Book of The Dead

It almost felt unnatural to be sitting alone in his study as if nothing had happened. An entire Noble estate, every man, woman and child within, dead by his hands, but here he was, sitting in the brick-walled room beneath his shop as if he’d never left.

Yet he had.

He thought he’d feel more than he did. His goal all along had been to take vengeance on the Nobles, the Magisters, everyone who had played a part in the deaths of Magnin and Beory, and a small slice of that had been achieved at the Jorlin estate, yet he wasn’t satisfied. Not even remotely.

Some of the guilty were gone, yes, but so many remained. Until they were all gone, every one of them, until each and every descendant of the Divines was dead, along with their servants, the Magisters, he wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop.

No, there was no sense of victory, but neither was there any guilt. Perhaps this was the work of the Vampires in him, but he was unmoved entirely by the desperate pleas of those he had killed, nor did he care about their suffering in death.

In a way, he would have liked to have known if he were capable of this level of detachment without having been manipulated. Perhaps he always was able to do this, but he almost felt robbed of the chance to prove he’d have been able to stomach the process of his vengeance just the way he was.

There was no use being angry about it now. What was done was done, and there was still so, so much to do.

Things were going to accelerate now, and quickly. He didn’t doubt the Divines would interfere to ensure he was killed. After everything they’d done to corner his mother and father, they surely weren’t above getting their hands dirty to finish the job.

Which meant he didn’t have much time. They would find him eventually, there was no doubt about that. He wasn’t so naive as to believe that his countermeasures would be enough to protect him from the full might of the Empire. Before then, he had to extract all the gains he possibly could, make his final preparations, then ascend to gold.