Josh Reynolds - Master of Death

Melkhior jerked back, surprised, his flat, black eyes gleaming in the sudden blaze of light and his monstrous features writhing in consternation. Melkhior looked akin to nothing so much as one of the great bats of the deep dark, squeezed and twisted into a mockery of human shape. His quivering spear-blade nose flexed wetly as he exposed his scythe-like fangs in a hiss. ‘As handsome as ever, my son,’ W’soran said.

‘Don’t call me that,’ Melkhior growled, turning his face away from the light.

‘Why? It is what I have always called you — it is what you are. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, did I not raise you up as unto a god? And what is a god, but a father writ large?’ W’soran spread his gangly arms. ‘I have forgiven you, my son.’

‘Have you, old monster?’ Melkhior asked, looking at him sidelong. ‘If so, that would be a first — you nurse grudges like infants, W’soran.’

W’soran folded his arms. ‘Hurtful words, such hurtful words. But you are right. I am tempted to pluck out your heart and eat it, my boy. Even the long years cannot dampen that fire you stirred in me. You know this; why have you come so rudely to my sanctum?’

‘Not much of a sanctum,’ Melkhior said, pulling his ragged cloak more tightly about his malformed body. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

‘Lest we forget, you did have a hand in that,’ W’soran said. He eyed Melkhior, studying the changes time had wrought in his once-student. The once muscular frame had withered into the semi-hunched simian shape that all of W’soran’s followers assumed over time, like something equal parts sun-spoiled corpse and mangy animal. He had been a warrior once, one of the ajals of Strigos, a proud, tall war-leader of Mourkain. W’soran found a great deal of pleasure in his former student’s degeneration. He smiled, and Melkhior’s eyes narrowed.

‘Even now, you laugh at me,’ Melkhior said bitterly.

‘Because you amuse me, Ajal Melkhior,’ W’soran said as he stepped out of the circle of braziers. Melkhior flinched back and W’soran’s smile grew. ‘As I recall, the last time I saw you, you were driving a knife into my back. Come to try it again, my son?’ He extended a hand, and a sour green balefire sprouted from his fingers, crackling and snapping hungrily. ‘I am not distracted now. I can give you my full, undivided attention. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?’ W’soran purred.

He was not a warrior, as Melkhior had been, though he had played one often enough. Nonetheless, a hunger for conflict roiled within him, as great as his thirst for knowledge. He could not recall whether it had first come with the blood-hunger of vampirism, or whether it was something more innate, a holdover from the man he had been, back along the black line of centuries. To fight, to kill, was a pleasure as sweet as the nectar of human life to W’soran — he had overindulged in it more than once, and to his detriment.

For a moment, he thought Melkhior might try his hand. He could practically smell the urge for violence seething in the other vampire’s gizzards. Melkhior tensed, but then relaxed. Melkhior had always been sensible despite a few notable exceptions, W’soran reflected, curling his fingers and snuffing the eldritch fires that had engulfed his hand. ‘Why are you here?’

‘To warn you,’ Melkhior said.

W’soran guffawed. Bats stirred in the high reaches of his sanctum and tittered fearfully as the sound of it curled upwards. ‘And why would you do that? Does some small affection for poor, old W’soran yet linger in that sour heart, my son?’

‘Stop calling me that,’ Melkhior snarled, his eyes flashing. ‘And you are not half as crippled as you pretend, old monster.’ He pointed a claw at W’soran. ‘Even now I can smell the dark magic festering in your carcass.’

W’soran snorted and let his claws drift up to play with the amulets dangling from his scrawny neck. There were half a dozen of them. Some were crafted after the fashion of the reptilian masters of the far Southlands, while others were the tangled devising of Cathayan craftsmen. All reeked of power to one degree or another, as did everything in this chamber, from the tomes to the wide-mouthed clay jars that crowded the corners.

It was the former that attracted his attention. Some were missing. He knew each scroll and tome by look, scent and position in relation to his circle. A momentary flare of avaricious panic sliced through him, as he realised just which ones were missing, before recalling that those particular volumes were sealed away in a vault of his own devising. He always sealed them away before meditating — they were too dangerous to be left out, unguarded. If his apprentices had free access to them, to the secrets within them, they would massacre one another within a fortnight. Perhaps they had done just that.

All of this occurred to him in the span of seconds. He realised that Melkhior was still talking. ‘Our enemies draw close, W’soran,’ Melkhior said. ‘Even now they may already have penetrated the defences of this draughty pile you call a sanctum.’

‘Well, one has, at any rate,’ W’soran said, stalking towards the bone-decorated archway that marked the exit to the chamber. Skulls had been stuffed into the many nooks and crannies of the archway, and as he passed, he stroked the closest. Never one to waste raw materials, he had decorated his new residence with the remains of the former occupiers — those that he hadn’t raised to serve him in other capacities.

‘I do not deny it, but this time, I have come to aid you,’ Melkhior said, hurrying after him.

Outside the chamber was a corridor that curled around the slope of the crag that the crude fastness clung to like a limpet. W’soran frowned. There should have been guards on duty. Paranoia, honed to a killing point by centuries of experience, flared. Where were his apprentices? Why had they not responded to his calls? Had they attempted to stop Melkhior? He shoved the questions aside as unimportant. He had to get to those tomes. Everything else was replaceable, unnecessary.

‘I doubt that, Melkhior,’ he said, stalking onwards. The vault was buried in the rock of the mountain like a cavity in a tooth. It had taken him a year to carve it with the proper tools and weave the proper spells to render it invisible to all but him. ‘Did you kill them? Urdek and the others, I mean. You always were a murderous one in regards to your fellow students.’

‘Are you listening to me, old monster?’ Melkhior said. ‘I said that our enemies are gathering — yours and mine. He has found you, W’soran. He is coming.’

W’soran stopped, but did not turn. Through a large gap in the wall, he could see the peaks and crags of the mountains, and the silvery glare of the moon overhead. ‘Is he now?’ he said, softly. ‘And how would you know this, Melkhior?’

‘You are not his only prey,’ Melkhior said.

W’soran closed his eyes. ‘Neferata,’ he hissed, hatred oozing from every syllable. ‘So that’s where you went… afterwards.’ He opened his eyes. ‘I looked for you, you know. But you ran too quickly, and hid too well.’

‘I learned from the best,’ Melkhior spat. W’soran smiled. It stung his old apprentice, the thought of cowardice. So prideful, the Strigoi people; they were all brainless, barbarian bullies for the most part. Only a rare few had possessed even a modicum of talent. Melkhior was one, and Morath as well… his smile slipped as he thought of the treacherous necromancer. He had never accepted W’soran’s gift of immortality. He had too much pride, though of a different sort than that of Melkhior. He had had too much pride to follow his master, the being who had made him, into exile, instead remaining to serve his mad king…