The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

The men tailing them nearly choked on their own surprise, watching the pair vanish arm in arm down a side alley. Who was this woman, Feimaji? It took them a moment to place her — a street girl, rarely seen out and about, who took the occasional client but not often enough that any of them had paid her much mind.

They watched the two disappear into a modest little house, and the watchers were left staring at each other. Was Evan really just out here whoring around on a slow night? None of them had seen that coming.

Still, they didn't let their guard down. They took up position at a distance and kept watch. A light came on inside, dim and low. Before long, the curtains were drawn, blocking any view of what was happening within. The men exchanged glances, already filling in the blanks with their own imaginations.

Inside, the room was small — a bed against one wall, two sofas piled with clothes near the other, and a second door leading to another room, closed.

The moment they were inside, Feimaji slipped free of Evan's arm, pulled off her coat, and tossed it onto a sofa with a coy laugh. "Handsome, why are you just standing there? Get undressed."

Her tone was light and teasing, her breasts half-hidden and half-bared as though straining to spill free, her skin pale in the dim lamplight — pale, but full, in a way that only sharpened the effect. Something thick hung in the air, something indecent — but a flicker crossed her eyes for just a moment, the bare, hungry look of something sizing up its next meal. Evan seemed lost in lust on the surface, but his eyes stayed narrowed, watching everything closely.

"Sure," Evan said, turning as if to undress. In that instant, Feimaji changed — two fangs jutted out, her eyes flooded red, and she lunged silently for the vein at the side of his neck, her true nature laid bare. A vampire.

Evan hadn't been undressing at all. He simply turned, swinging the cane back over his shoulder in one motion. It struck her square in the chest with a heavy thud, sending her flying onto the bed. Only then did he turn fully around, his eyes clear and calm — a faint green glow flickering in them now and then, though very faint.

"You— you were already on guard?" Feimaji sprang up off the bed the moment she landed, a thread of blood trickling from her lip.

Evan looked at her coldly. He'd already known she was a vampire — not even a baron, which meant she couldn't have been turned long — and here she was, thinking to sink her teeth into a lich. "If I were you, I wouldn't try anything else."

Feimaji had no intention of listening. Wings tore open from her back, and she became a streak of light, her nails sharpening into a set of blades. The room was small, and in the blink of an eye she was on top of him, her claws blurring too fast for the eye to follow, slashing down at him.

Evan simply shook his head and stepped back half a pace. That half step was enough — her claws swept through empty air. He never drew the blade, only swung the cane in a shallow arc. Another heavy thud. Even with her transformation raising her defenses considerably, the blow landed with proportionally greater force behind it, and she slammed back onto the bed a second time. Just as before, Evan hadn't used a single spell — the cane alone had been enough.

He hadn't gone for the kill. He knew nothing about this town beyond what James had told him, and this vampire in front of him clearly had some real strength — she was bound to know something useful. That was the only reason he'd held back.

"I've already shown you mercy," Evan said, certain now that those two blows had taught her exactly how outmatched she was, and that she wouldn't fight back again for the moment. "Tell me — how did you end up in Burk Town?"

"I used to be a working girl. A year ago, my father turned me and I became part of his bloodline. I settled here after that. I haven't killed anyone — I just take a little blood from them now and then. They're clients anyway, so it hardly matters." Something flickered in Feimaji's eyes as she said she hadn't killed anyone. Evan knew she was lying, but he didn't call her on it.

"I'm not asking how you get by. Going a whole year without getting caught says something about your skill. What I want to know is what factions run this town."

"I didn't know anything about the factions before. After I got turned, I thought I was untouchable for a while, until I found out the hard way I was nowhere near their level. There are three major powers in this town." She laid out the same breakdown James had already given him, with barely any discrepancy.

"How strong are their leaders? What are they each like?"

"I don't know exactly how they measure up against each other — only that they're all stronger than me, by a good margin. Holred, who runs the Burk Protectors, is greedy and lecherous. Fiat, who leads the Gael Advance Corps, is a real pervert — puts on a righteous face in public, but likes hurting people in private. Rose, the Order Keepers' priestess, is the hardest of the three to read. People call her the black widow of the Gael Mountains behind her back."

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Evan pressed her for detail on each of them, building a rough picture of the three leaders in his mind. Somewhere in the conversation, almost in passing, he brought up the six missing members of the gathering team. Feimaji didn't know much about it, but she'd heard something — that it seemed to involve both Holred and Fiat. That caught Evan off guard. She knew about it, and James claimed he didn't. According to Feimaji, most people in town wouldn't have heard anything about it — but it had circulated among those with real power.

That settled it in Evan's mind: something was off with James. A sixth-tier mage, and he genuinely knew nothing about this? What was he hiding?

Evan's gaze drifted to the small door on the other side of the room. It didn't add up — this was already her bedroom, so what was behind that second door, half-hidden behind its curtain?

Feimaji saw where his attention had gone and felt her nerves tighten. She'd thought about running, more than once, but Evan's unreadable skill had talked her out of it every time.

"What's in there?" Evan asked.

"That's my bedroom. And... a way out," Feimaji said, hesitating.

Evan walked straight over. Feimaji wanted to stop him but didn't dare. He pushed the door open. It was pitch dark inside, though that didn't matter to Evan — his eyes flashed green, his faint sight opening, and the room came into focus. A coffin sat there, its lid open, empty inside. Understanding clicked into place at once — this was her real bedroom. The one out front had been nothing but a front; she actually rested in the coffin.

Evan turned his gaze back to Feimaji, and she understood what he wanted without him needing to ask. She hurried over and shifted the coffin aside, revealing a hole in the floor beneath it.

"Where does it lead?" Evan asked.

"To an abandoned house, one street over from here," Feimaji said.

Evan smiled faintly. An eyeball materialized above his head, fading gradually as it drifted down into the dark passage below. Feimaji's eyes narrowed slightly — she'd taken Evan for some kind of knight, and now, watching this, he seemed like a mage after all.

The inspection didn't take long. Evan recalled the Wraith Eye and turned back to Feimaji with a smile. "A pleasure meeting you. You've got a few watchers stationed outside your door — you might want to keep an eye on that. Goodbye."

With that, he dropped down into the passage, leaving Feimaji standing alone in the room.

Feimaji watched him disappear into the tunnel, her expression shifting rapidly — flushing, then paling, as if weighing something in her mind. Finally, she stamped her foot in frustration, set the coffin back in place, and stepped out of her vampire's bedroom, a red glint rising in her eyes. If she couldn't do anything about Evan, then maybe those watchers outside her door were skilled enough to be worth something after all.

She was already wounded, and it just so happened she had a use for those men now. A vicious look crossed her face as the window slid open without a sound, and a swarm of bats poured out into the night.

The watchers outside had been building their own fantasies about what was happening inside for over an hour now. The curtains were too thick to see through, and creeping right up to the window would have been far too obvious. Then, suddenly, the window opened, and they all straightened at once, alert.

Something came flying out — bats, it looked like. What was going on? Before they could even finish that thought, the killing had already begun. A handful of short, choked cries — most of them never even managed that much before her fangs found them.

By then, Evan had already reached the end of the passage, which let out behind a bookshelf. He shifted it aside. The room beyond smelled of neglect, the ceiling mottled with age, a thick layer of dust coating the floor — no one had lived here in a long time.

Evan slid the bookshelf back into place. There were no books in it at all, which told him something — only a wealthy household would ever have owned a bookshelf in the first place, since books were a mark of status among the well-off, a sign of learning too valuable for anyone else to afford. Whoever had lived here once, they were long gone now, and whatever had driven them out, Evan had no way of knowing.

He heard a few short screams cut through the night — nothing unusual in a town like this, run by gangs where a handful of deaths barely registered anymore. But Evan knew exactly what it meant: Feimaji had gone to work. A vampire, whatever else she was, wasn't going to swallow that kind of humiliation without letting it out on someone. Fitting enough — those men had been tailing him since he'd arrived, thinking themselves the local powers that be. Now they'd understand they were nothing more than pieces on someone else's board.

Evan didn't bother with the door. He went straight up through the skylight instead, oriented himself, and set off toward the Burk Protectors' headquarters. If this was tied to the missing gathering team, there was no reason to hold back — these people were no better than criminals to begin with. Evan never bothered justifying his own actions to himself, and he didn't need to now. If they weren't good people, then a little visit in the night seemed fair enough.

Holred, meanwhile, was seething. He still hadn't gotten a word out of Lidis about the Fallen Angel's Tear — a gemstone drawn from the very depths of the Gael Mountains. Word was this particular stone was a flawless specimen, material fit for summoning a fallen angel, and more than that, a stone capable of strengthening a person all around, sharpening their affinity for magic, raising both their magical and knightly cultivation by a full tier.

What irritated him even more was Hollingburton's arrival. He'd sent men out that afternoon to keep watch — he'd given no order for that thief, Pika, to make a move. And yet Pika had gone and done exactly that, and ended up dead for it. There was a thick smell of something orchestrated in all of this, and Holred could sense it clearly.