William King - Shadowblood

He remembered Tamara’s tale of the creatures she had fought. Even with the advantage of surprise and his sorcery could he beat such a thing? If it had power akin to a Nerghul, he could think of only one way. It came to him then that the real reason he had agreed to come along on this suicide mission was that it gave him an excuse to feast again, to drain life using thanatomantic magic, and feel the indescribable ecstatic burn that it provided.

He was like those men he had known back in Sorrow who were addicted to drink or dreamdust, the ones who somehow always managed to find a reason to go back to the bar or dealer no matter what promises they had made or how much resolve they claimed to have. There was part of him that wanted to use that tainted magic and always would. The path that had led here was the path that gave him the excuse he needed.

He studied the sorcerers of the Mirror and the unholy energies that infused them. They burned with power bled from that flowing into the Gate. They were very strong.

“It’s behind that doorway,” he heard Asea say from by his side.

“Yes,” said Tamara. “Rik and I can clear a path. You can follow if you can pass the spells binding the Gate.”

“That I can do,” said Asea.

“Are you ready, Rik?” Tamara asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“On the count of three then, let us go.”

Rik’s stomach lurched. The moment was upon him at last; within the next few heartbeats he might be dead. His remaining breaths might be numbered to only a few more than Tamara’s count. Nonetheless excitement burned in him too, and he felt so eager to get to grips with the enemy that he could barely restrain himself from making the shadow — walk.

“One,” said Tamara. Rik slid his blade from the scabbard and focused his mind back through the shadows into the Gate chamber.

“Two.” He tightened his grip around the blade, picking the spot from which he would emerge and planning exactly how he would strike.

“Three.” He stepped forward into the shadows and fell through the whispering void towards his target, one of those assigned to protect the sorcerers. Emerging on the far side he reached out with one hand. Instinctively, guided by the knowledge of the Quan, he lashed out, draining life from the guardian.

Tendrils of dark energy burrowed into his foe through vein and muscle and bone and he became aware of just how altered the Terrarch was. Strange things had been added to him. His bones had been strengthened, his heart altered and that which flowed through his veins was not blood but something clotted and black and oily.

There was little resistance; his prey had not been expecting the attack. Energy flowed into Rik, feeding him strength and driving him onwards.

The sensation of vampirism was ecstatic. The flow of power enabled him to drain his victim all the faster. The Terrarch’s skin turned pale and grey and ashen and began to flake off. He took on a withered mummified look. A strange whistling moan emerged from his lips as life fled from him.

A deluge of memories far too fast to be assimilated flowed before Rik’s eyes. He saw the Terrarch’s youth, his initiation into his strange cult, and the operation that had transformed him into something other than human. He saw the pumps that had drained him of blood and replaced it with black fluid and the surgery that had replaced his internal organs with things torn from corpses and altered and grown in glass jars bubbling with nutrient fluid. He felt the taint that the Terrarch carried within him, cancer-like. He saw how the Terrarch’s eyes had been scooped out and replaced with new ones that had been stolen from dead men and changed to let their own see things that other men could not.

He took part of the stolen life force and forced it into the spells that made him faster and stronger. Time slowed.

It came to him that his victim did not even know what was killing him, saw him only as a deadly shadow. He was almost drained now and would not last much longer. Rik lashed out with his blade, severing the head with one blow. It rolled away across the floor, little more than a mummified skull to which a few wisps of hair clung.

Tamara danced across the room, far faster and stronger than a human. She had managed to sever the head of one of the guardians in the first moment of surprise, but the others swarmed towards her, unaware still of Rik’s presence, or uncaring.

Tamara’s movements would have been sight-blurringly swift to a normal mortal, but to Rik they seemed as slow as something happening in a dream. He had time to take in the precision of her attacks and the beauty of her technique as she dodged her foes.

They were as fast as she and as strong and he noted that their power came not from spells but from the modifications that had been made to them. They looked like Terrarchs but they were something else now, creatures modified by eldritch sorcery.

Rik swirled over to them, exulting in his power, he struck the head from one’s shoulders before it knew what was going on. Decapitation was a proven way of killing them. He did not want to experiment when facing creature’s as potent as any Nerghul.

The changelings were not stupid. They noticed what was going on even if they could not see Rik. Two of them turned and their blades slashed through the air where he had been a moment ago. He ducked their strokes and sprang backwards away, knowing that getting in the way of those razor edged blades would be fatal, even if it only happened by accident.

“I see something,” said one of the guardians. “The shadow of a shadow of a shadow. There’s another here, a sorcerer.”

Tamara took advantage of the instant of confusion to drive a stiletto through his eye. She left it there, buried in the brain and slashed a tendon. Her foe toppled and writhed, beating hands and feet against the paving stones like a lizard dropped on a hot skillet.

Rik swept towards his own assailants, slashing and cutting. He felt his stolen energy draining away fast. The many spells enwrapping him were taking their toll. He knew that he would have to finish this quickly or drain another foe, and with the edge of his life-hunger dulled by satiety, he was not sure that he wanted to do that again quite so quickly. He rained blows down on one of the guardians, a hundred cuts that would have drawn blood from any normal mortal but left his opponent with more slashes that a butcher’s block. The impact drove it back.

Its companion slashed at Rik, and its blade bit home. Pain surged up his arm, and the cloak of shadows flickered and dissipated around him. He invoked the healing spells Asea had taught him, and knitted his own flesh back together but he had lost the advantage of invisibility.

“There he is,” said one of the guardians. “We have him now.”

“Do you?” Rik asked, springing tiger-like on the foe he had driven back and knocking him to the ground. Straddling his opponent’s chest he placed his blade against its neck and pushed down, sawing the head partially from the shoulders. A swish of air behind him warned him of peril and he sprang just in time to avoid being pinned to the enemy. Instead, the guardian’s blade went through its companion’s breast with such force that it became embedded in the floor.

Rik attacked in that moment of defencelessness and slashed away the hand holding the blade, at the wrist. His foes may have been invisibly armoured by magic but their weak spots were at the joints of their limbs and necks, which had to remain flexible and thus vulnerable.

He shouted this information to Tamara, just in case she had not realised it herself, and set to work at butchery. He hoped that Asea would get here in time. He sensed there was something unstable about the Gate.

Sardec watched as the undead rolled forward in an irresistible wave of stinking, rotting flesh. Their feet made an awful squelching sound and their bellows breath whistled eerily. There was the thunder of musketry and the smell of gunpowder as the Foragers opened fire.