Chapter 1034: A Man of Few Words (Patreon)

The city was freshly purged of undead corruption, with the populace still in chaos. At least half of them had been drawn from elsewhere in the realm, with no idea where they were. Even the natives were unsure of what was happening, although people from the castle Jason had liberated were trying to help. Despite not knowing much more, they had arrived to try and aid the confused population.

This included the four Jason knew best; they now stood with him on a flat stone rooftop. Sunlight beamed down onto three captive energy vampires that were lying on the flagstones, each surrounded by a ring of writhing leeches.

“You are certain they cannot escape?” Baloc asked, the orc’s hand resting on the handle of the axe strapped to his back.

“I’m not sure about anything,” Jason said. “I don’t know what powers they have, or to what degree sunlight impedes them. I’m not very familiar with this variety of vampire, and these ones have been modified.”

“Vampire,” Yujin said, the robed human peering at the captives. “This is what they are called? They are a curious thing, not dead souls like us, but also not alive. I would say undead, but there is considerable life force within them.”

“There were vampires in my world when I was alive,” Baloc said. “They were blood drinkers. These smell different.”

“These are energy vampires,” said Lalia, the reptilian techno-knight. “They were the most common variety on my homeworld, but you are correct that these are modified. The sensors in my armour are giving anomalous readings. There appears to be some energy field connecting them.”

“They were altered to grant them access to this realm,” Jason explained. “Also to give them abilities they could use to hunt me.”

“These were sent to hunt you?” asked the wind fairy, Aeora. “They seem too weak, given your capabilities.”

“That energy field Lalia mentioned,” Jason said. “Enough of these things in one place and they can suppress most of my powers.”

“Most?” Aeora asked. “But not all.”

“I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Jason said, “but I can’t confront them directly if there are too many. I defeated them this time, but they’ll adapt. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Tease out what I can and can’t do under the power of their collective auras.”

“Kill them,” Baloc said. “The dead learn nothing.”

“Maybe,” Lalia said. “For all we know, that energy field allows them to share knowledge and experience, letting even the dead be teachers. Asano is wise to be cautious.”

“It’s also hard to kill gold-rankers of any stripe,” Jason said. “Basically impossible when most of my powers are suppressed. These things aren’t here to kill me so much as harry me constantly. Extend how long it takes me to escape this place.”

“We can at least kill these,” Baloc said.

“And we might,” Jason said. “But first we interrogate them.”

***

Melissa Kohl was in way over her head. She had been for a long time, but the last few years had seen a level of escalation that beggared belief. Joining the Order of the Reaper had made sense. Shortly after turning twenty-one, her family had shared the truth. They had been a part of the order for centuries, carrying the torch for an organisation believed a long-dead historical footnote.

She’d learned to fight from the ancient skill books. Learned to infiltrate and to kill. She was part of the Order in the greatest of times, as it once more rose from the darkness. Still hidden, but now a global power once more. Not as it had been in ancient days, but on the way. Melissa loved her life. The intrigue, the danger. Sowing the seeds of political strife one day and infiltrating an adventuring guild the next.

As she rose through the ranks, she’d caught glimpses of trouble but had put them out of her mind. She still loved the life, even if oddities were appearing in the Order’s direction. Objectives of unclear value. Missions that didn’t seem to make sense. Behaviour in the leadership that went from strange to incomprehensible. It was easy to ignore at first. They were a secret society, so it made sense that there was a larger picture to which she was not privy. But as she rose through the ranks and got a better look at that picture, it looked increasingly like a cracked mirror.

Missions started feeling like busywork as the Order waited on some unspecified event. Melissa’s careful, quiet attempts to uncover what was behind it all revealed a single, mysterious figure. It was in ultimate command of the Order and apparently had been throughout its reconstruction. She had not learned who or what the entity was before being faced with a choice that changed everything.

The entire Order was to be turned into vampires. Every member had to decide: would they go along or turn their backs on the Order? Some fought. Some ran. Melissa did neither. She loved her essence powers and had no desire to turn into a monster, but she was too high up. Maybe some of the low-rankers had managed to escape, but there were too many eyes on her. For her, the choice was between being turned and being killed. She never accepted the change in her heart, even as the vampire’s curse changed her body.

What came next was hazy. Being turned into a blood vampire, then transformed into an energy vampire. Her mind had been transfigured as drastically as her body. There were whole years missing prior to her memories becoming coherent once more, and by then the Order was done. They were slaves now, to the shadow creature called Umber. Perhaps they always had been.

They were given a new purpose, never asked if they wanted it. It was never even really explained. They would be sent to a place and set to the task of hunting a man. Where and why didn’t matter. They were placed under the command of the energy vampire who had changed them from blood drinkers into the more exotic vampires they were now.

Upon being placed on this new world, they had been told to scatter. Move into groups and seek. Melissa had never imagined that, with an entire world, she would find Asano within days. Kinsey had taunted him, the foolish behaviour of a foolish man. Becoming a vampire had not changed that about him. Asano did not dignify Kinsey with a response, clearly being a man of few words.

Her coterie did as they were taught, using their new abilities to suppress his power and attack. She had expected panic when his powers were shut down, leaving him surrounded by vampires. Perhaps a quick escape, if he kept a cool head. What she did not expect was a man who not only stayed calm and stayed put, but took the fight to them.

Melissa knew that she was exceptional amongst the Order when it came to martial arts. Where most of her fellows has consumed their skill books and left it at that, she knew the books were just a beginning. Years were spent honing those gifted skills, making them her own. Turning magically bestowed reflexes into conscious choices. As a leader, she’d pushed her subordinates to do the same, although none had shared her zeal.

By gold-rank, Melissa suspected that she was the greatest practitioner of The Way of the Reaper in the entire order. That should have made her the greatest practitioner in the world. Jason Asano did not just disabuse her of that notion, but shattered it so thoroughly that she was staring, dumbstruck in awe. Melissa was a master of her martial arts, but this man was an actual artist. What she had considered distinct moves were, in his hands, an effortless, infinite flow. It was less martial technique than the dance of a shadow fairy that pranced amongst them, playing them for fools.

Melissa had been so struck at the spectacle that she’d failed to command her people as she should. This man did not waste her negligence, using their numbers against them as he remained untouchable. When she came to her senses, she was able to shift the battle, forcing him onto the back foot. Even so, he led them on a merry dance, bolting through the streets as the glowing eye creature with the cloak became his bodyguard.

That creature was something she had been warned of, but that did not stop it from being a massive impediment. Of the other two creatures known to follow Asano, she had occasionally sensed the shadow entity, although it did no more than observe. The feeling she got from it was akin to that of Umber, the creature that had destroyed and enslaved the Order.

The last of Asano’s familiars had not made an appearance, and that was her undoing. The man had led them away, far enough that they did not sense it taking its hideous form. Asano led them on a rambling trail through the streets and alleys, ultimately baiting them right into the beast. It snatched up Melissa, Kinsey and Lowell, the rest of the group scattering. Without her to lead them, and in the face of that abomination, it had been the right choice.

The beast had not finished them, although she wished it had. The rings of teeth ground her flesh and bones, while its venom caused her flesh to rot and die. Unconsciousness had been a mercy, even waking up in the sunlight being a better fate. She listened to Asano and a group of strange people discuss them, staying silent as they did. In a small miracle, Kinsey did as well.

It was a chance to gather information and get a good look at Asano. To her vampiric senses, he was strange, certainly not the human he appeared, but definitely alive. The others with him were something else entirely. She would have recognised if they were undead, even ones that hoarded life force, like vampires. They were not that, but her senses didn’t register them as alive, either. The human one claimed that they were dead souls, whatever that meant.

She turned her attention back to her quarry, Jason Asano. She’d heard stories in her Order days, most of which were too outlandish to be even vaguely plausible. There was definitely something odd about him, though. The last she had heard, there was still a standing order for every Adventure Society Director to put their entire branch on standby if Asano arrived in their city.

Melissa listened as the big one with green skin advocated for their deaths.

“And we might,” Jason said. “But first we interrogate them.”

The restraint Kinsey had managed thus far was finally shattered.

“You think you can make us talk?”

Asano let out a sigh as he looked down at the vampire. He made a dismissive gesture and a moment later, Kinsey was buried in a mound of leeches. It shifted as Kinsey thrashed from within and muffled screams told a story of torment. Gold-rankers did not die quickly, the screams and thrashing continuing at length. Melissa sensed Kinsey pushing to activate the powers robbed from him by the sun, now he was hidden by the leech mound.

The lingering effects of the sun didn’t make it easy, but Melissa felt Kinsey’s powers draw close to activation. Then Asano’s previously unfelt aura descended. It lacked the power she had been expecting from what she’d heard of the man, but there was something in it that made her skin prickle with fear. There was something absolute within it, an authority that said that everything within it was his. Not just the territory or the people, but the very rules of reality.

Melissa watched as the leech mound over Kinsey became clear as glass. It revealed his miserable state, bloody and blackened as dying flesh darkened with necrosis. Kinsey was exposed not just to Melissa’s gaze but also to the sun shining from a clear sky. His vampiric powers were cut off like a door had slammed shut. The meagre sliver of hope they had offered was gone, and all that was left was to wait.

Not all of Asano’s companions watched Kinsey’s slow, horrifying demise. The human and the one that looked like a fairy turned away, moving as far away as they could from the moans and the stench. The acrid tang of blood mixed with the fetid reek of dead flesh. Asano's gaze did not waver, watching the vampire be slowly devoured, its own regenerative power only extending the torment. Melissa was not squeamish, being an agent of many deaths herself. Even so, this was beyond anything she had seen or done. Kinsey was not merely being killed but consumed, bloody chunks of him visibly entering the translucent leeches before slowly breaking down. His body grew back, fighting a slow, terrible and ultimately hopeless fight against his own consumption. He lived much longer than she would have expected, given how much of his body remained. His screams only stopped when his lungs were gone, but the life force within him kept what was left alive. One of the last parts to go was his wide, terrified eyes, most of the head already consumed. Only after the eyes were gone did the final scraps of his flesh stop twitching, only to be devoured soon after.

“I was wondering how my aura would work,” Asano muttered to himself, his voice no more disturbed than if he'd been watching a performance at a festival. “The description was a bit vague, and changing the fundamental laws of reality isn't wildly intuitive, regardless of how many times I've done it.”

“Did you say ‘changing the laws of reality?’” the human asked, returning to see that no more of Kinsey was left than a wet stain.

“Don't mind me,” Asano said. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Couldn't you have done that faster?” the big green one asked.

“Yes,” Asano said absently as he turned to the third vampire, Lowell. “But their job is to slow me down, so I'm going to let them. Fewer leeches, this time, I think. Give the regeneration more time to work.”

“I... I'm willing to talk,” Lowell stammered.

“I don't care,” Asano told him. “I don't think there's much you can tell me, and even if there is, I don't need three of you.”

Asano glanced at the stain sitting between Melissa and Lowell.

“Two of you,” he corrected.

“There is no pride in this,” the big green one said. “Kill them or let them go. Torture is not a warrior's way.”

“I'm not a warrior,” Asano told him.

The fairy-like one drifted over.

“Even so, I agree with Baloc,” she said, placing a hand on Asano's shoulder. “Whether you end them or not, do so with mercy. For your own sake, if not theirs.”

“My father would want me to do the same,” Asano said. “Mercy when I can. But these people will harry me wherever I go and whatever I do. I need them to understand that there is a price to pay.”

He gestured and the leeches crawled away, melting into blood as they reached Asano and seeped through his clothes, disappearing into his leg.

“Go,” he told the vampires.

“What about interrogation?” Baloc asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Asano said. “They will do what they do, and so will I.”

Lowell scrambled to his feet and launched himself off the roof, as fast as he could move under the direct glare of the sun. Melissa lingered, looking warily at Asano.

“There's a leader,” Asano said. “What does he call himself?”

“Thadwick Mercer.”

His eyebrows rose.

“Still,” he muttered. “Interesting.”

“You know him?” Melissa asked.

“I know the body. I doubt there's much of the man I knew left inside it. Why aren't you running?”

“Would it help?”

“No.”

“I'm used to that. I would have run years ago if it would have done me any good. Do you know the shadow creature? I think it calls itself Umber. You have one around you that feels similar.”

“They're brothers. How does it control you in this place? A vampiric sire?”

“Just helplessness. When there's nowhere to go, what else is there to do? There’s this place, and then the shadow monster waiting to take me away when we’re done here. Assuming I survive and he ever intended to keep his word the first place.”

Asano tilted his head as he looked her over, as if observing an art piece.

“Do you know what you are?” he asked.

“Some kind of strange vampire that drinks magic instead of blood.”

“Do you understand the difference between a lesser vampire and a greater one?”

“No.”

“You are what is called a lesser vampire. Catch it early enough and you can be turned back by anyone with the power to purge curses.”

“You’re saying that it’s early enough for me?”

“No, you are long gone. That said, I can try something, if you're willing. Chances are it will kill you horribly.”

She looked over at the Kinsey stain.

“More horrible than that?”

“Far more. It'll be worse than that even if it does work. You'll experience a torment unlike anything you've conceived of, and if you resist it, for even a single, reflexive moment, it will fail and you will die as horrible a death as I can imagine.”

“That doesn't sound appealing.”

“I know. But is going back and preparing to come after me again any more appealing?”

“It isn’t, no.”

“Then...?”

“Do it.”

“Jason, what are you going to do?” the human asked.

“Something cruel,” Asano told him. “And, if I'm very lucky, something kind.”

Asano walked up to Melissa and placed a hand on her forehead.

“I'm going to extend my aura into you now. All the way, soul deep. Once I begin, if you resist at all, your aura will be able to push me back and the process will end. If you're very, very fortunate, at that point, you'll die.”

Melissa took a deep, slow breath.

“Do it.”

There were no words for the utter, mind-annihilating torment that scoured every mote of her being, mind, body and soul. Her eyes and mouth shot open, but she could not see and she could not scream.

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