403. Lord of drinkers
Dravros could almost feel the scent of battle in the air, even though all he should have been sensing was the dry dust of sand moving through the wind. But blood drinkers past a certain stage learned to anticipate violence before it fully arrived, and this was the same feeling he had sensed dozens of times before. This time, however, it was stronger.
Out of all the traps they had laid for Arzan Kellius, Dravros had not expected the man to walk in this quickly. At most, he had thought it would take a few days before Arzan found his way toward this part of the desert. Instead, the man had somehow made some of the lesser drinkers speak and had even moved through the sandstorm without alerting Dravros’ senses. That part was almost worthy of praise, but only almost.
In the end, a single scream from somewhere in the storm had been enough to tell him what was happening. Arzan had found them far earlier than expected, and once Dravros realised that, he wasted no time. He let out a screech of his own, one sharp enough to spread through the storm and tell every drinker hidden inside it what he wanted. Then he moved at once.
It didn’t take long to understand which direction Arzan was travelling in. Now that Dravros knew he was somewhere inside the storm, all he had to do was trust his senses. Even with the sand and wind raging around him, there were always signs. The sound of something forcing the storm away from itself, the shift in the current of sand, the break in the natural rhythm of the wind—those things were enough.
As he moved, blood rolled from his claws in waves and wrapped around his body in a shifting shell. He did the same for the drinkers following him, giving them enough protection that they could keep up with his speed as they cut through the storm after their prey.
Then they moved as fast as they could through the sandstorm, and it didn’t take long before Dravros finally saw Arzan.
Funnily enough, he had never actually seen the man before. He had only heard of him. Even so, Arzan looked every bit as powerful as Dravros had expected, though he was also far younger than he had imagined someone with that level of strength would be. For a brief moment, Dravros found himself wondering how a human so young could already wield such power.
From a distance, Arzan didn’t even look thirty, and unlike blood drinkers, humans couldn’t simply change into younger versions of themselves no matter how much their strength grew. He truly was that young.
And yet he was already this dangerous; dangerous enough that the great lord needed all of them to kill him before it could awaken.
Dravros could not understand how such a thing had happened, but understanding was not needed for killing. Human flesh was weak no matter what sort of power moved through it, and Dravros was an elder blood drinker, the strongest in the world, something even a Magus would struggle to handle properly. So as he and the other drinkers closed the distance to Arzan, Dravros raised his claws and sent a stream of boiling blood straight toward the dome around him.
The barrier cracked at once.
Still, the man sensed the attack in time and ducked, the magical hands he was using to carry the two useless tribals lowering with him. Then Arzan turned and finally looked straight at Dravros.
That grim expression on his face sent a thrill through him. What would his reward be once he tore the Fatebreaker’s head free?
The great lord would surely grant him enough power to become the first true progenitor among the drinkers in centuries.
And an immortal being in his own right.
But just as that thought crossed Dravros’ mind, he noticed Arzan turn back for the briefest moment. In the very next second, globs of magma burst out of the man’s left hand and tore through the sandstorm, heating the swirling sand around them so much that parts of it turned to glass in midair.
Dravros and the drinkers behind him answered immediately.
Projectiles of blood streaked through the storm to intercept the magma, but Dravros realised what Arzan was doing just a second too late. The magma balls exploded before the blood attacks could even touch them, and all at once the heat around them transformed the sandstorm itself into a cloud of compressed, brittle glass. It shattered and flew outward in all directions, becoming a storm within the storm as it rushed toward the drinkers.
With the blood shield Dravros had raised, most of them avoided the worst of it, but not all. A few of the weaker drinkers cried out as the glass tore into them, their own shields too frail to hold against it properly.
Worse than that, the whole thing ruined their sight.
The bursting magma threw up thick smoke that swallowed the space in front of Dravros, and he cursed immediately before forcing more speed into his body and pushing through until he broke out of the smoke.
But when he looked ahead, Arzan was gone.
Where the fuck did he go—
Dravros immediately pushed dead mana into his eyes, sharpening his sight until everything in front of him became painfully clear, but even then, there was no sign of him anywhere. It was as if the man had simply vanished from the world.
Could he teleport? Eh. Maybe not. Dravros doubted he could.
There was no trace of shadow mana in the air, nothing that suggested movement of that kind, but then again, Arzan was an anomaly in too many ways already. There was always the chance he had some other method. Even so, Dravros found it hard to believe the man had escaped the sandstorm entirely and crossed beyond it in only a few seconds.
Especially not while carrying two humans with him.
Dravros let out a low grunt and stopped. At once, all the drinkers following him stopped as well and turned their attention toward him, waiting. Dravros stayed quiet for a few seconds and moved to use one of the spells only he could perform.
Closing his eyes, he let the dead mana of the great lord fill his body before sending a wave of it outward, mixed with his own blood magic.
At once, he could sense every drop of blood within a hundred metres. He pushed the spell farther… and farther.
Even with the sandstorm raging around them, the spell remained accurate enough, but no matter how far Dravros stretched it, it found no sign of Arzan or the two tribals anywhere nearby. After a while, he cut the spell off, unwilling to waste more mana on something that was giving him nothing.
There was no way Arzan had already moved beyond his range. That only left one answer.
He knew Dravros had a method like this and had found some way to hide himself from it.
How he knew that, Dravros couldn’t tell.
But there was no time to waste thinking about it if the man was still somewhere in the storm.
So he opened his eyes. “Spread out. Arzan is hiding somewhere in the storm with the tribals. Find him. We are not leaving this place until he is dead.”
At once, the drinkers moved away from him, spreading as far as they dared within the cover of the shield Dravros had created, each one searching in a different direction.
Dravros himself did not move.
He remained where he was, letting his followers do the work while his mind went through the countless ways the next minute—or the next hour—could unfold.
Dravros had lived for centuries by now, and that was more than enough time to learn the shape of battle in almost every form it could take. He didn’t think himself invincible, nor did he believe he knew everything. In front of the great lord, he knew better than anyone how little he truly understood. But even so, he knew enough to grasp what Arzan might be trying to do here.
He never truly believed the man had run away.
Arzan didn’t feel like the sort to flee once battle had begun. So Dravros waited and waited.
Soon enough, the confirmation came. Far to the left, some of the blood drinkers cried out. More screams followed after that, and by the time the third and fourth sounded out through the storm, he already knew those pawns were dead.
That didn’t matter much to him.
Among drinkers, death was as natural as life, and with how many of them existed, losing a few lesser ones meant little. More than that, the pattern of it all told Dravros exactly what Arzan wanted. He was thinning the field, cutting away the weaker drinkers one by one before making his move. Even if Dravros had come here to kill him, a part of him welcomed that. A true battle would never happen with too many followers swarming around them.
So he remained where he was.
The screams continued for a while longer, then stopped.
A second later, Dravros’ senses screamed in warning from the left, and he turned just in time to see a massive hand of flame rushing toward him, heat rolling off it so fiercely that it looked ready to boil the blood in his veins. Dravros simply let the attack crash into the blood armor around his body. The flames hissed and spread, sand around them instantly turning to chunks of glass before the spell finally died away.
When the fire faded, Dravros stood there unharmed.
His eyes settled on Arzan.
The man didn’t look nearly as surprised as Dravros had hoped, and that should have disappointed him, but instead it only made the excitement in his chest deepen.
A smile spread across his face as he said, “It’s nice to finally meet you, Arzan. I’m Dravros… I have wanted to fight you for a long time. I never thought our first meeting would happen like this.”
Arzan only gave a cold scoff at that. “First and last.”
“I hope so too.” Dravros couldn’t help but smile.
The next second, the atmosphere around them changed. Even with the sandstorm roaring on all sides, the space between them felt still in a way that only happened before violence. Both of them prepared their next attacks while slowly circling each other, each waiting to see who would reveal more first.
Dravros moved first.
He had no intention of dragging this fight out. Dark red blood mana surged through his limbs, and in one instant he was hovering in front of Arzan, while in the next he was already above him, bringing a sharp blood sword down toward his forehead.
Arzan didn’t move an inch.
The blade cracked through the outer dome around him but stopped against the wind shield underneath it.
Before Dravros could push harder, Arzan raised his left arm and a searing wave of white flames crashed into him.
Dravros brought his sword up to block on instinct, but the moment the flames struck, his eyes widened. The mana inside them was wrong. It was trying to eat through dead mana itself, and that was not something Dravros had encountered before.
“I see you really do have some interesting tricks.” A smile spread on his face.
Arzan stayed silent. He simply followed with another wave of flames, this time mixed with wind, trying to swallow Dravros whole.
Before it could hit him, Dravros twisted away from it. For a few breaths, the two of them did nothing but test each other. They traded attacks without fully committing while feeling out the other’s strength and weaknesses.
But Dravros knew very well how important it was to strike early in a battle, especially before the opponent fully understood what was coming.
So even while he pushed out waves of blood mana to crash into Arzan, he was already setting up his next move.
Arzan dodged around the huge blood waves easily enough and answered back with his own projectiles, still probing Dravros’ strength more than anything else. But just then, two of the blood drinkers that had survived his earlier assault took the chance to rush him from the left. Both of them were lord-ranked, and both went straight for his shield, trying to break through it.
Arzan turned toward them at once—only for a moment, but that was enough.
Dravros knew he had found his chance.
So he moved, but not in any way Arzan could have expected.
One moment, he was standing in the air in front of him, and the next, his whole body dissolved into blood. It slipped through the storm and blended itself into one of the blood waves it had already sent out.
By the time Arzan dealt with the two lord-ranked drinkers and turned back, likely noticing that Dravros had vanished, it was already too late.
Dravros struck.
He formed another sword of blood, but this time far denser and sharper than before, then emerged right behind Arzan and drove it down. The blade punched through the outer dome and even cracked the wind shield beneath it, aiming to go straight through his back and end the fight before it had properly begun.
But just as the sword scraped against his armor, Dravros felt resistance.
He couldn’t tell what it was for certain, but it wasn’t a shield, or a dorm. It was rather something else.
At once, warning bells rang through his mind. He started to pull away immediately, but Arzan was already turning.
His left hand was raised, and a spell was already there, waiting.
Dravros forced blood around its body to form a shield, but before the defense could fully solidify, a sharp icicle wrapped in wind mana burst from Arzan’s hand and struck it straight in the eye.
Dravros cried out.
***
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