details and what this means for later can wait. The important thing is that we’re okay, and Avalon is safe from the threat of the vampyr! Now it’s time to go home!”

A cheer went up and Eleniah grabbed him again, pulling him into a crushing hug.

“Don’t break my armor! I don’t have any clothes on under here!”