Chapter 302: Powerful Progeny (Part Two)
Against the common soldiers, Zedya’s basic fighting skills and superior physical abilities allowed her to slaughter with impunity. Against a vampire more than four times her age with centuries of experience in battle, however, she fared little better than a talented recruit, new to the army.
She managed to avoid blows to the head or chest, only barely, but the sickening crunch she’d heard when the flail smashed into her knee was repeated again when it slammed into the bottom of her ribcage, and a third time when it crashed into her right shoulder, sending shards of bone deep into her flesh and rendering her arm useless as it hung limply by her side.
Despite her terrible injuries, a smile blossomed on Zedya’s face as she pushed her Mist Walker Dance to its limits, drifting out of reach of Savis’s blood soaked flail.
"What are you smiling about, woman?" the white furred vampire sneered. His answer came a moment later, not from Zedya, but from a powerful voice that echoed from the depths of the abyss as a dark winged woman in tattered, bloody clothes strode through the northern entrance to the hall.
"Drop your weapons, or Hamdi dies," Nyrielle commanded. Shadows flowed from her wings like a dark tide, blanketing the hall with a darkness that dimmed everything from the crystal chandeliers to the standing oil lamps and cast the room into a cold otherworldly darkness like a graveyard on midwinter’s night.
"You are in the presence of Her Eternity Nyrielle, the Harbinger of Death," Ignatious said, stepping in front of Nyrielle like an obedient herrald and dropping the charred and desiccated body of Hamdi at her feet. "Kneel in her presence, or face her wrath," he commanded, immediately following his own orders and dropping to one knee.
"Your Eternity, Mistress Nyrielle," Zedya said formally and loudly enough for the entire hall to hear while she dropped to her uninjured knee.
"Master Hamdi!" Savis cried, his flail falling from his fingers as shock tore through him. The charred figure at the dark-winged woman’s feet was all but unrecognizable, and yet the connection he felt to the man who had made him a vampire all those centuries ago couldn’t be denied. Most importantly, that connection told him that, despite the ghastly wounds, his master was still alive!
Savis’s anguished cry paralyzed the soldiers of the Dark Wolf Brigade, giving Captain Lennart and his men the opportunity they needed to act. Rather than strike down their foes, however, each and every one of them stepped back from their opponents, laying down their weapons as they knelt and bowed deeply to their lady.