Blood Shaper

Book 6: Chapter 34

Kay gathered up his companions and anyone else that would be more useful back home and flew them back to Avalon. Making mass graves and cleaning up battlefields wasn’t the best use of his time and the Earth Mages and Earth Manipulators who’d made the defensive wall would be able to finish the job quickly. Kay had also left orders for a marker to be raised where Martha the necromancer had faded away. He had no idea who’d she’d been or what the title she’d called herself meant, but the woman didn’t deserve to go unrecognized for the battle she’d fought for so long.

“What’s wrong?” Eleniah asked. The two of them were in a small private chamber Kay had made in the construct he flew them with. “You’re tense.”

“… I had a… call it a vision, I guess. The necromancer woman, she had something controlling her, something eldritch. I told you that, right?”

“You mentioned it, but we didn’t have time to go over the details. Was it like Blood Puppetry?”

Kay shook his head. “No, although that’s another topic that’s bothering me, but we can come back to that. It was some kind of parasite that took over her body after killing her, but she didn’t die and it ended up being a standoff, I think? I’ve only got a little bit of the story and it’s disjointed.”

“She told you before she died?”

“No, the parasite tried to take me over and I got some a vision of it’s memories. I’m not really sure why, but there were bits of it’s thoughts like I was watching it think about what was going on bundled up with older memories, and it confirmed we’ve got a problem.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment. “An eldritch parasite tried to take you over and you saw it’s memories and thoughts. Yes, I would call that a problem.”

Kay waved her off. “Not like that. I felt it die, it couldn’t deal with my biology or something. Whatever the System did to me when I became a vampire killed it.”

“Lady Eleniah, what’s going-“

“I’m not a lady!” Eleniah shoved Lauren at Kay who caught his foremost guard when she stumbled. “Check him!”

“What?” Lauren’s hair whipped around as she looked between the two of them. “Check him for what?”

“Eldritch things taking him over!”

“I…” Lauren slowly looked him up and down and even sniffed at him a little. “I don’t sense anything. Is it even possible for that to happen?”

“It’s worth checking! He says some kind of eldritch parasite tried to take over his body and he’s only just now mentioning it!” Eleniah spat, looking incredibly displeased.

Lauren’s grasps on Kay’s shoulders tightened. “Wait, this is something we’re actually worried about?” Her expression firmed up as she caught on to what was happening and she stared at every inch of him intently for several long moments. “I really don’t sense anything.” She slowly took a step back. “Your Majesty, you should have informed us about such a thing immediately.” She scolded.

Kay opened his mouth to rebut, but actually thinking about what he was about to say killed his momentum. “… Alright, yes I should have. I got caught up in what I learned and didn’t think about it as a security risk, I apologize.”

Eleniah pushed past Lauren and grabbed him by the collar. “A security risk? You’re calling the idea of you dying and your body turning into the mindless husk of some otherworldly parasite a security risk?”

“… What else should I call it? A health hazard? It’s something we should test for because there’s no way to guarantee I’m right about killing it, right?” He turned to look at Lauren for help. “I don’t know what else I’d call it.”

Lauren turned away from him.

Eleniah’s fists vibrated as she glared at him, opening and closing her mouth repeatedly. Eventually she said, “You dying would be a tragedy to us personally, not just because we’re your guard or part of Avalon!”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Oh.” He slowly reached up and took her hands. “I know that. I wasn’t saying you’re right just because of the political implications or anything like that, I just couldn’t think of a better thing to call it.” He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers while maintaining eye contact. “I understand the mistake I made fully, not just the ‘I’m a leader’ part of it.”

She stared back at him suspiciously until the glare in her eyes faded. “Good.” She glanced over her shoulder at Lauren. “You’re sure he’s okay?”

“As much as I can be. It’s not something we’ve ever had to deal with but even with a heavy grain of salt for safety I don’t know if anything eldritch could affect him like that, if at all. Not only is he a vampire with all the inbuilt anti-eldritch stuff put into us by the System, but he’s also got his blood running through him, which might be even stronger.”

Eleniah still looked tense and nervous but she slowly let go of Kay’s hands and drifted back toward her seat. “…Fine.”

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to worry you.”

She let out a deep breath. “I accept your apology. What are you worried about that you found out?”

Kay took the subject change and went with it. “The parasite thing was looking for a way to get away from Martha, that was the necromancer, without leaving itself open to an attack from her when it left. Apparently she turned parts of her body into some kind of partial lich and was fighting it from since it took her over.”

“What’s a lich?” Lauren asked as Kay took a breath.

“Really?”

“We haven’t had many necromancers around for a long time,” Eleniah muttered, “There were some purges and people still tend to kill them when they pop up.”

“Alright. Well, liches are necromancers that turn themselves into powerful undead.”

Lauren frowned. “Why?”

“… I don’t know? In fiction and mythology back home it was generally to escape death, but people live a lot longer here. There has to be a reason… But that’s beside the point. The parasite was looking for a way to rip her out or become more part of her body or something and it started studying the vampyr because they’re a different kind of eldritch and that was going to help somehow.” Kay shrugged when they both gave him confused looks. “I don’t know the real details either it’s pretty spotty. But the real problem was something I saw in it’s memories. It negotiated with something to help it with a plan of some kind, and I think its the ritual circles.”

“Huh?”

“It met the lead vampyr, and it thought it was bigger than it somehow? Like it was scared of it but also worshipful. I think that we might be up against the first vampyr.”

Eleniah was still frowning. “… What?”

Kay shook his head. “Sorry, it’s all… jumbled up in there. It didn’t look at the world the way we do, obviously, and converting it’s fucked up memories into something I can experience… It med the lead vampyr-“

“You said that.”

“I did, right. The vampyr leader felt more real to the parasite, in the way that eldritch things exist outside of the world somehow. It felt like the vampyr was more powerful, and the parasite made a deal with it in exchange for more vampyr to study, which is where those vampyr undead things came from. It also was thinking that if it helped the vampyr then it didn’t matter if the parasite got out of Martha or not, it could just leave. But then right before it died inside me when it thought it had gotten a new host, it wanted to stop whatever the vampyr are doing because a new host meant it didn’t need to leave the world?” He looked up at them and they still had very confused looks on their face. “Sorry, I’m rambling, it’s all-“

“Jumbled up, you said.” Eleniah interrupted, “But I think I get understand what happened, just not your conclusion. Why do you think it’s the first vampyr that we’re up against?”

“Because it’s probably the most powerful one. The first vampyr was a vampire that somehow got tossed into an eldritch realm before landing on Torotia, wouldn’t that mean it has the most eldritch,” He waved a hand around, “Stuff? Power, corruption, whatever?”

“Why would the first vampyr want to open a bunch of gates to other realms?” Lauren asked. “That is what we think it’s plan is, right?”

“I definitely think that’s it’s plan based on what the parasite was thinking. If gates open it could just throw itself into one and Martha would burn away wherever it landed because she would be eldritch to that place, but with a new host it wanted to stay around and stop the vampyr’s plan, probably because more eldritch things here would get in its way. And who knows why it would want to open a bunch of gates? Maybe because it was in a true eldritch reality for so long it became more like them and now it wants to bring that here? It doesn’t really matter why, what matters is we need to stop it.”

“So, to summarize,” Eleniah said after a long pause. “There’s a super powerful vampyr doing something we really don’t want it to do that we’re going to stop so that the world doesn’t turn to shit?”

“Yes.”

“How is that different than what we already thought was going on?”

Kay opened his mouth to respond and then just let it hang there. There was something on the edge of his tongue, some reason that it was important… “I don’t remember, but something is different and it’s a big deal.”

Eleniah sighed. “Fantastic. That means its going to spring out at us at the last second and be a giant problem. Fantastic. I’m assuming the reason you wanted to bring it up is that you’re going to say we need to speed up all our preparations and move as soon as possible?”

“We do.”

“Alright, I’ll tell everybody to hold onto something and then you start rocketing us back home as fast as you can. If you say it’s a problem, it’s a problem.”