9 – Pale Warden

Victor looked down the slope toward the squat, dark-gray keep. It sat in the middle of a field between two hills, and the road leading north passed right outside its walls. The field was more mud than grass, and it was dotted with gibbets and stakes displaying human corpses in varying states of decay. Victor had left the road a while back and gone through the woods to approach the keep from the west, and even there, away from the thoroughfare, where the majority of the grisly displays were centered, he could smell the stench of rot.

He looked over his shoulder at his three slinking escorts, cowering in the damp grass a few yards back. “Who were those people? The corpses?”

Tristan, sallow, hollow-eyed, and shivering, replied, “Those who broke laws or failed to contribute their share to the tithe, milord.”

The three Bloodcloaks were in dire straits. Victor wasn’t sure why, but he guessed it had something to do with his blood and his further refusal to allow them to feed on anything else. Over the last few days, they’d wasted away, and the dark veins of their corruption had spread to every inch of their pale flesh. They were constantly spitting because their gums were rotten and oozed blood and pus.

He might have felt sorry for them, but these weren’t the first corpses he’d seen on display, and he was well aware that these three had spent many years tormenting the people in the southern part of the valley. They didn’t just kidnap people, but they fed on them as well, and their tastes went beyond just blood. He’d forced them to confess that much—many young women and their families had known the terror of their demands. No, Victor had concluded early on that they wouldn’t survive the coming conflict.

He turned his gaze back to the keep. It was a sturdy structure with twenty-foot walls and a heavy, iron-banded gate, but, barring some incredible defensive enchantments, there was no way it would keep him out. His palace at Iron Mountain was warded against flying invaders, but Victor doubted this dour little keep had such protections. Even if it did, Lifedrinker would make short work of that gate.

Still, there were innocents out there. He could see livestock pens near the castle walls, and the road was busy with goods being sent north. Human thralls were all over the keep, too, working as servants and guards. If he assaulted the place, he’d have to be careful. “Better to draw him out.”

“What’s that, milord?” Jost asked, his voice dry and raspy.

Victor turned to regard the three, where they crouched on their knees, with their mud-stained hands clutching the wet grass. He’d made them free their horses back by the road. “Do you want your suffering to end?”

“Yes, Lord!” Tristan wailed, falling prostrate.

Victor nodded, standing up and brushing the damp from his knees. He wished he’d thought to bring a banner of some sort. He wished he could still cast Banner of the Champion. Frowning, he wondered if there was still a way. Could he make a weave of glory-attuned Energy using rage and hope? He felt like it must be possible, considering glory was an echo of hope. “Something to experiment with when I’ve got some damn time,” he muttered.

He gestured toward the keep. “Go then, you three. Gather your Bloodcloaks and the Pale Warden and tell him I’m here. Tell him I’m alone, and that so long as you don’t try to feast on my blood, I should be easy enough to slay.”

They didn’t argue or question him; their desire to be away from him and the power of his command were enough to send them flying with the last of their strength down the hill. They ran like men possessed, like men sprinting the last hundred yards of a cross-country race. Victor watched them stumble dozens of times, falling to slide through the muddy grass, then climbing, filthy, to their feet to renew their efforts.

Meanwhile, Victor took a few minutes to change his clothes. As he removed the threadbare woolen sweater and the rough-spun pants, he clicked his tongue, chuckling at the wasted effort they represented. He’d had big plans of skulking around, pretending to be a thrall and learning the details of society on Dark Ember. He supposed it had been a fantasy borne of stories and movies he’d seen back on Earth.

Victor, the human, might have been able to pull it off, but not Victor the titan. He wasn’t suited for groveling, fake or real. He could have avoided the Bloodcloaks back in that first village. He could have let them continue to harass the shopkeeper and the other villagers in their search for some supposed thief, but that wasn’t something he could stomach anymore. He couldn’t stand by while bullies plied their trade around him. Worse, there was no way he would have been able to kneel—it was antithetical to his nature.

So, he folded away the peasant clothes and pulled out some proper leather pants and a sturdy linen shirt—clothes that would resize, mend, and clean themselves. He didn’t think he’d need his armor, but if he did, it was all there, ready to be pulled out and instantly equipped.

With his attire sorted, Victor contemplated the spell he’d learned when he converted his glory and inspiration to hope. “Standard of the Last Light,” he said, recalling the description:

***Standard of the Last Light – Epic: You manifest a glowing standard—the final light against the dark—that floats behind you. Allies who see it will be filled with hope, gaining endurance, resistance to fear, and a bonus to their will attribute that increases the longer they stand their ground. The more desperate the situation, the stronger the banner’s effect. Enemies who attempt to extinguish that hope suffer mounting penalties the longer they remain in sight of the standard. Energy Cost: Minimum 1000 – scalable. Cooldown: Long***

“That should do.” He moved to his right a few yards, getting to the highest point on the hill, and then he cast the spell, channeling a thick torrent of hope-attuned Energy into it. As the pattern populated with the Energy and the spell took shape, the first sign of its manifestation was a pale blue light that shone down over the hillside, spreading rapidly onto the muddy field below, even down to the road and the distant walls of the keep.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so noticeable if the world hadn’t been so damn gloomy to start with. As it was, the mist that cloaked the ground retreated, the shadows lifted, and the whole hillside came alive with spectrums of light that were usually held at bay from that dusky land by the clouds and dour, death-attuned Energy that permeated the atmosphere. Seeing the light barely illuminate Gloomhallow Keep's base, Victor poured a little more Energy into his standard.

He glanced over his shoulder as the faint hum grew louder, and beheld the standard for the first time. It hung in the air behind him, much as his old Banner of the Champion did, but it had a much different…tone. Rather than a white and gold background embossed with a bleeding sun, this one flapped like spun silver in the wind—though there was no breeze—and at its center was a sun that was like a star brought down from the sky. It blazed with silvery blue light, sparkling and alive, smoldering in three dimensions. When Victor gazed upon it, he swore he was looking into an alien sky and basking in its beautiful sunlight.

He turned back to the keep and grinned when he saw the battlements crowded with figures, staring and pointing, shouting and…cheering? He could see why; the longer he stood under the influence of his magic, the better he felt. He’d been awake for days, and though he didn’t require much sleep, he’d begun to feel the toll of the unclean air and his watchful irritation at his three captives. Standing in that light, though, feeling the influence of his hope-attuned Energy, the fog began to lift from his mind, and he started to feel good about things.

Those people down there were feeling it, and the Pale Warden would be forced to respond. He couldn’t linger in that fortress while Victor drove the taint from the land around it. He’d have to come out to answer Victor’s challenge; why would he fear one man, especially when three of his Bloodcloaks assured him that the only trick up Victor’s sleeve was the blood in his veins. So, Victor stood there under his standard, watching as the hillside and the muddy field continued to change in its light.

It wasn’t that his spell was transforming the land; it didn’t do that. No, it was more a side effect of the death-attuned Energy fleeing before the standard’s near-diametrically opposed Energy. Victor was feeding more Energy into his spell by an enormous factor than the latent, ambient death magic that permeated the land. Considering that, he glanced at his Core and smiled when he saw that his regeneration was sufficient to cover it, even though he’d doubled his output into the spell. He could keep that standard up indefinitely.

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After a few minutes, a commotion occurred on the distant keep’s ramparts. Victor couldn’t make out the figures’ details, but he could see the crimson of their cloaks as they came up the stairs and chased the human thralls away. Their movements were frenetic, and Victor thought he glimpsed whips—the thralls certainly moved like they were afraid, but that wasn’t any surprise. Soon, the ramparts were empty, and Victor continued to wait.

As carts and burden-bearing individuals entered the influence of his standard’s light on the road, they slowed and most even stopped, gathering along the berm, looking his way. They held their hands to their eyes, peering toward the light, and Victor wondered how much they could see against the glare of that blazing star. He didn’t mind being a spectacle; he was trying to be one. The more he disrupted things, the sooner the Pale Warden would have to come out to investigate.

There was a small chance the warden would be too cowardly—that he’d flee out some hidden bolt hole and run north, seeking reinforcements. Victor wasn’t worried about that—it wouldn’t matter. He’d face any number of vampiric steel seekers. He didn’t think he was overconfident when he considered Lord Fausto, the only veil walker in the valley, the only legitimate threat. Hadn’t he slain dozens of steel seekers already? There was the chance that these vampires were stronger than the champions of Ruhn or Sojourn, but he doubted it.

“I better be able to handle these pendejos,” he said, clenching his fists. If he couldn’t kill “elder vampires,” then when he faced his first “Ancient Lord,” his conquest would be very short-lived. Along those same lines, he had to wonder how much stronger the “Great Masters” were. If Ancient Lords were veil walkers, were the Great Masters something more? Or just powerful veil walkers?

His mind grew so busy considering all the possible outcomes and the different types of vampires he had to kill that he almost didn’t notice when the keep’s gate began to grind open. He watched as the two halves swung outward, and a few moments later, a dozen mounted men rode forth. They all wore crimson cloaks, but for the one at the center. He had to be the Pale Warden; his cloak was the color of bleached leather, his armor the blackest of iron, and his horse—his horse was undead with eyes of fire, and pale bone protruded from its rotting flesh.

Victor watched the undead stallion rear up on its hind legs, and then the riders charged over the field, racing toward Victor and his blazing standard. The sound of their hooves was like thunder, echoing up the hillside, and their mounts were crazed with the auras of their riders. Victor didn’t see his three former captives. He wondered if the Pale Warden had slain them, or if he’d left them behind because they were so weak.

When the riders reached the base of the hill, they pulled on their reins, bringing their mounts to a screaming, whinnying stop. Victor could see the Pale Warden better, now that he was only fifty yards distant, and he saw that his head was encased in black armor like the rest of his body, and a red warhammer hung from his saddle. It wasn’t huge or intimidating—just a long-handled hammer with a spike on one end of the head, appropriately sized for a human.

In a way, that utilitarian style made it more threatening than some ornate, massive sword. Still, Victor pitied the poor weapon should it try to clash with Lifedrinker. Looking up from the hammer, he contemplated the man’s cloak. Was that human skin? Before he could study him further, the vampire called out in a raspy, clarion voice, “Extinguish that light, take your knees, and your death will be swift.”

Victor smiled, reached into his spirit space, and summoned Lifedrinker. He had to step to the side so that her blade didn’t obscure most of his human-sized body. “I’m afraid it will be you who dies swiftly today,” he replied, releasing his hold on his flesh, allowing some of his titanic potential to expand his size and weight. When he stood fifteen feet tall—the smallest he could make himself and not find Lifedrinker unwieldy—the vampires looked decidedly less bold. Even the Pale Warden shrank back, his undead horse stomping and snorting as he tugged on the reins.

“Who are you?” the elder vampire called, his voice thinner than before. “What do you want?”

“Me? I’m Victor, a man from Earth—Tucson to be exact—and I’m here to liberate this world.” With that, Victor began stomping forward, inhaling deeply. Halfway to the riders, he unleashed his aura and watched as most of the Bloodcloaks fell, gasping, from their saddles. The Pale Warden stood his ground, however, and Victor watched as he held out his hands, and the coppery tang of blood filled the air.

The Bloodcloaks screamed in unison as crimson fluid erupted from their eyes, their mouths, even their ears. The blood flowed in rivulets toward the Pale Warden, and Victor suddenly understood what was happening: this man, this steel-seeker-ranked vampire, was about to harness the power of his underlings, perhaps making him significantly more powerful. Victor didn’t know how strong he was, or to what heights the blood ritual would take him, but he didn’t want to allow it to happen, so he unleashed his pent-up breath, lacing it with the furious Energy of his abyssal magma.

A torrent of fiery, liquified stone erupted from his mouth, expanding into a broad, cone-shaped blast that doused the vampires gathered before him. The furious lava was streaked with the black whispers of the end of everything—the empty void. It washed over the blood in the air, instantly annihilating it. It reduced the horses to steam and ash before they could so much as scream, and the Bloodcloaks, every single one of them, burst into flames and exploded into frenzied, panicked flight. Their Energy-filled bodies were more resilient than the mortal horses, and some of them managed to run halfway across the field before succumbing to the horrific fury of Victor’s breath weapon, but succumb, they did.

Victor's breath assault knocked the Pale Warden from his mount, but his armor or his defensive capabilities protected him far better than the others; he broke his fall almost elegantly, rolling back to his feet, and then great bat-like wings burst from his back and he launched into the sky, trailing black smoke as Victor’s lava, still clinging to his armor, continued to burn.

With a thought, Victor’s fiery magma wings burst into existence and he streaked into to sky, easily gaining on the fleeing vampire. The creature was beating his wings furiously, desperately flying toward the squat, dark keep, but Victor caught him before he’d covered half the distance. Lifedrinker practically begged him to use her, so, rather than another spell, he dove toward the vampire and swung her with all his might at the center of his back.

The Pale Warden might have been a steel seeker, but either he was terribly outmatched or simply too panicked and caught off guard to put up a proper fight. He didn’t even sense the attack coming; if he did, he had no defense against it. Victor would have at least tried to dive and avoid the blow. The vampire didn’t, and Lifedrinker’s massive edge, nearly as long as the Pale Warden’s torso, cut him neatly in two, sending his top half tumbling toward the earth in one direction and his bottom half, trailing a coil of entrails, in another.

Victor grinned, fiercely proud of his axe’s ability to ignore the creature’s armor. Shouldn’t a steel seeker have better equipment than that? He flew in a slow spiral, following the vampire’s top half. He watched it crash into the muddy field, flopping and sliding for a dozen yards. When he set down, and his wings flickered out with a puff of black smoke, Victor saw the Pale Warden was still alive, clawing his way toward the keep, dragging his trailing guts through the mud.

Victor strode toward the broken creature, lifted Lifedrinker high, and smashed her, lengthwise, into the vampire’s back. Again, she tore through the armor like it was paper, and again, she cleaved him into two halves. The vampire didn’t move after that, but Victor knew undead Death Casters were tricky with their magic and uncannily resilient, so he didn’t take any chances. He blasted another gout of abyssal magma onto the remains, utterly engulfing them in the fiery void-tainted lava.

Not long after that, Victor felt a rush of Energy from behind him, and he knew the System was rewarding him for the Bloodcloaks. As the rush faded, he saw pools of dense Energy gathering over the Pale Warden’s ruined body, and he sighed, relieved; he wouldn’t have to hunt down some kind of phylactery or some such thing. Once again, the Energy surged into him, flowing straight into the well that sat in his spirit space.

When it was over, he resolved to work a bit on his mantle; he was beginning to amass a ridiculous amount of unspent Energy. Shouldering Lifedrinker, he marched toward the gates to the keep, his standard radiating hope around him as he moved. He wasn’t surprised to find the gatehouse abandoned. The vampires had made the human thralls go inside, and, if they’d seen him slaughter the Pale Warden, he’d be stunned if they hadn’t fled.

Before entering the gatehouse, he reduced his size, making himself about nine feet tall—short enough to clear the lintel. He sent Lifedrinker into his spirit space and walked through, eyeing the murder holes in the ceiling. No attacks came his way, however, and when he entered the bleak courtyard, he heard the moans and whimpers of the Pale Warden’s victims.

Iron cages hung from the high walls—dozens of them—each occupied by a man or a woman. Victor’s rage began to smolder and enter his pathways, and he roared, “Someone get out here and speak to me.” His voice echoed like thunder, and it wasn’t long before the central entrance to the keep creaked open and a gray-haired human wearing peasant clothes slipped out, falling immediately to his knees.

“M-m-mil…” he stammered, gasping, and falling prostrate.

Victor’s scowl deepened, but he endeavored to rein in his aura and push his rage back into his Core. “Speak. Do any of those undead dogs remain?”

“They fled, milord. Through the underway. They’ll be running north by now.”

“Good. Get up and find the keys to these cages. Find me someone who knows the keep. Are there dungeons?”

“Many, milord!”

“Bring forth all the humans—every thrall left behind. Do you feel this?” Victor sent another surge of hope-attuned Energy into his standard. Sobs and gasps filled the air, but he knew they were sobs of relief. “The vampires’ reign in these lands is at an end. Every thrall will be set free. Have everyone assemble here in the courtyard.”

A woman’s voice called out from one of the cages. “They’ll be back with the other elders—the reavers, too.”

Victor nodded, smiling up toward the voice. “Good. Then I don’t have to hunt them down one by one.”