Before the Ancestors, there were progenitors.
Unwanted children from the marriage of heaven and earth. Spawn of the trueborn, unable to reach for the moon or return to their former home. Cast off from the natural order, they could only seek guidance in the parents that had, through death and subjugation, birthed them anew.
However much they partook in it, the beings that fettered them were unknown to humanity.
However much they clung to humanity, a soul touched by those beings was indelibly stained.
For a long time, the children of the moon culled the planet's upstart species in anticipation of the king who would one day inherit it. There was no anomaly in their actions. From the very beginning, they were meant to oppose ambition transgressing natural law. To quell those who would wrest away the crown of primacy was their only purpose.
To their thralls' watching eyes it was a noble yet pointless struggle. Though they too spurned humanity in imitation of their masters, they understood how inexorable its victory was.
In order to remain beautiful, the planet would exhaust itself against its wayward children. In order to become beautiful, its children would exhaust the planet by virtue of simply living. To the ones who were the planet's senses, that sin was proof of humanity's evil. But to the planet itself, the ones destroying it were still its precious children.
The hated enemy to be eradicated was also a beloved child to be protected. Mired in this contradiction, the firstborn ruthlessly punished the sins of those demons, and for it became demons themselves.
An impossible task. Truly their masters were doomed from the start. But the servants knew of a different path, one only they could take.
They felt no filial love, nor compassion for their former race. Though they looked down on humanity and preyed upon it, their pride was tempered with the knowledge of what would befall those who stood in the way of its ascendance. By embracing inevitability an ambition was born. And in order to pursue it, they broke the chains that tied them to their true ancestors and their damned fate.
A counteragent bound to the laws of the world could not halt the progress of a force that painted the world in its colours. But a purpose borne by dint of one's very existence was a law unto itself. Whereas the children of the moon were a mechanism inducted into nature, the progenitors inscribed their principle on the cornerstone of human history itself.
The first and highest system, a foundation binding their existence to that of the human race. For as long as humanity persisted on its course they would follow at its back, spurring it on when it faltered and holding it back when it advanced. Not as a deterrent, but as a shadow lurking on the dark side of fate.
And most of all, they would endure. To the bitter end, and whatever lay beyond.
That was their pledge - the original goal of the twenty-seven ancestors.
United in their purpose, the progenitors set down roots in the world, building their kingdoms with flesh and fang as much as with stone and mortar. The blood of the moon flowing in their veins gave rise to the dead that would become apostles of their will and influence far and wide. In time, vampires even greater than their originals were raised, and the progenitors passed on their duty to those who could best see it through.
As they shared the same goal, conflict was unknown between them. In this manner they grew old and prosperous. Eventually they began to think the extent of their hegemony did not match that of their power; hubris begat the fall.
Some believed it was a flaw inherited by their former masters, a psychological compulsion which once manifested would only ever intensify. The pious blamed the degeneration on the thaumaturges, who by profanely imitating the vampiric form to serve their own purposes and propagating their heresy had sullied the race. A few realised the depths of their own conceit in believing themselves purged of human vices and desires when they were divested of their mortality. Whatever the cause, the result was the same.
The purity of their aspiration was tainted by base desires and petty ambition. The power amassed to facilitate their goal instead became a goal in itself. Life was a plaything, death was a sport, and history their gruesome canvas.
In truth, there was no great collapse, no age of confusion, broken oaths and kinslaying. For such tranquil beings, change was a gradual process they underwent without realising it. If their succession games became more violent or the disputes protracted over the centuries, it was simply a variation on their timeless theme. Eternity was very long - too long to endure on the promise of eventual triumph alone.
They were just too long-lived, too easily distracted. The progenitors believed their resolve could persist untarnished through the aeons to guide their successors, but they simply did not possess the immutability of beings created for a single purpose. The power they wielded was aimless, their traditions devoid of meaning. They had become Ancestors and still they numbered twenty-seven, yet for most of them the purpose behind their title had long been forgotten.
But Valery Fernand Vandelstam was different. He had turned his back on that destiny of his own accord before oblivion made the choice for him, and for that he could not claim ignorance of the true import of his actions.
He knew there was a higher purpose to Trofim's ritual, an obligation that he could not ignore. He realised that an Ancestor allying with humans was tantamount to betrayal of his very nature. And better than most, he understood what it meant to commit a crime even graver than that.
To slay a fellow Ancestor was anathema like none other. Cutting down one of the twenty-seven and leaving his title vacant was the abominable prerogative of their most hated adversaries. It was for good reason that the Holy Church was their nemesis and the knight of vengeance so despised. And yet, Van-Fem had once emulated their deeds and nearly earned himself the same enmity for reasons far more trifling than those of god's assassins and the single-edged blade of retribution.
It was a simple story from a tumultuous time. The rise of the serpent had driven a wedge between the confederacies of the royal pretenders and a stake in the heart of their accord. The clans of the sealed Ancestors abandoned the thrones of their lords to rally behind the renegade, igniting an unprecedented conflict that threatened the integrity of their ancient league. As centuries-old feuds simmered to a boil and the sacred mores of their kind were flouted, the apostate priest's bid for power seemed to many as proof that no rule was inviolable and everything was there for the taking.
And so it was that the marauding revenant known as Finnablóð Svelten set his sights on the most dangerous prize and was rewarded for his daring with the title of Ancestor and a place at the black princess' side. Humiliated and consumed by a lust for revenge, the vampire who was the Eighth no more sought to reclaim his pride with the blood of his enemies.
But a wounded dog could only bite so deep against monsters at the peak of their powers. Though Van-Fem refused to bury his grudge, he knew the odds were stacked against him. He would one day make good on his oath to destroy the Eighth, but for now he had to content himself with aiming a little lower.
Compared to his exceptional brethren, the Fourteenth's claim to prominence lay in his awareness of the place he occupied in the scheme of things. He had shrewdly established his unseen empire in a remote corner of the world, entrenching his presence in the land and keeping an eye on which way the wind was blowing - and how strongly. When the vampire princess tamed the white beast, it was this prudence that bent his knee. He had no way of foreseeing the rippling repercussions of his choice, and in all probability perished never knowing what had invited the full fury of an elder title upon him.
When his castles had finished pulverising the rubble, Van-Fem's ire cooled to a bitter discontent. The ones who had disgraced him continued to elude punishment and the show of force against their minion was a cold comfort, more a sign of his affliction than a reprisal. Vainglory had made a wanton beast of him, no different from the one he despised. If his hatred was to ever find resolution, he had to achieve catharsis as a man who was not ruled by it.
Regardless, his deed could not be undone nor remain unnoticed even in the chaos of the serpent's wake. The voices demanding his head cried loud and carried far to reach ears not averse to the proposition. In a world where many eyes watched from the shadows, waiting for a sign of weakness to pounce, an abundance of enemies was a disquieting prospect. To mollify the outrage and quell those nascent schemes Van-Fem assumed the mantle of the Fourteenth and ratified the succession, an afterthought that salvaged his standing more than his reputation. The former was merely a convenience and he cared little for the latter. His restoration among the Ancestors was the point his gradual retreat from their affairs began.
It wasn't as if the taste of infighting had put him off. Rather, it had laid bare the futility of a world where the only currency was power, and its reward the transient satisfaction of a need that could never be truly fulfilled. So far gone from their former humanity, and yet all dead apostles knew was to consume everything they touched without ever being sated. He had distanced himself from the moonlit world because he felt a different path existed for him. Centuries later, without knowing if he had ever truly walked it, he liked to believe he had at least changed. If not as a vampire, then from the husk of empty pride he had once become.
He had let go, and the story that began eight hundred years ago was left unfinished. It seemed now that whatever forces wove the narrative fabric of the world abhorred loose ends. His arch-enemy stood before him, and Van-Fem was once more willing to slay another Ancestor and damn the consequences. His absolution and the end of his ancient grudge were within reach.
The scene was the same—but he was not. This battle, these wounds, they were all for the sake of another. And in due course, his victory too.
In the wake of Flat's departure, the kingdom of ice and snow settled back to silence. Only, unlike the feeling of being smothered by its stillness, the lull now seemed to Van-Fem an augur of anticipated violence as sure as the scent of ozone in unassuming skies. Whatever whim had stayed Svelten's hand this time, the escalation of their encounter was proof that the Count's machinations - the crux of their mutual history - allowed for no other outcome.
Their forces were once more at their disposal. But while his own automata, pared down to his royal guard and a scant few of the most resilient crewmen, hailed the prospect of battle with bared blades and steely bearing, their opposition's murderous mania that would've had them champing to sink their teeth in warm flesh had given way to a truly bizarre display.
Chains and ropes that once flailed like livid snakes now swayed in a trance. Ravaged ghouls twitched and shifted erratically as if puppetered by invisible wires, their mangled bodies staging a macabre dance of death without stumbling into a single step. Above them all, the conductor kept a silent rhythm with his sword, appraisal in his eyes.
A breath flared white from Van-Fem's nostrils, long trails of derision swirling in the winter air. The calm was fragile, taut as a violin's string about to snap - or to warble out a devil's trill at the right hands. Such hands that had contented themselves with tracing their inner tempo in lemniscates of diamond dust now settled, fingers flexing on the grips of sword and dagger as though palpating for the breaking point of the standstill.
Sacred moonlight glinted anew as the blade that heralded the dead of winter was raised—and sheathed.
Then, the bellicose Ancestor held up a hand in the improbable signal of ceasefire. Van-Fem could not suppress the raised eyebrow that cracked his poker face.
"Parley, is it?"
An appeal to dialogue was most unlike Svelten, yet it shouldn't have come as a surprise that his goals did not lay solely in brute force and malice. Those motivations could not fully explain his actions - or rather his inaction that had, in some or other fashion, accommodated his alleged prey. Peace did not come easy on the battlefield but he had granted it freely in the wake of Van-Fem's spell, allowing his rapport with Flat to develop whilst failing to capitalise on drawing first blood. He'd wondered then what scenario the man was engineering; it seemed now that where Van-Fem saw their standoff as an opportunity to unleash the full extent of his powers, Svelten's preoccupation in their newfound privacy was to have words meant only for his fellow Ancestor's ears.
"A caesura," came the reply. At that the vampire finally stirred from his perch and began descending from the quarterdeck. Each step he took on the shattered stairs was a step that Van-Fem and his puppets could not force him to take before, and with each step that brought him closer to Van-Fem the circle of automata closed further. Ghouls parted before Svelten like so many leaves swept aside by wind.
His strut came to a stop in the middle of the deck, looking up with a sardonic mien to the prow where Van-Fem stood. From his elevated perspective, the puppeteer saw no reason to join him. A wave of the hand dismissed his show of wariness; Svelten's lax mannerisms were no great facade for his intentions.
"Are you enjoying our gamble, Valery? Be honest, now that we're alone. How does it compare to the child's play you dabble in?"
As if there was any doubt what he'd meant, Svelten spread his arms wide to encompass the scene of carnage with a smile he passed for joy. Unlike the misery that spread wherever he roamed, his good cheer was not contagious in the least to the other vampire.
"Gamble? I thought we had dispensed with the trivialities. I see this more in the way of an execution."
"That is apt indeed. You've lost your castle, and now you've let go of the boy. What then can you wager but your life?"
Svelten cocked his head to the side and all false geniality drained off his face.
"My lady only requires your blood and your finances, and I for one am positive she could part with the rest. Perhaps I can convince her of this, yes?"
A return to form if nothing else. If Svelten fancied their conflict a gamble he could make better use of this intermission than goading a seasoned player. Provocations did not determine the cards, only the way one played them. The table was a microcosm of the world and his mastery of that domain was a mastery of his own self. His hand was low, but he knew very well how to play it.
"So much for decorum. And here I'd almost believed you had the makings of a knight yet." Surprisingly, his rejoinder garnered a nod of agreement.
"I will cleanse my lady's honour with your blood, believe you me, but in a battle under her orders I comport myself with dignity. I've no right to speak while my actions speak for her. Yet I have suspicions I wish to confirm first, and it would be tedious work to extract the answers from your mangled hide. If not an intermission, consider this a stay of execution."
A lout in noble guise. The Ancestor had hardly developed a taste for pleasantries; once his depravity was taken into account, the white knight's curiosity seemed a more dreadful prospect than his martial prowess. Though it was far too late to turn down a part in Svelten's game, Van-Fem was in no way disposed to accommodate his indulgences.
It was a petty satisfaction, but he took those in a pinch.
"Eager to talk, are you now? That makes one of us, Vlad. Unlikely as you are to beg mercy, I suggest we get this over with. Or do you need her permission for that?"
Svelten shrugged off the jibe with the poise of one who knew the upper hand was his. "And you, Valery, must be eager to die. But we at least have time to spare, and as much as first blood whets the appetite I have nursed my curiosity for much longer."
"And you have come to me for answers."
"From you, a confession will do."
"Are you a priest that you may administer last rites? I dare say you finally have me at a disadvantage."
That quip, of all things, wrinkled Svelten's nose in affront.
"Enough of that. It is in your best interest to reach for an understanding, even with your bitterest foe. The possibility exists, albeit remote, that we may soon have to call each other allies."
An unlikely proposition as far as he was concerned. But there was also something else that gave Van-Fem pause, an offhand insinuation that forced him to take stock of the situation and brought it back into perspective.
True, they had all the time in the world, as long as Svelten could sustain it. His wound was not severe, though it would remain a slight impediment as the reality marble severed his connection to the moon and hampered his restoration. However, every minute he counted off in safety was a trail of sand trickling down the hourglass for one who did not enjoy that luxury. By the same token, every moment by which Van-Fem prolonged his reprieve kept the window of opportunity open for Flat to find the means to deprive Svelten of his advantage.
It was a rare conundrum when time was both the greatest commodity and the deadliest enemy. All the same he'd sent Flat off, and now time was all he could give him. Either he would unlock the back-door of Parade and level the odds, or Van-Fem would coerce Svelten to lift his accursed brand from the boy that had only ever been a means to force his hand. He'd hoped to beat the concession out of the Count, but perhaps bargaining remained a possibility, albeit remote.
"You need have no such fear." Van-Fem waved down his automata in acquiescence. Svelten shook his head all the same.
"I have nothing to fear from you. There are simply some points that bear...elaboration."
"Then ask, if that is worth all this trouble."
"I already have. This gamble, is it to your liking?"
"My answer has not changed. The gamble ended when you drew your sword. This sham you have devised is nothing more than a hackneyed vampire's game."
"You speak as if you are not one yourself, Lord Vandelstam."
"I much prefer the human ones. Even as an Ancestor, I am too old to play with my food."
"Oh?" Svelten raised a fair eyebrow in disbelief. "But is that not precisely the point of your enterprise? Should I revoke even the meagre credit I'd given you for having your food march willingly to your plate?"
"What…did you say."
The answer was an object thrown at his feet. Van-Fem stared at the rigid visage of the carnival mask that was the shibboleth of his court with no more of an expression on his own.
Monaco's most exclusive society. Lord Vandelstam's masquerade. The court of the crimson king. Titles and sobriquets accreted like moss on the aspect of the long-lived, ones he had embraced so as to make trappings out of the desiderata of his existence, as one whose mastery affords him to make light of his own vices. But no matter how wilful the charade, how subtle the means, he too held court and so derived his sustenance, bound by the inevitable gravitation to the tendencies that united the league of singularities where he belonged.
He had constructed a castle to host a gilded prison, as was his wont. Though there were no locked doors to hold the prisoners, even if the gentle price exacted was nothing they could not afford, it would take a great deceiver to deny it to others and to himself.
One kept his silence. The other spoke truth with a forked tongue.
"Why, when your castle is an arena where humans struggle for your amusement, to feast on their blood and passion as their coin fills your coffers, and to have them return to you again and again—I do believe you ought to blush when you call me a leech! Where this," and here Svelten gestured about him, "is the intrinsic form of my soul, that ship is the shape you've given to your own desires. A pretence to predation. Strip that away and you will find we are not so very different."
Absently, his fingers reached towards a tongue of flame burning at the end of a swaying rope. The ghost-fire shuddered as if shying away from his touch.
As always, Svelten struck at the thoughts that plagued Van-Fem the most. Though he had come to think of his Casa as a kinder compromise where nothing irreplaceable was taken, the qualms he'd once harboured lived on in its design. A doubt put to rest long ago cast a lasting shadow on the present. Van-Fem could not reject the notion of such a resemblance as strongly as he'd like when the same idea had long lingered in the recesses of his mind.
"It is a choice to be a wanton beast. I doubt you can even imagine that."
"Imagine it?" Incredulous laughter bled over Svelten's words. "Valery, you have spent so long in sheep's clothing that it's become your second skin. Worse yet, you are beginning to believe it. Shut in your little kingdom, you've lost all sense of perspective."
Ruefully he shook his head, as if the degeneration of his rival was a joke that amused him against expectation. Then, in a madman's switch, a cruel glint wicked away the humour from his face.
"But you can't change what you are. Puppets dance in the palm of your hand as you bleed them dry. Blood, gold, passion, soul - do you think what you take, how much you take, makes any difference?"
The blade within Svelten's voice was fully unsheathed. The more animated he became, the more his countenance contorted in ruthless angles. Fervour cast a livid glaze that darkened the scarlet in his eyes.
"No. Wrong. There is none. Our nature is beyond moderation. Our violation is beyond excess. Be it a drop or an ocean, to drink from life itself is a sin beyond penance. That is why we affirm! Why we push life to the razor's edge, why we crush the bulwarks of the self to grasp its primal form! To affirm all that they are—and then to take it!"
His clenched fist snuffed out the quivering will-o'-wisp. It was more zeal than madness that swelled behind Svelten's polemic, castigating a relic who had forgotten the ways of their kind.
Taking everything from them. All that is precious. All that makes them human. It is the act itself that defines us. And you, proud fool, even you—!
A deep breath hissed through clenched teeth like a sword sliding into a scabbard.
"—even you, deep down, know this. You would not have agreed to this gamble otherwise."
Restraint won out, not without effort. Svelten's tirade had revealed more than he had intended. Nevertheless, his lashing tongue had struck a vital point - of that he was sure, and so there was nothing for it but to slide the knife out and let silence infect the wound. In time the truth would be exposed - he'd spare his rival no pains in dragging it out.
Van-Fem had no reason to contest words that he could not deny. The white knight had, in fitting fashion, laid out the ontological fabric from which they had both been cut and clothed. Their mutual origin bound them to be judged by that limited measure; Svelten seemed to find no point to such judgement when their essential nature was unalterable.
How then could he say that Svelten was wrong? With what words could he make their differences known, mark the divergent paths they'd taken from the silvernight cradle and the progenitors' creed? Would it be possible to disclose his recent revelation, which he was still coming to terms with himself? Most of all, did he even want to?
There was no resolution to be found, on that he agreed. His feelings could neither be related nor understood. Such a thing was impossible in the first place, precluded by their history and firmly drawn conclusions. Whether that was a fact that he had willed into truth, he didn't care to know.
So he wore the face of resignation to an irreconcilable polarity, trusting his nemesis to make the inferences that would keep their distance unbridged.
"It seems you hardly needed to change your ways at all."
Svelten's brow creased in the briefest disappointment at the sidestep, before the confidence of one unsurprised returned to him. If the man wanted to bleed, he'd keep bleeding him. Nothing came easier to him.
"It reflects badly on me if you sell yourself that short, my enemy. Quoth the primus inter pares: 'the shadow of man takes in all light and has no light of its own', and you are no beacon yourself. Reject any association with me as you will, but in this we are alike whether you like it or not."
"If our nature does not make us equal - and to that you must agree - I hardly see how our actions may."
"I didn't say we are. You're content with a charade, your casino and the bloodbags you call friends. That kind of make-believe can't possibly satisfy me."
The undercurrent of suspicion running through their repartee had long lost its intrigue, Van-Fem realised. His senseless prattle and the reason behind Svelten's interrogation mattered little, so long as each verbal parry bought time for Flat to make headway towards his goal. They couldn't reach an understanding and wished even less to understand each other.
"That's quite enough from you."
It was enough that he knew the difference between them. Even so, Svelten's foisted kinship compelled him to declare it.
"Truly? What could you possibly object to?"
"Your mind is concluded on matters of principle, that much is clear. Clearer still is how little you understand of what you speak. What do you know of our oath and pledge, of the First's precept, to hold me to account? If an admission of imposed guilt is what you seek, seek elsewhere. If it's the unvarnished truth, then listen well."
Perhaps it was, for just this once Svelten complied, a glimmer in his eyes.
"The rites you mouth are relicts, commandments etched in broken tablets binding nothing but ghosts. The kinship of the old ones is long broken, the blood diluted by time, the purpose glutted with avarice. Degeneration is your claim and legacy, scion and Ancestor."
Their mutual title, mired in contradiction, was spat out like a curse.
"Inheritors of a fractured lineage, one and all. Pale shadows of your namesakes. Apostles of dead gods for whom there is no law or destiny, cast adrift into the world until you in turn became your own gods, whose aimless worship is death. If we were all made equal in our second birth, never have we ceased to grow apart thereafter."
Equality in equidistance. The ones who stumbled and grasped in the dark to recapture that former state were as far from the ancestral ideal as those who navigated eternity by whittling down that aimlessness to their own singular course. And as a matter of that course, it was between themselves that the twenty-seven were most unalike.
"Our power is frivolous excess, our lot to seek its purpose. Wrought by our hands are deeds that topple fate, yet like a child you cling to the comfort of predestination."
Beings of such excessive power must find a meaning for that power before it consumes them. To look for it in ancient edicts was to gnaw on the bleached bones of a saint in search of enlightenment. Revelation lay within oneself, where no room remained for any god or devil to determine it.
"So do not speak to me of likeness, ye claimant and slave twice over, and do not cite the laws that I saw written. The nature of the Ancestors is not yours to determine. Levy your war with word or with steel, but do not bore me with sophistries."
Such was the admonition of the ancient one. Of elder title though he was, myth among creatures of fantasy, he was not given to overt displays. Like a crooked dealer, the passage of years had gifted him with restraint while cheating him of the wisdom that he sought. Mingling in the sublunary world had quickly made apparent the empty vanity of cloaking himself in the regalia of a moribund lineage. Unlike his peer, the ivory king of the sky who wore the livery of his old master as a mark of succession, the crown and sceptre only made Van-Fem feel like a jester, spinning a fable to children that no longer believed in fairy tales. The age of gods was a realm of fiction to magi as to laymen. For vampires, it was a genetic memory whose revenants they feared to run afoul of. In that light his blunt recountal of their founding myth bordered on irreverence.
Whatever the expectations of him were, Van-Fem drew satisfaction from defying them. In the best of cases his status made for amusing conversation; Svelten's conceit, on the other end, was as risible as a crusader preaching theology to one of Christ's own disciples. Like a saint whose patience had reached its limits, Van-Fem allowed his lip to curl in a heartfelt sneer.
"So tell me, Svelten, should I expect an end to these theatrics, or are you satisfied with make-believe after all?"
The Count's indulgent smile and measured clap was a response in itself.
"Now, now, Valery, you really have gone too far, charging me with dissembling after a pretty speech like that! And yet I can't complain." He raised his hand to reject the notion. "I asked for your honesty and a lie earnestly believed is the closest thing indeed, for words are poison to self-delusion."
"I should petition for a rise in rank. With an endorsement as ringing as yours I rather think I could dethrone the King of Lies himself."
"To me there is no doubt, you are a master of your antinomies. You hold such pride in your mythology, a legacy quaint enough to paint the dome of your temple of hubris, where you flaunt your irreverence and clothe yourself in indifference to all that marks your own kind. That is my claim, Valery. That is what you have shown."
Every profound spirit has a mask; those who have lived a hundred lives can claim a great collection. The scattering of memory through reflection, calcified strata of cumulate experience. Of the ancient ones, some deny the passage of the world and preserve their true face so as to preserve themselves, and others still retire at great remove as ghosts that neither hand nor thought can reach. A few, however – those who chose to brave the currents of history and be shaped by its flow – wear their masks as their ephemeral aspects, the material manifestations of a syncretic being, and they slip from one to the other with a protean ease that has itself become their nature. And finally, one let the debris of each life become a foundation for the next, and as a city built itself upon the ruins of its previous iterations all bearing the same name, so had Van-Fem worn a single mask of unfathomable layers that was one and the same to his true face.
Piety and sacrilege, avarice and altruism, friendship and predation. The depths of his contradiction lay buried beyond his own sight, yet he would not be himself without it. Who can endure twoscore and five centuries of the same name, the same life? He had embraced the paradox at the core of his existence and so borne it lightly.
But to Svelten, who had no need for masks, the law of contradiction fell heaviest on those who had abandoned consequence, and therefore purpose.
"You are all that I knew you to be from the first, but my lady disagreed. Her view is that your spurning of her royal claim was an indiscretion repaid in full by my hand at our first meeting, and that you can put aside bygone grievances for the merits of her proposal – that you, specifically, will appreciate where she stands. She thought you worthy of her confidence, though in choosing me as a herald I must imagine she had an inkling of this outcome. After all, your answer..."
"...has long been decided."
"Just so. We are here because you turn your back to the inevitable. Because you believe the destiny of the world is one of your games, yours to forestall. An inveterate fencesitter to the last. Stormclouds are gathering and still you keep faith in your castles on the sand. That will be your legacy when all is done, faithless Ancestor. Castles on sand and castles in the air."
Whether he was acting as the mouthpiece of his master or voicing his own thoughts, the danger in Svelten's words wasn't couched in venomous insinuations; however, something in them seemed to have the opposite effect to the intended, as Van-Fem's chuckle boiled over into laughter that suited much lighter topics in more genial company than the vampire split between ire and surprise.
"And castles under the waves too! My word, Vlad, only you could paint so vivid a picture of my mastery in such an ill light. But tell me now of the faith that I lack – for once you have piqued my interest. You invoked the first Ancestor, but surely it is not they you mean. Are you loyal to the heir or to the father who is in the heavens?"
A flat stare.
"The princess then. She has far exceeded the expectations placed upon her, and for that she has my respect; I would not have agreed to build that purgatory on the ritual land otherwise. But faith is not something she has asked of me, and so the currency of what I owe eludes me."
It was a reversal of positions fit for one of the Casa's games. Van-Fem had recaptured some of the smoothness that characterised his public persona, delving glibly into that which was hateful for his opponent to divulge. To his delight, he could see Svelten's self-control waver in the grind of his jaw as he forced out his answer.
"My lady does not ask for what ought to be given of one's own accord. My blood signed the terms that I dictated – my loyalty is true because it is freely given. I wouldn't debase this pledge by exacting it from an opportunistic colluder, but...you have agreed to see her cause through. You owe it to be faithful to your terms."
As he spoke, the gravity of his words seemed to overtake Svelten's pique, and in turn Van-Fem's good humour lost its grip on him, until the two vampires shared a silence that, were it not for the ruins of their conflict and the remnants of their forces, might have been solemn. Then Van-Fem inclined his head.
"I understand. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to fulfil that obligation. I admit I did not give it due consideration before, but I am quite decided now. Altrouge will be disappointed, but she will understand."
"I see," Svelten said. "Then I am free to take your head for this and all your other transgressions. I should thank you for giving me the cause." His hands slowly reached for his blades, the hissing caress of steel like a serpent's last warning.
"Please, not yet." Without ado, Van-Fem's guard shifted its posture to readiness. "Your mistress bears no more upon our business, and so there is nothing more to say. After I have torn you from your enchantments, after you have returned all that is mine and paid for all that cannot be returned...then I will give you a choice that you can thank me for."
"Ahh, the boy." The vampire dragged out the words in his vicious joy. "I had almost forgotten. He has got quite close to ripening while we were speaking. The beauty of youth makes for fine music. I will savour him especially, all the more because he was yours."
"Mine?"
"Your pet, your friend, I leave the pretext to you. What matters is that he is precious to you, and that makes him part of the stakes."
For all his courteous manner in the matters surrounding his liege, this was a reminder to Van-Fem that Svelten's own contradictions amply accommodated both his chivalry and his depravity. The meaning, and even the possibility of the friendship between him and Flat was beyond the limits of the Count's imagination, even for the one who was lowest in his estimation. For beings like them who bore death and destruction with and within them, finding meaning in the experience of the human world by living alongside humanity was unthinkable. That was the frontier Van-Fem had made his home.
If a vampire gave a tiny bit of itself to its victims in order to take away their humanity, then he gave a bit of himself away to every human he met in return for a speck of their humanity. His gregarious lifestyle and this constant exchange generated an ontological friction that kept him awake to the joys of life and stayed the cup of poison fated to the deathless. Perhaps, in time, even the darkest shadows of his being would be abraded away.
To his kin whose immortality was a worm coiled around the core of their being, denying the defilement that preserved their purity was inconceivable. Svelten, who had carried his greed beyond the grave, would never fathom it.
"You used Flat to drag me into your game - that does not make him part of any gamble, even by your definition."
"Oh, but it does. This is where your mortal fallacy lies. A gamble is not a mere simulation of victory and loss. It is a war, a crucible for the convictions of those who seek to dominate one another. What they are willing to risk and what they fear to lose make the measure of their souls. And I always bet for what's dearest to a man's heart."
A thousand years of pillage and plunder backed the word of Finnablóð, the scourge who had denied the seas of countless souls and imprisoned them within his drowned limbo.
Now he raised his hands with his two blades - the dagger and the cutlass - held parallel like the balance of a Themis who had abandoned the scales for the sword.
"We have spoken of choices, your struggles with them in particular. I will give you a chance for remediation, Valery Fernand Vandelstam. One that you can trust in, because any of your choices will amuse me equally."
Svelten raised the hoarfrost-laden cutlass level to his eyes.
"Your little castle and its contents."
Then, while lowering the cutlass, he raised the dagger.
"Against the soul of the boy."
Over the ridge of steel, his crimson eyes were pools of welling blood. Anyone other than Van-Fem would have drowned in their own fear.
"Flat is more important to me than any castle."
"I told you, we are not playing for trinkets anymore. The chips have become souls. Two thousand souls, in fact. It would be a simple matter of numbers for me, but for you, what was it? 'A friend's life weighs more than the Earth'? Now that is a fine predicament you've raised for yourself!"
While his shoulders seemed to shake in mirth, Svelten's unsettling bearing was far from jovial.
"Tell me...no, show it to me. I offer you these lives if you give up the boy - there is no trickery in it. Two thousand strangers against one friend. What is more important to an ally of humanity? Show me the upshot of your convictions. Show me how we differ, Ancestor!"
By the end Svelten's voice was dredged up from the back of his throat, gravelly and raw. As his bearing sharpened into predatory anticipation, the refinement of his fair appearance and aristocratic garb took on the aspects of his phantasmal form. A faintly rippling milky hue spilled over the pallor of his skin, his clothes tattering like the wind-torn sails of a shipwreck, long hair floating freely in the air about him as they would underwater. Seeing it for the first time outside the heat of battle, Van-Fem imagined no other explanation than the appellation of the ghost captain reflecting an unembellished reality.
An aberration befitting a high-ranking dead apostle. It was a mystery whose solution could only come by direct confrontation - and one way or the other, confront it he would.
Svelten's choice was no choice at all Even if he honoured his deal, the Ancestor's prizes were merely opportunistic leverage in service to his true objective. He wasn't sent to Monaco to steal a demonic castle and spirit away a few of its richest patrons – his mission was to affirm Van-Fem's loyalty or else avenge his betrayal; everything else was a torment orchestrated by Svelten to sate his own hatred. Except, there was one thing he could not have predicted.
At the thought of his ally, the crux of his current dilemma, Van-Fem knew his mind was decided.
He was no ally of humanity. If anything, Svelten's prying had torn apart that pretense. Pushed to such action, he would sacrifice however many people it took to achieve his goal, just like a human could. Two thousand faceless patrons of the Casa for Flat was an exchange he would readily make if it wouldn't cost him the boy's friendship when he realised the price paid for his freedom.
A vampire did not sacrifice a human life, nor consider it a price to pay. To do so would be a recognition of its value that it is simply incapable of – like chips on a poker table, it was a simple matter of numbers. The difference between them was simply that only Van-Fem would consider the offer at all.
"I must admit to some confusion," he began, "for I believe I have made our difference very clear. What is more, you are holding out on me, Vlad. After all this talk of gambles and stakes, you have forgotten something essential. Or dare I say, avoided."
The deadly scales of balance turned on the vampire lord with murderous intent.
"Speak," Svelten growled.
"I have put everything on the line for this gamble to be worthy in your eyes, but do I sit alone at the table? Whether it is a game or a war, a gamble requires an equal pledge of its partakers. You said you bet for what's dear to a man's heart, but Vlad, I do not remember you wagering a single thing."
"I act upon my lady's honour—"
"Her honour is her own, that is no loss for you. No, I recall that you have taken more than a few souls from me. Things that I intend to reclaim, and others for which there is no simple restitution."
The debt was heavy, accrued over hundreds of years of festering loss and hatred. Only absolutes could satisfy it now. Van-Fem's oath brooked no other outcome.
"The heavens fall upon thee, Ancestor. I pledge all my powers to avenge those tresspasses."
Half-measures had failed to mediate the threat, and words had achieved no greater understanding. The only language left to him was violence that would imprint his message by force – the common tongue of his kind and perhaps, he thought, the only one Svelten had ever understood. Already the Count was mustering himself with verve, as though the long intermission he had contrived was an tedious obligation he had finally seen through. His theatric comportment projected a mercurial streak onto his inner calculation, but there was no concealing the vampire's anticipation of bloodshed.
"And so do I. It was inevitable, you know, that it would come to this. You lack the means to understand the nature of my loyalty, why I wish to see her beautiful destiny fulfilled. The elder title has neither gods nor faith, that much I've learned from my compeer. Therefore, I will carve my bloody devotion into your miserable flesh, that you may feel its depth firsthand."
The time for talk had passed. The cards lay on the table. Their conflict had exhausted all other expression but the most primal contest of annihilation.
Yet on that precipice of battle Van-Fem chanced a secret smile, for there was something Svelten had not foreseen.
"No, you won't. Your blade will never reach me."
Valery Fernand Vandelstam had no gods, but he did have faith.
And with that faith entrusted, he only had to play his part.