Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 8

She sank to her knees as she awaited the arrival of her glorious lord, her arms aching to spread in rapturous wonder as she beheld him! The blessed platform from which her lord would give her his holy commands sat before her, and she stared in rapture upon its form. It served to keep her lord safe from the foul taint of the unhallowed ground upon which the unclean tread; of course, she must study it in awe of its majesty! The smooth lines, the granular texture of the wooden planks, and even the nails that held it together were full of hints towards the magnificent plans of the holy one!

She completely ignored the arrival of two more figures, fellow vampyr though they may have been. The overlord’s direct servants ushered them in and bid them wait. She was incredibly jealous of the figures who were allowed to serve the most revered one directly in his abode; those that brought guests to him acquired him his sustenance and made sure that his subjects knew the word of their master. Who else had such a wonderful chance to be in the presence of the magnificent one for such long periods? Who else could hear his thoughts as he spoke them when no others were around to hear? Who else had the glorious opportunity to have their lives ended by her most holy lord when he felt the need to extinguish them? Not her.

Alas, those glories were denied to her. But! She could and would receive the orders of the most magnificent ruler of all those that should know they were ruled by him, whether they were willing or no! She would go and carry out those orders for the glory of all that her lord ordained! She sank deep into meditation as she observed the place where her master’s feet would rest for a moment as he spoke to her.

Her concentration was broken by one of the two others that had been brought here, and she glared at him with all her fury. Her fangs sunk into full view as she bared them at him in her rage! How dare he speak and interrupt her pondering of the glory of the most holy stage, how dare he! He even stood where he should be kneeling! Kneeling in preparation to receive the holy orders of the holy lord! Did he not believe? Why would he be there to be tasked with one of the rapturous assignments of the one whose light shines above all else?

No! It was not her place to question the lord, not her place to question who could or could not be sent out to complete those tasks the magnificent one saw fit to have completed. Her nails stabbed into her palm as she clenched her fist, spilling her own blood in penance for her transgressions.

The other two vampyr looked over as they smelled blood. The one who would not kneel looked down at her hand in hunger, then sneered at her, showing his ignorance and stupidity. Did he not see how she was completing penance? The other was smart enough to kneel, although he only had one knee touching the ground, as if he was there to greet some mere king, as opposed to a god! He looked away easily enough, his face blank as they all waited.

She knew enough to identify them both now. One was a Fool, and the other an Arrogant. She herself was one of the Wise, those who saw the divinity of their lord, god of all vampyr and all others beside. The one who kneeled, albeit incorrectly, was one of the Arrogant. The Arrogant ones only saw the holy one as a powerful being worth following as if they were vassals serving some noble that ranked above them. The Arrogant were called such due to their arrogant thoughts of supplanting the greatest above all as if they somehow could bring themselves to a higher level of power and overthrow him. They served because they saw themselves as weak and the great one as strong, which was the true and rightful way to think. But they also saw the one filled with grandeur as having a level of power that could be reached by mere mortals such as they! How she wished to destroy them one and all.

But while they vexed her so terribly, they served the holy overlord of the realms, and she would not remove his tools from his grasp.

The most holy one appeared then and gave them his most holy orders. He spoke for eons, and yet for not long enough, as he gave them the knowledge necessary to complete one of his grand plans, and she took that knowledge into herself, full of gratitude for his benevolence. She dared not gaze directly upon him as he spoke, but she could imagine his glorious form in his shining robes that represented the might of his purity, that which would smite all the unclean! She watched as he moved across his wondrous stage, and the path his feet took showed her the way to true enlightenment.

Near the end of the revered lord’s instructions, the Fool finally showed the true depths of his foolishness. He dared ask such a question as, “Where shall I go to enact your plans, my lord?” and was thus righteously punished by the lord ripping his skull from inside his head and beating his body into pulp! Such was the brilliance of the holy one’s rage that even she, lowly as she was, looked up to watch him work his ways! The holy one screamed out more teachings for her to learn as the Fool’s corpse was reduced to nothing but liquid and chunks of flesh. The way the holy one struck was a testament to his divine will and a teaching to those that followed him!

Although she hated the Arrogant ones much more, she hated the Fools the most! They had such foolish ideas and thoughts. Some believed that the holiest of beings was their comrade or even their friend. They believed that he followed such base codes as “honor” and “loyalty” or even “camaraderie”. Some others among the Fools thought that they knew how best to respond, that after hundreds of times of speaking to the lord and learning of his will, that responding in the same way was somehow acceptable.

Did they not realize that the bright one was the epitome of chaos? Their god was a tide that swept all along with it, and the movement of the tide could not be predicted! Just as the tides of the ocean did not move in ways that could be anticipated, neither could the god of vampyr and more besides. She often watched the ocean when she was not in direct service to the holy one and his magnificent guidance, and every time she was surprised by how and when the tides chose to rise and fall. The Fools thought they could see when the lord rose and backed away from him, then approached again when he fell like the waves pulling back from the beach.

Such folly. Such foolishness.

When her lord felt that the punishment had come to a close, he left, and she stood. Wasting no time, she crossed to where the lord had stood upon the holiest of stages and kissed where his feet had been, taking in the heady fragrance of divinity. When she had finished taking in the energy of the holy, the Arrogant had already left. She glanced down at the pool of blood that had once been a Fool, and even the ever-present hunger could not make her drink such tarnished fluid. Blood that had once insulted the great one should not be consumed by any who knew the true glory and divinity of the master of all vampyr!

She strode out the door, dragging her feet through the tainted elixir of life to show her disdain, and set out to complete the will of her god. She would do as tasked and bring the light of chaos how and where he had bid! In her excitement, her grasp tightened around the holy token she had been granted, and she quickly released it to not damage it with her prodigious strength. Of course, a divine relic from her lord could not be damaged, but her strength was a product of the divine will of her god, so she would have to be careful.

She stopped before the group of lesser followers who she had been given command of to carry out this most holy of errands. “Come!” She exclaimed, holding the relic above her head, “We go to take this to its rightful place and bring about the true age of our lord!”

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“And that’s pretty much it,” Kay shrugged as he looked at the contrasting expressions of the two women across from him, “I believe the reason that vampyr are madmen and monsters and the three of us aren’t is because they’ve been influenced by a power from a realm beyond this one. Either that power is deliberately driving them insane, or they just can’t handle the connection to it because it's so beyond our understanding.”

Zeia was leaning far enough forward that he was slightly worried about her jumping over the table at him, “That explains so much!” She exclaimed, “The physiological changes we see between stages of the change, they don’t make any sense because they’re not meant to, not to us. They’re being driven by the eldritch energy or whatever.” She whirled in her chair to look at Alice, “Do you know what this means?”

“Well-“

“It means we could be doing so much more! I don’t know any hunters that have anti-eldritch Skills or Classes; we could entirely augment our people to be more effective. This is going to change the future of the hunt.” She froze suddenly, her eyes jumping all over the place, “This is why we’ve never been able to make a true vampyr hunter Class,” She hissed, “We’ve got loads of Monster Hunters, and we should have been able to branch off to a Class designed to hunt a specific monster, but we haven’t been able to, because we’ve been missing the key detail.” She reached into her clothing and pulled out a hidden notepad from somewhere, “We need to add anti-eldritch Skills in, maybe even pull in some actual Eldritch Hunters into this to get us in the right direction.” She hurriedly scribbled notes down as she talked.

“There’s an Eldritch Hunter Class?”

“Of course there is! They’re just rare because they tend to die out quickly. The few that end up surviving end up really powerful and usually paranoid.”

“Or they go mad,” Alice added.

“Or that.”

“What I’d like to focus on is the fact that you can cure vampyr,” Alice said, letting Zeia continue with her note-taking.

“I can’t actually cure vampyr,” Kay corrected her, “I can save people before they’re completely lost to being vampyr. The same Skill that would let me save people just straight-up kills vampyr. Once they reach a certain point and the eldritch corruption completely consumes them, there’s no saving them.”

“So instead of having to kill every vampyr we see and do our best to mercifully put down anyone they turn, we could potentially save the victims and still need to destroy vampyr on sight? That is a direct and meaningful upgrade to our situation up till now. I want that Skill.”

Kay took some time to think it over before nodding in agreement. “Done. I’ll teach it to you. You’ll probably have to learn Blood Manipulation, though, since that’s the base Skill. I know that’s close enough to Blood Magic to make some of you uncomfortable, though.”

Alice’s face contorted for a second, then she physically shook it off. “Doesn’t matter; sensibilities aren’t worth shit if it means not saving people.” She stared him in the eyes, “What’s your price?”

“We’re going to team up to convince your organization and every other vampyr hunting group out there that we aren’t vampyr, and they don’t need to come to kill us.”

“We’d do that anyways,” Zeia looked up from her notes as she commented, “Can’t have them coming for Alice. Also, if anyone you saves gets turned into a vampire anyway, we’d need them to be safe too.”

Kay tried not to smile at their suspicious looks, “I don’t want to die to some stupid shit that doesn’t have to happen, and I’m perfectly fine with providing a service that will go on to help people. Having that vampyr venom in me and feeling it change me as I fought against it was hell. If I can teach other people to fight back against that and be part of that fight myself, I’m in. I’m not going to be selfish with something like that.”

Zeia snorted. “Sounds like you’re a good person.”

“I certainly try to be.”

Alice nodded once and reached her hand out to shake, “That’s a deal I can make with a clean conscience. Let's do it.”

“Well then,” Kay said after they’d shaken, “Your first job is convincing the rest of your team that everything’s alright. If we want to convince the world that we’re not the monsters they’re assuming we are, we’ll need to convince your own subordinates first.”

“That’s going to be the easy job. They already know me, and most of them that didn’t die or desert have worked with or under me for a while. Getting them to see the truth won’t be hard, even if they have years of training and biases to get past.”

“Let’s start with the easy job, then increase the difficulty. No point in getting in over our heads this early.”