Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 19

“Technically, nothing's gone wrong,” Lauren told him as they marched deeper into the palace. A squad of Blood Guard bodyguards were gathered around Kay, forming a small cordon around him as they headed toward Kay’s secure office. Deeper inside the complex.

Kay stuttered, stepping as he tried to stop, then was forced to keep walking by the guards right behind him. “… How is that true? Two assassination attempts and a brewing coup are things going wrong.”

“The assassins failed, which means that things went the way they were supposed to. Both of them attacked in public areas where we couldn’t search everyone or control people’s movements, and the security we did have in place reacted exactly as they should have, with no casualties on our end. None of our people even got seriously wounded; the worst was some heavy bruising and an easily healed cut.”

“’ No casualties on our end’?” Kay repeated.

“One of the assassins went after Eleniah outside the academy, and there were kids around. She took care of it very quickly and quietly, but the assassin died.”

“How does quickly and quietly equal death? I would have expected at least a little bit of a scuffle.”

“She punched him once, and his heart stopped.” Lauren saw Kay’s expression and added, “Eleniah says she checked right before he died, and he was only tier three.”

Kay’s brows came further down over his eyes, “Did they, ‘they’ being whoever sent assassins going after our people, not send someone actually able to kill their targets?”

“No idea. The other one went after Amanda in public, but her guard detail captured them. He isn’t cooperating fully, but so far, we don’t believe the two attackers were working together, and if they were hired by the same person or people, then he doesn’t know that.” She stopped, holding Kay in place as the lead elements of the guard detail checked the room, then stepped in front of him, entering before he could. “The most likely scenario at the moment is that it was a testing strike. A couple of cheaper and weaker blades-for-hire were sent in to see how we would react. That’s Isla’s leading theory at the moment, and while they aren’t anywhere near her level of experience yet, our own intelligence people agree with her.”

Kay glanced through the small pile of paperwork waiting for him. “Aren’t all of the Blood Guard intelligence people working for Isla right now?”

“She’s acting as their mentor until they’re higher tier in those Classes, yes. We haven’t had anyone with those kinds of Classes or Skills apply for the Blood Guard, so we asked for volunteers with open Class slots.”

“I’m glad Isla’s students are agreeing with her.”

Lauren ignored his sarcasm and nodded in agreement.

Kay rolled his eyes at her. “Tell me about this coup.”

“From what I understand, it's more of a plot than an actual coup, but Amanda and Isla have the full briefing for you. They’re on the way now.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It doesn’t sound like the people plotting to take over have any chance of pulling it off.” She gave him a small smirk, “They also aren’t part of our government, so I think technically it's a takeover attempt, not a coup.”

Kay shot her a flat look. “I’m going to work on these papers until they get here.”

“Of course, my lord,” Lauren replied instantly.

A drop of blood splashed against her face like a tiny water balloon. The splatter dripped down her cheek for a moment before silently lifting off of her and merging with her armor. The almost imperceptible cut on the end of Kay’s finger sealed up.

“You could have drank that.” He commented.

Whatever snark Lauren had been about to reply with was cut short. “That’s… still a bit odd for me. Drinking it out of a glass makes it a little bit more mentally palatable, even if it's started to taste surprisingly good recently.”

“Have you tried biting anyone? I haven’t outside of the limited experiments we did.”

“No, I haven’t. The researcher from the hunters, Zeia, right?” She continued after Kay nodded in confirmation, “She’s been doing some tests to see if it is safe for us to drink directly from someone. Some of the hunters that felt more trepidation about working with us insisted that just because we weren’t vampyr didn’t mean we weren’t dangerous, so her original plan to find differences between us and vampyr that could be exploited as weak points against the vampyr got derailed into double checking if we’re evil terrifying monsters to ensure we don’t alienate anyone.”

Kay sat back in his chair, the paperwork forgotten, “That’s a smart move and exactly what we discussed before I left. If we don’t want vampyr hunters constantly after us, we need to show them we aren’t their targets. Convincing a smaller group of them is just a stepping stone to convincing all of them.”

“Yes, just like Zeia and Alice told me several times. Each.” She grimaced, baring her fangs for a moment, “There’s just this… urge. It’s not like being thirsty for blood, it doesn’t feel like that. It’s just…”

“You look at someone and feel a need to feed on them. An impulse.”

She nodded, looking wary.

“I’ve been feeling the same way,” Kay admitted, “It’s not all empowering or even hard to deal with, but it’s there.”

“Yes. I don’t feel like I’m going to hurt someone, and I’ve been making sure I drink regularly from my own blood stores to make sure I avoid any lust for blood that you said might occur, but I still just want to bite.”

Kay shrugged and held out an arm. The thin coating of blood that sat beneath his clothes as a hidden set of armor pulled back his sleeve and left his arm bare. “Want to try biting me? It’s not like you could make me any more of a vampire than I am now.”

Lauren took a step forward, then paused. Her gaze danced around the room, looking at each of the guards posted in the corners.

“Guarner, you stay, but you don’t see anything unless I’m in danger. Everyone else, out.”

Three of the four guards saluted and headed for the door. The fourth, the leader of the current detail turned his already blank gaze away from Kay’s seat while murmuring a quick, “Yes, my lord.”

Lauren slowly kneeled down next to Kay. “Why do I feel… reverent?”

“I’m only slightly less in the dark than you are,” Kay replied slowly, “But in some myths, vampires feeding from the one who turned them was a ritualistic thing that could transfer or grant power. In others, it was a way to break free from the control a vampire’s vampire parent had over them.”

She paused with her fangs an inch away from his skin, and he nodded gently in reply to the question in her eyes.

When her fangs pierced his skin, there was a dull shock of pain, almost identical to the feeling of a needle going in, but after that, it just was. He could feel her fangs in his veins and the slow trickle of his blood into her mouth, but there wasn’t anything other than the literal physical sensations. Eleniah had reported the same thing, but it was interesting that there was no venom or mystical component to a vampire’s bite that added pain relief or made it feel good, like in some stories. Or maybe at tier five, he and Eleniah were just too powerful to be affected by such things if they were from the same tier or higher.

A few moments after she started drinking, roughly three or four large gulps worth of blood had passed out of his arm and into Lauren’s stomach when something suddenly changed. Kay’s eyes jerked down to meet Lauren’s right as hers leaped up to meet his. As their gazes met, Lauren’s eyes flashed red, and a deep sense of satisfaction suddenly rolled off of her as a bond of feeling was created between them.

Lauren slowly pulled her fangs out of him and sat back, staring up at him in both interest and mild confusion. “Can you feel that?”

“I can. It’s… you.” Kay instinctively looked for some kind of actual tether between them before realizing that there probably wasn’t one. “It's like I know your position and how you are somehow outside of my regular senses. I-“

The sudden appearance of a screen cut him off, as they usually did when they popped up unexpectedly.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

New Racial Characteristics Discovered!

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

[————————————————————]

As a new and technically unnatural sapient species to Torotia, any newly discovered information regarding your new race will be added to your Status and to the Status of any other members of your new race as new information is discovered. This information will remain in the Status of all members of your race for ten biological generations or until that information reaches a level of acknowledgeable by the sapient beings of Torotia that the System determines counts as “general knowledge”.

New Characteristics:

Spawn’s Bite: Willingly allowing one of your vampiric progeny to drink your blood forms a connection to them, communicating to you their location over moderate distances, their general well-being over short distances, and any strong emotions they feel over very short distances. Each time you allow your vampiric progeny to drink from you, you will renew and extend the length of the bond. Multiple repeated feedings will eventually result in a permanent bond. Feeding your spawn may also temporarily empower them if you are significantly more powerful than them in certain characteristics or of a higher tier. Multiple repeated feedings may turn temporary boosts into permanent ones over long periods of time.

Sire’s Blood: Willingly feeding from your vampiric progenitor forms a connection to them, communicating to you their location over moderate distances, their general well-being over short distances, and any strong emotions they feel over very short distances. Each time you drink from them, you will renew and extend the length of the bond. Multiple repeated feedings will eventually result in a permanent bond. Feeding from your sire can also temporarily empower you if they are significantly more powerful than you in certain characteristics or of a higher tier. Multiple repeated feedings may turn temporary boosts into permanent ones over long periods of time. What characteristics are empowered depends on what characteristics you are weaker than your sire in, and the strength of the boost is determined by how much weaker you are in those characteristics. Those characteristics include but are not limited to direct strength, reaction speed, mana regeneration, mana pool size, vision acuity, and more.

[————————————————————]

“Helpful.” Kay commented, “Really helpful. This will let us know when we actually figure something out instead of just randomly guessing based on my random memories of vampire lore. Why didn’t it trigger on more basic things like diet, though?”

“I don’t know.” Lauren replied, still reading the prompt in detail, “Maybe that information doesn’t affect the System directly so it doesn’t populate your Status with that? What you eat doesn’t directly change your combat prowess or ability to level Skills, but having a connection that tells you where someone is or if they’re injured and can provide power-ups to several different key traits definitely can.” Her eyes narrowed before she grinned widely, “And that kind of bond is perfect for a bodyguard.”

“It only works between vampire parent and child. Or sire and spawn as the System calls it.”

“How useful that you’re the First Vampire and my sire, then.”

“You’re the commander of my entire Blood Guard. I need you leading my troops and dealing with problems, not guarding me all the time. That’s why we decided to split things up into divisions.” He gestured at Garner, who still wasn’t looking at them directly. “Oh, speaking of, Guarner, tell the rest of the detail that they can come back in, please.”

“My lord.” The grizzled orc stepped over to the door and ushered his fellow guards in.

“True,” Lauren said slowly, “But you can turn other people into vampires too.”

“Turning people just to make them better bodyguards for me sounds immoral.”

She shot him a flat look. “It would be if you were forcing anyone, but we’re not going to. We’ll need to experiment with turning someone who doesn’t have eldritch gunk inside them anyway, just to make sure we won’t have any problems there, and we can ask for volunteers from the Guard.”

“That’s doable.” Kay eventually replied after thinking it over.

“And a smart move.” She stood up before leaning in close, “You’ve saved my life on multiple occasions and given me a giant step up in the world. I’ve gone from a random nobody with a scouting Class who took a chance at running away from home to join up with a new village in the wilds into one of the most important people in a powerful new nation, with a big important job to boot. Allow me to do that job and make sure you’re safe, alright, my lord?”

The intensity of Lauren’s feelings, admiration, gratitude, determination, and a few others that weren’t as strong pushed through their new bond into Kay’s awareness, but just looking into her eyes told him the same thing. “Alright, Lauren.”

She grinned. “Good.” She stood up and brushed imaginary dust off her armor.

A few minutes later, the paperwork still forgotten, Amanda opened the door and stepped through with Isla on her shoulder. They found Kay sitting at his desk with his eyes closed, and a finger pointed directly at Lauren while she tried to sneak around the office. She stopped in place and glanced over as Amanda pulled the door closed behind her.

Both of the new entrants to the room paused to look things over before Isla asked, “What are you doing? And why is there blood around your mouth?”