Legacies of Blood

The chambers surrounding the area leading to the vault had long been cleared, and only a handful of patrolling guards were required to ensure that no errant creatures still lingering within the castle walls moved in to occupy them. Elaina gently waved at a couple of them as she and Royce passed on their way to the vault door. The rest of the small group assigned to taking the vault awaited them.

“About bloody time,” Resius remarked in his characteristic Winder’Laen accent as the pair came into view. Though they weren’t technically on good terms, Elaina found herself relieved to see the face of the sandy brown-haired man, though he looked much more gaunt than she remembered. “We were about to send a runner to drag ya out of bed.”

The redhead smirked and punched the shoulder of his armored coat playfully. “Looks like you could use a little more of it yourself, jackass.”

“Well, after we’re done with the vault, I’ll give it a try,” he replied dryly. “You ready for this?”

Elaina nodded, narrowing her eyes as she took a closer look at the man. She’d traveled for a while with him and seen him in a pretty sorry state before, but there was something different about his pallor. Something told her it wasn’t a simple matter of the man staying up past his bedtime. “Are you?”

“Of course, mate,” Resius replied with a brief wink. “Always.”

“I’m serious,” Elaina pressed as the concern became more evident in her tone. “You look like shit. What’s really going on with you?”

“Heard you two were getting ready to move in together,” Resius said, abruptly changing the subject as he glanced in Royce’s direction as she spoke with the others. “How’s that working out for you? Spending most of your time between her legs?”

“Fuck you,” Elaina grunted, though the insult lacked any genuine malice. She’d thought about a thousand different ways to tell him off the next time she saw him, but now that she was there with him, all she wanted to do was shoot the breeze with him and joke around. “But if you mean staying in her tent for a few nights, sure. We’re moving in.”

“She treating you alright, then?” Resius asked, averting his gaze to make the question seem more casual and less concerned.

The redhead regarded him thoughtfully in a long moment of silence. “Yeah.”

“Good,” he responded under his breath before clearing his throat. “Glad to hear it. Ready to work?”

“Always,” Elaina beamed. Whatever ill will was between them had been set aside for the time being, which felt like a weight lifted off her shoulders. “What’s the plan?”

“Glad you asked,” the landgraf piped up, squeezing Elaina’s shoulder as she breezed past her. Elaina’s eyes drifted down to the woman’s round, supple behind as she sauntered away from her to take position at the front of the chamber. “Due to the ancient construction of the vault, Mister Hardcoat will be the one to breach the mechanical components of the locking mechanism.”

The dwarf raised a thick hand to the small group as a collection of tools jangled and swung from his belt. More were rolled up in a pouch he had slung over his shoulder.

“I didn’t take you for a thief,” Trevik joked from his perch against the wall.

“I’m not,” Herrog answered with a lazy shrug. “But there are places where my expertise and a thief’s overlap, like knowin’ how shit’s put together and how to take it apart.”

Elsebeth waved an elegant hand to quiet them down before continuing. “Mister Resius will be the one to address the matter of the arcane wards and protections. This means that while the two are occupied, it’ll be up to the rest of us to confront the guardian when it tries to interfere.”

“Appears?” Elaina asked. “Isn’t it on the other side of the door waiting for anyone who opens it?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Elsebeth explained. “It’s summoned when the vault is accessed without the proper key. We don’t have a way to replicate that magic at the moment. We’d hoped to locate one of the keys or some notes on how to make one in one of the other chambers, but we had no such luck.”

“Does the cuirizu have one?” Royce wondered. “She used to be one of them. Either she has one, or she knows where to find one. That’s why they’re here, right?”

Resius took a step forward, shaking his head. “We’re not about to let a former Abyssal stroll back into the vault where they kept all their nastiest toys.”

“Would be easier, wouldn’t it?” Royce argued, glancing between him and the landgraf. “It would save us all a lot of time and be much less risky.”

“I thought about it,” Elsebeth admitted as she shifted her weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other. “If they had not tried to deceive me, we might have been able to work out a deal, but the fact they tried tells me to err on the side of caution. We have to be the first ones in there.”

Though visibly annoyed with the answer, Royce relented. There was no use arguing the matter at a time like that anyway. “Alright.”

“When the guardian emerges, we need to be ready,” Elsebeth reiterated. “If Herrog and Resius are interrupted during their breach, we could be faced with a multitude of additional failsafes to contend with.”

Elaina nodded, glancing between the stoic Kitch and the handful of soldiers she had with her. She recognized each of them as battle-tested and up to the task. Kitch herself had nothing to say, keeping her focus on the vault door in the event something threw it open to jump out at them. Her eyes settled on the knocker. “Not to be rude, but what’s he doing here?”

Trevik stood up straight and glowered at her. “What I do is none of your gods’ damned---!”

Elsebeth held her hand up again in the same way she had earlier. “Trevik believes there is a unique complication involving the powers of the Faen and is here to monitor the situation and warn us, should it become necessary.”

“The Faen?” Resius asked incredulously, glancing between Royce and Elaina. “I’ve been working the grounds here since we arrived and never detected any issues from the Faen.”

“Perhaps you’re a little too close to the situation,” Trevik argued. “Or just not as sharp as you think you are.”

The occultist’s brows shot up in surprise, having never been spoken to in such a way by the knocker. “Mate, this place is steeped in the resonance of pain, fiends, and the dead---to name a few---something powerful from the Faen would have stood out in all that.”

“Perhaps they’re related,” Trevik replied coldly, his beady eyes settling on Elaina momentarily. “Blends in with all the background energy. A knocker knows these things.”

“Regardless,” Elsebeth interjected. “He’s here in an advisory capacity as an extra precaution. We can’t afford any surprises.”

Resius frowned but backed off the subject. Either he didn’t know that the knocker was referring to Elaina, or he was putting on a convincing show of it.

“Alright, put them away, guys,” Royce scoffed as she motioned to the immense door on the opposite side of the chamber. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Right,” Resius agreed as he nodded toward Herrog, who returned the gesture. Together, the two approached the massive door, intricately carved with all manner of profane symbols and creatures. Elaina saw no obvious locking mechanisms among them at first but spotted a strange recess shaped like a six-pointed star once Herrog went to work.

Resius and the dwarf conversed quietly as they worked, each making sure not to get ahead of the other in their respective process. Elaina listened carefully as she hovered nearby. From what she could understand, a specific sequence between the mundane and magical mechanisms had to be adhered to. If one was out of step with the other, it could trigger one of the failsafes Elsebeth had mentioned.

The landgraf drew her rapier from the finely crafted sheath at her hip and stood ready. The handful of soldiers responded by drawing their weapons as well. One of the mechanisms within the wall clunked heavily, followed by a loud bang that Elaina felt through her feet. A section of the door emitted a baleful glow, finally coaxing Elaina into drawing her weapon as well. Resius held up a crystal sphere the size of a small child’s ball almost immediately and began to mutter an incantation. The profane light of the magic glowed brightly, but Elaina somehow got the sense that its power was contained.

“He loves to parade that thing around every chance he gets,” Royce scoffed as she offered Elaina a sideways glance. “Very proud of his toy.”

“What is it?” Elaina asked without taking her eyes off of it. However, she did wonder briefly how Royce would have become acquainted with it enough to know.

“It’s an eye of the king,” Elsebeth answered, cutting the vishanti off and surprising them both. She glanced at them with a satisfied smirk threatening to grace her strawberry-pink lips. “Even if I weren’t well-read on such arcane treasures, most human nobles know of them. In the days of ancient Hume, they were gifted to the heads of every human house by the king as a symbol of their authority. It grants a blessing of acute sight and the means to see the unseen. With it, you can focus on a magical working without devoting any effort to regulating arcane sight of your own. It bears the weight for you, so you’re free to focus your attention elsewhere.”

Royce gestured casually with one hand to indicate that Elsebeth had covered everything with her explanation. The profane glow of the magic in the door faded slowly, and Herrog moved on to the next mechanical lock in the sequence.

“How did he get it,” Elaina wondered. Both Elsebeth and Royce shook their heads. Neither of them knew.

“I offered to buy it from him, but he wouldn’t have it,” the landgraf commented. “Buying it wouldn’t grant me the authority it did in the days of Hume, but it would certainly make for a useful tool after I’ve resettled here.”

“Feh!” Trevik spat from his isolated space against the far wall. “Such a thing should be destroyed.”

Elsebeth raised a brow and glanced back at the knocker, who took on a less hostile posture as soon as her eyes fell upon him. “Explain.”

Sheepishly clearing his throat, Trevik ran his fingers through his wiry hair and stepped forward. “Forgive me, my lady, I only meant that such devices were instrumental in wiping out generations of elves and fae in those days. Seeing it in person and feeling anything but revulsion is difficult.”

The landgraf’s poise faltered for only a moment as she realized how it must have sounded for her to have regarded it with such admiration. Before she could formulate an apology, the ground beneath them suddenly lurched. All eyes fell upon the two at the door, but Herrog and Resius looked just as surprised as everyone else.

“W-what’s happening?” Trevik stammered, his eyes darting around the chamber in a panic. “This isn’t right.”

Elaina felt a sudden pain in the base of her skull so intense that her legs nearly went out from under her. “AGH!”

“Elaina!” Royce exclaimed as she reflexively charged a hex in her clawed hand. Though she had no direct target, she would be ready to cast on one the moment it revealed itself to her. Or at least that’s what she thought.

A sudden burst of light washed out everything in the room, filling it with such intensity that Elaina had to avert her eyes to keep from being blinded. A powerful droning that shook the entire room accompanied an intense heat as a vaguely humanoid figure took shape at its center, white hair whirling around its disproportionately thin frame. Its mouth hung open in a silent scream, glowing brightly in tandem with hateful, burning eyes.

As the intensity of the light faded into a swirling, glimmering nimbus, Elaina could see that its white, naked flesh was devoid of any sexual characteristics---emaciated as it was. It hovered about a foot over the stone floor, which glowed brightly for a few feet in every direction from where it had appeared. Elaina’s skull screamed in agony despite not having been caught in the direct blast it had emerged from. Her knees shook, and something deep inside her screamed at the top of its lungs for her to flee.

“M-my eyes!” The landgraf cried, stumbling backward awkwardly. Two scorched blackened holes were situated on her face where her eyes had once been, bubbling and spitting with the bit of remaining fluid that had once been inside them. Kitch’s body smoked inside her armor at the landgraf’s feet. “I can’t see!”

At some point, Royce had let her hex fly but, due to the intensity of the light, had only struck a part of the stone wall far behind the creature---whatever it was.

Next to the door, the two charred corpses of Herrog and Resius slumped heavily against the door, staring blankly at the ceiling. The soldiers stumbled and screamed, their flesh scorched and red from the light as Royce stumbled toward Elaina with one arm burned almost entirely off. “Elaina, you need to---!”

The vishanti’s final words died on her lips as a beam of pure light lanced her through the chest, piercing her heart. She fell to the floor lifelessly, eyes still on the redhead she had tried to go to.

“Royce!” Elaina screamed in horrified astonishment.

“What?” The blonde replied in a confused voice, standing hunched over in front of the redhead with a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Elaina glanced around quickly, seeing everything just as it had been before the creature appeared. Without understanding fully what happened, the need to get to safety remained. “We need to move.”

“What?” Elsebeth responded.

“Resius!” Elaina yelled in a near-panicked state. “We need to go!”

Without questioning the swordmage, Resius abandoned his work on the door and quickly began the motions for a spell with both hands while snarling something in Solacine. Elaina turned, tugging hard on the witch’s arm as she dove for the landgraf, sending the three of them tumbling to the ground in a heap, just beyond the reach of the burst of light that roared into existence a split-second later.

The creature was just as terrifying as it had been the first time, but with the slight warning she offered everyone in the room, the outcome was dramatically different. The soldiers fell back while Resius managed to conjure a magical barrier to cover him and his dwarven companion.

“What the fuck is that!?” Royce shrieked, kicking her feet to push herself further along the floor away from it.

“Don’t look right at it,” Elaina warned, experiencing an echo of relief that she had managed to prevent any eyes from being burned out so far. “It’ll blind you!”

Again, the light faded, and the creature hovered a foot above the glowing floor. It tilted its head to one side as it regarded Elaina silently, puzzled over how she knew where to go. Elaina would have gladly offered any explanation she could have pulled out of her ass if she thought it would convince the thing to go back to wherever it came from.

“I’ve no idea,” Elsebeth growled as she scrambled to her feet, rapier in hand. “But we need to kill it before anyone gets hurt.”

“How are we supposed to do that if we can’t go near it or look at---?” Royce fell to the floor as Elaina shoved her out of the way of a searing light that erupted from the creature’s mouth.

“You’re the witch,” Elaina argued. “Use a hex!”

“Use a hex,” Royce repeated mockingly before hissing something in vishanti to produce a flat disk of magic just in time to intercept another powerful ray of searing light.

A shot from Resius’s enchanted firearm thundered off the chamber’s walls, but Elaina couldn’t determine whether it struck the creature. Regardless, it turned its attention briefly toward the occultist, offering Elaina an opening to advance. Pushing against the warning at the base of her skull, the swordmage took up her weapon and rushed forward.

“*Ishkastalk!*” Elaina roared, adjusting the grip on her weapon as it became supernaturally sheathed with water. Droplets trailed behind it like rain as she swung, casting a brief rainbow behind her as the blade found purchase in the creature’s exposed shoulder blade. The steel didn’t bite very deep despite the added force to her swing that the Aquastrike spell offered, but the creature’s flesh and the area around it were instantly drenched, taking the edge off the heat its light produced.

As she slid the blade from its flesh, the creature turned on Elaina, baring a set of claws at the end of each hand. It roared furiously at her with a voice like tearing metal that reverberated down to her bones and penetrated deep into her mind.

“Faeling!” It roared, scandalized. The glowing of its eyes and mouth grew hotter and brighter as it prepared another searing light for her at close range.

The swordmage brought her freehand up, making a fist as she focused her will into her bracer. “*Ruaig!*”

It wasn’t so much a tactical decision as it was a panic response, but it served her well in the end. A brief burst of concussive force erupted from the bracer, knocking the floating creature back several feet while sending its head whipping back. The ray of searing light raked across the ceiling, carving a deep groove in it as it went.

The water that had existed a moment before had turned to steam under the heat of the creature’s rage, obscuring a direct path between her and it while reducing the intensity of light from the whirling nimbus swirling around it.

“Resius,” Elaina called over to him without taking her eyes off the creature as it reoriented itself. “What in the hells is this thing? What do I do?”

“I’ve no bloody clue!” He responded, raising his weapon and firing a few useless shots of radiant light into it. “Not this, apparently.”

“Reduce the heat if you can,” Elsebeth called over to them, causing the occultist to abandon his gun in favor of a short iron rod he kept inside his armored coat. The heat chisel was another toy of his that allowed him to focus the powers of fire and ice magic, depending on which way he pointed it. The question was whether there was a fire spell to contend with the heat or if he would have to use ice.

“*Calorskut!*” Resius growled, causing a thin sheen of pale blue magic to wash over the two of them from the tip of the rod before moving on to the others. Despite the spell being defensive in nature, it caused the creature to go into a shrieking fit of blind rage as it fired ray after ray from its gaping, toothless mouth. Few of the rays hit anyone, but those that did were far less effective than they would have otherwise been. The damage was mainly restricted to scorched surfaces on armor and a few minor burns on flesh.

“I guess you must have really pissed it off,” Elaina muttered. “You fuck it’s mother or something?”

“Sounds closer to your department,” Resius quipped as Royce responded to the assault with a hex of her own. She hurled an explosive bolt of ice at the creature, its glow guiding her aim. The hex connected dead center with the creature, producing no visible effect besides a brief glimmer of reflective ice before sublimating into water vapor.

The terrible creature floated out of the mist in Royce’s direction even as Kitch and the other soldiers formed a defensive line in front of her, Elsebeth, and Trevik. Elaina’s eyes narrowed as she watched the knocker, cowering with existential fear as he stared wide-eyed at the entity before him. It wasn’t the fear they were all rightly experiencing. It was the fear of something seen in one’s own worst nightmares.

Elaina tugged on the arm of the occultist’s coat. “We need to draw its attention before it realizes---.”

“Knocker!” The creature shrieked in the same bone-chilling, mind-numbing tone of rending metal as before. Immediately altering its focus from Royce to Trevik, the creature extended one clawed hand that seemed to vanish amid the growing light in its palm. Pure malice and hatred rolled off it in thick, palpable waves as it closed in with murderous intent. “Perish!”