Chapter 1042: A Small Sacrifice (Patreon)

The city could have come from Earth, or at least one of Earth’s zombie apocalypse movies. It looked every part the downtown of a western city, given to significant disrepair. Glass windows were broken; grass grew up through breaks in the asphalt. There were even the zombies, with the corrupted wandering aimlessly. They were scattered, not in the horde-like numbers Jason was used to. Most had been collected into a massive form that stomped down the streets like Godzilla, its heavy footfalls turning the streets from cracked to shattered.

Jason perched atop a tall building, crouching on the edge of the flat roof. His cloak danced around him despite the complete stillness of the air. Jason frowned as he caught glimpses of the thing as it passed between buildings, disliking what he saw.

“Why does it do that?” Melissa asked, standing behind him.

“Wander around? I have no idea.”

“No, I mean your cloak. It’s weird enough that there’s no wind this high up, but your cloak is acting as if there were.”

“It responds to dimensional forces,” Jason said absently, still watching for the lumbering giant. “Does the giant appear strange to you?”

“As opposed to all the other giant zombies I’ve seen?”

“Is this your first?”

“When have you sent a giant zombie before?”

“Avatar of Undeath.”

“How’d you get out of that alive?”

“A friend of mine drank from Hero’s cup.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. But tell me I’m not imagining that this thing seems strange.”

“You mean how it looks like a giant ice cream sculpture of you that was left out in the sun?”

“You know ice cream?”

“Yeah, there was a shop near where I lived in Vitesse, I really loved it. It’s called The Biscuits and Cream Stash. They have a sandwich with sweet biscuits on the outside and ice cream in the middle. I miss it so much. Just didn’t taste the same as a vampire.”

He turned to look at her, pulling down his hood to level a flat stare.

“What?” she asked.

“That bloody dragon,” he muttered. “I bet he’s been stealing my damn recipes again.”

“Did you just say dragon?”

Jason turned his attention back to the monster as it ponderously shambled down a nearby street. It really did look like a melted reflection of Jason himself.

“Why do you think it looks like me?” he asked.

“The facial hair, the clothes, ragged as they are. The melty face kind of looks like a half-smirk.”

“No, I meant why did the corruption make it look like me?”

“The whole thing is a reaction to you, right? We don’t know if it has a fully formed mind, but our best guess is that it’s doing this to try and fight you. Maybe, in whatever passes for its brain, it saw the only thing with the power to threaten it, and tried to replicate it.”

“Do you think it’s an animalistic response, nothing but copying an aesthetic?”

“I have no more information than you do. I hope it isn’t genuinely recreating you. I won’t want to see the corruption spreading like those afflictions you use.”

“Fair point.”

“Are you going to fight it now? See how strong it is?”

“I’m not sure,” he said as he stood up straight. “What I am sure of is that it’s time for you to go.”

“You don’t want me caught up in the fight?”

“You’re strong enough to handle that. You need to go because your old boss is here.”

She looked around, spotting nothing.

“He’s here in person?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve been waiting for him to show himself for years. He picks now, of all times?”

“Of course he does. This is what all the patience was for. If he fights me here, we’ll definitely get the giant’s attention, and it will focus that attention on me. What the thing looks like tells us that, if nothing else. It’s a better plan than old Thadwick would have come up with, and certainly a more patient one. I personally would have waited until the fighting started before revealing myself, though.”

Jason waved at the space beside him and a shadow arch rose from the rooftop.

“Go, Melissa.”

“What happens if you lose? There’s a lot of them, plus a melting giant, and Thadwick has that sword.”

He scowled.

“I know what he has. I can feel it already, it’s like its aura is trying to unravel my very being.”

“Then maybe we both go?”

“No.”

“Isn’t that a little arrogant?”

“No. It’s a lot arrogant.”

“You know the others won’t be happy when I tell them what’s happening here.”

“We’ll see. Now leave.”

She sighed but stepped through the portal.

“I appreciate you not starting things before she left,” he said.

A cloud of glowing blue mist rose over the rooftop before coalescing into the figure of Thadwick. Around his right arm was a gauntlet and vambrace that reached up to his elbow, glossy black and ruby red.

“It’s been a while,” Jason said. “Or do you count this as a first meeting? What should I even call you?”

“I have retaken the name Thadwick.”

“How much of the Thadwick that I knew is in there?”

“Scraps of a soul. I am a gestalt being, although not like you. Where you are flesh and spirit made one, I am two broken souls put together to make another. I have Thadwick’s memories. I cannot claim they didn’t shape me, but, if anything, they were a guide on what not to be.”

Shade rose from Jason’s shadow.

“One of those souls was a former summoner of mine. Do you have any of their memories as well?”

“I do not. His soul had been engineered into little more than raw materials. For good or ill, it is Thadwick whose past has shaped my future.”

“He didn’t care for me,” Jason said.

Thadwick nodded.

“Thadwick was never a stable person. Being implanted with a star seed was the true beginning of the end, I think. He became increasingly self-deluded, fixated on you as the architect of his downfall. I have always been curious to meet you. I’ve heard of your exploits, over the years. I often wondered what would happen should we meet again. If his hatred, his obsession would bleed into me.”

“And?”

“I find my own circumstances colouring our encounter more than the memories of a long-dead fool. I’ve been alive now longer than he ever was.”

“I hated him too, almost instinctively. It took a lot of time and therapy to realise that it was because we were so alike. I didn’t like looking at something that petty and self-impressed, knowing subconsciously that I wasn’t that far away from it. How easily I could end up like him. He had money and I had friends. One of those does a better job than the other of keeping you from turning into a complete turd.”

“Yes,” Thadwick agreed. “I came to the same conclusion.”

“What have you been doing with yourself for all these years? How did you wind up here?”

“I was lost, after my rebirth. Alone, confused. Filled with memories that made no sense to me. They belong to a person that I did not know, yet I cannot deny that they have made me what I am. I’ve avoided his family, for the most part. I saved his sister’s life once, although she has no idea. My first mistake was revealing myself to his mother. My second was letting her live. She could have set them on me, but those mistakes were the best thing that ever happened to me. She found me again, knowing her son as I followed his memories. Then she found it in her heart to be a mother to me, even knowing what I am. And what I am not. I try to be a better son than the one she had before.”

“People were hunting you, and she was the only one who found you?”

“They were looking for a vampire. Such creatures leave very specific trails. Energy vampires find it easier to go undetected. I can feed on a room full of people and they’ll never notice it. They just go home feeling tired and have one of the best night’s sleep of their lives. If one is willing to act in moderation, it is easy to go unnoticed. I seem to have a resistance to the effects of sunlight. It still weakens my abilities, but it does not affect my mind as it does the blood drinkers. Or perhaps it does, but to a sufficiently lesser extent that I have not become a remorseless slaughterer.”

“I’m familiar with energy vampires. One works for my family. She was an enemy as well, once, as you were. If Thadwick’s soul isn’t what’s driving you to pursue me, why did you cross into death itself to hunt me down?”

“In my early days, I encountered other vampires. Most were driven by hunger and as much consequence as they could bring themselves to care about, but a scant few resisted the changes to their mindset. Willpower alone is not enough, of course. There were various methods of shielding or purging the change. Usually at great cost or with grim side effects. I began collecting these vampires together. Consolidating their methods, combining the best and discarding the worst. It was difficult and impractical, but the alternative was to become unfeeling monsters. Something most who becomes vampires see as the appeal, not a curse.”

He held up his arm, looking over the gleaming gauntlet of onyx and ruby.

“With the messenger invasion,” Thadwick continued, “opportunities presented themselves. This weapon is a very fine thing when it comes to killing them. The Adventure Society would have nothing to do with us, but other organisations were more willing to look the other way if it meant alleviating the pressure of messengers at their gates. It was a bounteous time for a resource-starved group of vampires with very specialised needs.”

“How did the copies of the sword come into being? One of them killed me once.”

“It’s not actually a sword, as it turns out. As I came to master it, I discovered it can take the shape of various weapons. The sword form does appear to be its original incarnation, and slightly stronger than the rest. That’s why it is that form we copied.”

“We?”

“As the war progressed, even the Adventure Society became willing to make certain accommodations. A clandestine group within it, I believe, but the people above them were more interested in results than details. Unfortunately, the replica swords were not as powerful or versatile as the original, yet were extremely costly to craft. It was determined that their mass production was not practical.”

“Let me guess: this secret group within the Adventure Society decided to clean up loose ends before their bosses found out what they were really up to.”

“Yes. In success there is forgiveness, but in failure, blame. They attempted to wipe out their collaborators, primarily me and my people, along with a number of researchers.  This was not unanticipated, although a number of my friends were caught out before we vanished entirely. It was enough to drive us to the enemy.”

“You worked with the messengers?”

“We did not fight for them. We managed to escape with most of the replica swords, and we sold them to various astral kings. An edge against their rivals. In the course of dealing with the Adventure Society and the messengers across the years, I came to discover what all the fighting was about. While the public was told it was simply an invasion, the truth was much more specific.”

“The Purity relic.”

“Indeed. We joined the search, as had so many others. The difference was, we found it.”

“Knowledge told you.”

“One of her priestesses, but yes. The why never mattered in the face of something that could cleanse my friends of the taint on their minds. The process even seemed to shield them from further effect. But the use of such an object was hard to hide. It consumes so much power that it needs to draw it from the astral itself. The alarm formations the Adventure Society uses to detect monsters register it as an anomalous manifestation. The relic worked, but it was not the solution we had hoped. We did not consider an alternative even possible until we were approached by a leader of the messengers.”

“Jamis Fran Muskar. He gave you the Quilido technique for purging vampire mind-taint.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he got that technique from me. You and I have both been played for pawns. The price Knowledge asked for the relic was steep. To serve a shadow man, much like the one standing beside you. Umber, he is called.”

“My brother,” Shade said. “We are aware of his participation.”

“The shadow man knows much, including about me. He taught my people how to replicate my sword more efficiently. He taught me to turn ordinary vampires into energy vampires. Once the mind-taint was purged from my people, I was able to make them like me.”

“But it wasn’t just your people.”

“No. There was an Order of Assassins.”

“More pawns like us,” Jason said.

“Yes. Umber had them turned into vampires, then into energy vampires, all armed with replicas of my weapon.”

“Why the extra step of having them made into blood vampires first? Why not have you turn them directly from mortals?”

“I have never turned a living person into one of my kind. I intend not to, and from my understanding, that is for the best. It is deeply consuming to propagate my nature, far more than for blood vampires. Turning those who are already vampires is much easier. Also, if I created all those vampires, I would control them. The shadow man does not like power in hands other than his own. I command those vampires, but they are not my thralls.”

“And now you’re here, holding up your end of the deal. I see why you would, back on Pallimustus. If you break a deal with a goddess of Knowledge, she wouldn’t find it hard to hunt you down. But you’re here now. Surely, you’ve realised by now that I can and would take you out of here, once I’m done.”

“I believe you would. The problem is Thadwick.”

“Your old memories? You want to what? Avenge him?”

“No. Whoever and whatever may have led Thadwick to the choices he made, he was the engineer of his own fate. He made those choices, and made them based on a fundamental lack of two things: integrity and honour. I am still figuring out exactly who I am, but I am certain it is not Thadwick Mercer.”

“Yet you took his name.”

“A small sacrifice for a woman who needed a son. My point is that I will not abandon my honour or my integrity. I made an agreement and I will see it out. If I can, I will cut you down. I’m told it won’t kill you.”

“No, but it will get a lot of other people killed. Others corrupted, in ways worse than your vampire friends. You’ve seen what is happening in this afterlife. I respect integrity, I do, but putting principles over people blindly will only do more damage in the end. One of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that sometimes you have to compromise. You have to be willing to pay a little part of yourself to do what’s right for other people, even if it’s wrong for you.”

“I am sorry, Asano, but I cannot do that. I made a deal and I will keep it.”

The gauntlet on his arm moved like a living thing, reshaping itself into a wicked sword. Looking more like an oversized tool of ritual sacrifice than a weapon, it nonetheless sat comfortably in Thadwick’s hands.

Jason sighed.

“I thought it might come to this,” he said. “Thadwick, the way I see it, we have three options.”

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