Chapter 39: A New King Rises (Patreon)

Chapter 39

A New King Rises

Subterfuge comes naturally to vampires. There’s no line we won’t cross to achieve our goal, so killing thousands of children to begin a harvest ritual fifteen minutes early makes perfect sense to us. But human sacrifice is a messy business. The malevolence of the action can be felt from miles away, revealing your actions to anyone watching.

The vampires didn’t care about that.

They knew we were coming. Because of the changes to the harvest ritual, they knew when we would arrive. And they knew where we had to enter the city.

The graveyard memorial outside the dungeon tunnel was crawling with vampires, ready to bombard our defences with spells the moment we left the tunnel. Accelerating the harvest ritual had forced us into action, before we were ready, drawing us into their trap.

This was no longer about saving the children’s lives.

There was nothing left to save.

This was about stopping the chosen from becoming immortals and casting those children’s souls into hell to pay for that immortality. Even though I only had three minutes to end the harvest ritual, I found it amusing that these four ancient vampires were taking me so seriously and even more amusing that they had overlooked Gorgath.

It was going to be a costly mistake.

As the entrance to the memorial came into view, Gorgath rushed forward. Everyone who had been waiting at the entrance to the Abyss to fight the ancient vampires I thought were chasing us moves aside and let him through.

The runes on Gorgath’s staff burned with small blue flames, charged with mana, ready to unleash utter destruction on the city above. As Gorgath skidded to a stop and shoved his staff forward like he was thrusting a spear, Rupert raised his hand and released a flash of blue light.

Our forces halted their charge, coming to a complete stop a hundred yards from the entrance. The weaker archsorcerers, acting as Gorgath’s bodyguard, lifted wands and staffs as they released their spells. Dozens of barriers appeared across the tunnel, shielding everyone from the coming backlash.

“Inferno,” Gorgath roared as he released the same intermediate spell he’d cast at Darksmith.

Blue flames burst from his end of his staff in a swirling vortex with a napalm consistency. It crashes into the side of the tunnel with the strength of a flash flood and blinded the world with light. The flames spun to the surface, twisting and tearing into the tunnel walls, trying to expand. The tunnel didn’t let them, focusing the force into pressure that continually searched for a means to escape.

Gorgath was a level 320 elemental sorcerer with numerous new skills and levels. In the past day, he’d upgraded all of the magical skills I’d told him to, including his fire elemental skill. His ability to manipulate and control mana and magic was on an entirely different level than when we left Darksmith.

As Gorgath’s spell reached the end of the tunnel, it burst across the surface, engulfing the world in flames. I felt the auras of the elder vampires waiting outside the tunnel to ambush us vanish. The masters of these scourges, who were further back, turned and fled, running as fast as they could, trying to outpace the inferno. Many didn’t make it, overrun by the sticky flames surging through the surrounding city.

No human sorcerer could replicate what Gorgath had done with that spell. The kid worked on a scale far beyond human capacity. The amount of mana he released made everything he cast comparable to greatest master-tier magic.

Based on what I felt, a fifth of the elder vampires that had invaded the city were now dead.

It was a good start.

I tapped the kid's ankle with my fist to get his attention. “Gorgath, phase two!”

Phase two involved our strongest fighters overrunning the ambush site, entering the city and charging through the streets towards the main gate. While we did that, Gorgath would use his inferno spell to destroy several sections of the nearby city so the teams hunting vampires wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

With the harvest ritual now in play, with a countdown measures in less than three minutes, I was the only one with a reasonable chance of intervening. Sir Trent and Rupert were now in command. They didn’t serve me, but they had the most experience in high-level combat. Their only objective was to engage the ancient vampires and lock them down so I could slip away and disrupt the harvest ritual before it ended.

Gorgath lowered his staff, making a mystical motion with his empty hand. The blue flames clinging to the tunnel vanished as he cast the counterspell. The barriers disappeared a second later, releasing a wave of burning hot air.

“Phase two formation,” Sir Trent roared.

Everyone reacted to the order and broke into a run, shifting positions to a holy running turtle formation. There were three rings to the formation. The melee fighters were in the outside ring, the archsorcerers were in the middle ring, with the clerics in the centre.

Archsorcerers rose ten feet into the air, lifting the clerics with them to escape the frying pan heat of the tunnel floor. The warriors ignored the heat. Their constitution so high that it didn’t bother them. With the ability to fly, those in the air could match the speed of those running, and we surged forward, leaving the other forces behind.

The spells were a necessary expenditure of mana to move quickly, but it would cost lives later. We were no longer in the dungeon, and it would be harder to replace mana.

The formation blurred out of the tunnel and charged through the ash-coated memorial, with its melted headstones. Sir Trent and Angelica rushed forward as we approached what was left of the iron gate and kicked it off its hinges, clearing our way into the burning city.

For a quarter of a mile in every direction, buildings and bodies burned, clogging the air with smoke and ash. Wraith wisps surged toward the flames, flying through the air, drawn by the vampires' deaths and the abandoned lifeforce saturating the air.

I sprinted through Necropolis’s burning city centre, filled with wide twisting and turning streets and tall buildings. The city's main industry was the dungeon, and people wanted to live close enough to commute easily. It made the two miles around the dungeon a dense urban environment. Once, we got through it, there wouldn’t be so many directions to be attacked from.

We wouldn’t get that far though.

As burning structures gave way to ransacked homes, I moved to the front of the formation, beside Sir Trent to act as a scout and early warning system, pointing out buildings that held elder vampires. “There. There. There.”

Sir Trent relayed what I told him to those under his command, calling names and sending warriors to deal with the threats. Running through a barrage of expert-tier spells would overwhelm us before we engaged out target. We needed to save as much mana as possible to deal with the real fight, so sending high-level people to deal with them was the most efficient way to do that, even if it cost people their lives.

As we ran, I heard elder vampires relaying orders they’d telepathically received from one of the four ancient vampires. In the beginning, they were cut down while speaking, but as we moved further into Necropolis, more and more of them were waiting for us. They weren’t ready to deal with someone as strong as Angelica or Gregory though.

When their leaders realised they were losing people without gaining anything in return, the elder vampires along our path retreated, shadowing our formation from several streets away.

“They’re shadowing us now,” I said, thirty seconds into our blind charge for the city wall.

Sir Trent grunted, signalling he’d heard.

From behind us, blue light suddenly illuminated the night sky as Gorgath reached the surface and began throwing spells. Unlike before, he didn’t counterspell his efforts, and the blue light continued to provide light as the city burned.

Being able to sense elder vampires’ auras let me what was going on by paying attention to their movements. Twenty seconds after Gorgath threw his second spell, our enemy realised we weren’t the only threat. The distant elder vampires converging on our location began changing directions to intercept the teams hunting their army.

Without slowing, Rupert lifted a communication crystal to his forehead to receive a message from Harlin. His family were tracking the ancient vampires for us. Before Rupert could share his update, I felt the elder vampires converge on us.

“Incoming attack!” I shouted. “All directions!”

The entire force stopped in three steps. Archsorcerers dropped everyone out of the air and cast barriers, protecting the clerics, while warriors spread out to engage an enemy they could hope to match.

Sir Trent took control of the situation, shouting orders as the four ancient vampires blurred through our lines, cutting our warriors apart, sending limbs and heads flying. They overran the outer ring in a violent blur and leapt over the archsorcerers to pass above the clerics together, releasing eight master-tier destruction spells simultaneously.

The first pair of spells created a hole in the barrier above Davina as they targeted the biggest threat. Davina was just as fast as they were and managed to counterspell the first destruction spell heading for her. The defences of her holy robe blocked the second.

Mother and Father weren’t so lucky. The archbishops’ robes block the first spells, but not the second, and the two of them dissolved into dust, vanishing like they’d never existed.

Hellfire exploded from Professor Firebrand’s hand engulfing Yasmir’s legs in unholy flames that hurt to look at. Angelica tackled Sing out of the air, dragging her to the ground in the middle of the clerics as the barrier reformed over them.

“Stay still,” she commanded, throwing everything she had into the command.

The force of the command washed over me and the other ancient vampires, causing all of us to pause for half a second as we fought the compulsion. Sir Trent, Gregory, and Helen used the opening to attack the other two ancient vampires, while Professor Firebrand threw a second ball of hellfire at Yasmir.    

Sing froze in place, unable to immediately fight off the compulsion. Archsorcerers and clerics got out of the way as Professor Lan pivoted and rushed to the momentarily helpless ancient vampire, weaving a master-tier banishment spell.

Angelica leapt aside, right before Professor Lan touched Sing. The ancient vampire and the cobblestones under her disappeared from this reality.

As I regained the ability to move, Yasmir released a primal scream of rage and quickly cast three destruction spells fuelled by the pain of his loss. The first opened a hole in the unstable barrier. The second was countered by Davina. And the third turned Professor Lan to dust.

Professor Firebrand hit Yasmir’s chest with a third ball of hellfire right as Angelica cut through his shoulder with her staff. His arm fell to the ground as the hellfire cauterised his wound, stopping him from being able to regenerate. Yasmir ignored his burning body and backhanded Angelica through a building.

His strike left him open as I blurred past and swung Slaughter. My blade cleaved through his stomach, draining mana and introducing hellfire into his core. The raw mana in his core behaved like gasoline for the hellfire.

Yasmir exploded, covering everything with hellfire for twenty feet. There was no way to escape. Hellfire engulfed my Day Walker set from head to toe, burning and corrupting any exposed flesh. My face melted beneath my hood as my soul screamed and my skin sizzled.

I blurred to the edge of the archsorcerers barrier with my eyes shut, navigating through the world by auras. I needed a cleric to extinguish the flames before they burned through my eyelids and blinded me.

Necrotic bolts and fingers of destruction began to strike my back as the elder vampires entered the battle. The ring of deathlords thinned as they spread into the surrounding buildings to engage the vampires in close combat.

Dalin came to my aid, bathing me in holy purifying magic to extinguish the hellfire. He smiled as I opened my eyes and leapt back into the fight, chasing after the elder vampire I could feel fleeing with Yasmir’s arm.

Holy magic bombarded the ground where the rest of Yasmir’s body lay as Davina did her best to purge him from existence and prevent him from regenerating here. Her wouldn’t kill him without all of him there, and it wouldn’t take him long to recover from his hellfire injuries once the hellfire burned out.

I ducked down an alleyway and leapt over a fence. A deathlock barrier appeared across the mouth of the alleyway. I cut my way through the barrier with Slaughter and used the mana from the spell to cast a finger of destruction at the vampire who had cast it.

He exploded in a cloud of dust.

I turned right, seeing the three elder vampires fleeing down the street. In the space of two steps, I shapeshifted into a creature that resembled a cheetah, merging my Day Walker and Slaughter into my body. Such a transformation was only possible because Lavaire had specifically built the ability into his creations, and I had Lusor’s understanding of shapeshifting.

I finished the transformation on all fours, killing the sound and scents from my body with my mastery of death magic. Lusor wouldn’t have denied that attributes mattered, but he would have strongly argued that form mattered just as much. In a foot race, a longer stride and more efficient technique mattered just as much as attributes. Four legs are always faster than two in his opinion. Wings were even better, but that would expose me to too many spells.

I was twice as fast in my new form, covering the distance like a speeding bullet. Without scent, sound, or an aura to give me away, they didn’t notice in time to react.

With a swipe of my paw, I broke the neck of the elder vampire carrying Yasmir’s arm, snatched the charred limb that was already expanding in his grasp with my teeth, and darted down another alley being chased by spells.

Yasmir’s cold sickly blood ran down my throat as I fed on what was left of him with my vampiric soul touch. His flesh fought back, automatically using his vampiric touch on me to slow his death as I raced through side streets and alleyways, drawing as many elder vampires as I could away from my people.

Memories flashed through my head as I consumed Yasmir’s knowledge of the harvest ritual. An ancient vampire named Belva was the one who had compelled the chosen and helped them acquire the demon king’s greater orb for the ritual. Beyond the involvement of a greater demon orb, my impression was that Yasmir didn’t know anything about the ritual that I didn’t already know. That didn’t stop me from continuing to absorb his memories.

Moving on all fours was so much faster than two legs and I was several streets away his arm in only a few seconds, heading for the Necropolis’s outer wall. I passed a building full of survivors who had received Harlin’s ghost message and saw a dozen exhausted necromancers outside the buildings fighting vampires in the street.

Having a ghost deliver a message to fight was not the most effective way to gather support, so only one in three groups of survivors were participating in the fight. They added to the chaos, drawing more attention away from my people. I watched more than one necromancer die as I wove through the streets, passing down alleys and over fences, unable to stop and finish off Yasmir quickly. Stopping would allow those chasing me to catch up and with enough spell potentially pull me out of the fight.

The tall apartment-style buildings gave way to large walled manors, exposing the ritual in the distance. Beyond the city wall, thirteen figures hovered far above the city. They held hand around a glowing orb of red and gold energy. With each passing second, the orb grew brighter, syphoning off the lifeforce and attributes of the children trapped below.

Above the orb was the soul vortex. It was feeding on the same children, tearing their souls from their bodies to pay for the chosen’s immortality. From the vortex a funnel began to descend towards the orb.

I was out of time.

I was out of options.

I slipped into the Deadlands ready to face Death.

***

Contessa talked about her many encounters with Death in her research journals. Death was the apex predator of the Deadlands, a form of spiritual entity that preferred to consume the undead over the living. It was immaterial, fast, powerful beyond reason, and had no weakness to anything the undead could throw at it.

Contessa describes Death as a nomadic, so the chance of coming into contact with one in the Deadlands was low, except under two conditions. Massacres and anywhere undead congregated in large numbers always drew their presence. Wherever she set down roots with her undead horde, Death would follow, cutting her off from the Deadlands.

Contessa had no idea what these creatures were or why they existed. She’d theorised that they were spiritual constructs, something created to prevent the undead from merging the Deadlands into reality. I didn’t buy her theory, but I did buy that Necropolis was not the sort of place I wanted to enter the Deadlands.

I was right.

Within seconds of entering the Deadlands, Death stalked me, tracking me through alleyways and side streets like bloodhounds. The weight of its spiritual presence had pulled at my lifeforce, draining me and hastening Yasmir’s demise.

I would’ve never risked travelling through the Deadlands without the Yasmir’s arm. Even as just an arm, his undead aura was stronger than mine, making him the perfect bait to reach my destination safely.

Using a levitation spell, I floated in the sky behind the leader of the chosen. The thirteen Unseen archsorcerers still held hands in a circle, but they had thrown back their head as they chanted the last words of the ritual.

Below them sat the harvest ritual circle. It was filled with hundreds of thousands of dead and dying soulless children and surrounded by thousands of cultists who were powering the spell. There was nothing I could do for the children anymore. Their souls had already been harvested by the soul vortex above, waiting to be sent to hell to pay for the chosen’s immortality.

Their bodies were batteries now, feeding what was left of their lifeforce into the unholy greater orb floating between the chosen. With the tornado of power descending from the vortex to the orb and ropes of lifeforce extending from the orb to the chosen, there were only seconds left before they ascended, before they became immortal, before they damned all those children’s souls to hell for power.

That wasn’t going to happen.

With my first glimpse of the children came rage, an anger so deep and primal that it would see worlds burned to ash. What I was about to do was not sane. But in this moment, I was not sane. I was a father, watching other fathers’ children suffer for power and I would do anything to stop it.

I felt Yasmir’s aura vanish as I floated out of the Deadlands, behind the cult leader, and swung Slaughter, cleaving her down the middle. My vampiric touch turned her to dust as I floated forward and took her place, sheathing Slaughter, and holding the hands of the chosen who stood beside her.

The rope of lifeforce continued to snake towards my chest, unconcerned by the cult leader’s death. I smelled the neighbouring chosen’s fear as they noticed my presence and realised all was lost.

I tightened my grip.

The ritual had gone too far for me to just kill them. The only way to free the children’s souls trapped in the vortex was to void the contract they’d made with the demon king.

The funnel of souls descending from the vortex touched the demon king’s orb as the ropes of lifeforce connected everyone’s in the circle. The greater orb that was about to open a gateway to hell and transfer the power the chosen craved, recognised that one of the chosen was not like the others.

The contract was voided

The greater orb shattered, unleashing all the magic, lifeforce, and soul energy it contained in a divine explosion that vaporised everything in its path. The Curse of Sloth and the impulses that had turned me into a monster vanished as my flesh was stripped from my soul.

My soul’s ghostly immaterial form became as solid as flesh, then it swelled in size, before a pair of magnificent wings sprout from my back. The changes I’d made to my soul to heal Kathrine causing it to transition through several states as it absorbed the torrent of lifeforce and soul energy released by the explosion.

A true harvest ritual was not a master-tier spell, but a divine spell. It required lifeforce and soul energy, but its power was far beyond what mana could offer.

The explosion had vapourised the earth beneath me, leaving a crater that extend a third of the way into the city, with no trace of the cultists and the children who had been below. Beyond the crater, the concussive force of the blast flattened everything, leaving the city in ruins.

Chunks of earth and stone the size of houses began to rain from the sky as a I felt a powerful spiritual presence appear behind me. This wasn’t part of my plan.

Before I could turn, the presence placed one hand on my shoulder and struck. Pain exploded across my lower back as the creature cut through my soul to take hold of my core.

“Stop fighting me,” Shadow spat into my ear. “If you regenerate with this inside you, you’ll explode. That might be fatal in your condition.”

I gritted my teeth, fighting against the pain, and shouted through my teeth. “Stop!”

Shadow ignored my order and gave a violent tug, tearing the magical nexus that made up my core from me. The lifeforce and soul energy I was still absorbing from the explosion went to work, repairing the hole in my back, lessening the pain.

Shadow tightened his grip on my shoulder. “Don’t move. Your soul is shielding a handful of demonic parasites that managed to survive the blast.”

The pain receded as I looked over my shoulder to see a translucent copy of myself. Shadow now possessed all my features, including a ghostly version of my Day Walker set and Slaughter. Until now, he wasn’t powerful enough to sustain his existence, surviving on a connection to me that feed him lifeforce, mana, and soul energy. The explosion that had strengthened my soul must have done the same to him through that connection.

He gave a grunt of discomfort as he shoved my core into his ghostly form.

“Put it back,” I commanded.

Shadow gritted his teeth through the pain as he forced my core to merge with his body. “You’re not technically master. You’re just a part of him. I don’t have to do what you say.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to harm me.”

“I’m not harming you. The changes to your soul are significant enough that I truly believe you have a chance to cast holy magic. If I’m right, this would cause your core to explode as your body tries to reform. In your disembodied state and with your mana capacity, that could be fatal.”

My mind couldn’t work as quickly as it could under my vampiric parasites influence. There was no instant solution that came with his statement. I had to think it through. What he said sounded plausible. The wings did give a holy magic vibe.

“Why did you put my core inside you?”

“It’s compatible with my transformation. Also, it’s free loot and it will make what comes next much easier.” He grinned and patted my shoulder. “Remember, don’t move if you want to live.”

Shadow dropped to the ground, in the middle of the crater. He raised his ghostly hand, the same way I would, if I was going to cast a master-tier spell.

This wasn’t good.

Snap!

The sound reverberated through the city, as Shadow emptied his stolen core, weaving a spell even Contessa wouldn’t cast. A wave of death magic crashed through the city with the speed of a nuclear explosion, momentarily breaking the barrier between the Deadlands and this reality. In its wake stood the ghosts of the city’s inhabitants, the imprint they left behind when their souls moved on.

Shadow had woken the dead from their slumber, given them clarity and purpose, power without restriction, and set them free to act as they wished. The ghosts of the dead children and cultists filled the crater and the ghosts of the thirteen dead chosen trembled in the air around me.

Shadow didn’t lower his hand.

Snap!

There was no magic behind his second snap, only a force of will. In the blink of an eye, every ghost in and around Necropolis appeared beside the children in the crater. The temperature instantly plunged below freezing. The weight of so many spirits warped the world.

Shadow looked at the ghosts with open sorrow, supressing the same anger I felt over what had been done here, and I understood what he was going to do. He was going to give them justice.

“You did not deserve this,” he said, voice carrying far beyond his soft-spoken words should have allowed. “Let me set this right.”

With his words came his will, and I had to restrain myself from bending my knee. In his words were the promise of retribution. The promise of justice. The promise of peace if I only bent my knee and offer my power to him.

The ghosts of Necropolis bent their knees without hesitation, giving up their existence for a chance at revenge. As their knees hit the ground, they vanished.

A crown grew from the dirt at Shadow’s, containing all their spiritual power. It had physical presence that matched the spiritual and I felt the anger radiating from it. I’d seen a crown like it in the vault at the adventurer’s guild in Hellmouth. And I knew what it would do to him, if he put it on.

Shadow reached down without ceremony and picked up the crown, holding it between his hands. He understood the burden he was about to place on himself. The sorrow vanished from his expression as he looked at the ghosts of the cultists and placed the crown on his head.

His spiritual weight deepened, as the spiritual strength of the Necropolis’s dead flowed into him. His translucence faded as he grew solid, cementing his transformation into a ghost king. With a flick of his wrist, he asserted his new authority and the ghosts of the cultists and chosen crumbled.

Shadow raised his head, met my gaze, snapped his fingers, and broke the connect between us. Then he set his sights on the city and vanished.

I released a disembodied sigh.

Shadows transformation into a ghost king was surprisingly low on my list of problems.