Victor of Tucson

Victor carefully descended the inner courtyard steps, warily avoiding clomping or scuffing his boots on the stones. Victoria’s obscuring mist had worked like a charm so far, clinging to the three of them, hiding them from the watchful eyes of Dunstan’s posted guards. Kethelket had flittered up to the top of each wall, lowering a rope for Victor to climb while Victoria clung to his back, a process Victor hadn’t much enjoyed.

Victoria’s flesh was cold, and despite the heat his body radiated, it never warmed. She’d held on to him, chilly, oddly rigid arms around his neck, and not made a sound as he climbed, but he’d savored the moment she let go, allowing the cleansing air to touch his skin where she’d held him. If he’d had doubts about her status as an undead creature, they were banished after that.

The courtyard was enormous and filled with barrels, wagons, coaches, and myriad odds and ends. It was a trivial matter to walk carefully around the clutter, avoiding the handful of guards walking about, and make their way to a side passage that led into an area that once must have been kitchens. The ovens were cold, the pantries bare, and Victor was reminded that Dunstan and his people, his thralls or “children,” didn’t take sustenance like normal, fully alive people. It was probably to their advantage; not a soul lingered in those big, dusty kitchens and dining halls, and they found an easily accessible stairway leading down.

None of them knew where they were going, but Victoria knew Dunstan and his people had discovered hidden depths to the keep. She’d heard him boasting about their expansive darkness, hidden away from the sun, the ideal place for people of his ilk to rest during the day. Victor didn’t know much, but one thing he knew was that when you were searching for “hidden depths,” it was probably best to go down. So, they descended every stairway they could find, and soon, they were walking through damp, dripping stone tunnels. Those tunnels were constructed of rough-hewn blocks, but the mortar was looser and patchy, with occasional stretches of natural stone lining one side or the other.

Once they’d passed beyond the courtyard and descended their first flight of steps, they hadn’t encountered any of Dunstan’s people, no vampyrs or wampyrs or whatever they wanted to be called, no people whatsoever. Victor was beginning to wonder if they’d entered some unused portion of the underground, a set of tunnels and rooms to which the invaders hadn’t yet spread. That doubt nagged at him for a while but was banished when they passed through a dripping, ancient stone arch into a massive, vaulted cavern, and Victoria softly hissed, “There!” and pointed to the ceiling.

Sure enough, straight out of a horror movie, Victor saw dozens of naked, gray-skinned, monstrous humanoids hanging from the great, calcified wooden beams that held up the vaulted ceiling. They were large, probably nine feet tall, and hung upside down with leathery, vein-filled wings folded about their forms. Their hairless gray heads protruded with long, pointed ears and ugly, noseless faces lost in slumber. Victor scanned the chamber and saw another high arch on the other side. He motioned toward it, and Victoria nodded, leading the way.

She and Kethelket were noiseless and probably would be even without her obscuring mist, but Victor had to concentrate, watching where he set his large, booted feet, careful to step lightly. Even so, with her magic aiding them, they passed through the room without disturbing the sleeping creatures, and when they’d progressed into the next damp tunnel a short distance, Victor asked in a rough whisper, “Are they always like that? They don’t change shape like Eric’s vampyrs?”

“His oldest thralls, aye. The younger ones need to exert Energy to transform.”

Victor considered Victoria’s words and then nodded. “I guess we’re on the right track. Hold here for a moment.” Victor concentrated, and, channeling some fear-attuned Energy, he summoned his coyotes. Being a part of him, they knew he was hunting, stalking something, so they emerged from the cloud of roiling shadows silently, padding around the trio with noses lowered, sniffing, silently circling them. “We’ll wait here a minute and let my hermanos prowl around and see if they can find Kethelket’s people. No reason to spend all day going down the wrong tunnels.”

Without direction, responding to Victor’s will, the coyotes drew near Kethelket, sniffing him carefully, then darting away down the tunnel, silent, black, cloaked in shadows, and invisible to Victor’s eye after just a few steps into the darkness, even with Victoria’s magical mist enhancing his vision. “You don’t fear they’ll alert Dunstan’s thralls?” Kethelket stared into the darkness of the tunnel intently, perhaps readying himself to react to an alarm or outcry.

“They’re sneakier than we are.” Victor grinned at Kethelket. “Even you.” He could sense his spirit companions, as usual, and though he couldn’t see through their eyes, he knew he’d feel it when they found something. Confident in that knowledge, he leaned his armored shoulder against the damp stone wall and waited.

“Your companions, are they a spirit shaping?” Victoria stepped close, speaking softly.

“Yeah.”

“As a Death Caster, I’ve always found spirit Cores fascinating. Few Spirit Casters I’ve met, though, had much power at all. There’s some prejudice among my kind about them; at least on Dark Ember, they’re looked at as primitive.” She hurriedly held up her hands and continued, “I know how that sounds, but I’m not casting aspersions; I’m simply noting that we were clearly misinformed.”

“Speaking of casting,” Victor replied, choosing to ignore her fishing expedition, “if we come upon Kethelket’s people and have to kill some guards, can you use this mist of yours to keep the noise down?”

“I can, but Dunstan will feel it when his thralls die.”

Kethelket frowned, locking eyes with Victor. “I suppose there’s a limit to the stealthy part of this endeavor.”

“Unless you two know a way to silence and incapacitate the guards without killing them.”

“Were they not undead, I could.” Victoria’s words were almost a sigh.

“Can undead be rendered unconscious from a blow to the head?” Kethelket directed his question to Victoria.

“Not easily, not these wampyrs. Perhaps with the sunlight from Victor’s banner, though I fear it will also banish my mist, which would thwart my ability to mute the sounds of conflict.” As she spoke, Victor got a sense of excited success from one of his coyotes, and he knew they’d found the missing Naghelli. Rather than tell Kethelket and Victoria, he concentrated his will upon his companions and tried to impress upon them what he wanted. He pictured the hanging wampyrs, then tried to direct the coyotes to find the biggest, greatest creature like that. When he felt like they understood and sensed that they were on the hunt once again, he turned to Kethelket.

“It doesn’t matter. When we break your people out, I’ll head for Dunstan, and I’ll make a pretty big scene about it. You all should be able to fight free; I’ll leave one of my coyotes to guide you.”

Kethelket looked him in the eye, saw his conviction, and slowly nodded. “Once we’re out, we’ll make an assessment. I won’t risk all of my people, but if we can aid you, we will.”

“That’s all I could ask for.”

“Assuming we find your people alive . . .” Victoria said, perhaps before she could consider the impact of her words. Kethelket growled and whirled to face her, reaching a hand toward the blade at his belt. Victor forestalled his angry retort, though, by putting a hand on his shoulder and speaking.

“My coyotes found them. I’m not sure how many, but definitely your people.”

“Why are we standing here?”

“Patience. They’re learning the layout of these tunnels so they can guide us where we need to go.”

Kethelket nodded. “You mean after we rescue them.”

“Exactly.” They stood in silence a few minutes longer, and then Victor felt a wave of excitement from his dark coyotes; they’d found his quarry. He could feel them struggling to remain quiet, to remember to sneak back to him rather than yipping and howling, surrounding their prey, and calling him to them. He couldn’t have blamed them if they’d done it; they were smart, clever helpers, but they had a nature of their own, and he was asking them to behave very much outside of it. Still, he exerted his will, calling them back to him, reminding them of their need to be silent, and they contained themselves, gliding through the dark, damp tunnels and caves, clinging to the shadows as though they were a part of them.

A few minutes later, Victoria gasped softly and pointed into the darkness; several sets of dark, smoky, purple eyes were bobbing toward them up out of the recesses. “It’s time,” Victor said, loosening Lifedrinker from her harness, grinning savagely as she hummed in his hands. He stalked into the darkness, and his coyotes turned to lead the way. They silently descended, turning at junction after junction, and he congratulated himself a few times on having the forethought to send them out hunting; he might have been hours exploring all of the branching passages, and each minute they spent down there was another minute they might be exposed too soon.

They passed half a dozen vaulted chambers like the one where they’d first seen the wampyrs hanging from the supports, sleeping away the day, and, all told, probably passed by another hundred of the creatures. Knowing that the ones perpetually in that monstrous form were Dunstan’s oldest, strongest thralls, he had to wonder where the more junior members of his army were. Did they sleep up in the keep in regular barracks? If so, it might make his job easier. He reasoned it would take them more time to get down to join the fight against him than it would take him to get to wherever his coyotes had found Dunstan.

As he contemplated, planning in his mind how he’d fight his way to Dunstan, visualizing his moves, the abilities he’d use, and picturing how he’d most quickly dispatch any wampyrs that got in his way, his coyotes stopped before a narrow, tall opening with arched, curved blocks holding up the boulder-like lintel. They paced in a small circle, and Victor knew they wanted to yip and cry, wanted to signal that the object of the hunt was there. He stepped forward, holding out his left palm reassuringly. He looked to Victoria and Kethelket and nodded. Approaching the archway, he realized it was much wider than it had seemed; it was just so tall that it seemed narrow.

He couldn’t see any light in the space beyond, but within Victoria’s magical mist, he could see rows of iron cages lining the far wall of an enormous natural cavern. High, stone-block arches held up a rough, cavernous ceiling from which water fell in steady drips down to pools dotting the uneven cavern floor. Victor could see the huddled forms of dozens of Naghelli within the cages, and he breathed out a sigh, releasing some pent-up stress; it looked like most of Kethelket’s people still lived.

At first, he thought they might be unguarded. He couldn’t see any wampyrs hanging from the ceiling, and the lack of light or furniture made him wonder if any non-monstrous guard would be present, but then he saw a faint flicker of silvery light from the left side of the cavern. Peering that way, he could just make out a small archway. He pointed, and Kethelket nodded, whispering, “A guard room?”

Victor nodded again, then gestured for his two companions to follow him. He crept into the cavern, stealthy and silent within Victoria’s mist, and when they rounded a heap of broken crates and stood only a dozen feet or so from the first of the iron cages, Victor could see into the distant archway. Two men sat at a small table with a tiny silvery orb of light hanging above their heads. They were playing some sort of board game that looked almost like chess. Victor looked at Kethelket and Victoria and pointed at the cages, then he pointed at himself and then to the guards. When Kethelket nodded, Victor stalked forward.

He was still a dozen feet from the archway when he cast Iron Berserk. He strained to contain his usual roar as he surged in size and power, and his vision tinted red. He must have succeeded, or Victoria’s mist was still working to hide and silence him because the guards never looked up. When he was just five feet from the archway, Victor channeled fear-attuned Energy into Lifedrinker, imparting her with dark, roiling, shadowy power. Then, almost simultaneously, Victor summoned his Banner of the Champion and cast Energy Charge, streaking toward the two guards and hacking Lifedrinker in a broad, forward cleave.

The two guards might have been able to put up a bit of a fight had they seen Victor coming, but he took them entirely by surprise. If Lifedrinker’s razor-sharp, gleaming edge hadn’t separated their heads from their bodies, Victor’s impact would surely have rendered them insensate. When he struck the guard on the left, such a concussion resulted that both men’s bodies crunched into the far wall with wet, bone-grinding impacts, leaving little doubt that they were destroyed. Victor whirled, red fury tinting his gaze, and stomped back into the large chamber with the cages.

He saw Kethelket breaking locks with a gleaming chisel and hammer, saw the Naghelli silently crowding the doors, and then he took in Victoria; she was standing near the archway, weaving a cloud of writhing mist that filled the opening, perhaps hoping to buy them some time by damping down the noise of their activities. Victor whistled for his coyotes, and they slunk out of the shadows, crowding close. He stared at one of them, letting his will be known, and it yipped and whined but hurried over to Kethelket’s side.

“That one will guide you out.” He looked from Kethelket to the men and women in the cages. “I’m glad you all are alive! Follow my coyote and listen to your captain.” They answered him with muted cheers and thanks, and when he turned his hulking form and started for the exit, he heard some of them asking Kethelket where he was going. He didn’t linger to hear the answer. As he stepped into Victoria’s mist, he said, “Don’t betray me. Listen to Kethelket. He’ll honor our bargain if something happens to me.”

“As you say.” She ducked her head, refusing to meet his gaze. Was he so terrifying in his berserk state? Perhaps it brought back memories of the ordeal she’d faced on the Spirit Plane with him. When he saw her mist burning away, he realized it wasn’t fear that made her look away; it was the burning heat of his banner’s bloody sun. With a rumbling growl in his throat, he strode into the dark passageway, banishing the shadows as he progressed. His coyotes yipped and barked as they followed him, somehow knowing the time for stealth was past. No, it was time for Victor to make some noise. He gestured ahead with his left hand, letting his pack know he wanted to find the big wampyr leader, and they surged past him, trotting up the sloping tunnel.

He'd barely followed them to the next junction when he felt their alarm, and then he saw the roiling, hulking shadows of a pack of wampyrs. Had they felt their lesser compatriots’ deaths? Victor had been expecting as much, so he didn’t react with alarm. Instead, he lifted Lifedrinker and ran forward, letting loose a terrible roar that shook the dripping water loose from the stones, showering everyone in the tunnel with a fine mist. He laughed as the light of his banner refracted in the damp haze, making an incongruous rainbow in the middle of the corridor between Victor and the wampyrs.

He felt like he’d been stuck in traffic, forced to drive five miles an hour, stopping and starting for the last hour, and now he had an open freeway ahead. He stomped the accelerator. Roaring and laughing, he charged among the big, leathery-skinned, gray figures. He hacked Lifedrinker left and right, and as soon as she sliced the first wing, she burst into molten, white-hot glory, adding her screams of battle lust to his grunts and roars. The wampyrs weren’t silent either, hissing, screeching, crying out as their claws raked his arms or slid off his armor. They yowled in pain and tried to retreat as he delivered vicious, mortal wounds, hacking into them like a butcher making scraps.

“You’re not going anywhere!” he roared, using his bulk to keep them from surrounding him, forcing them to face him one or two at a time and utterly dominating them. These wampyrs were probably as tough as the monstrous vampyrs he’d fought out on the plains, but he was fresh, and he wasn’t facing them in the hundreds, surrounded, bloodied, and beleaguered. He worked his way through the pack like a terrier let loose in a rat den, and in minutes, he was standing at the far end of a bloody, corpse-littered stretch of corridor, heaving and panting, blood dripping from every inch of his person.

His coyotes came out of the shadows, hazy purple eyes focused on him, yipping in a way that almost sounded like laughter as he urged them to continue on, to find the object of their hunt. He chased after them, winding through the tunnels, howling, laughing, and roaring alternately as he progressed. He was mad with battle lust, but only because he’d allowed himself to be. He’d decided early on that he would put on a show, savage his way through these corridors, drawing the wampyrs into a chase that would leave Kethelket and his kin in peace, allowing them to find their way out with as little resistance as possible.

It seemed his plan was working because he could hear the sounds of pursuit, and it didn’t sound like a small number. He could hear their claws scrabbling over stone in the gaps between his roars. He could hear their outraged cursing in sibilant hisses, and he knew they were frustrated by his speed and unerring sense of direction, thanks to his coyotes. His companions guided him through the maze and away from the larger packs of enemies. When he came upon one or two wampyrs, Victor’s axe fell with bloody, crunching hacks, severing limbs, cleaving bodies, and spraying hot, black blood on the stones. He never lingered long enough for the bulk of his pursuers to catch up and slow him.

Because they helped him avoid the larger packs and because they could tell their quarry was on the move, his coyotes didn’t lead him on a direct course to where they’d seen the wampyr lord. They followed their noses, yipping, braying, and howling their way through the subterranean maze. Along the way, Victor probably killed several dozen wampyrs, and he knew he could probably clear the place out if his Energy would hold out that long. As it was, he knew he needed to find Dunstan sooner rather than later, lest his rage run low. He needn’t have been concerned; just as he began to allow such worries to find root in his mind, he burst into an enormous cavern and immediately caught sight of his quarry.

Dunstan stood before a massive throne-like stone chair at the far end of the cavern. Perhaps cavern was the wrong word to describe the space, Victor revised, noting the high, massive wooden beams holding up the stone ceiling, the thin, ancient red carpets laid out over the marble-slab flooring, and the furnishings—tables, chairs, benches, and candelabra in their hundreds—scattered about the space.

Victor slowed and took everything in, sauntering forward, his coyotes yapping nervously as they walked around him in a loose circle. Dunstan was a big wampyr, twice the size of the ones Victor had faced thus far, with enormous wings that were more black than gray. Like his brethren, he was naked save for a thick, gleaming obsidian crown that sat atop his ugly, bat-like head. He had baleful red eyes, and as they watched Victor approach, he spoke in a deep, guttural voice, wet with loose consonants and the promise of violence, “So you come into my home bold and full of fury? You dare? I’ll bathe in your blood and spend the next hundred years hunting everyone you’ve ever known. They’ll be my playthings for millennia.”

Victor continued forward, trying to decide whether he’d break his rule about shit-talking. He’d gotten halfway into the large chamber when he heard his pursuers catch up and start to file in. He’d figured they’d do so, but he had plenty of ideas to deal with the superior numbers, not least of which was charging back into the tunnel and forcing them to funnel into him in smaller packs. He just wasn’t sure if he’d start the fight with the big bastard first. Dunstan made his decision easier when he growled, “Stand back, children. Watch your lord slay this great buffoon.”

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