Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 41

Were getting close. Well be able to see the edge once we clear these trees.

The differences between the two local guides Kay had had the opportunity to follow recently couldnt be overstated. Dev was an older, experienced, elven man who gave off an air of confidence. The young human woman leading Kay, Alice, and the combined team theyd brought along had refused to give her name, was barely old enough to have her first Class, and was visibly shaking with stress as she led them toward the village that had stopped responding to anyone.

The area had definitely had serious troubles over the last few days, and Alice was sure there was a vampyr around. The only thing the locals knew was that people were dying, and while they were grateful someone had shown up to try and solve whatever the issue was, they werent going to trust strangers. The only person willing to lead them there had been a scared girl whod worked past her fear, mostly out of personal reasons. Shed reluctantly told them about her friend in the village they were aiming for, who she was worried about, and asked them to try and save her. Since the whole point of Kay and company being there was to try and save anyone they could, he easily agreed, and theyd set off. Having a guide had cut quite a bit of time off their journey, and it had only taken them a few hours to get close. The tier one girl had slowed them down quite a bit until someone had managed to convince her to climb up on someones back and direct them verbally.

They quietly passed through a few hundred feet of brush, slowing down considerably once they knew they were close. After a nod from Kay, the weakest members of the group gathered up their guide and hung back, their orders to protect her while the more experienced fighters and the Shatterplate Order dealt with the threat. Past the tree line was another few hundred feet of open ground, with the edges near the forest looking like theyd been recently cut back. Beyond that was a simple-looking village with clusters of single-level buildings around a more open central space.

Kay watched the area alongside Alice and a few people with scouting Skills. He could faintly make out a group of people in the center of the village, and he could faintly hear someone speaking to them. It sounded like a lecture or a sermon. What is with these people and gathering them up in the middle of villages to make speeches? He quietly groused.

Alice shot him a look. What are you talking about?

I ran into a blood mage who was trying to dominate everyone in a village not too terribly far from here, who Im pretty sure was some kind of vampyr worshiper, by the way, who did the same thing. And that vampyr that we fought made that stage and was trying to give some kind of talk when we got there.

Im not sure that those really equate, but if a vampyr-worshiping blood mage was somewhere around here, maybe they got their clues from this vampyr or something? What does it matter?

Im looking at patterns in behavior; it could teach us something about vampyr that we didnt know.

Well, Ive been hunting them for a long while now, and I havent seen this before, so dont worry about it now and focus on killing them.

One of the Shatterplate scouts who had the highest level stealth Skill crept forward out of sight and returned a few minutes later. They reported that the villagers had been gathered in the center of the village, and there was a vampyr on a temporary stage giving them a sermon, preaching about the wonders of some Great One they should all adore and follow.

See? Kay muttered.

Again, worry about it later. Did you see any other vampyr?

There were five weaker ones on the edges of the crowd and some thralls moving in and out of one of the buildings. Some of them looked newer, but most of them were older. The one giving the speech is definitely the leader.

Thralls? Someone asked.

Basically servants made through blood magic and a vampyrs bite. There are more than one type based on what Classes or Skills the vampyr who makes them has, but whoever gets turned into one dies and the vampyr gets a mindless servant.

So theyre undead?

Not really, Alice answered, Or not usually. I have heard of some vampyr having undead thralls, but mostly the body is alive, and the person whose body it was is gone.

So we should put them down.

Definitely. They wont hesitate to attack you on the vampyrs orders, though they shouldnt be much trouble to fight. True combat thralls are rare, but dont let your guard down; they can sometimes have tricks.

How do we take them out without letting the villagers get hurt? Kay asked.

We do our best and mourn anyone that gets caught in the fight. Kay and I will head for the leader and try to take them out as fast as possible. Well split up one team to hit the building with the thralls, and everyone else will focus on the vampyr on the edges. Hit them hard, but try to angle them away from the crowd and drive them back. Anyone not directly in the fight will take over, evacuating whoever you can.

Kay nodded with everyone else. He could try to take over the planning, but he didnt think hed get much experience out of it for his Leadership Skill since overriding your expert was bad leadership. The group split up, with Kay following close behind Alice as they got in position. Alice would give the order to attack, and Kay would launch the signal, which was just going to be a compressed ball of blood launched into the air that would burst open. Hopefully, it would be visible enough to alert everyone to attack, and it had the added bonus of potentially distracting any of the blood mages among the vampyr.

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Blood-red armor stood out against the wheat-colored grass, and Kay didnt have any camouflage blood, so he lay across the ground, keeping his profile beneath the mildly overgrown grass.

Weve got an opening, get ready.

Whats happening? Kay asked as he pushed himself to his knees.

The leader one just shot over and backhanded one of the weaker ones for grabbing one of the villagers. Looks like she doesnt want her sermon interrupted. Once she gets back to her stage and starts to talk, were going in.

A few moments of Kay nervously watching grass passed before: Now, go!

A miniature volcano launched a red ball from Kays back as he scrambled to his feet and charged forward. The ball arced over the village, and as he rounded a small home, he saw a pale woman in long drooping ropes with sleeves that covered her arms and hands and a train that dragged across the makeshift stage in the middle of the village. Her mouth was open mid-word, her previous tirade about the beauty of the violence of some Great One, which seemed to be a reoccurring theme with vampyr. The moment stretched as her body shifted toward the ball, a strangled sound coming out of her mouth as her speech was cut off by the distraction.

At the top of its arc, the ball exploded outward in a spray of blood, making a nice big signal that hopefully everyone would see. Kay let the condensed mist spread out before magically grabbing hold of it and brutally slamming it down toward the preachy vampyr in the form of tiny, high-speed droplets. The vampyr shrieked like a banshee as she waved her hand at the incoming attack. Her hands Kay could feel some kind of influence attempt to spread itself through the blood he controlled, but he shrugged it off and continued to pelt the enemy as he ran up to her.

At the edges of his vision, he could see the rest of the team carrying out the plan. Someone appeared out of invisibility, or at least very good stealth, and stabbed one of the vampyr, watching the edges of the crowd through the neck. Another vampyr vanished into a hole that opened up underneath him. More fighters charged into view, some attacking vampyr and the rest bodily grabbing people from the crowd and running off with them. Either the villagers were quite mentally tough, or the random people in armor showing up and yelling at them to run in a certain direction broke through the mental fog of shock and panic because anyone who wasnt carried out of the way of the fight was quickly up and running, surrounded by a cordon of Sentinels, Blood Guard, and Shatterplate Order members that had been dedicated to defense.

The building with thralls in it had a wall splinter, and then the door broke into pieces as a pale, emaciated body went flying through it. Kay could just make out a handful of people putting down the thralls as he swung his halberd down at the vampyr womans head. The attack bounced off a translucent, black-colored barrier that popped into place around her, and her defenses triggering finally made the vampyr pay attention to something other than trying to force whatever effect shed been trying on the blood pelting her to work.

She swung toward Kay, vicious, jagged fangs that looked like crooked bolts of lightning flashing as she swung a finger pointed at his chest. A series of magic circles formed above her hand and trailed up her arm, each of them a disgusting combination of brown, red, and black that looked like sludge and bile. A bead of magic the same color as the circles condensed in front of her finger and shot out as a beam at Kay. He dodged the first one and the second, but the third and fourth were coming too quickly, and they were too close together, so Kay braced himself for a hit.

The first one that struck his armor felt like being stabbed with the magical essence of a decaying corpse that tried to burrow into his armor instead of hurting him. He was surprised enough that it managed to get partially inside the arm armor hed brought up to block his face, and it spread like poison through someones veins.

The final beam went wide as Alice sprinted up behind the woman and drove two vicious-looking daggers up into her armpits, and the finger the vampyr was using to direct the attack jerked in a different direction. The vampyr shrieked again, loud enough for Kay to wince, although it didnt seem to be a real attack. Kay shoved at the contaminated piece of his armor and watched it slough off like rotted flesh from a bone. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Kay stepped forward in a lunge, driving the spear tip of his halberd into the vampyrs chest. She shrieked for a third time and struggled against the three blades plunged into her. Her eyes drilled into Kays with maddened hate, and she began to melt like wax, her entire body dripping onto the stage and forming a pile of muck.

Uh. Is that-

The body of the thrall that had been sent flying through the door of the house exploded from within in a gory spectacle as more sludge erupted from its chest cavity and reformed into the same vampyr. She continued to glare at Kay as she snarled with rage and panted with exertion, completely naked except for the gunk covering her.

You! I can feel you! I can feel the perversion of the Great Ones gift within you! You have none of his power, none of his glory! You have purged it from yourself and doomed yourself to an eternity of suffering! Die, heretic! The vampyrs eyes began to glow a familiar sickly green as they physically grew in her head, the rest of her facial features shifting or stretching as her anatomy suddenly started to shift. Her nose melted into her mouth, which opened into a gaping maw that couldnt close entirely, revealing more and more jagged fangs that took up her entire jaw. Her eyes melded together into a disgusting-looking conglomeration with two pupils drifting and rotating around inside the one giant eyeball. The rest of her body began to shift as well, her arms growing more joints as they elongated and bent while her legs grew stumpier and shorter to account for her now top-heavy torso. Her ribs cracked, and jagged pieces of the jabbed out of her flesh before two more tiny deformed arms grew from her sides and began to undulate, the fingers twitching as more magic circles appeared in the air near them.

What the fuck is that!? Alice shrieked in panic as the abomination that the vampyr had become twitched and writhed.

You dont know? Youre the vampyr expert! Kay shouted back.

None of them have ever done that before!

The original, longer arms of the creature flailed, one of them clipping a roof and breaking the edge into flying splinters. Its eerie eye snapped back to look at Kay. YoU wiLL DIe, HeReTIC! It shrieked again, its voice warbling and filled with the sounds of decaying bodies and warped flesh. More beads of nasty-looking magical energy formed from the magical circles its lower arms had made, but they werent beads this time; they were baseballs. Kay and Alice dived in different directions to avoid the foot-wide beams that shout out at them, melting the stage into more sludge and muck.

Kay rolled to his feet and saw more orbs of energy forming, along with more complicated-looking magical circles appearing at the ends and at each joint of the two longer arms that were still thrashing against the ground and the surrounding buildings. Kill it now; figure everything else out later!