As always, a big thanks to my betas but a special one to Advena Phillips who helped me a lot with my prose. She's the author of Sith Zero, go check it out!
Blood Bonds
Chapter Nine
Relics of the Past
And the Scrolls have foretold, of black wings in the cold, that when brothers wage war come unfurled!
Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound, with a hunger to swallow the world!
Song of the Dragonborn
Siesta ran.
Across the yard, through twisting hallways, and with her heart about to burst, she ran.
It was just like back at the Academy and back at Tarbes. There were screams in the distance, and blood in the air.
They had attacked an hour after Miss Charlotte and the rest had left, announced by broken windows and shattered doors. The sound of battle then followed.
"Keep moving, keep moving! Don't stop for anything!" The order was directed both at herself and at the group of maids fleeing with her. "We're almost there!" They had to get to the nobles. If there was someone who would know what to do, it'd be one of them.
Someone screamed, loud and frightened, behind her. Siesta nearly tripped over as she turned to see what happened. It was a maid, desperately fighting against a gaunt figure, the ghoul's eyes alight with an unnatural light.
Her blood froze, stomach twisting in fear, but she forced herself to act. "Keep running!" Siesta shouted, pushing past the fleeing maids as she rushed over to help.
The girl -whatever her name was as Siesta couldn't tell her apart from the rest- kicked desperately at her attacker's head, trying to break free, but the ghoul was unrelenting and several others were already crawling hungrily towards her.
Siesta grabbed her hand and pulled.
Their eyes met, Siesta saw the terror in her face and pulled harder.
There was a sound of tearing flesh and Siesta was hurled back, still holding the girl's hand.
The hand was attached to an arm and a torso, but that was where the body ended. Everything from the waist down was missing, violently torn by the undead.
Siesta screamed, and as she did the feasting ghouls twisted their heads towards her, guided by the animalistic instinct of feral beasts.
Siesta scrambled back, trembling in fear.
Those girls had been her responsibility. They were little more than children unaware of the bigger world outside, content with just serving without question. Siesta had tried to help them, to teach them, to show them the wonders of life, but now one had been killed and only Founder knew how many more were dying right now.
She had failed them.
A massive black form barreled into the horde with the might of a cannonball, carving through flesh with the strength of his blade.
Within moments, the horde was beaten back, and they were alone: Siesta, frozen in fear, and the tall and imposing knight. He turned, regarding her silently, his expression -if he had one- hidden by his helmet. He sheathed his sword and lifted the dead maid in one hand before lifting Siesta with another, throwing her onto his shoulders.
And then he ran.
He was neither careful nor gentle, but he saved her.
As they fled the scene, she saw the battle unfolding all around the manor. Walls had been breached, furniture had been pushed to block doors, and corridors had been turned into chokepoints with unmoving ghouls laid scattered all over the place.
It was chaos. And the knights were failing. They swung their massive weapons, cutting through multiple bodies with each slash, but the ghouls were an unending mass crashing like waves upon the battered knights.
Slowly, step by step, the defenders were pushed back, the ghouls arriving faster than they could be killed.
The knight broke into the library where the rest of the survivors had barricaded themselves away. Montmorency was there, nose deep in her alchemical trunk, brewing something that smelled of sulfur. Miss Carmen was behind her, alive but with a bloody bandage around her head. And then there was Isabella, surrounded by her maids. Some of them alive, some... not.
"Good you're- wait, why did you bring her?" Isabella shouted, looking at Siesta. But it wasn't like the knight could answer her, at least not as far as the commoner girl knew. "Oh, it doesn't matter. Put the body here!"
At the command, the knight dropped Siesta to the ground, and then placed the maid's severed torso at the Princess' feet.
Siesta's stomach twisted at what happened next. Isabella grabbed a bloodied knife in both hands and stabbed it down into the maid's chest, pulling the blade down, parting skin, and cutting through bone with unnatural ease. Blood pooled but the princess was undisturbed, plunging her hands deep inside the corpse and rummaging inside as if she were searching for spare change in a bag.
"Ah, there!" she cried, ripping her hand free. In it was a pearl, small and unassuming and marred by vitae. "Alphonse, bring the bag!"
The head maid -only recognizable by the lock of blue hair- rushed to her mistress' side, a leather pouch in hand. The pouch was full of other pearls, to which Isabella added the one she had just retrieved from the body.
Siesta might've only been a commoner -a well-read one, but a commoner nonetheless- but even she knew at a glance that whatever that was, was not natural. "What is that?"
"As if you could possibly understand," Isabella spat before turning to her knights. "Bring me the next one! Fast!"
The knights obeyed, bringing with them the many corpses. Some were half-eaten, some others had been ripped in twain, disemboweled, and beheaded. Isabella cut open every last one, pulling pearl after pearl. And all the while the sound of combat grew steadily closer. The knights held the line but the ghouls crashed down upon them like the unrelenting waves of a frenzied storm.
A thunderous explosion made the very foundations of the building tremble as an entire side-corridor suddenly was engulfed in fire and shrapnel.
Montmorency laughed like a maniac at the sight. "How do you like that!?" she cried, pushing another flask of whatever concoction she had brewed into the hands of a knight. He hurled it and another explosion burst to life, shredding the undead hordes into charred pieces of flesh.
"If you hit one of my maids, I'll be using your corpse to rebuild her," Isabella said almost casually, not even bothering to look up from her bloody work.
"Yeah, yeah!"
With the combined efforts of Montmorency and the knights, the fight reached a stalemate. The ghouls couldn't break in, but the knights were too few in numbers to push them back. The only thing they could do was resist and fight, and maybe hope for Charlotte and the others to return.
"More survivors!" A maid cried out. She was by the hallway door, gesturing frantically for someone to come. Siesta rushed to her side, peeking down the hallway. A knight charged out of the door, spear at the ready, all the while a few of his brothers joined, trying to distract the ghouls from the fleeing maids. But even their inhuman strength failed against the unending tides.
A maid tripped and in a moment the horde was on her, ripping her to shreds.
Alphonse screamed in horror. "Get her! Get her!"
It was no use. The knights pushed on but the ghouls pushed back as an immovable wall of flesh.
But there was no need to break down that wall. They only needed to avoid it. Too focused on the massive metal sentinels, gaps had been left on the mass of undead. The knights were too big to exploit them, but a normal human could do it.
Siesta could do it.
She could save the maid. Or what remained of her.
Without a second thought, she jumped into action, hopping over a still-crawling legless torso.. A ghoul rushed to her, but a glaive severed it in half.
There were twitching bodies all around her, but she ignored them as she moved on. She reached the lockdown, where a group of knights wrestled against the main group of ghouls.
And there was her gap.
Without slowing down, Siesta slid between the legs of one of the knights, reaching the other side.
It took her a moment but there she found it. The girl's body had been reduced to just a limbless torso, but that might be all that Isabella needed. Siesta crawled to the body, grabbed it by the blood-soaked apron, and pressed it close to her chest in a grim embrace.
Her objective found, she turned around to leave but found her way out blocked. The undead had realized what she was doing and had shifted their attention to her.
"Stay back! Stay back!" Siesta screamed, falling to her back and kicking desperately at the ghouls. A worthless act of defiance against her imminent death, but was her life not a succession of multiple worthless acts of defiance?
Her time had not yet come, though, as a thunderous roar announced the arrival of her savior. The ceiling was blown away by the strength of a powerful wind spell, and through the hole entered the dragon Sylphid, with lady Charlotte riding on her back. Blades of ice rained on the undead, hacking them to pieces, and opening a way for a knight to save her.
The knight took her in a massive grip and hurled her away towards the rest of the survivors. In her arms, she still carried the remains of the maid.
"Get your hands off her!" Isabella screeched as she rushed to her, snatching the corpse out of her grip.
"I-I just want to help!"
Isabella snarled, cutting into the maid with fury. "Why would you care?!"
Siesta's teeth grit. For too long had she put up with Isabella's ramblings, "Why would I need a reason to care?"
The princess kept her eyes leveled, but couldn't come with an answer. "I don't have time to argue with you."
More bodies were brought in, and Isabella was working frantically to get to all of them.
"My lady," Alphonse said in a quiet voice. "Time is running out."
"I know, I know!" The Princess cried back. "I'm working as fast as I can!"
In the corner, the surviving maids cowered like terrified children. Some cried, others more subdued, too stunned to do anything. Utterly paralyzed.
"What do you mean by that?" Siesta asked in confusion.
"We can still be rebuilt if-"
"Alphonse, don't bother!" Isabella cut her off, "She can't understand."
Biting her lip, Siesta reached a decision. "What do you need me to do?"
"What?!"
"I don't know what's going on but I think you're trying to save them. How can I help?"
"And you think I'll trust you with my maids?"
"We can argue and waste time or you can let me help!" Siesta yelled, clenching her hands into fists.
Isabella's lips trembled, "No. Not as much as I do. You- why-?"
The handmaid Alphonse put a hand on the Princess' shoulder. "She's right, and we trust her."
A confusing series of emotions flashed across Isabella's face. There was anger, disbelief, and betrayal, "Why? Why would you?"
"We don't know. We just do."
For a moment Siesta thought that Isabella was about to attack her, but then the Princess placed a second knife in Siesta's hands. "Open the bodies. Behind the lungs and next to the heart, they have a water stone that I created. Pull it out. As long as it's intact, I can rebuild them. If you break it, I kill you."
Siesta nodded. She could do it. She had to do it.
Placing the knife against the sternum of one of the corpses, she closed her eyes and pushed it in. It was unnatural how easy the knife cut through the bone, and in a moment she had made an incision from neck to navel.
With trembling hands, she checked the edge of the wound she had caused. It was cold as if the person had been dead for days, not minutes. They weren't really human. At least not fully.
She pushed her hand in. Next to the lung, behind the heart, and against the spine, she found what she was looking for: a solid, perfectly spherical pearl that had no place being in a human body. It was, thankfully, intact.
"I-I got it!" She cried, pulling her hand out. Alphonse rushed to her side with the pouch. Siesta deposited the pearl inside and then moved to the next body.
Isabella screamed, furious and anguished, throwing bloodied shards of pearl across the room. "I was too late. Too late. I will kill her. I will rip her limb from limb, and if she has a family I'll make her watch as I kill them first!"
Over the sound of battle and death, laughter arose. It echoed terribly through the hallways, making glass windows shake. "Oh, I'm sorry for disappointing you my princess, but I don't have a family to be killed. I already killed them myself!"
The monster in a child's body came floating over her undead servants. Her face a mocking grin as she looked down at them with nothing but cruel amusement. Lucina, her so-called sister, was levitating at her side, hanging from an invisible grip as if a rope had been tied around her neck. The eyes of the older girl were glassy and unfocused, and tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Well, I still have this one, but I wouldn't let you kill her." A long tongue lashed out to lick those same tears. "She has been such a nice source of entertainment."
With a swing of her staff, Charlotte launched an ice spike in her direction, but it never reached its target. With a sound of breaking glass, the spike shattered when one of the tiles of the floor detached and intercepted it mid-flight.
"Feisty little thing, aren't you?"
Siesta had rarely seen Charlotte expressing any emotion at all, her face a mask of detachment. Now she knew what the quiet girl looked like when angry. Her eyes were sharp and filled with anger as she searched for targets to destroy.
That terrified Siesta more than the undead at the doors.
"Odette," Siesta gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing. "Why are you doing this?"
The little girl smiled, baring sharp teeth, "Oh, Siesta, want to play with the ball again?" She laughed. "But please, I'm tired of hearing that name. Call me Urbat."
"She's a vampire," Isabella said, already working on a new maid. "An old one that has been terrorizing Gallia for centuries."
"You heard of me? You honor me, my Princess." The vampire bent down in a mock bow.
"This is insane!" Montmorency yelled, lifting her head from her boiling cauldron. "Don't you realize that all of Gallia would declare war on you now?"
"Oh, my, you silly child!" The vampire laughed again. "Do you think that Gallia cares about their motherless princess? Not when its king is the one-"
With a furious roar, Sylphid charged. Claws and teeth, she slashed her way through the horde, trampling over the undead and hurling broken bodies with swipes of her tail. There was far too little space for her to open her wings, but her powerful muscles compensated for that hindrance.
"Sister! Kill that thing!" Isabella ordered.
The frost covering Charlotte's staff shattered, hurling dozens of shards of ice toward the vampire. They also failed to strike true. Like a protective shield, broken pieces of scattered debris danced around Urbat's body, each one intercepting a different shard.
Odette- no, Urbat's face split open in an inhuman grin. "You know, I was so happy to see that a Rhyme Dragon had survived the humans' hunt. They are delicious."
With a gesture, a piece of brick launched itself at Charlotte. The fragment impacted against the younger princess' stomach, throwing her off the saddle.
Sylphid lunged at the vampire, her maw opened and rows upon rows of sharp teeth bared. A pillar of marble broke free from the wall and smashed against her skull.
"Sylphid!" Charlotte cried out from her position on the ground, with a hand against her wounded stomach.
"Oh, don't worry. Rhyme Dragons are far sturdier than that. Unless-" Urbat looked down at the dragon in wild fascination. "She's a child! How did I not notice? She'll taste even better after I torture her master to death in front of her!"
A bottle flew towards Urbat. The object smashed against Urbat's shield of debris, detonating in a monstrous shower of fire but leaving the vampire completely unharmed.
"Nice try," Urbat glanced at Montmorency before returning her attention to Charlotte. "You know, I was expecting you all to die to my pets back at my lair. But, well, I'm not surprised that you of all people made it out of there. After the twins of Tristain, you were the strongest one of that group."
Siesta knew things about Charlotte that few knew. She wanted to believe that she knew things that not even her sister did. She knew that one of the few moments when the Gallian girl allowed herself to express joy was during her night rides on Sylphid's back. She used those moments to laugh to her heart's content, and that was a happy, joyous laugh.
Now Charlotte snickered. And that snicker grew into a loud, terrible laugh of cruelty.
"What?" Urbat recoiled, her face twisted in disgust. "What are you doing? Stop laughing at me!"
"Idiot!" Charlotte cried out. "You know nothing."
Urbat's fury was palpable as she looked down at Charlotte, "What is it that I don't know?"
The answer came in the form of a thunderclap.
"Wuld Nah Kest!"
How many times had Louise run through a city chasing down a dragon? She had lost count. But, breaking with routine, this time she wasn't trying to hunt that dragon but follow her to their common enemy.
Civilians below screamed and pointed at the massive beast flying over their heads, too preoccupied to see the small pink blur whizzing across the rooftops, moments behind it.
And then Syphid vanished, diving past the walls of Isabella's manor and out of sight. Louise skidded to a stop just at the edge of a rooftop, overlooking the grand estate. It was absolute chaos. The main gate had been breached, its guards mutilated and only identifiable from their battered armors. And, just over the walls, she could see a fire blazing.
She narrowed her eyes, hissing the words of Aura Whisper. "Lass Yah Nir!" And the world darkened as splotches of red filled her vision.
The great angry masses of undulating red were the hordes of undead, surrounding the manor proper.
From where she stood, she could see that the draugr were focused on the left wing, surrounding a few isolated blobs of red that had to be the survivors. A great mass slammed into the horde, moving far quicker than the horde itself -Sylphid, Louise realized- before being hurled against a wall.
Louise grit her teeth, hopping back before sprinting forward and leaping from the rooftop on to the battlements of the estate's wall. And from there…
"Wuld Nah Kest!"
Her voice boomed like thunder and she was catapulted through the air, faster than the human eye could follow. In a swift, fluid motion, her sword was drawn blazing with unseen void magics, ready to rend the vampire's head from its shoulders.
It should have worked. In that instant, she should have killed the creature. But, with her blade inches from striking, the vampire turned with speed far beyond human ability, eyes widened in surprise. The blade missed its mark, biting only into the corner of the monster's mouth.
What should have been a beheading strike ended up being nothing more than a flesh wound.
The only silver lining, Louise realized as she barreled into the library through shattered windows, was that she had hurt it. Rolling to break her fall, she pulled herself up and saw the vampire holding its wound.
"You-!" it hissed, glaring at Louise with a fury that spoke of agonizing retribution.
Louise smiled, even in the face of the whirlwind of debris that followed.
"Feim!" The tornado of destruction lost its lethality as Louise entered her ethereal state. "Wuld!" A zig-zag to distract the target. "Wuld!" Repositioning to its back. "Wuld!" And then she delivered the strike.
But the vampire was quick and the cut that should have bisected it just became a deep gash across its back. The vampire screamed as the wound hissed and bubbled, the Void keeping its body from knitting flesh back together.
"You insolent-" The vampire cursed, its face twisted in pain. "That's what I get for missing the Void mage."
Louise tried hard to keep the surprise off her face, slipping into her Ethereal State as a spear of stone flew her way.
"Always with your silly tricks. Your kind is always such a pain to kill!" With a gesture of her hand, the vampire lifted a statue in an invisible grip and hurled it towards the survivors, clustered behind the line of protective knights.
Charlotte muttered an incantation and summoned a wall of ice that stopped the projectile on its way, and all that accomplished was exposing the Vampire's back.
That was her chance.
"Wuld!"
A swift strike. There would be no salvation this time, but then Louise's vision was obstructed.
Lucina.
The girl was still alive, still human. The vampire must have kept her as a pet, and was now using her as a human shield.
Why would it assume that Louise would care? She barely knew her! And against a threat like this? One that had killed thousands and would continue to do so if left unchecked? Louise was ready to pay the price, even if it was with another person's life.
And what was wrong with that?
'Because you speak like the monsters you claim to fight.' The voice of her aunt came to mind.
Her mind wandered to Albion. To Londinium. To the woman whose head she'd blown off for the sole crime of screaming in fear. To the dozens she'd slaughtered.
They were all victims, deceived and betrayed, whose only crime had been standing in Louise's way.
Just like Lucina was right now.
'Oh, fuck me.'
"Feim!" Louise's body dematerialized into red mist, her blade phasing through Lucina's and the vampire's bodies without causing any harm. The momentum pushed Louise forwards, and she twisted her body to land on the open arms of one of Isabella's knights.
The thing cackled, swinging the hostage from side to side. "I actually got a bit worried there. I wasn't sure if that would work. If it hadn't- well, let's keep that surprise, shall we?" She winked. "After all, I fought several void mages across the millennia, but you're the strangest of them all."
Louise hissed. The monster was mocking her, trying to get under her skin, make her slip up. She needed to focus. "Who are you to speak about the Void as if you even know what it is?"
She was humoring the vampire, keeping it talking. Who cared that there had been others before her? Void was hers now and that was that.
"Oh, my silly child! The likes of you keep popping up every other century, but not faster than the elves or the church can put you down."
If Louise were gritting her teeth any harder, her molars would've cracked.
She was allowing herself to be put down, to face the indignity. She could've already destroyed the thing but not without sacrificing Lucina. 'And all because my aunts complained!'
It was easier when she didn't care.
"Oh, did I touch a sore spot?" it continued. "I do like that look so much! It whets my appetite. Anger, pain, despair. They give such an amazing flavor!" She placed a hand underneath Lucina's chin. "That's why I kept this one around. But I think I'll replace her after tonight. After all, there are few things more delicious than a Void mage with dreams of changing the world being brought down and broken."
The thing liked to talk. Every single word it spewed was coated in sadism and disdain that sent shivers of electricity down Louise's spine.
But Louise steadied her hand. She would restrain herself and shackle her fury, keep it chained until the time was right. It shouldn't be long now.
"Who are you?" Louise demanded. She might as well learn its story before she killed it.
"Me? Oh, you'd know my name if you heard it. I'm old, you see. I was old when your kingdoms first formed, and I was old when Brimir and his ilk first came to this world. But you can call me Urbat! " Soon. Just a bit longer and then she could let it all out. "He liked elves, you know? Brimir. He loved them. Where do you think the royal lineages come from?" Come on, where are they? "And, well, if you inherited the Void, guess what! You do have a little bit of elf inside-"
The vampire's words were cut short when a blurred figure came charging at the vampire, clawed hands ready to rip and tear. But Daphne never finished the strike, Urbat twisting and gripping her by the throat.
The monster laughed. "Did you really think that would work?"
But Daphne wasn't alone and while the creature was distracted, Amethyst threw herself at Lucina and wrestled her out of the telekinetic grip. Kirche then followed, dashing into the room with her wand held high, ready to cast a spell.
Urbat's face shifted. In the blink of an eye, the monster was gone, replaced by the girl they had believed it to be. "Kirche, no!"
The Germanian flinched, and that was the opening the vampire used to hurl Daphne in her direction. With a 'thud' the two women crashed, forcing all the air out of Kirche's lungs.
"Did I really fail to kill any of you? At least tell me I got that pompous-"
"Wuld! Nah! Kest!" Louise put all her bottled up anger in that attack. All her hatred and frustration.
She smashed into the vampire, ramming her sword into her chest. Then they crashed through the wall, and then through the one after that.
It had been a while since she last unleashed a Shout filled with so much raw malice.
The hole they punched through the manor led them all the way to the outside and into the coliseum it was connected to.
With a sonorous smash, they landed on the center of the arena, Louise's sword still buried into the vampire.
The next thing the noble knew she was being hurled back by the strength of a monstrous hand.
"You- ugh, that hurts." The vampire groaned in pain as she stood up, the hole in its chest failing to properly close.
Louise's eyes widened in anger. That should have been a killing blow!
The vampire's lips twisted in a mocking smile, "I told you I fought void mages before." Its flesh shifted, and Louise saw the reason for Urbat's survival: her heart freely moved inside her chest, the organs reshaping to survive any attack.
And then Urbat charged at Louise.
A heartbeat later it was hovering above Louise, Urbat's clawed hand ready to deliver a devastating strike. She parried, hoping that her void-coated blade would cut through the claws as easily as it had cut through her aunt's, but the sword was pushed away with the impact. Louise was forced to jump back, and as she did she saw shards of stone attached to the vampire's claws, acting as armor against the Void.
The monster resumed her attack.
"You know what? I should just call Romalia and tell them there's a Void Mage here! They'll be happy to kill you all and then burn your family at the stake for heresy."
The ground below Louise shifted and twisted as spikes of bones sprung at her. Louise sidestepped and breathed fire on the monster. "Yol!"
Urbat screamed, the conflagration pushing her back, "Yes! That's my problem with you. You shouldn't be able to do that! Brimir made sure of it."
Why couldn't she just shut up?
Louise was tired of her mockery and her voice. She just wanted to kill her and savor the moment.
"Seriously?" The thing continued talking at Louise's silence, "You don't want to know about the story of void and Brimir's legacy?"
If it was expecting to dangle her secrets in front of Louise's face, she'd find herself disappointed. Whatever Brimir's grand plan had been, she cared not about it. Void was for her to do as she pleased.
"Like I give a fuck." Louise pushed in, ramming her sword between the vampire's claws and locking her in place. "Fus! Ro! Dah!"
The creature experienced the full power of Louise's shout point-blank. Her claws shattered as she was violently torn to pieces against the ground. The blast, strong enough to break the walls of a castle and split giants in two, reduced the vampire to a broken mess of torn flesh and splintered bones.
Yet still, it lived. The palpitating heart remained beating amongst the liquified remains, already knitting itself back together.
She needed to finish this now.
Louise dashed to her target, ready to deliver the finishing blow. Dozens of skeletal hands broke through the floor. Skeletons wearing the armors of ancient gladiators rose up, their eye-sockets alight with unnatural life.
"Feim!" Louise phased through them, their attacks useless against her ethereal form. The target was so close! She reformed a step away from Urbat's quickly reforming body, her sword raised to deliver the killing strike.
That was when a shard of rock smashed against her hands, forcing her to drop her sword, and another against her stomach, hurling her to the side.
Louise dropped against the ground, all the air having been pushed out of her lungs, and her sword just out of reach.
"I'm getting really tired of you!" Urbat no longer looked like the young girl she had killed. Now she looked like a true monster of skinless flesh and mismatched proportion. The skeletons she'd summoned laid in wait at her side like dutiful soldiers while their master approached the noble. "But you aren't much of a threat without your sword-wand, are y-?"
A sound of shattering bone and flesh being ripped apart echoed through the arena as Louise's maw closed around Urbat's shoulder.
The creature screamed in pain. "Get off! Get off!" Urbat wrestled Louise away, but not without the noble tearing a chunk of flesh with her.
Louise chewed and swallowed, as she shattered the skull of a skeleton that had gotten too close, and felt the pressure of millennia setting on her shoulders.
There were so many memories there, so much power in that blood. A resilience that had lasted even as ages shifted. The will of a relic from a bygone era that refused to be extinguished, even long after its time was over.
Had she ever tasted anything like that? The most powerful Thalmor archmages she'd fought weren't older than two millennia.
It reminded her of the day that Louise drank Serana's blood for the first time.
Louise might have doubted her up to that point, but now she was sure that Urbat was as old as she claimed to be. Maybe even older.
"You-" The vampire cried, her face contorting into an expression of terror that brought a smile to Louise's face. "What are you?"
Now it was Louise's time to grin, showing rows upon rows of teeth. "After all this, you still haven't noticed yet that I'm also a vampire?"
Urbat's eyes widened as she brought a hand to her wound. As if it had been damaged by Void, the flesh refused to regrow. "No. No, no, no! You aren't a vampire." Her expression suffered a complete change. Gone was the cruel amusement and dry wit, replaced with fear. "I know what you are. And to think that after all this time, those stuck-up elves were right!" Her form shifted together with her mood. Spikes grew out of her spine as her back and limbs lengthened. "I can't let you leave this place alive." And then she lunged.
Of the enemies she'd fought, only Miraak had moved as fast.
"That's my line." Louise dodged to the side, the vampire's claws cutting cleanly through her armor but sparing her flesh by a hair's breadth.
Was this the true form of Halkeginian vampires? Instead of the bat-like form of the Skyrim ones, this one looked like a human praying mantis.
Urbat dug her talons into the ground to redirect herself against Louise, but the noble was ready. "Ilz!" Frost covered the vampire's body, locking her in place for valuable seconds. Unrelenting Force followed, shattering the ice and hurling its targets over the ground. "Yol! Yol! Yol!"
Attack after attack the structure rumbled as more corpses raised from their resting place underneath the arena.
"Seriously, you come hunting for a vampire and pick a coliseum as your stronghold?" Urbat laughed, recovering part of her wit. "Do you even have the faintest idea of how many people died to a cheering crowd here?"
Pathetic.
Louise had broken a horde far bigger in the catacombs. She'd crush this one all the same.
She shattered a ribcage and stole a skeleton's ax, using it to shatter the legs of a second one.
Where had her sword gone? This would be far easier with it.
"Fireball!" An orb of flames engulfed a group of the charging undeath, while spikes of ice impale another dozen.
"Kirche!"
The Germanian had arrived, joined at her side by Charlotte.
As if smelling an easy prey, Urbat charged at them.
But Louise was ready.
"Wuld!"
She crashed into the vampire's side, shattering her stolen ax on impact. A fireball and more ice daggers then followed, scorching and lacerating the side of the monster.
Urbat was pushed back. In a single leap, it covered the distance to the stands, and then it disappeared.
"Where did she go?" Kirche yelled in surprise as she summoned a wall of fire to stop the charging skeletons.
The place once had enough seats to accommodate sixty thousand people, and there was a lot of space to hide. And that was only above ground. With Aura Whisper, Louise found the vampire skittering underneath their feet from one side to the other.
"Underground tunnels," Charlotte explained. "Used to lift gladiators and animals to the arena."
Urbat moved like a wolf circling their prey in search of an opening to strike.
But she wouldn't surprise them. Not while Louise could follow her.
"Girls!" A voice broke over the sound of clinking bones. It was Guiche, rushing to them surrounded by a cadre of Valkyries. And darting towards him like an arrow, was Urbat.
Kirche screamed. "Guiche!"
Louise shouted, "Wu-" But by a fraction of a second, she wasn't fast enough.
A monstrous hand broke through a dust-covered hatch in the floor, long claws stabbing into the boy's side. Surprise flashed over Guiche's face before his body was hurled away into the stands at the side of the arena, wooden planks shattering as his body punched through.
And during all that, the sickening laugh of the monster echoed through the arena.
"Oh, I have been waiting so much for that! He was the one that annoyed me the most!"
Fire and ice converged at the monster's location, but it evaded the attacks by digging back into the tunnels.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Kirche cursed.
"Keep your calm," Louise told her.
"Calm? That thing just killed Guiche!"
Biting her lower lip, Louise forced herself into silence. She focused only on the zig-zagging form of Urbat underneath them. The only saving grace of this entire situation was that the vampire didn't seem to care about the survivors back at the mansion anymore.
Her sole focus now was Louise.
That worked just fine.
Surrounded by darkness, Guiche opened his eyes. He checked his chest, releasing a muted grunt of pain when he pressed his fingers against his side.
His shirt wasn't stained in blood, so his skin hadn't been pierced, but he most definitely had a broken rib or two.
With adrenaline rushing through his veins, he pushed himself up.
The underground dungeons, where gladiators lived and trained, extended before his sight. The systems of pulleys that elevated them had long ago rotted away, but through the cracks on the floor, he could see and hear the ongoing fight.
Guiche tried to get to his feet but the pain proved unbearable, and he fell once again.
He refused to be defeated! He had to get up there and help with the fight.
If only he could-
His hand closed around a flat, round object, smaller than the palm of his hand. Through the dust that covered the floor, he saw the glimmering of silver. It was a coin. And next to it were dozens more.
Long ago there was a custom of burying the dead with two silver coins as a tribute for when they reached the afterlife. Many gladiators had been buried in that very soil, bringing those coins with them as they rose as undead.
Guiche clenched them against his chest and felt a pulse of heat rushing through his veins. It was a feeling that he had only experienced in fables and other people's tales. It was as if someone had lit a furnace in his heart.
He knew what that was. His brothers had explained it to him as such.
He was no longer a dot mage.
He was a line now.
And he had an idea.
Spikes of bone shattered against the wall of ice that Charlotte had summoned.
Urbat had run out of skeletons to send at them, but that didn't mean that she didn't have a use for their remains. She had summoned to herself all the splinters and shattered bones, too broken for her dark magic to animate, but more than enough to be turned into deadly projectiles.
"Come on, Louise!" Kirche grunted as one of her fireballs got deflected by the shield of bones. "You have to have killed, what? A dozen vampires like her before?"
Only a dozen?
She'd lost count of how many had died during the siege of Castle Volkihar. "I did. But back then I had the help of an army of werewolves, the elven god of the sun, and Serana."
"Elven god?!"
"I was desperate, alright?"
A tornado of dust and bone surrounded their position, the combined magic of the three nobles being the only thing stopping it from shredding the skin off their bones.
"I'm getting really tired of you lot!" Urbat shouted, its figure hidden behind the rising dust.
"We can say the same about you!" Kirche shouted back. "Come on, Louise, this can't be that hard for you, can it?"
Louise didn't reply, too busy repeating the world "Ven" against the ground. The Cyclone shout wasn't intended to be used like that. It was similar to Unrelenting Force, the ascending crashing shockwaves used to tear the target to pieces, but she'd been forced to develop a new function for it on the spot. By focusing it around the group, she was using it to challenge the tornado that Urbat had summoned.
She coughed and spat blood, her Cyclone losing strength.
"Louise?"
Ignoring Kirche's concern, she kept chanting.
The events of the day were catching up to her. Every scratch and every bruise had accumulated. Each moment of doubt and weakness had piled one on top of the other and now she could feel her mind unraveling at the edge of her consciousness.
'Locked in here, tied to the ones that you once hated so much. How have the mighty fallen.'
She ignored the voice. This was no time for those delusions.
Only a bit more time now.
It wasn't much what she asked. Just for Guiche to do his job.
'Of course he's going to do it. You're lucky like that. Once that luck finally runs out, though- well, it seems that the elves know more about it than you do.'
Her throat was hurting. Itching.
"Getting tired?" Urbat's voice rose through the sound of crashing wind currents. "You're not getting out of this alive! I already survived one end of the world, and I will survive ano-"
And that was when one of the hatches next to Urbat was blown open.
Two valkyries raised out of the underground, their spears and armors of shimmering silver.
Surprise flashed over Urbat's face before the knights brought their spears down, piercing through the vampire's chest.
The tornado of bones dissipated as a howling scream of pain tore out of the monster's throat, the flesh in contact with the silver metal blackening and peeling away.
The spears shifted, turning into shining vines that surrounded the vampire's body, burying their sharp hook-like thorns into its skin.
"Now!" Louise shouted. "Yol! Toor! Shul!"
"Fire torrent!"
"Transmutation."
A pillar of fire raised from the arena as Kirche joined her fire to Louise's, with Charlotte changing the earth below the Vampire's feet into sticky oil. The violent conflagration was hot enough to melt the silver golems into boiling liquid.
The screams reached a crescendo as Urbat violently fought against its restraints, droplets of silver falling over its skin.
Even now, with its skin scorched, and much of its body reduced to only blackened bones, it still had enough strength to fight back. With a wet sound, it ripped itself out of the metal, leaving an arm behind, and tried to crawl out of the inferno. But that was when another figure arrived.
Daphne strode up to the edge of the inferno, utter fury etched on her features. And with a violent kick, she sent the vampire back into the bonfire, impaling it against the silvery mass. "That was for making me worry about Louise!" she yelled.
The silver embraced the vampire with its bloody thorns, vines whipping around and latching onto the creature and pulling it deeper. Urbat struggled. She thrashed like a drowning man, desperate for air. Yet all its struggling did was ensnare her deeper and deeper within. Gone was her bravado, her mockery, her power.
Eventually, the thrashing stopped, the fire died down, and the only thing that was left was a grotesque silver statue made in its image, its face forever frozen in agony.
"Is- is it over?" Kirche whispered as if it was too good to be true.
"Yes," Louise confirmed. "It is."
Kirche collapsed to her knees. "Oh, thank the Founder! And I don't say that often so you know I mean it!"
The Founder hadn't been the one to help them, it had been just themselves. But Louise didn't feel like correcting her. Far too much had happened already.
She, too, took a seat, exhaustion overcoming her. Her breath came long and labored, and with adrenaline running low her muscles started aching. But finally, she could relax.
Daphne walked over to her, limping on the foot that she'd used to kick Urbat into the fire. "Are you okay?"
Louise nodded. She had survived and so had those she cared for. That was the only thing that mattered.
Now, the only one missing was-
"My ladies!" A weak voice called to them.
Reinvigorated, Kirche pushed herself off the floor and rushed to him. "Guiche! How?"
The boy looked hurt, several parts of his face having turned an ugly shade of purple. He also couldn't walk on his own and was being carried by Amethyst.
As a form of reply to Kirche's question, Guiche unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the glimmerings of polished metal. He was wearing a suit of armor underneath his clothes. A series of interlinked silver and gold scales as thin as a sheet of paper, yet deceptively strong if Urbat's attack hadn't pierced them.
"I followed Miss Louise's suggestion and bought a suit of armor with the money we got from Tarbes." He added with a smile.
Louise replied with a smile of her own, remembering their conversation during their trip back to the Academy.
"And now comes the most difficult part," Amethyst said with a wicked smile, "Getting checked-up by miss Montmorency."
Guiche paled, "Oh, she's not going to be happy about this."
The two of them left, the boy grunting in pain every other step. Charlotte then followed after them.
"Where were you?" Louise asked, now focussing on Daphne.
"Killing ghouls and keeping the survivors safe," was Daphne's reply, "Once the coast was cleared, we rushed in."
Louise slowly nodded, "And what about our losses?"
"Not that bad, all things considered. Several of Isabella's maids and knights were killed, but all the humans survived."
"Yeah..." Kirche forced the word out of her throat, raising her fists to the air. "Great. Fucking great. So, if someone needs me, I'll be celebrating with Isabella's supply of wine. See you later." She waved at them and then marched back to the manor.
There was an edge in Kirche's words, and how could one blame her? Their material losses might have been light, but the spiritual and mental ones were steep.
"How's the sister?"
"You mean Lucina?" As she said that, Daphne sat next to Louise. "She's alive but unconscious. We'll have to keep an eye on her for aftereffects, but the brainwashing should have faded."
Small mercy that. Louise had risked victory, and her life, to save her. The question now was if she'd ever recover.
"That's something at least." She shrugged.
That was another thing she wasn't looking forward to dealing with. All that drama, all that suffering- she had seen enough of that.
Daphne brought that train of thought to an end as she put a hand on her niece's shoulder.
"Louise, look. We can wrap things up here with Amethyst. You go with Kirche."
And there was that again! "Aunt, I already told you-"
"I know, I know. We were joking with Amethyst!" The 'mostly' went unsaid, "But, look, with your parents we won many battles that didn't feel like real victories. And I know you did too, but this is the first time for Kirche. In situations like these, there are few things better than to be with a friend."
That made sense.
Relaxing and letting someone else handle the aftermath? She rarely did that. Few were the people she trusted to do things right, but she guessed that she could add her aunt to that group.
"Thank you, aunty." A bit of a childish memory there. That's what she used to call them so long ago.
Daphne smiled. "See you in the morning, Louise."
Until then, the noble suspected that there would be a lot to talk about with Kirche.
…
A/N: Sorry for the massive delay. Life has been crazy these last couple months. I moved to a new house and that drained a lot of my free time. And to that you have to add everything else that's happening right now.
