Blood Shaper

For a second the harmless seeming old man in a religious outfit distracted Kay. Something about the atmosphere in the quiet room that he’d passed through and the torn apart, tiny throne room, a testament to the arrogance and narcissism of the man who’d once sat in the now broken throne combined with the outward appearance of the man made him hesitate, for just a moment. The elderly looking vampyr didn’t take advantage of the pause, it just stared back at Kay with narrowed eyes, looking like someone trying to remember something they might have forgotten. The complete lack of tension that was an ambiance all it’s own was broken by two things. The first was a flicker of sickly green behind the eyes of the vampyr, something Kay had seen before that narrowed his focus. The other was the almost physical reek of eldritch taint that permeated the air, all coming from the vampyr in robes.

“I don’t think-“

Kay ignored the words and stepped forward in a lunge, the sword in his hand becoming a halberd that extended to reach across the distance between them. A white light surrounded the vampyr’s hand as it deflected the blow away from itself.

It recoiled a step, looking offended. “Now see here! That is no way-”

The deflected halberd split into razor tipped segments that each shot at the vampyr all at once. The light over it’s hand became a glowing trail as it literally brushed off the attack. It continued trying to talk to Kay but he ignored it. Blood rolled off of his armor as he reinforced it with more that flowed out of his veins. Projectiles mixed with pressurized blasts as he dove forward at the monster that he was here to slay. A sword slash was repelled by armor-hard robes but became a strike with a punch dagger that the vampyr slipped under. Kay kept up a continuous flow of attacks with a level of pressure that he could sustain endlessly. Based on the amount of eldritch corruption he could sense from this one vampyr it was the strongest he’d ever encountered and it’s almost entirely human form screamed “trap” to Kay. He wasn’t going to commit outright until he knew what was waiting for him.

“Enough of this!” The vampyr shouted. It held out an open hand and the light covering that limb coalesced into the shape of a staff held tightly between it’s fingers. It slammed the butt of the glowing translucent implement onto the ground, generating a wave of light that erupted from the point of contact. It swept outward in a circle that vaporized the attacks coming at it and pushed Kay back several steps.

The vampyr no longer looked like a calm old holy man. It’s eye were wide and the pupils were hallway filled with that noxious glowing green color that shifted like liquid. “Who are you!? How dare you attempt to assault me in this holy place!” It hissed at Kay, dripping spittle on the floor. “Do you not know who I am, or what I have done for your people!? I am the…” It trailed off, looking confused as it stared at Kay, who was gathering up and refashioning the scattered blood into more attacks as he waited. “You aren’t one of mine, are you? But how could you have reached here if you are not one of the blessed? How… An infidel! A heretic! Be purged, heretic!” It thrust out the staff of physical light, sending out a spray of golden color that resembled a flashlight’s glow made more.

Kay sidestepped most of the attack with only the edge of it catching his arm and burning his armor for a moment. He retaliated with a renewed barrage from every direction that he could send attacks fashioned from blood at the vampyr. It retaliated with a mixture of attacks all formed out of the same light it was generating from it’s hands. More waves of light along with beams, blasts, and solid light constructs countered Kay’s blood, with red spikes and blades running into glowing books that acted like shields and unyielding looking ceremonial scepters sweeping out like bludgeons. The shattered throne room turned into a pandemonium of magic fueled attacks that wrecked the room even more, like a giant storm of magic.

All throughout the bedlam the vampyr kept talking. “How dare you!? I am a man of God! To attack me is to assault His sovereignty! Beyond that, I am High Inquisitor! A leader among His Church! You disrespect the institution of the Church in such a blasphemous way that it is unredeemable! I shall have you excom…” An arrowhead that Kay had focused on specifically weaved it’s way past the defenses and aimed directly at the vampyr’s throat. It was only through a truly inhuman movement of it’s body that it managed to get away with only a small nick to the side of it’s neck.

A flying red sword pierced through a glowing book through the center of it’s open pages and unleashed a cloud of red gas as Kay copied Cindy’s ideas. The continuous rippling waves of light pushed back liquid blood that tried to flow around the other defenses, but Kay had noticed it had little effect on the air. The gas rushed in and as more attacks were converted into floating particles the vampyr began to grow desperate to avoid the red cloud. It send more blasts and constructs at it’s own but they had little to no effect on the encroaching sanguine vapors.

It continued to scream as it’s skin began to sizzle as the anti-eldritch empowered blood began to eat at the otherworldly corruption that made up it’s flesh. “No! No! This cannot be! I cannot be unmade! I am that which will become above all! He who will complete the work!” It froze in place staring with maddened eyes into nothing as droplets of blood landed on it and ate away tiny fragments of it’s being.

“The work.” It whispered as bit’s of skin began to drip off of it.

“The work.” It said as it’s nose became a mush that fell from it’s face.

“The work!” It shouted as one of it’s arms began to dissolve.

“THE WORK!” It screamed with insane fervor. Every bit of light that it had been wielding to stave off the cloud of death surrounding it gathered into a ball that floated an inch from it’s palm.

Something about it warned Kay a moment before it was too late and he hardened his armor to the extreme limits of what he could achieve while sealing his helmet. The vaporized blood melting the vampyr became a solid cage an instant before the sphere of light detonated. Even through inches of blood covering his closed eyes in layers he could see the flash that went off. For a brief second before the wave of force picked him off his feet and threw him through the wall behind him and then a foot into the wall on the other side of the room behind that if that was what it would be like the watch a nuke go off.

Kay dragged himself to his feet after his vision recovered. The front half of his armor had been turned to ash by the explosion and the back half and crumbled under the force of hitting the walls. The walls themselves had fractured and collapsed into bits of rubble that he hat to kick out of his way as he removed himself from the crater he’d made with his body. His skin was burnt and blackened across it’s entire surface and his eyes were covered in white that eclipsed his view. He staggered forward as his vampiric body began healing the wounds as it consumed the blood from his veins. He pumped more blood into his physical veins from his Folded Veins Skill until he was completely recovered and reformed his armor.

Stolen story; please report.

He rushed back into the throne room once he was recovered and found the vampyr once again hunched over the single work table inside, which was somehow untouched, along with the papers that were on top of it. Everything else was a red-hot filed of slagged stone. The curtains had burned away and the glass windows had been warped into unusual shapes by the blast sending odd patterns of sunlight scattering around the room. The vampyr itself had some kind of healing ability like Kay did, as it’s missing arm had regrown and what he could see of it’s face seemed repaired. Unlike Kay it still looked like it had taken damage. Weeping sores leaking a green liquid that changed viscosity between one moment and the next as it ran down the vampyr’s naked skin.

“Theworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworktheworkthework-“ It’s head snapped up and around to Kay as it’s neck twisted around like a snake’s body. The vampyr’s eyes were gone, leaving only two black pits that leaked dark ichor like unending tears. “No! No! You have to be dead! The work must be completed!” It tilted it’s head back to that the black liquid trailing from it’s eyes could run into it’s mouth. It swallowed a mouthful of it and lifted it’s arms into the air, screaming, “The work must be completed! For the work!”

Kay rushed it, blade ready to strike it down but it’s arm lashed out, grabbed him by the shoulder, and threw him back. He sent out waves of ranged attacks, a flood of blood like a tidal wave, and more clouds of blood to erase it but it ignored them all as it’s body began to twist. A second pair of arms burst out of it’s chest , fingers spread wide. The new limbs began to twist and move as they climbed up the chest and over the shoulders until the were pointed behind the monster. Bones broke as it began to grow taller and wider. More sores leaking the same green fluid began to open up all over it’s body with sickening pops that released an unclean stench that smelled like concentrated eldritch corruption to Kay, worse than it’s stench from before.

The new arms began to writhe as more and more of them burst from the first pair. A tree of pale arms grew out from the starting pair into a massive set of twisted wings made from arms, hands, and fingers. The monster’s nose shrunk into it’s pale, waxy skin, leaving only the eyeless holes still dripping black ichor and a toothless mouth stretched wide in an eternal scream. It’s arms drooped low on disfigured shoulders and it’s legs were bent in painful ways. Kay never got a chance to see if the vampyr’s more human form had genitals, but this monster had none, with it’s naked body entirely smooth except for the cancerous looking wounds that covered it.

With the transformation complete it lashed out with arms and arm-wings, unleashing a sweeping wall of nightmarish color, a perverted version of it’s previous light magics, that blew away the bloody assault Kay was sending against it. It’s forever open mouth let out an unearthly wail that raised the hairs on Kay’s neck and arms in a way nothing else had up till that moment. Tiny indescribable masses of impossible colors formed around every disfigured finger that made up the being’s wings and they flew at Kay in a swarm.

Kay threw himself to the side, unwilling to let this eldritch energy to touch him even with the protection of his blood armor. He ran around to the side of the being and struck three times with a sword he formed, leaving weeping gashes on the monster’s side. It wailed again and twisted on wing in on itself to fire another salvo directly at Kay. A portion of the attack struck Kay’s armor and began twisted pockets of blood into something else, something from outside Torotia’s reality that Kay couldn’t touch and that felt horrifically dangerous to him. He ejected the corrupted pieces form his armor and kept running.

He switched to a hit and run tactic, not aiming for decisive blows but to bleed the monster bit by bit while avoiding every attack. Glowing claws of eldritch power sprang from beneath the fingers of the main arms and lashed out at him, forcing him back as he dove in with punch daggers raised. As the battle continued Kay was forced back more and more as the spray of corruptive energy continued, filling up the room with unsafe areas. With nowhere else to go Kay leapt into the air and began running along the walls, growing extensions from the bottom of his boots to anchor him as he took each step, firing beams of compressed blood like water saws as he ran.

Kay ascended to the highest point of the room, where the ceiling was still faintly red from the earlier explosion. He gathered a massive amount of blood at the bottom of his feet and pushed it away form him in one moment, generating more force than a jet. He formed a halberd in his hands from a stream of blood as he rocketed downward, the blade pointed at the monstrosity. Sheets of blood erupted from him as flak, catching the motes of otherworldly magic as the streamed up at him. Kay slammed into the vampyr turned abomination with the power of a meteor. The blade of his weapon almost shattered as he drove it through the monster’s chest and into the glassed floor, pinning it in place.

The monster thrashed and struck out with blows that Kay tanked as he stabbed with punch daggers growing from his fists, as he tore at the misshapen, sore covered limbs of the vampyr, and ripped the wings apart twisted joint by twisted joint. The eldritch monstrosity wailed and struggled, sending even more corruptive energy in crackling bolts of unreal lightning and waves of motes that spun in impossible ways/ Kay dumped pools of blood from his storage over the monster, swamping out it’s attacks with liquid fortified by his Skills to resist such outside energy and destroy it.

After tearing the last stub of grotesque arm-wing from the main body Kay reared up with a blood-red sword in his hand and drove it through the vampyr monster’s neck. With one hand on the pommel the other reached down to grab the wailing creature’s head and with a cry of exertion and emotion Kay ripped the head from the body and threw it away.

The wailing died instantly and the swinging arms and legs of the monster stilled and dropped to the ground. Kay stood up from the blood covered body, watching intently for some trick or resurrection gimmick. For a long, long moment he stood there, watching for movement, but there was none. He took a long deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Drat.”

Kay’s eyes snapped open. He’d known that was too easy. He followed the sound of the single word to the decapitated head. It was lying a few feet away, on it’s side, with the face turned away from him.

“All that investment, all that power I’ve spent, all that time, and you couldn’t even last a few minutes longer?” The head rolled on it’s own until it was facing Kay. The voice was coming from the unmoving mouth and it was one Kay hadn’t heard before. It was deep and sonorous, but there was an undertone to it that sounded like records scratching, nails being dragged across chalkboards, and children screaming, all mixed with incomprehensible babbling in a million languages.

The beheaded body melted into black goo that coalesced into a puddle. A streamer of undulating darkness rose from the puddle and grabbed the head, pulling it in. The voice continued to ring out, coming from the rippling puddle. “It just goes to show you that you mortals aren’t really worth anything. Am I saying that right? Mortals? Moooortals? Mortahls? Mertles? As, whatever. Little fleshy tubs of goop that think they’re real people when they’re limited to three or four dimensions, it doesn’t really matter what I call you.”

The goo rose into the air in a blob that sprouted four limbs. The center of the blob began to mold itself into the shape of a body. The four extrusions became detailed arms and legs, the center became a chest and torso, even a head rose up on a neck. The pitch black substance slowly formed itself into a man, then into clothing covering that man’s body. The body was exactly like Kay would have imagined a cartoon villain wold look like in real life, with a patrician’s attractive face atop a chiseled body. It’s skin was the black of a night without stars and the clothing on it’s body morphed from something that looked like a king from an ancient time would wear, to a colonial era nobles outfit, into a cheap looking suit. It too was black, but the kind of black normal clothing could be, with a black undershirt and black tie. The only bit of color on this being were it’s pupils, which glowed that familiar sickly green color against a black backdrop.

Kay’s instincts screamed at him to kill this thing or run forever to escape it. Not only his base human instincts hated everything this beautiful but uncanny valley inducing being exuded, but his vampiric senses joined in with a dull buzz on the pure and unadulterated taint that this thing was made from as it floated a inch or so above the floor.

“I think I’ll stick with ‘mortal’. It really fits the theme my failed little puppet was going for.” It grinned at Kay, it’s face distorting into a horrifying amalgamation of the impossible and indescribable. “Hello mortal. I’ve been watching you on your little journey, and I think it’s time I had a word with you.”