Corrupted blood lord

Alta slept beneath a peaceful night and a false sense of safety.

The village had been sealed for days already, its streets still watched by patrols of paladins, inquisitors, and priests who moved in careful rotations through every road and alley.

Torches burned along the roads and across the outer parts of the newly erected palisades, while wards placed beyond the village glowed faintly in the soil.

With such a tight defensive net around them, the guards on the night shift believed they were ready.

They were wrong.

The six thralls moved through the darkness without sound, each approaching from a different direction.

They came as close to the village as they dared without raising the alarm, waiting for the perfect chance to strike.

Tepesh would give the signal.

He crouched in the shadows of the nearest tree, just a few feet away from the palisade, his eyes fixed on the patrolling guards above.

Dallion was the closest to the village of them all. He lay flat on the ground where the wheat fields were, the wheat tall enough to obscure him completely as he skillfully avoided the wards in the field. He was raring to go and redeem himself from his previous failure, eager to kill some of the Church scum.

The other four waited farther back, not willing to risk being exposed.

Each of them carried a pouch of black iron bombs tied to their belts.

These bombs were highly effective, etched with runes that amplified their explosion and made the shrapnel more potent.

Tepesh watched the guards carefully as the shift changed.

For a brief moment, they bunched together across several points of the camp, exchanging a bit of banter between themselves. It was a small mistake, but enough for the vampires to take advantage of.

Tepesh reached into his pouch, drew out several bombs, and hurled them toward the palisade.

The explosions tore through the night, blasting apart wood, bodies, and armor as multiple guards were swallowed by fire and shrapnel.

Then they drew their weapons and attacked.

Tepesh, Dallion, and a tall female thrall with two curved swords moved toward the temple stairs, where Regulus himself, with two priests in tow, had appeared after hearing the commotion.

The rest of the thralls split up and targeted the disoriented priests still on patrol. They were the first to be eliminated.

A paladin near the gate turned his head, reached for the bell, and sounded the alarm, waking those who still slept.

But that was it. He never got the chance to take another step.

His head rolled from his neck before he even understood what had happened.

The Church suffered heavy losses in the initial attack, and less than half of their warriors remained alive. The ambush had been an overwhelming success.

But it was not over yet.

Regulus alone would be a serious problem, and now that the rest of the Dawn warriors were awake and ready, their deaths would not come as easily as before.

Paladins quickly formed a vanguard line, with inquisitors behind them for support, but the priests were almost wiped out apart from a few lucky ones.

Regulus was being held back by Tepesh, Dallion, and Alvira. Normally, he would not have much of a problem against three of them, but he had to protect the priests as well as the church itself from these heathens.

—

The runes beneath the temple flickered from the explosions, and dust fell from the ceiling.

From a pitch-black cell, two red eyes suddenly shone through the darkness, and a sinister smile appeared beneath them.

Teclos was rather happy that his "comrades" came so quickly.

’Looks like I’ll be able to escape sooner than I anticipated.’

—

More bombs detonated along the lower road where the paladins tried to establish a front-line push against the thralls.

They were too slow to brace themselves and were knocked back, some of them even hurled into the houses.

Smoke rolled over them and took their sight too.

Tiria, one of the female thralls, dropped from a rooftop into the middle of a patrol and cut through them like a knife through butter. Her hands flashed, and their throats opened before the men even had time to blink.

But after that small victory, she thought too little of them and let her guard down.

She made the mistake of rushing one of the few priests left alive, exposing herself too much in her haste. Three spears pierced through her almost immediately.

She hissed as the light-coated weapons burned through her body and forced her to recoil. The paladins pressed forward, nearly ending her there, if not for another thrall coming to her aid.

Obelon threw his double-bladed battle axe and cleanly severed the shafts of the spears, cutting her free.

The paladins drew their swords instead and tanked his follow-up shoulder charge with their shields.

Villagers looked out of their windows and barred their doors. Tiria simply ripped one door from its frame and rushed inside, feasting on the unfortunate family within to regain some of her strength.

—

Tepesh reached the temple stairs in a flash of blue-white lightning.

Regulus just extended a hand and caught Tepesh’s greatsword. The priests were blown backward from the shockwave, and the church walls sustained some damage.

Lightning burst outward from Tepesh’s blade, crawling over Regulus’s armor, but golden light flared across the paladin captain’s body and easily forced it away.

Dallion appeared behind Regulus, dagger aimed for the gap beneath his helmet.

But again, Regulus simply twisted his body with the greatsword still firmly clasped in his hands and caught the dagger on his gauntlet, then drove an elbow into Dallion’s face. The vampire flew backward, rolled across the ground, and stood up spitting blood.

"Tch..."

Alvira slashed her curved swords toward Regulus’s knee.

He stepped back half a pace, avoiding the strike by the width of a finger, then swung his claymore in a wide arc that forced all three vampires away.

Tepesh smiled coldly. "We meet again."

The paladin captain’s eyes narrowed, and he took his stance. There was no room for talking.

They crashed together in a whirlwind of steel and mana.

Tepesh attacked with brutal force, every swing of his sword wrapped in lightning strong enough to shatter the stone steps.

Dallion circled around them like a shadow, darting in whenever Regulus committed to a block or an attack.

And Alvira kept aiming for joints and weak points in his armor, trying to force the paladin captain’s stance open.

Against any other warrior, the three of them would have ended the fight very quickly.

But Regulus easily held them off.

He wasted neither strength nor mana, parrying and countering in the same fluid motion. Golden light poured from his blade, and more than once, it came close to taking one of their heads.

Each step he took forced them back. Each block flowed into a counterstrike that would have cut any one of them in half if their teamwork had been even a little weaker.

The only reason they were still alive was because he had to protect the unconscious priests behind him and the church.

Tepesh slammed his sword down, and lightning exploded across the stairs. Regulus defended the church by summoning a shield of light, but Dallion used the opening to cut across his side. The dagger scraped through a gap in the armor and drew blood.

For the first time, Regulus gave ground.

Tepesh pressed forward immediately.

"Now!"

Alvira drove both swords toward Regulus’s throat.

Regulus caught the blades between his mana-coated teeth and bit down. Metal cracked and then snapped.

Before she could pull back, his free hand seized her by the head. He dragged her forward and slammed his forehead into hers hard enough to crack her skull.

She staggered, and he kicked her down the stairs, but Dallion was already there again, cutting toward his exposed wrist.

Regulus roared and unleashed a short burst of aura.

A sharp, tsunami-like wave of light burst outward and threw all three vampires back several steps.

As they staggered, an opening appeared.

Regulus did not miss it.

Of the three pressing him, Alvira was the most wounded, so he chose her without hesitation. He stepped forward with frightening speed, his claymore rising in a clean golden arc meant to end her before she could recover.

Alvira tried to raise her broken swords in defense, but against that force, she knew it was useless.

Dallion appeared beside her at the last second.

He hooked one arm around her waist and pulled her back just as Regulus’s blade cut through the space where her neck had been. The golden edge missed her by a finger’s width and carved a glowing wound into the stone beneath them.

At the same moment, Tepesh raised his greatsword.

Lightning gathered around the blade in a violent storm, twisting into a roaring blue-white serpent before he unleashed it toward Regulus. The blast struck the paladin captain head-on and forced him back a step, his boots grinding against the stone as golden light flared across his armor.

—

Across the village, the other three thralls were no longer cutting through the Church as easily.

Tiria, who was almost back to her full strength, moved like a shadow with daggers in both hands, darting in and out of the paladin formation, but every opening she created was quickly sealed.

Obelon swung his double-bladed battle axe with brutal force, smashing shields and forcing men to their knees, yet the Church warriors held their line and did not break under that immense pressure.

The last thrall, Kaelvorn, fought with a simple longsword, but his strikes were clean and efficient. He gracefully avoided their blades and slashed at their weak points, but even he could not break through alone.

The Dawn warriors had fully rallied now.

Shield walls locked together. Spears thrust in disciplined rhythm. The few priests that were left chanted from behind the formation, giving just enough blessings to stop the vampires from overwhelming them.

The battle had become a stalemate.

—

Tepesh’s eyes moved across the battlefield, cold and calculating.

Three of them were holding Regulus in place, but that was all they were doing. Holding him.

Every time they tried to push him, the paladin captain answered with a calm, brutal counterattack. They were not even wounding him anymore.

With only three of them, they could not bring him down.

And time was no longer on their side.

The priests behind Regulus would not stay unconscious forever.

One of them was already half awake as smoke rose from him. He coughed up blood and reached for the talismans around his belt to heal himself with a stored spell.

Others had probably begun to wake up as well from behind the shield wall. Give them a few more minutes, and those pesky blessed arrays would return.

Tepesh made his decision.

"Hold him," he ordered.

Dallion’s eyes narrowed. "What?"

"You heard me. For as long as you can."

Alvira spat blood onto the stone and raised her broken blades. "Easier said than done..."

Tepesh did not answer and started to gather lightning. It began crawling over his armor.

Regulus noticed immediately and tried to stop him, but Dallion and Alvira threw themselves in his path.

Of course, Regulus drove them back, but he could not shake them, and he could not arrive in time to stop Tepesh.

Tepesh stepped away from the fight and raised his greatsword toward the sky.

Lightning surged from his body in violent waves. The air changed, and every hair on their necks rose.

Above Alta, clouds gathered unnaturally fast, twisting into a dark spiral over the temple.

Regulus looked up.

His expression finally changed.

"You bastard!"

The vampire smiled coldly as a thundering roar split the heavens.

From the heart of the storm, a massive dragon made of blue-white lightning descended, its jaws open wide, its body coiling through the clouds like it owned the sky.

Then it struck the church.

Everything vanished beneath the impact as the entire temple exploded in a blinding storm of lightning.