Corrupted blood lord

The lightning dragon descended with a roar that swallowed every other sound.

For a single moment, everything turned white.

The whole church vanished beneath the impact.

Stone, wood, glass, runes, it did not matter, as everything was swallowed at once when blue-white lightning descended through the temple and the ground beneath it.

The priests behind Regulus were engulfed before they could even scream. The arrays that had protected the church flickered wildly, cracked, and shattered under the force of Tepesh’s spell.

The blast rolled outward in a blinding wave.

Paladins were thrown from their feet. Inquisitors were hurled through ruined walls. Villagers hiding in nearby houses screamed as roofs tore apart and windows burst inward.

When the light finally began to fade, nothing remained of the church but a smoking crater and broken stone.

Almost nothing.

At the center of the destruction stood a black sphere.

It was perfectly still.

Lightning crawled over its surface for a moment, hissing and snapping like a living thing, but none of it passed through. Slowly, the darkness peeled away layer by layer, dissolving into smoke until the figure inside was revealed.

Teclos stood unharmed in the middle of the ruined dungeon.

The cuffs that had bound his wrists and ankles lay broken on the ground around him, reduced to twisted scraps of burned metal. Everything else had been erased. The walls, the cell, the floor, the ceiling above him, all of it had been torn apart.

Only the patch of stone beneath his boots remained untouched.

Teclos looked around at the devastation.

Smoke drifted past his face. Ash fell through the air like black snow. A few feet away from where the blast landed, men wounded by the shrapnel groaned.

Teclos shook his head slowly.

Then he looked up.

Regulus, Tepesh, Dallion, and Alvira stared at him from above where the entrance once had been, all four frozen for the first time since the battle had begun.

Teclos smiled.

"One would think you wanted to erase me," he said as his red eyes moved toward the thralls. "Hello again, comrades."

They stayed silent and simply observed him for a while.

Regulus was the first to speak, his voice cold and heavy with suspicion.

"How did you remove the cuffs?"

Teclos glanced down at the broken restraints, then gave a small shrug.

"Well, it seems that something is eroding every chain or restraint placed on me... might be that cursed purple fluid." Teclos said as he shuddered at the painful memory.

Regulus tightened his grip around his sword. He expected a fight, four against one now.

But at the same time, Tepesh’s expression also darkened.

Dallion and Alvira narrowed their eyes as they studied him. They could not explain it, but something about him felt wrong to them.

He should have felt like an ally, not a neutral variable... they should have rejoiced now that he was free and they could finally push Regulus back.

But standing there in the ashes, Teclos did not feel like an ally.

He felt unbound and dangerous.

Tepesh sensed it the most, though he did not fully understand why he felt that way, as Teclos was ultimately still Luther’s thrall.

He commanded Teclos and simultaneously probed his reaction with suspicion. "Enough standing around. If you are free, then prove your usefulness to our Master and help us kill him."

Teclos turned his gaze toward Regulus.

For the first time since he had been dragged into Alta, he truly looked at the paladin captain. But instead of the armor, his scars, face, or sword, he looked deeper.

At his shadow.

It stretched like an endless and silent abyss, and that abyss looked really angry right now.

His power was deep, vast, and heavy.

Teclos stared at it for only half a second, and then he started laughing because he could not believe it.

He was amused by their stupidity.

Dallion’s jaw tightened. "What is so funny?"

Teclos wiped at the corner of his eye, though there were no tears there.

"Oh, nothing," he said. "I was just wondering how badly you three misunderstood the situation."

Tepesh’s sword flashed downward, and he gathered his lightning for another attack. "Move," he commanded.

Teclos shook his head and obliged.

"Sure."

Darkness burst from beneath his feet.

In an instant, he vanished from the crater and appeared closer to Tepesh, his body slipping through the shadows like dark smoke. At the same time, dozens of dark tendrils erupted around Regulus, twisting up from every side.

They lunged toward the paladin captain and tried to bind him.

"Filth!"

Regulus unleashed his mana.

Golden light erupted from him in a violent wave, so dense and overwhelming that the tendrils burned before they could even touch him. The darkness shrieked as it was torn apart, dissolving into nothingness from the sheer pressure of his aura.

But Teclos never meant for the tendrils to hold him or do anything, for that matter. They were just a distraction and a way to reassure his "comrades" that he was still on their side.

After all, they did not quite hide their suspicion toward him, and if he had attacked them outright, he might not have gotten this perfect chance.

Tepesh let his guard down.

For the smallest fraction of a second, when every eye turned toward Regulus, and they thought that the battle was about to resume.

Regulus lowered his claymore, ready to cut through all of them if he got the chance.

Dallion and Alvira began to channel their own lightning mana, ready to strike.

Dallion drew it through his body, enhancing his speed, while lightning crackled around Alvira as she prepared to unleash it.

And Tepesh began to turn back toward Teclos. He intended to use him as bait once again.

"Go and att—"

But then, mid-sentence, his head slid from his neck.

There was no warning. No war cry from Teclos. No burst of mana.

Not even sound itself.

One moment, Tepesh was standing there, lightning still crawling across his sword and armor.

And in the next moment, his head was on the ground.

It fell on the shattered ground with a dull sound and rolled once before stopping near Teclos’s boot.

His body remained upright for another heartbeat, as though it had not yet registered what had happened.

When it collapsed, though, Dallion, Alvira, and even Regulus froze.

The entire battlefield went silent with disbelief.

"What...?" Dallion whispered.

Alvira’s face twisted in disbelief. "Impossible."

To them, it was more than just impossible.

First of all, Tepesh was not weak. He was one of Luther’s most valuable thralls, a monster even among them. No one should have been able to take his head so cleanly without even him noticing.

Second, the vampire pact was absolute, or so they believed. It was a sacred and untouchable power from the vampires, and nobody could escape it.

Regulus looked at Teclos, and understanding flashed across his face.

It seemed he did not lie about hating his master.

Teclos stood beside Tepesh’s corpse with a sword made of pure darkness in his hand. Its edge distorted the light around it, silent and thin, but infinitely powerful, like a black void in space.

He knelt beside Tepesh’s severed head and smiled down at him.

"I am surprised," Teclos said softly. "I thought you were smarter than this, letting me this close and even looking away from me after you suspected something was wrong. Truly a dumb pet of Luther."

Tepesh was still alive to hear what he said, of course, it would not be for long.

Vampire vitality kept the last sparks of his soul burning behind his eyes. His mouth twitched, but no sound came out. Utter shock and disbelief covered his face. Then, slowly, terror cracked through his expression.

Real fear.

The fear of realizing that he would die soon. Ironic for an undead. Ugly tears soon started flowing from his eyes as he wanted to plead for his life, for his head to be quickly attached to his neck again, so he might still have a chance.

Teclos leaned in closer, savoring the moment as a mad smile appeared on his face.

It was delicious.

The despair of this dog was delicious.

Dallion finally snapped out of it and rushed forward.

"You bastard!"

But Teclos was already opening a portal.

Darkness split the space behind him, opening like a rift in the air. A deep, endless cold spilled from within.

With one hand, Teclos seized Tepesh’s body. With the other, he lifted the severed head by its hair.

"I will come for you too, someday."

Regulus moved first.

He could not allow Teclos to escape. He was far too valuable as a source of information. Light surged around him, and he shot forward with blinding speed.

Dallion lunged a heartbeat later, lightning flooding his body, though he was still slower than Regulus.

Alvira raised her hand and unleashed the storm she had been gathering, a thunderbolt tearing through the air.

Too late.

Teclos stepped into the darkness with Tepesh’s corpse in one hand, smiling as he waved goodbye with the severed head.

Then the rift closed around him, and he was gone.

—

Far away, in the halls of Count Aweq’s castle, Luther Vael’thorr stopped walking.

The corridor around him instantly became oppressively silent.

A servant carrying a silver tray froze several steps behind him, not even daring to breathe.

Luther frowned, and his pale eyes narrowed.

Two of his chains snapped at the same time, but they did not break in the same way. One shattered violently, while the other simply stopped existing.

Tepesh was the one that shattered violently, and it meant only one thing. He was dead.

But thralls were replaceable, and although it hurt him in the short run, it was not anything to be too worried about.

The main problem was the pact between him and Teclos.

A vampire’s pact was not broken so easily. You either had to kill the master, or a holy relic had to sever the tie, but survival was not guaranteed. Just in case, he would normally execute the thralls captured by the Church.

Teclos was alive and free from his grasp without that, though.

Luther stared at nothing for several seconds, his mind moving faster than any ordinary man could dream. Possibilities unfolded one after another, each worse than the last.

The Church had Teclos for a while now.

When was the pact damaged?

How long was Teclos able to defy him?

His room was full of secrets, and he had massive freedom on missions.

And now that Teclos had vanished, everything was compromised, and it was not safe here anymore.

Luther understood that immediately.

Teclos had not merely survived, he had betrayed them.

The whole Church would be upon them soon. Perhaps even the royals.

Luther’s expression cracked for the first time, and the servant behind him began to tremble.

"Lord Vael’thorr?" the servant asked.

Luther turned his head slightly and issued a single command.

"Call every thrall stationed in the castle."

The servant trembled as she barely managed to swallow and bow. After that, she rushed off like her life depended on it.

Meanwhile, the temperature in the corridor seemed to drop.

Luther’s voice trembled with barely contained fury.

"I can’t believe it..."

His mind raced, not with fear of Teclos, but of what this would mean for him. A broken pact was unheard of. If word reached the vampire court, his standing would suffer greatly.

Worse, he might become a laughingstock.

Luther turned toward the window, his gaze drifting to the distant city below. Beyond it, night stretched over the count’s lands like a black veil.

Once he escaped and returned to his castle, Luther would have some hunting to do.

If this dog had forgotten that biting its master’s hand meant certain death, then Luther would remind him soon enough.

The next second, he vanished from the corridor as though he had never been there, leaving only the lingering cold behind.