Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

After a few minutes there came a sudden commotion outside the war tent, and two albino warriors dragged a shackled woman into the cosy interior. Although, upon closer inspection, it was clear she was not entirely human for she sported the tiny brass fangs of the vachine – the machine vampires of Silva Valley. The vachine were a blending of human and advanced miniature clockwork, a technological advancement of watchmaking skills evolved and developed and refined over the centuries until flesh and clockwork merged into a beautiful, superior whole. The vachine relied on the narcotic of blood-oil, a concoction of refined blood, in order to keep their internal clockwork mechanisms running smoothly. Without blood, and more importantly, blood oil, a vachine's clockwork would seize; and they would die. Hence the necessity of vampiric feeding.

Jaranis was thrown to the ground, where she spat up at Graal, eyes blazing with fury and shocked disbelief. Her fangs ejected with a tiny pneumatic hissing. She climbed smoothly to her feet. She was tall, elegant, with a shower of golden curls. She was beautiful beyond the human, and as she spoke Graal could see the tiny clockwork mechanisms in her throat, miniature gears and cogs and pistons working in a harmony of flesh and clockwork. Like a well-timed vampire machine. A vachine. Graal smiled, some curious emotion not unlike lust passing through his mind; through his soul. "Graal, you excel yourself with stupidity and arrogance!" snapped Princess Jaranis. "What, in the name of the Oak Testament, are you doing?"

Graal smiled, slowly, and stood. He stretched himself and gave an exaggerated, almost theatrical, yawn. Then his cold eyes focused on Jaranis and she could see there was anything but pantomime in that shadowed, brutal gaze.

"I admit, O princess, that it has been considerable time since I sought to pride myself on the baser concept of… stupidity," said Graal, handling the word like an abortion, and as he spoke he moved smoothly to a rack of armour and began to buckle on breastplate and forearm greaves fashioned from dull black steel. "Rather, my sweetness, I seek to pride myself on the twin lusts of betrayal and dominion."

"You would betray the vachine?" whispered Jaranis, stunned. "A society you helped build from a mewling wreckage of primal carnage and bestial evolution?" Graal smiled, and halted midway through buckling a greave. His eyes seemed distant, and as he spoke his voice was lilting, a low growl, almost musical in its harmony. "Allow your mind to drift back, like drug-smoke, for a millennium, my sweet; there were once three Vampire Warlords, maybe you have heard of them? Their names are written in iron on the Core Stone of Silva Valley, carved into the back cover of the Oak Testament with a knife used to slit the throats of babes." His eyes grew hard, like cobalt. "They are Kuradek, Meshwar, Bhu Vanesh – Kuradek, the Unholy. Meshwar, the Violent. And Bhu Vanesh, the Eater in the Dark." He glanced at Jaranis, then, head tilting. With tight lips Jaranis shook her head, and frowned, seeking to understand Graal's direction. "These warlords," continued Graal, "were, shall we say, all powerful. I am surprised you have limited knowledge of their prowess, for they are a pivotal part of baseline vachine history." He smiled. "That is, your vachine history. For as we all know, the Engineer Council seek to strongly enforce a true vachine culture in which nobody strays from a pure and holy path. Is that not so?"

"That is so," said Jaranis, voice little more than a whisper. She was trembling now, and Graal felt a trickle of lust ease through his veins like a honey narcotic. Sex, fear and death, he thought, went hand in hand, and were always a turn-on.

"The warlords, they had clockwork souls," said Graal, eyes blazing with a sudden fury. He calmed himself with intricate self-control, and finished strapping on his armour with tight, sudden little jerks. "But then, you may not know this, for the High Engineer Episcopate practice and preach rewritten histories and a fictional past." Jaranis shook her head, and Graal gestured to the two albino soldiers, who stepped forward, grabbing the young vachine woman and dragging her out into the freshly falling snow. All through the war camp tumbled jarring sounds, the snort and stamp of horse, cankers snarling, the clatter of arms, the low-level talk of soldiers around braziers. Jaranis was thrown to her knees, her fine silk robes stained with saliva, and just a little blood. Graal emerged, striding with an arrogant air that made Jaranis want to rip out his throat. Her fangs ejected fully, eyes narrowing and claws hissing from fingertips. They gleamed, razor-sharpened brass. She considered leaping, but caught something in her peripheral vision: two figures, both female, both albino subordinates. She snarled in disgust, and turned to stare at these… soldiers.

They were tall, lithe, athletic, and wore light armour of polished steel unlike the usual black armour of the albino Army of Iron. Both women wore sleek longswords at their hips, and one had her long white hair braided into twin, wrist-thick ponytails, whilst the second had her hair cropped short. It was spiked by the snow. Their skin was white, almost translucent, and they had high cheekbones, gaunt faces, and crimson eyes. When they smiled, their beauty was stunning but deadly, like a newborn sun. And when they smiled, they had the fangs of the vachine.

Princess Jaranis hissed in shock. Albinos could not be vachine! It was not permitted. It was illegal. It was unholy. Graal stepped forward, and touched one woman behind her elbow. She smiled at him. "This is Shanna, and this is Tashmaniok. Daughters, I would like to introduce the vachine princess, Jaranis." The two albino vachine warriors gave short bows and moved to stand erect, one at either side of Graal. They took his arms, as if enjoying a stroll down some theatre-lined thoroughfare in one of Silva Valley's more respectable cultured communities, and their eyes glowed with vampire hate. "You will not get away with this… blasphemy!" snarled Jaranis, voice dripping poison and fury. "Not for giving White Warriors the clockwork, nor for betraying the vachine!"

"But, my sweetness, I think I already have," said Graal. He smiled down at Jaranis. "You vachine are so trusting, and so beautifully naive. These girls, they are not some simple blending. Some back-street black-market clockwork abortion!" His voice rose, a little in anger, blue eyes glinting as his focus drilled into the vachine princess. "Don't you understand to whom you speak? Don't you recognise the birth of your death?" "The Soul Stealers?" whispered Jaranis, in horror. Graal smiled. He gave a slight, sideways nod, and Shanna detached from his linked arm and in one smooth movement, drew her sword and decapitated the vachine princess.

Jaranis's head rolled into the snow and blood, and blood-oil, spurted from the ragged neck stump. The body paused for a moment, rigid, then toppled like a puppet with cut strings. As blood-oil ran free, so clockwork machinery grew noisy, it rattled and spluttered until it finally faltered, and came to a premature clattering halt with a discordant note like the clashing of swords in battle.

Graal knelt in the snow, ignoring the vachine blood which stained his leather trews. He stared into the severed clockwork face of the murdered vachine; in death, she was even more beautiful.

He glanced back. The Soul Stealers were poised motionless, beautiful, deadly.

"I had a mind-pulse from Nesh," he said, voice low and terrible. "He says Kell and that puppet, Saark, are cornered in the maze of Old Skulkra."

"Yes, father," said Tashmaniok.

"Bring them to me," he said, and shifted his gaze to the Soul Stealers' bright, focused eyes, "It is the Soul Gem that matters, now. You understand?" "We serve," they said, voices in harmony.