Chapter 436: Shubnalu’s Trap (Part Two)
Standing before a stone slab blocking her path, Nyrielle hesitated, trying to sense what her teacher might be doing in the space beyond. The Blood Seeker had clearly found a trace of her former teacher, but at the same time, he had taken no action against the construct. Was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security, pretending that he hadn’t noticed? Had he revealed himself to deliberately guide her here?
Any of it was possible. Shubnalu’s moves were always carefully considered and planned well in advance to force his prey to stretch out their own necks. She was doing that right now, separating herself from her own forces and coming to meet with him alone. But the alternative, exposing her loved ones to the powers of the oldest among the True Vampires, was something she didn’t dare to contemplate.
"There’s no time for this," she muttered as another recently reawakened feeling overtook her. Impatience. Though Ashlynn still felt confident, the bursts of pain weren’t only more intense, they were more frequent, and her lover’s mind seemed to be focused not on victory, but on escape... or even rescue.
Taking her shadowy ax in both hands, Nyrielle cloaked herself in darkness, summoning all of her physical strength until nothing could be seen of her but two midnight blue eyes, glowing in the darkness like dark oceans of power.
"Break. Crumble. Collapse," she said, her dark voice reverberating through the stone chamber like a pronouncement from the abyss as her ax descended, splitting the stone slab cleanly from corner to corner. For a moment, the slab stood resolute as if it intended to defy death herself. Then, with a shuddering crash, the top half slid to the side, cracking and crumbling away as it fell to the icy stone floor of the cavern, leaving nothing behind but a pile of loose rubble.
"Teacher," Nyrielle said as she strode forward. "Your student has come to have a word."
Inside the chamber, the air was still and stale, giving the impression that anything that nothing living had trod these stone halls in centuries. It was the contents of the chamber, however, that stilled Nyrielle’s heart when her flickering sapphire flames peeled back the darkness.
At the center of the chamber stood a massive stone altar, roughly carved from volcanic glass. Hooked glyphs that were among the oldest Nyrielle had ever seen covered the surface of the blood stained altar and deep grooves in it’s surface spoke of dark rituals used to guide the flow of blood from anything unfortunate enough to find itself atop the altar.
Chains and hooks hung from the ceiling, like the implements of a slaughterhouse, cast in bronze that had long ago lost its luster beneath a heavy greenish blue tarnish. Along one wall, rows of ceremonial knives, cleavers and saws for hewing bone were encased in blocks of ice that had endured for hundreds of years, perfectly preserving the deadly implements that awaited their next use.
The aura of blood in the chamber hung so thickly that Nyrielle was momentarily disoriented, as if she could feed simply by breathing the air in this dark, forsaken place. But despite the thick, heavy smell of blood that filled the place even after hundreds of years sealed behind the stone slab, she found no trace of her teacher. Instead, her Blood Seaker hovered patiently over a stone tablet, carefully placed on a pedestal to the side as if it refused to be the center of attention but demanded a place from which to watch.
"So you were like this, even then," Nyrielle said as she approached the stone tablet. The top of the tablet bore an ancient version of the Eldritch glyph for ’vampire’ while the bottom of the tablet bore the symbol of a blade and fangs that had long represented the current Fangs of Death.
"Always standing in the shadows, watching as others executed your will." Slicing the tip of her smallest finger with a sharpened nail, Nyrielle pressed her finger to the glyph at the top of the tablet and spoke in the older form of Eldritch her former teacher still used for sorcery. "Blüd Scribë: Revæl."