Chapter Six:
The Heart Of Midnight

The Great Master swept down his halls furiously, cloak flowing behind him as he moved impatiently further into his keep. Tapestries on the walls, containing bloody pictures being re-animated by the magic of the place, kept still until he had passed them; nobody dared to bother him when he was in such a mood. Not even the inanimate.

He would kill every last one of them.

His cold eyes, hidden by the ever-present hood which he wore, surveyed his keep, rather vexed. His deciphels should have been back by now, the little snake-men which he had all rights to call his minions. They had set out on a mission to be spies into the underground lair of the Team Rocket site. He wanted all information possible on them now, as he had lost to them last time he had fought. It further annoyed him to bring up such a memory, and the cold air about him caused the stones on the walls to glaze with a slight layer of frost.

He would kill every last one of them.

Bringing his hurried pace to a halt and entering a main room, namely the entrance room to his small castle, he paused and waited for his deciphels to return. Assuming a regal position on a stone chair, he rested upon it breifly. Though this rest should have been comforting, it would be nothing like the one he so yearned for; that of death. In some ways, he confused even himself; all his minions would soon be growing out of the stage of being too young to understand their Master's ways, and soon they would be able to handle themselves. Soon they would learn the truth.

He would kill every last one of them.

It wasn't that he didn't want them to follow in his footsteps; he was merely afraid that they would someday overcome im and then they would be the rulers of his land and soon, the entire world on which they lived. But that was not his present concern. He was not undead, so why should he want for the lifeless existence it gave? Despite rumours and talk behind his back, he was not at all what they assumed him to be; a lycanthrope, a vampire, one of the living undead... he preferred to keep it that way. Let his little ones be left in mystery their whole lives. Then they would not be able to protect themselves against him when his wrath finally bore down upon them. And then, smiting the few beings who were left, he, by himself, would rule supreme. Anyone left would die a horribly painful and long-endured death.

He would kill every last one of them.

Resting his head against one of his hands brought up to his cheekbone, he found himself staring at the main set of doors which led into his keep. What had been taking the snake-men so long? Whatever it was, it only caused him to be further irked by their tardiness.

He would kill every last one of them.

Finally, not long from that point, a hissing sound, like gravel upon gravel, emerged from the front of the castle. Had he had a heart, it would have beat, but the Great Master only wanted his information, and nothing more. Moments later, the door opened, and a small, copper-brown head poked out of the opening, looking towards the Master and freezing with fear. The head was neither serpentine nor human, but a warped version of both; the snout turned outwards, yet it had a mouth, and it's eyes were set further to either side than to the middle, as a serpent's should be. That head was soon followed by a gray-green one, and then a rather pretty shade of brown-blue.

"Sssir," the first one started, moving forward and out of the doorway. It's torso was erected upon a serpentine body as well, though it had two arms and hands, though only two fingers and an opposable thumb outstretched from the hand. There were no legs, or anything remotely like legs; just the twisting, coiling lower half of a snake.

"You are late," the Master said, his deep voice harsh and oppressing as he glared at them, tiny points of gold-red light dancing from his eyes.

"Ah, yesss," the serpent said. "Myssself and my brothersss, you sssee, we were nearly dissscovered, and we wisshed not to-"

"SILENCE!" the Great One thundered. "You returned late!" He allowed himself to calm down partially before continuing. "Your oath to me was to fufill my whims as you were directed, and, of thusfar, you have failed to do so with a passion." The Master turned his eyes on the gray-green serpent. "Nahari. Surely you have something to say to your master," he said, then rested them on the brown-blue one, frowning. "Or you, Kiri."

Kiri and Nahari both looked incredibly embarassed by their tardiness, but said nothing. The main snake-man, Polsara, continued. "We were afraid they would ssspot usss, O Great One, may your name caussse pessstilence."

"This does not please me," The Lord said, standing up and unnerving the serpent-man to say anything further. He thoughtfully turned his back on them as they drew nearer, and thought a moment.

The serpents had their way, The Great One knew. One always told the truth, one always told lies, and the third one would speak in nothing but riddles and give neither a false nor true lead. It would have been no hard task to figure out which was which normally, but they would always shift their personalities to further confuse him, and it was hard, often, to tell which was which, for they shifted in neither pattern nor any other type of lead. Putting a hand carefully at his chin, trying to phrase his questions so that they couldn't be avoided any way, whether it was the neutral, good, or bad serpent speaking.

"And you are saying to me that you would have been caught had they seen you? What would they do to you? Torture you?" The Great One turned to them again, his eyes glinting maliciously. "They are not so cruel. And if they were, it would be no hard thing to find another race of creature suited to the task, ones that did not tickle my patientce such as you."

This was in part true. The snakes had dutifully served him over the course of over a year or so, and it would be hard to replace them, though they did irk him so by their trading of positions. It was a common thought of his whether or not the snakes did it deliberately to annoy him, or whether this was truly the way they were. Even at this point, he knew not their race, and could not easily find any others like them.

Nahiri spoke first, his green-tinted skin gleaming by torchlight as he slithered forward, undulating unpleasantly. "They might have," he said quietly, his lisp of his race coming clearly through on even his non-"s" words. Licking his scaled lips, he continued. "And in sssuch, they would have taken no information. Or would they have? Could they have, my Great Lord, may your name caussse fear beyond belief?"

The Lord Of Soon To Be considered this, and made a note that Nahiri would be the one giving the neutral information this day. "You, then, Kiri. Tell me why you are so late. And tell me what happened in that place."

Kiri looked first to Polsara before speaking to his master. "We are late due to the enourmousss tunnelsss that are usssed to get in to the keep, O Lord Of All, may your name caussse plague."

The Great Being frowned, but not visibly, as his serpents shrank once more, to their original size of little more than a foot big. Polsara nodded assent to what Kiri had said, but Nahiri only sat and looked down at the floor, averting his eyes from The Lord's view.

"And then what?" he asked, his anger only growing stronger, and he felt the first waves of pain that came with his power surging through his body.

Kiri evidently noticed the change, for he backed up slightly, undulating his coils in a sinister way as he looked down at them. "We found out nothing, Sssire." He winced, cowering, and held his claws up at his face.

The Lord feigned sorrow at this news, and shook his head. "A pity," he said, stepping back over to the throne and sitting down on it, staring down at the floor.

Kiri was nearly beyond himself with relief when he had seen his Lord sit down, it was obvious to tell it the way he relaxed. But it was not for long.

"Nahiri and Kiri. Come here." The Master said nothing further, only glared at them as he once again stood up, the fire in his eyes growing stronger to only Polsara's view. The other two snake-men were drawing themselves slowly forward, wincing with every curve of stone underneath them. It seemed almost eminent they would be punished for not gaining any information.

Nahiri opened his mouth, hissing hurriedly, "Sssire, pleassse, do not lasssh usss again! 'Twasss painful enough lassst time! Sssire, I beg of you-"

"Hush, shhh," The Great One said, as if comforting some quailing child. "I will not lash you."

Kiri gave a wail of distress. "Sssurely The Massster hasss sssomething elssse more deviousss planned, Nahiri! You fool, you musssn't have reminded him-!"

He, too, was cut short by The Ultimate Being. Polsara remained quiet in the background, silently surveying what his two brothers would suffer for lying. It was he, in fact, who had been the one witholding the true information.

The Master stepped over to where the snake-men were, and smiled down at them. The moonlight glistened off of what couldn't be described fairly as a tooth, but something resembling such. "Come now, I'm not going to punish you. Just giving you a last chance to answer me correctly."

The two brothers looked at each other. Surely they couldn't do such; it was not a routine which they followed by their constant switching of roles in truth and fakery. It was, indeed, an oath that their race must make, and seeing as how there were so make snake-people born into a family, it was each three snakes that were paired up to do such. But of course, The Being knew nothing of this.

"We cannot," Nahiri said hoarsely, and closed his eyes in defeat. "Pleassse, Sssire, do not harm usss! We will make ammendsss-!"

Nahiri was cut short as a large boot was slammed down onto his spine, and he flailed wildly for a moment before collapsing, dead. His eyes rolled up in his head, and a yellow, sap-like blood oozed from his back, where charcoal-grey bone stuck out of it. His ribcage, too, had been crushed, and there had been a sickening sound as it had crunched under The Master's boot.

Polsara and Kiri stared at their fallen brother, but made no sound. They were lucky it had not been them who had suffered the anger of their Master.

"Go. Now. And you will make do for what has happened here. You will be able to serve me just as well, if not more efficiently in the future. GO!" The Lord bellowed at the snakes, and they hissed with fright, sliding for the hall into which they could escape.

Looking down upon the mess that was Nahiri, The Almighty One wiped his boot disgustedly on the snake-man's scales, watching as the body leaked still more fluid onto his stones. It really wasn't a problem at all. Now there would only be two to decipher from, and there would always be one who would tell the truth. But, oh, such a waste of good scales.

The Master sighed, or emulated such a motion, as he lacked lungs with which to produce such a sound. But it was nonetheless a point of him being exasperated. The lights in his eyes died down somewhat, and he kicked the corpse of the snake as he walked down into the hall opposite from which he had originally come.

Climbing stairs, passing many bedrooms, and heading up to one of the utmost highest turrets, The Dark One stopped, collecting his wits about him, looking around. It was a foolish thing for the snakes to have no recorded any information. Stepping out and up, The Sire found himself staring up at the moon. It shone brightly down upon him, the stars around it gleaming with inner beauty. But such matters were not important.

The reason he was so hard-pressed to find information about the base was because of it's inhabitants. The damned little fools had hidden themselves away numerous times, and seemed to multiply more quickly than the corpses that The Being could find to raise from the graves of towns and cities. They seemed not to care about what happened to the dead; the townsfolk only cared long enough to bury them, bid farewells, and never look back again.

Which was a mistake.

Had they bothered to look, all the graves would have shown as empty; no more corpses littered the underground, as they had all been raised as an army to serve The Lord. He had a great many lycanthropes about him, as he did the living undead, but few amoung these were what he most desired to sneak in and kill the base's inhabitants.

Vampires.

The foolish little ants at the base had thought all the newcomers only slightly out of the norm, pale skin not giving them away in the least. It was only amusing now that the great one had the powers and means to get inside. All he needed was the right vampires, the right moment to strike...

He was snapped out of his thoughts by a throaty sound, one that sounded like a rubbing of rocks together, or, to the living's horror, bones.

A skeleton had shuffled up to his Master, wearing armour that had been long since gone, perhaps maybe since the 14th century. It hung loosely on his yellow, scabrous bones, showing all that was inside. A fleshless skull stared out at The Lord from inside a helmet, the visor raised so that tiny red pnpricks of light could be seen from inside of it. It stared at The Lord as if some part of it's human essescance remained, though it's individuality kept through past the afterlife.

"Uhhhrrrr.." the quiet creaking of bones spoke to The Sire. Though the skeleton would have been able to talk, it had been apparently disabled in some war before The Great One had found it. It's lower jaw was gone, and only the top row of teeth were visible through the helmet as well. It hardly mattered, since this distinguished it apart from the other hundred or so skeletons that served The Grand Being.

"Ah. Garag. You seem to have come in on my thinking again. Is that because you have no brain in that hollow skull of yours?" The Lord asked rheotorically, smiling evilly and looking back up to the moon.

"Uhhrrrr," Garag said, and the shifting of dust that rose in the air told The Master that the skeleton had nodded, releasing a small amount of dust from where his spine and head connected.

Skeletons were partly magical, partly just good luck. In this world, however, and unknown to most, it was magic that kept the damned things together. And indeed, they were damned, as they were forced forever to walk the earth, the temptation of the eternal sleep in front of them, but always out of reach. It was nearly impossible for the skeletons to sleep again. But their magic... ah, what wonder!

A transluscent webbing formed over the joints, and that kept them together. Normally, when a skeleton would be able to talk, it would be due to pushing air past the webbing. But also, there was no air to push with, so how was this possible? It was all part of the enchantment of the creatures.

Howsoever, The Great One was in no mood to be amused by the simplicity of the magic on the skeletons. He would have continued pondering this subject had he not heard another soft noise behind him. Unblinkingly, he stated calmly, "Dark Eve, vampire."

Only half-aware of the being behind him, The Lord turned his thoughts back to the sky and the headquarters. Yet, a snarling arose from behind him as a hand roughly grabbed onto his shoulder, trying to spin him around to face the nosferatsu in question. Annoyed, The Sire waved it off with a short burt of psychic energy, and, for good measure, pushed the owner of the arm back as well.

"What're you tryin' to do?" the vampire behind him asked, snarling once again. It finally occured he woud have to turn to face and deal with his little one. Sighing and rotating on the balls of his feet, The Great Being turned to look at his dark child, his spawn.

The creature angrily glared at him, tossing his head casually to remove a strand of brown hair from between his eyes. Dark, brooding eyes peered out from a macabre face, and the dark red fabric of his vampire's trenchcoat glistened with blood in the moon. The Lord Of Soon To Be glared at him, and he felt the creature shy not one inch away from his elder.

"What bothers you so, Zaerenz? You are usually hunting at this point in time. Why have you come back so early?"

Zaerenz glared at his predessescor, and spoke once again in a voice heavily laden with a Welsh accent. "D'you think I haven't been out there already tonite?" Here he motioned towards his trenchcoat. "I've been rather successful in my huntind grounds, 'Da', but in all good ways I mean to say you're takin' your damned sweet time in gettin' on with your plans. I've just back from the base isself, an' I've just got to say that they're down one member."

Zaerenz licked his lips, giving a satisfactory look to the skeleton who had now turned to face him. Motioning to the skeleton and moving his gloved hand up to his mouth, Zaerenz stage-whispered, "D'you think you kin get rid of 'im? Gives me the creeps." Straightening up, he smiled cockily at his elder, crossing arms and tilting his head. "C'mon, 'Da'. You've nothin' to say for yourself?"

The Dark Lord frowned upon this type of behaviour. It was true that this may have been one of his best and most trusted servants, but the young vampire irked him in a way that he felt unnessescary. Which, knowing the boy, it was. "I know you've been out tonite, and for the Goddess's sake, wipe your mouth. Not only is that disgusting, it's frowned upon by society. You want to go swaggering around with blood on your face?"


The skeleton thought nothing of this, and simply continued to stand there and stare at the two fleshed beings.

The Sire snarled to himself, and continued maliciously. "I would normally congratulate you on a successful mission to kill someone from the headquarters, but what exactly did you do with the body? Please tell me you didn't leave it there for them to find."

The vampire's grin faded, and he turned, scrubbing vigorously at his mouth. When he turned back around, he looked sideways to the ground and put a hand behind his head, at his neck and smiled sheepishly. "Well, not exaclt,y I... thought mebbe some o' the others woulda taken care of it."

The Lord started trembling with rage as a wave of pain swept through him, and his red eyes flashed angrily. "You WHAT..?" he hissed through clenched teeth.

Zaerenz looked up, placing both hands back over his chest and sneering at his Master. "Oh please, 'Da', I think that someone oughtta have gotten to it by now. and if they find it, they find it. S'no big deal. I mean, really, I just have to say-"

Not the first one that day, Zaerenz was cut short by his elder seizing him up by the neck and shaking him furiously, his other hand at his side and Zaerenz simply lay there. There was little need for him to breathe, though it was still something that helped to keep vampires active, so he glared at his elder from over The Sire's arm, which had shown little through the grey cloak that kept him so secret. The arm was black as midnight, and red, like snakes, entwined down it to the hand itself, which was also covered in grey cloth.

"You ignorant, stupid, annoying, damned little boy! How dare you! You didn't take care of it at ALL?! I WILL MAKE YOU SUF-"

The Dark Lord let go as his whole body shook, and his body was slowly engulfed in a dark light that eminated cold. Zaerenz dropped, landing neatly on booted feet as he rubbed his neck tenderly, watching his father with a grim, frightened expression. The Master held his head, and then he raised his head, the flames in his eyes growing larger. The skeleton reflected nothing but the same battle fever from his master's eyes, and he stood at attention, loosely relaxed because of his bony form.

Zaerenz looked solemnly to the form of his elder, blinking down at it as it slowly stood up, using the skeleton as a balancer. The vampire's pale skin shone in the moonlight, now counter-acting the dried blood on his trenchcoat. The dark light around The Great One's body slowly faded, as did the coal-fire in his eyes, and he glared at his little one as he stood importantly tall above him. "Go. Get rid of the corpse, and take care of your damned buisness at that base. If I ever catch you looking like you have been right now, let me just say that I will make your undead little life an incredibly unpleasant existence. Go. Now."

Zaerenz shook that same strand of hair from between his eyes once more, looking at his elder blandly. "As you wish," he growled gutterally, and slunk off, trenchcoat flaps trailing behind him with an air of annoyance.

The Sire looked at his servant, and the skeleton felt annoyance emenate from his master. "Uhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr..." he grinded, trying valiantly to reassure him that this was merely a slight annoyance, that things would go his way, but The Dark One only shook his head, motioning with a hand for Garag to follow him down, back into the castle.

As they wound down the stairs leading to the main hall once more, The Great Being thought carefully of what had just happened. That vampire of his was going to create more trouble, no matter what he did to prevent that fact.

"Uhhhrrr..." Garag started once more, but The Sire frowned up at him, which the skeleton's evil eyes saw into the cloak for.

"Do not worry, my good friend. I killed you so long ago for one reason, and that was to make sure you never spoke again," The Dark Lord sad, smiling back up at his minion evilly. "Come now. I will make sure that these stupid creatures will die. All humans are destined to, as are the stupid creatures thay have mutated with. Surely no breed of the two can stop me."

"Uhhhhhhhrrr.."

"No. No, they can't," The Ultimate Being said, smiling even moreso now, triumphantly thinking of his plans as they approached the throne. Skeletons were clambering to his side even now, their bones rattling macabrely as they rushed to aide their master. Lichs crawled out of the darkness, dressed in fine, yet tattered, robes, along with the lycanthropes, dragging assorted oversized limbs along with them. Beside these creatures followed the Dark One's pride, his little ones, all with blank looks on heir faces, those of the undead, and those who lived only to serve their master.

"And I will kill every last one of them," The Heart Of Midnight said, his voice echoing through the hall as he laughed insanely, drawing his creatures to him. As they kept pouring from the halls, the echos of his laughter, accompanied by the grinding of bone, kept the madman safely in his domain of insanity.