V3Ch35-The Vampires
“Assassination attempts?” Tybalt asked. “Is it the wood elves you mentioned you’re having trouble reining in?”
Kamila scoffed. “Hardly. Those primitives wouldn’t even know how to reach our islands. Without our guidance from above, they’re lost.”
Dero rolled her eyes. “Fucking typical high elves, high on their own specialness.”
“What was that, you little—”
“Honey bunches of oats, please,” Colin said, placing a gentle hand on his wife’s upper arm. “This is not constructive.” He turned to Dero. “If you could keep the color commentary to a minimum, Princess - or, Beastqueen—” He looked to Tybalt for help.
“We’re engaged to be married,” the necromancer said.
“Ah, future Beastqueen-unless-she-changes-her-mind-like-the-flighty-girl-she-is Dero, please kindly stop provoking my Queen,” the High Elf King said, with a smile like steel settling on his lips. “This conversation will go a lot more smoothly without those interruptions.”
Dero opened her mouth to say something, and Tybalt gently squeezed her waist. They were still so close - she was practically draped over him - that he could easily make those little gestures. The dark elf’s expression shifted from mild annoyance to a deceptively gentle smile.
“I’ll shut up for now, since I don’t want to put my future husband in an awkward position,” Dero said in an overly sweet tone. She sounded so meek and submissive that Tybalt wondered if she was copying someone - or if this was a kind of role play she was into.
She turned, rose on tiptoe, and planted a long, hot kiss on the side of Tybalt’s neck, then whispered, “I assume you know what I’ll expect for this later.”
The words were as quiet as any whisper Tybalt had ever heard, but he was unsurprised that both Kamila and Colin reacted to it - the High Elf King with a kind of mildly affronted surprise, the Queen with clenched fists and a slight shake of her head. Typical elven hearing.
I guess the high elves are a bit more conservative than Dero about sex before marriage. More like beastfolk - and some humans. He resisted the impulse to smile. These royals really didn’t know Dero at all. The kiss and the whisper was as much of an act as the meek, submissive tone she’d adopted just before it. All of it was intended to provoke this exact sort of reaction.
Tybalt didn’t mind helping Dero to do a little bit of harmless poking at the high elves, just as long as she didn’t provoke them to the point of violence or calling off their mediation. He was fairly certain that they were too invested in their role as supporters of the Death God to actually do anything adverse to his interests.
“It’s not the wood elves, then,” Tybalt said. “So, who is behind the assassination attempts? If you know.”
“The wood elves are interesting,” Colin said. “Their civilization seems to move in cycles. Sometimes they decide they need to be closer to nature than the rest of us, so every millennium or so, they rebel in that direction. They destroy some of their own magical and technical knowledge to live more in harmony with the wild things of their forests.” He shook his head. “It is getting to the point that I can almost time the cycles.”
But you can’t do anything meaningful about it? Tybalt just waited for the High Elf King to get to the point.
“Unfortunately, the actual threat is from within high elf society,” Colin said. “Not the nobility. Mainly just some commoners…”
He looked hesitant to elaborate, so the necromancer decided to take a stab at his own theory.
“Does you being vampires factor into this somehow?” he asked.
Tybalt looked into Colin’s eyes as he spoke, and he saw something he’d observed already when the necromancer introduced himself as the ruler of the undead. A little flicker of uncertainty - almost, but not quite, of fear. More like caution.
He finds necromancy threatening, the necromancer thought. There are methods that necromancers can use to dominate undead they didn’t personally create. Even if I couldn’t dominate him personally, because his will is too great, I might be able to take some of his subordinates from him. All those others who were faking being beggars were undead too. When he looks at me, he sees a threat to his power.
“Yes,” Colin said. “In order to shift the society toward the worship of Lord Mudo and lay the groundwork for his resurgence in Abadd, my supporters and I have spent centuries converting virtually the entire high elven nobility into vampires.”
That sounds like a very fucking time-consuming process. All right, at least he wasn’t just sitting here with his thumb up his ass waiting for someone else to do everything.
“It was only natural that, eventually, some non-vampires would learn what we were up to,” Kamila said. “After all, we need to feed on the un-converted in order to live. Even if it’s only small amounts of blood, an amount the average mortal would not miss, it is almost inevitable that someone fails to conceal our appetites.”
Colin moved to a beautifully ornate cabinet and opened it, revealing what appeared to be bottles of wine.
“Speaking of which, does anyone have a thirst?” he asked. “Normally, I have servants performing these chores, but I would be happy to serve us all drinks.”
“I don’t think your preferred fluid would quench my thirst,” Dero replied, furrowing her brow.
“Suit yourself,” Colin said, shrugging. He popped a cork on a bottle and poured something ambiguously red-looking into two goblets. “You, King Tybalt?”
“No, thank you, King Colin,” the necromancer replied.
I think that smells like it’s actually blood. Hard to be certain from over here.
“Anyway, all of the nobles are converted except for a small group who are nonetheless supportive of the cause,” Colin said. “They simply wished to continue the natural life cycle of elves.”
“You mean they wanted to eventually die,” Dero said. “Like all things are meant to, in time, per our god’s scripture?”
Well, that wasn’t the most undiplomatic way she could have put that, Tybalt thought.
And it was a legitimate point. Undeath was a perversion of the Death God’s plan. A necessary perversion, in Tybalt’s case, but still a perversion.
Colin shrugged. “I have made every compromise that I considered necessary to secure our eventual victory. That is what a leader does. Hard choices are part of the job. Nothing is eternal, anyway. I, too, will die eventually, when Lord Mudo is done with me. Perhaps at an assassin’s blade.”
“They’ll never succeed at killing either of us, honey,” Kamila said. “Our enemies are superstitious commoners. A small conspiracy comprised of people of little account.”
Tybalt could almost hear Dero scoffing, but this time, she managed to avoid rising to the bait by saying anything out loud.
The retorts were obvious, though. You’ll see how little they matter when their knives are in your hearts, or something to that effect.
Tybalt had a similar sort of thought. Even if the would-be assassins aren’t that powerful, I know vampires are vulnerable under daylight. That might be why he’d had so much trouble sensing Colin’s actual power while they walked with him. Vampires were severely weakened during the day. It was an inherent problem of their biology.
A thought occurred to the necromancer.
“How is it that you were able to have children?” he asked, looking at the King.
“I… had assumed you were familiar with the process,” Colin said, raising an eyebrow.
“From the way the Princess seems so besotted, I had gathered that you practice regularly,” Kamila said, one lip curling in slightly disdainful amusement.
Even Dero seemed to share a small fraction of the Queen’s sentiment, though she didn’t allow herself to show more than a twitch of one corner of her lips - unwilling to smile at what Kamila had said.
“My reading on the subject indicates that vampires are infertile,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “Otherwise I might have already transformed a few of my loved ones into vampires. Who wouldn’t want immortality, with the benefit of keeping all your flesh? The only real price is vulnerability when under sunlight. So my curiosity is more than just academic.”
This distinction, flesh versus decay, was why liches were comparatively rare. Tybalt had never even heard of them until he fought the lich in the Tower of Death to obtain the defiant necromancer class. By contrast, vampires were a widely known high tier undead. It was far more attractive to become or create a vampire than a lich, at least for the average person who cared about the pleasures of the flesh.
If vampires could still reproduce, that would only make it more attractive.
“Your reading deserves to be supplemented, then,” said Colin evenly. “I had meant to ask you to read this anyway.” He walked over to a panel on his wall and pressed on a slightly uneven place in the ivory. The panel slid aside, revealing a hollow space. He drew from it a slender book bound in pale leather. “This is everything that your last predecessor wrote about vampires during his time visiting with us. He was kind enough to give it to me. It includes his solution to the vampire infertility problem. A procedure he could perform on any individual vampire to ‘repair’ our defect of not producing viable regenerative material.”
“The fact that you’re keeping it in that panel and want to pass it on to me means that you can’t do it yourself,” Tybalt instantly guessed.
At least, from the way you’re phrasing it, it sounds like you don’t know how to do it.
Colin’s jaw clenched slightly, only for a fraction of a second, but Tybalt caught it.
And you resent needing the help of an outsider.
“Alas, despite my long years of study, only a necromancer touched by the power of the Death God directly seems to be able to fix this ‘defect.’”
Probably because it’s against the Death God’s plans that a whole race of immortal vampires be allowed to exist. Elves are fine, because they’re just long-lived, not immortal, and I suspect they typically make up for their longevity with radically reduced reproduction. Vampires, however, would twist any natural ecosystem they came into prolonged contact with. They’re already ageless apex predators. Much worse if they’re fertile too.
“What a fortunate coincidence that I am the High Priest of Lord Mudo,” Tybalt said.
Colin only nodded, clearly having expected that.
I guess my predecessors were all high priests, too.
“Why are you giving this to me?” the necromancer asked.
The High Elf King looked surprised for a moment.
“Is it not obvious that I intend to help you in any way I can, as we both work to fulfill our god’s will?” he asked finally. “For that matter, if you ever wish to follow the vampiric path, you are welcome to come to me directly.”
This is more like you giving me a way of helping you…
“It’s not quite obvious,” Tybalt said. “Since I know you’ve lived through more than one of my predecessors’ attempts to work the Death God’s will in the world.”
He didn’t exactly know that, but it fit with what Lord Mudo’s angel had told him back at the Tower of Death - that the god chose a new champion roughly once every millennium at most, while Colin’s plot to turn the high elves into vampires was millennia old.
Tybalt deliberately didn’t answer Colin’s overture about vampirism. It was probably an attempt to gain some power over the necromancer, which vampires usually had over their spawn through the blood connection.
“That is a fair enough observation,” Colin replied. “But I have always done what I could for the cause.”
“Where were you when Lord Mudo sent others with the same mission as me, then, if you’ll pardon the blunt question?”
“There were two such representatives of Lord Mudo in my time as leader of my family,” Colin said. “Twenty-five hundred years ago, I encountered a woman named Glory. A beautiful human woman with golden yellow eyes.”
Is that Lord Mudo’s angel he’s describing?
“When it became apparent that she was sent by our god, I provided her with all my support, depleted my political capital and what forces I had in her service, and was lucky to escape with my own life intact. The subsequent two millennia have largely been spent in rebuilding my political fortunes, warring with the humans, losing ground, consolidating control, and fostering my people’s slow recovery. It has been difficult, even with great wisdom gained through millennia of experience. The elven race was not made for war. Even non-vampiric elves have much lower fertility than the other races. We simply need our people more than the enemy needs theirs.”
“What about the other champion of Lord Mudo?” Tybalt asked.
“The other… tragically lost his way. He had become a lich by the time I met him. A type of undead with great power but terrible drawbacks. At one time, I think he was one of the most powerful mages in the world. Probably even stronger than me, and magic is my great talent as well as my hobby. But it made him overconfident - and as a result, ironically far more gullible than he had been as a mortal. I was more cautious by then. Almost one and a half millennia had passed since the previous High Priestess. I tried to lend him some support. Both material support and wisdom. But he ignored my counsel at every turn and insulted my material support for being insufficient. Ultimately, I had to distance myself for the preservation of my own people.”
“How did he end up?”
“He finally turned his back even on Lord Mudo’s priorities. He sought legitimacy, legacy, permanence. He tried to negotiate in good faith with the powers that opposed him, to stabilize his borders and establish a permanent necromantic empire. As I understand it, he was betrayed and sealed.”
“Fortunate that you hadn’t involved yourself more closely,” Dero said casually. “Or all your subsequent work here would have been impossible.”
It is oddly coincidental that you keep being the one who comes out of these things cleanly, Tybalt thought.
“Indeed,” Colin said, nodding with a stern expression. “I truly wish he had listened to my advice. One of the most promising mages of any age.”
“Dero and I need time alone together,” Tybalt said abruptly. “If that’s all right. It feels as if there is much information to digest.”