by DB King
“How do you know that?” Marcus asked.
Ben waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I got talking with one of his garden maids. Nice girl, you know. We got talking and one thing led to another…”
Marcus chuckled and Ben grew red in the face. “Sounds like fun!” Marcus said, and Ben nodded and grinned.
“What else did you learn then?” Marcus asked. “Any other rumors of interest to us?”
“Oh yes, lots,” he said enthusiastically. “There’s the blood-drained folk, that’s certainly interesting.”
“The what?” Marcus said.
“The blood-drained folk,” Ben repeated. “There have been a series of attacks in the Merchants’ Town in recent weeks, always on the outskirts, far from crowded areas. The folk who have been attacked are found dead, their bodies entirely drained of blood. There’s a special word for it… ex-something, exsa… ex…”
“Exsanguinated,” said a voice. They both looked up. It was Anja, dressed in her leather armor with her sword at her side and a wicker basket of bread, eggs, and apples in her hand, along with an earthenware bottle and cup.
She drew out the remaining seat and sat at the table, unloading her basket. “Good morning,” she said with a smile that looked a little strained. “The guard told me I’d find you two up here. Hope you don’t mind me joining you?”
“Not at all,” Marcus said with a smile. “I’m pleased to have your opinion on Ben’s news. Carry on with what you were telling us, Ben.”
“Well,” the big guy said, with a glance at Anja. “That’s about all there is to say about it. Their bodies have been exsanguinated and left in dark alleys in quiet areas near the edges of Merchants’ Town. Of course, everybody said it must be vampires, and the Council sent to Diremage Xeron for advice and help, as he was a vampire hunter and knows his business. But he wouldn’t reply to any letters. He just stayed shut up in his house and refused to speak to anyone about any of it.”
“How many have been killed this way?” Marcus asked.
“Oh, three or four,” Ben said. “It started about a week ago.”
“Well, that’s pretty creepy. Anything else I should know?”
“There’s the Maiden’s Hope out in the bay, that’s a weird one too.”
“What’s that, then?”
“A ship, sitting out in the bay for the last three days. It’s flown a quarantine flag, saying there’s a disease on board. It’s a ship from the Isles of the Sun, and some of the captains sent out a small boat to try to get some news from them a day or two back but the men on board warned them to get back. Just this morning before I set off, the word was that they had taken down the quarantine flag and were making for the King’s Dock, but I don’t know what happened with that.”
“Sounds worth investigating further,” Marcus said. “What do you think, Anja?”
He glanced at her and found her frowning, her food untouched.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that it’s time I came clean with you, Marcus. I have something that I’ve been wanting to tell you, and I’m not sure how you’ll like it.”
Ben looked at Anja in surprise. “Are you sure you want to…?” he began.
She waved his comment away. “I’m sure. It’s my secret to tell.”
Anja heaved a breath and looked at Marcus. She shrugged, as if throwing caution to the wind.
“Marcus,” she said, “I’m the descendent of a vampire.”
Chapter 10
Marcus felt his mouth drop open. With an effort, he closed it again.
“A… a vampire?” he asked.
“No, but the descendent of one. I have some vampire blood, that’s all. My father’s father was one.”
“I didn’t know vampires could breed,” Marcus said, amazed.
“They can’t,” Anja replied. “Not two vampires together, at least. But a vampire retains some human characteristics for the first week or so after he is first bitten. The change takes some time. One of my ancestors was… turned… during the old wars in the Isles of the Sun, the vampire wars. Before the disease fully took hold, he set the seed that would become my father. Then, hating what he had become, he walked into the bright sun and died.”
“Hold on a minute,” Marcus said. “What’s this about the ‘old wars’? The Isles of the Sun had some kind of vampire war?”
“That’s right,” she replied. “They keep the history of it quiet, but it happened. I don’t know the details, because it happened many years before I was born, but I know it ravaged the Isles one summer. The islanders won—barely—but they’ve never been fully free of the vampire curse. There were many people like me created in those days—hybrids, part vampire and part human. We are just the same as normal humans but sometimes, without warning, the taint can show itself and we can… change. We change and become full-blooded vampires. Darklings, that was the old name for the vampires.”
Darklings, Marcus thought, remembering the Species Marker he had seen on Anja in the augmentation view. Human / Darkling hybrid.
“Has that happened to you, that change?” Marcus asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and looking sick. “When it happens, it’s usually irreversible. It’s never happened to me, and most of my life I’ve been able to live normally and forget all about it. But recently, I’ve started to have strange dreams. I dream of a man, a vampire king of some kind. He has dark eyes, sharp teeth, a red coat, and a kind of monster with him. He says, ‘I will have my prize…’”
Marcus stood up so quickly he knocked his seat over.
“Come with me,” he said. Ben and Anja looked at each other. Anja started speaking but Marcus cut her off. “Don’t say anything more just now, just come.”
In the study, with Ben and Anja watching him, Marcus rifled through the papers on his desk until he came to the one that recorded his dream of the night before. He put it in Anja’s hand. “Read that. I had that dream last night, and it seemed important, so I wrote it down. What do you think of that?”
Anja read the document, her eyes widening. As she handed the paper back to Marcus he saw that her hand was shaking.
She was about to speak when the door creaked open. It was Ella. She looked sleepy and tousle-headed as she flew into the room. She yawned, looking around at everyone.
“Good morning,” she said drowsily. “Sorry I’m up so late, but I couldn’t sleep properly. I had the strangest dream…”
Half an hour later, they were sitting around Marcus’s study in silence. Marcus had poured them all a little of his brandy, and even Ella, who did not normally drink alcohol, took a taste. They were all a bit shaken. Ella had also reported exactly the same character appearing in her dream—a man with black eyes and sharp teeth, who ruled over a dark island realm and had a ship with a frightening crew. She had also dreamed of the monster that was with the man, and of the sinister phrase he had spoken, “I will have my prize.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing before,” Marcus said. “Anja, do you know anything about who this guy could be? And what could he possibly mean to us?”
“I’m afraid not. The teeth and the pallor of his skin suggest that he’s a vampire of some kind, but beyond that I don’t know. Why the three of us would be dreaming about him is beyond me, but it must mean something…”
There was a short silence, then Marcus asked the question that had been bugging him. “Anja,” he said, “why were you reluctant to tell me about your ancestry?”
Anja shrugged. “Wouldn’t you be? I guess I was ashamed of it. In the Isles of the Sun, where I was raised, my darkling heritage was always a shameful thing and I never wanted anyone to know about it. I’d almost managed to forget about it, but recently I’ve been feeling… strange. I started to think about how terrible it would be if I were to turn without warning, to lose my human nature and…” She stopped speaking, choking back a sob.
Ben stood and went over to her, putting a heavy hand on her shoulder. Anja reached up and gripped his hand as
she wiped her eyes.
“I’m glad you told me,” Marcus said. “I don’t judge you for it. No one knows better than me that one cannot choose one’s ancestors. But I’m glad I do know. If such a thing were to happen, it’s much better that your friends should be around to help you and deal with the issue from a position of knowledge. But until that happens, you can consider yourself my friend and ally.”
Anja sniffed, getting ahold of herself with an effort. “Thank you, Marcus. I’ve felt more at home here than I have in years, and I’d hate to think I’d betrayed your trust.”
The door burst open and Kairn appeared, a roast chicken leg in one hand and a tankard of ale in the other.
“Good morning, friends!” he boomed, blissfully unaware that he had burst in on a delicate moment. He thundered up to the table, plonked his beer mug on the desk and hauled a bag of polished gemstones from his pocket, tipping them out onto one of Marcus’s papers.
“Haha!” he laughed out loud. “Wait till you get a look at those, eh? Added value, that’s what that is. I sat up half the night polishing them up! What’s the matter? Why are you all looking so dour?”
Marcus couldn’t help chuckling at his friend’s inappropriate entrance. Not wanting to dampen Kairn’s enthusiasm, Marcus leaned over and took up a handful of the gemstones.
“These are great,” Marcus said, holding one of the stones up to the light. “These are the stones that we took from the dungeon run?”
“That’s right,” Kairn said proudly. “They were rough and uncut, but old Kairn hasn’t forgotten his jeweler’s skills. I cleaned them and polished them, and now they look stunning! They’ll fetch twice the price now. But what’s everyone looking so glum about? It’s a beautiful day and all is well in the world! I feel like knocking some heads with my axe, and was going to suggest another dungeon run, particularly now I see that my colleague in violence is back!”
Kairn’s ‘colleague in violence’ was Ben—the two got along famously well in a fight. Ben had to grin.
“We’ve just all realized that there’s something going on,” Marcus said. “It’s given us all a bit of a shock. Sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”
“All right, I’ll sit and you speak.” Kairn plumped himself down in a chair and Hammer came wandering over from his bed to sit in front of Kairn, staring at the remains of his chicken leg and drooling on the dwarf’s boots. Kairn, as he listened to the story, absentmindedly fed morsels of chicken to the dog. By the time the tale was finished, all the meat from the chicken leg was finished too and Hammer had taken himself back to bed with a satisfied sigh.
Kairn tossed the bone into the fire instead, where it hissed and spat on the hot coals. “I’ve never heard such a tale,” Kairn said once he’d had a moment to think it over. “The darklings of old, eh? I never thought that you had the least darkling blood about you, Anja.”
“Darkling,” Marcus mused. He had never told Anja about her status in the augmentation view.
Anja looked at him and nodded. “Darkling, yes. That’s what they used to call themselves. Vampire is a newer word for it. What about it?”
Quickly, Marcus explained the stats he had seen in his augmentation view in the dungeon. “I didn’t say anything at the time, because I didn’t know what the word meant and I didn’t want to pry into something you weren’t ready to tell me yourself.”
Anja smiled. “Well, it’s all out in the open now. Your magic is not to be fooled, Marcus, that much is clear. But, yes, I am a human-darkling hybrid, and the darklings were the vampire people of old. But even I don’t know much about them. They lost the war in the Isles of the Sun all those years ago, and the Islanders wanted to forget it and forget them. So, the darklings were forgotten, and those of us who had darkling blood were encouraged to forget that too.”
“Listen,” Kairn said. “I’ve a suggestion to make. All this is very interesting, and I won’t deny that I’m troubled by your shared dream, but there doesn’t seem to be anything in particular we can do about it just at present. Why don’t we go and fight some monsters in a dungeon to cheer ourselves up, eh? Yesterday was more fun than I’ve had in ages, and I want to bash something in the head before I do any more thinking and wondering today. How about it?”
Marcus chuckled when he saw how his friends’ faces all brightened at the suggestion. In all the news this morning, he’d almost forgotten about the new options available to him on the dungeon table from yesterday—the options to apply permanent augmentations to his friends.
As he thought about that, there was a sudden plucking at his attention.
Crucible: Arena: Gestation phase complete
The others were all agreeing with Kairn’s suggestion, and looking at Marcus expectantly. Marcus looked around at his friends, then stood. “Very well,” he said with a smile, “in fact, I have just the thing. Come with me!”
“Where’s Dirk?” Marcus asked as they made their way through the corridors toward the courtyard.
“Oh, he’s away to the slums already to check up on their progress. There was some question about building materials and he wants to see what’s going on with that.”
“Fair enough,” Marcus said. “Looks like it’s just us then.”
As he walked with his friends down to the dungeon lobby, he explained to them how he had discovered the possibility of adding permanent enhancements to their armor and their weapons.
“Your sword, Anja, has the ‘speed’ enhancement already, from the loot drop yesterday. In the same way, Dirk’s armor has the ‘silence’ enhancement, but you still have an empty enhancement slot on your armor, and Kairn, both your slots are free. I almost added something last night when I first discovered it, but I thought it would be better to wait and ask you what you think before making that decision.”
“How do you know what’s available?” Kairn asked.
“I think it’s like the augmentations,” Marcus replied. “Based on the spells I already have in my arsenal. But I’m pretty sure they are permanent, so I wanted to consult.”
“Of course,” Kairn said, “but I think Hero’s Might will be the best thing for me, in both my weapon and armor slots. With a native enchantment already on my gear, your augmentation in battle will be even more powerful!”
They got down to the dungeon lobby wall and entered the Grove chamber first. They walked to the central campsite area where Marcus conjured the dungeon management table and showed his friends the little images of themselves.
They were all pleased by the beautiful light script that displayed on the surface of the table, and Marcus did as Kairn asked, adding a Hero’s Might enchantment into both his armor and weapon enchantment slots.
As he held the spell over the slot, the title changed. It became just Strength. Marcus realized that the enchantments were different from the spell augmentations. The spell led to the permanent enchantment, but they were not the same.
As the Strength enchantment took hold of Kairn’s gear, it changed. A bright light washed over the dwarf, and his weapon and gear became covered in fine patterning. It was an intricate work of curved, parallel lines, so fine and small that at a distance he couldn't see it. Up close, however, he could see that it covered every surface of Kairn’s armor and axe. It reminded Marcus of the fine detailed work on the Arena token which he had put in the arena dungeon.
“I think I’ll wait for now,” Anja said, when Marcus turned to her and asked her to choose a permanent enchantment for her armor slot. “Let me get to grips with the Speed enchantment that’s on my blade, and then I’ll have a think about what I want to put in the armor slot to best complement the rest of my abilities.”
“All right,” Marcus said, “I can understand that. Come on, let’s have a look at my new Arena dungeon.”
As they walked back over to the cliff at the edge of the grove where the entrance to the arena was, Marcus asked Ella to explain the concept of the Arena dungeon again, for the benefit of Kairn, Ben, and Anja. She did so, explaining
that it was a place where Marcus, as the Dungeon Master, would be able to summon any monsters from his dungeon system, as well as any of the traps.
“So the dungeon is completely under Marcus’s control?” Anja asked as they approached the cliff.
“Not entirely,” Ella said. “I thought so at first, but now I’m not so sure. I think the dungeon may have some tricks of its own to play, and we would be foolish not to take that into account.”
They got to the cliff and stood before the massive bronze door that acted as the entrance to the Arena dungeon. Marcus raised a hand to the door.
“Crucible: Unlock!” he said, and there was a loud, deep click as the lock in the door snapped open. He reached forward and drew the heavy door ajar. It swung easily outward, and they all crowded forward to get a look inside.
Beyond the door, there was a short corridor leading to a flight of steps.
“Let’s do it!” Kairn said, thumping his chest with one gauntleted hand. Marcus glanced at him with a smile. The dwarf was keen to try out his new enchanted gear.
“All right, let’s go,” Marcus said. “But I’ll lead the way and you follow me. If there’s anything unexpected up here, I want to be the first to encounter it.”
They followed him in. He cast Ward Detect up the stairs to see if there were any traps up ahead, but there weren’t any. Satisfied that it was safe to proceed, Marcus drew his mace and headed up the stairs. At the top, he found a metal gate closing off the end of the corridor. Beyond, an expanse of sandy floor was surrounded by rising sandstone walls. It was bright, as if the sun was shining down from above, but he could not see the sky.
There was a handle on the gate.
“Here we go then,” Marcus said, gripping the handle in his left hand and tuning it. The gate swung outward, and a loud cheer went up from beyond as Marcus and his friends stepped out into the light.
They found themselves in a wide open, circular space, with walls of sandstone twelve foot high all around. Above the walls, ranks of wooden seating rose up to create an amphitheater, and to Marcus’s surprise he found that the seating was all occupied. Hundreds of people were sitting in the seats, talking to each other, laughing, eating and drinking, but most of all cheering and stamping their feet at the appearance of the adventurers.
