THE VROL TRILOGY

by SK Benton

  "Grrrrrr. Cowarrrrrd," Donus growled.

  That very vampire, Ryder Johnson, was not only a petty, evil man, he was also smart and had left formation long before they had gotten anywhere near the castle, preferring to wait until all of the cannon fodder had been eliminated, and hopefully had taken out defensive forces before expiring. As he rounded back to the south end of the structure, and saw a couple of ropes hanging from still-stable grappling hooks, he considered jumping to one, only to stop mere paces from the edge of the moat as a six meter long great white breached and landed back into the water with a mighty crash.

  Maybe I'll just hang on until Captain Crustyface gets inside, he thought to himself.

  ###

  Kangor was busy moving the defensive machinery around, and once he had it in place, enacted the second level of defense, which consisted of various quadrinium nozzles that sprayed out concentrated garlic water. Nine climbing vampires let go of their ropes as they instinctively put their hands to their burning faces; violently quick meals for the gargantuan fish in the waters below.

  Draagh ran up to Kangor and said, "Good job, my boy. Now let some more come up and release the oil." The werewolf nodded his lupine head and looked around, making sure that nothing rotten smelling would get anywhere near the machinery in which he was entrusted.

  Krynos entered the children's cubbyhole chambers and saw that all was well. The children knew what their king looked like in his death form, so it did not alarm them. But they were very aware that an invasion was happening, and numerous young ones whimpered in their enclosures, trying not to make a substantial amount of noise. Krynos paced from end to end, ready to protect the future of the Rhönen Dominion with his life, if necessary, but at the same time failed to notice that one of the cubbyholes was empty.

  Liliana, the former occupant of the empty cubbyhole, crawled through a dirty, narrow access tunnel, scared out of her wits, as she had heard even more of the commotion outside than the children who remained locked up. She kept her wand in front of her, and nearly fell down a hole that led to the lower floors, but her light source cast a great shadow on the nearly unseen abyss. Approaching it cautiously, she pointed her wand down and spied a rickety ladder.

  "Jennie, please be ok. I just want to have breakfast with you and Max in the morning," she thought out loud as she went to bravely reach out into the darkness.

  She grasped the top rung of the ladder, having it nearly disintegrate in her hand and almost causing her to drop her wand, but she slipped to the next rung and it held fast. Lowering herself, she went down a full floor and saw another access tunnel. Jumping over to it, she climbed through quickly and came upon a grate which gave her access to the living quarters of the Dominion's top officers. Pushing the grate with as much force as she possibly could, she found it wouldn't budge. So, thinking hard and trying to remember everything Jennie taught her, she tried to piece together a cantus that would remove the grate.

  "Undaincantatio aestus!"

  Nothing happened

  "Undaincantatio flamma!"

  Again, nothing, save for a small flame that had no effect on the iron grate.

  Thinking carefully, she then remembered.

  "Graveincantatio potentia!"

  The gravity push cantus caused the iron grate to blow off the wall, and set the little girl back a good meter, nearly making her fall back into the vertical access tunnel. She sat for a moment, breathing heavily, terrified that someone, or something, might have heard the ruckus she had made.

  Moving cautiously forward, she peeked her head out slowly and looked both directions down the hall. Squinting her eyes toward the end of the corridor, and with her superior night vision, she saw the ribbon she placed on Jennie's door the day prior. Liliana put it there as a little gift for her new friend. She thought it was pretty, and it was actually the only ribbon she owned, and as Jennie had earlier told her that her favorite color was pink (and to NEVER tell that to Max), the little lycan wanted her new friend to have one of her only possessions.

  She bolted out of the access tunnel and made a break for Jennie's room, quickly opening the door and shutting herself inside, her heart racing a kilometer a minute.

  ###

  By this time, dozens of protected, middle-tier vampire troops had breached the wall, and were running around, causing all sorts of trouble for the defending werewolves. Two even managed to kill Wilhelm, a phase 3 castle defender, ripping his stomach open with a claw-shaped, rhodium-coated scythe.

  Draagh used multiple cantuses to blast attackers over the wall and down into the moat, forever returned to their places in the ecosystem via the teeth of the Dominion's sharks. As he used his staff to split the skull of a particularly large, higher-caste vampire commander, he nearly stopped frozen in his tracks. Behind his deceased opponent stood someone he had not seen in ages.

  "Brother, I cannot say it is good to see you," the Primulus dressed in black groaned sardonically, "however, I can say that this is the last time we shall meet."

  ###

  The palladium-infused oil worked quite well, and had sent another fifteen vampire invaders to a watery demise. Kangor busied himself running around, dispatching various vampires with teeth and claws, occasionally stopping to pee on a vampire's head. He had already been shot with a palladium arrow, but the salubots in his system effectively rejected the foreign object, and after having pushed it out of the muscle in which it was embedded, continued to slowly heal the painful wound. Two, then three, then five vampires sent to ashen graves with his platinum claw enhancers, he was definitely making progress, and he only needed to keep it up for another hour. Thanks to the gift of a particularly powerful cantus by Draagh, the cage doors would automatically open for all of the imprisoned lycans once the inhabitants had morphed out of their death form. When all doors were open, the full, unfettered force of the Dominion would eradicate what remained of the near-dead interlopers.

  As he had already used all of the defensive measures in the mass of machinery at the castle top, he could only fight and defend. Running from one end of the castle to the other, he grabbed a leg of lamb and munched it while he moved, replenishing his reserves so that his meter wouldn't tank out. As he rounded a corner he was saddened by seeing four normals, lying together in a pile of drained death. One or more of Vladros' soldiers had accosted them and replenished his or their own reserves. As the law stated, the king was to personally console the families of the fallen and present them with an honorarium of gold, but it was something that the Krynos had not had to do for a very long time.

  Kangor stopped for a moment and checked to make sure that all were deceased. However, he detected that one was still alive and would eventually turn into a vampire, having been infected with the half-dead subspecies' virus. The werewolf nuzzled the man over and gazed into his eyes. There was fear in them, as the normal knew the laws. He had the honor of standing by his king in time of need, but that did not make him less afraid of what was to come to pass.

  I really do hate this part, he thought to himself.

  Reaching up to the massive, sapient phase 3, the man touched its face and choked out some final words.

  "Please… have our king care for my family."

  "Grrrrr… law. We carrrre," Kangor growled, barely being able to form the words with his lupine mouth.

  "Very well then, my friend - release me… please."

  Kangor tore the man's throat out in a flash, causing him to immediately lose consciousness and slip into oblivion. The man felt no pain, nor regret.

  ###

  Marnn wore neither sneer nor grin - his face was completely deadpan and revealed that he was deadly serious about the statement he had just made to his brother.

  Before Draagh could even formulate a response in his mind, he felt his body being lifted upwards and back from the force of a mighty gravicantus. Then all went dark for the ancient mage.

  Floating over, Marnn looked down on Draagh's still form, lying on the stone floor, surve
ying his sworn enemy and closest relation in the universe.

  "Such a shame that you did not join me, brother. We could have had so much fun - but no, you had to go and be the righteous one."

  Draagh regained consciousness and murmured, attempting to sit up, but Marnn simply waved his hand at him, causing the ancient Primulus to slam back down into the ground, a massive gash crossing his chest, from which blood soaked his clothing and spilled out over the cold deck.

  "Do not attempt to stand up. Just sit there and relax. Oh, and do not fret, dear brother, I will not let that ridiculous excuse for a living corpse get anywhere near you. I have other plans. So, that being said, you will take me to your grandson. He has caused quite a bit of mischief, and I am afraid I must dispose of him - while you watch, of course."

  "You shall not touch the boy," Draagh groaned, as he laid back and tried to recoup his strength. "He shall save his world and his species, and although I know that you care not for these things, let this be between you and I, brother."

  "Ha! You truly believe that I would do that? No, no, no. I mean to make you suffer your last moments of existence on this plane. Nothing would please me more than to see your loss - the only Primulus and lycan hybrid ever known of in the long, long history of existence."

  Even though Max's father, Michael, was the Taxiarch, he was, for all intents and purposes, a Primulus, as his caste level was above that of standard angels.

  Draagh cued into the armor he had created for the Dominion. He needed assistance, and he thought of a way to get it.

  "Donus, can you hear me? I am on the pathway between the west and north towers. A very powerful mage has taken my staff, and I need a distraction. I am fading quickly. Please, brother."

  ###

  As Krynos waited in the children's chamber, he heard the sounds of boots going up the stairs. The scent was of vampire, and even though their stink had permeated the castle, his nose was sophisticated enough to smell distance and velocity. Rearing back on his haunches, he prepared to defend his precious children, who were more than terrified, but had already been well trained to stay quiet, even in the gravest of circumstances.

  The door burst open and five vampire troops poured in, attempting to tackle the lycan king so they could detain him with chains of rhodium, but they were not even close to being fast enough. Krynos was a blur, instantly clawing and decapitating three of the invaders, causing them to fall as ashen piles on the floor. The other two attempted to open a cubbyhole, only to be met in the face with concentrated garlic water, squirted out of a bulb with a small nozzle. The two vampires screamed in agony as their faces burned, giving Krynos a chance to swoop by them, separating their heads from their bodies with his hind claws, which were not coated with platinum enhancers, resulting in massive sprays of blood covering the faces of shocked children locked in the cubicles close by.

  ###

  Enough troops had gotten over the wall and survived the mauling claws of Kangor and Donus to open the drawbridge and allow Vladros to majestically enter, still surrounded by his protective forces. As they filtered in, Ryder Johnson ran in from the western side of the castle and lithely avoided the great whites in the moat. Vladros looked around gloatingly from his protected position in the castle courtyard, while Johnson slipped by and ducked into a doorway, intent on finding Max and Jennie. A vampire soldier quickly approached his liege to give a status update.

  "Lord Vladros, even though we have suffered losses, we occupy the majority of the castle, and, as you had predicted, all of the fools have locked themselves into cages for the duration of the full moon."

  The reporting officer had various slowly healing scratches on his face, a testament to the skill of his command unit.

  "Find Krynos. I want his head on a platter before we leave this repugnant locale."

  "As my Lord orders," said the officer, as he bowed and backed away.

  Vladros looked up to the turrets and in between the western and northern towers saw great flashes of lightning and heard thunderous booms.

  "Ah, Marnn must have had his family reunion," he laughed, and hoped that somehow they would kill each other, saving him the trouble of doing it himself.

  ###

  Still terribly injured, Draagh groaned and continued, "Marnn, what happened to you? How did I wrong you so? What brought everything to this point, with you accompanying a rotting band of walking corpses?"

  The fallen dark mage looked down at his weakened brother, and after giving him a sneer, turned and looked out over the vast plains to the north.

  "Nothing happened to me. You were the problem. Let me ask you this - when was the last time Jah addressed you - or any of us? We are the workhorses, required to fix, create, nurture and prop up the weak and the undeserving. I simply offered you the opportunity to help make the universe a better place - to rid it of the needy and the weak, to support those of strength - those who would be the foot soldiers of our destiny!"

  As his chest wound, which was magical in nature, only worsened, Draagh felt as though he was going to puke, and that was saying a lot, as he had not vomited in roughly 1.3 million years. Staying down, and allowing his psychotic brother to ramble on, he looked around through squinted eyes. His staff was four meters away, but if he attempted to move his hand to call it Marnn would see, and then blast him over the edge of the castle wall.

  "Do you actually think that I would have joined in your plan of madness? We were created to build, improve, and to nurture. It is our purpose."

  "Do you remember Galicon S7? Do you? I spent 2,500 years helping that pathetic society get to the point where they could split the atom! Jah sterilized the planet with but a thought! All of my great works, ruined!"

  Draagh stayed in place and weakly shook his head, appalled that his brother was so nearsighted.

  "Marnn, they had interplanetary rockets and were going to send nuclear bombs to an inhabited moon! Plus, the attack would have thrown the moon out of the system's orbit and affected countless billions of lives later on. They had to be stopped," he whispered, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

  As he spun around, the dark mage boomed, "Bah! It was a sign of strength, and of the natural order of things. Were we not to support the natural order? Why, you pitiful fool, you would have taken the teeth from a tiger so that it could not harm a goat; that which nature intended it to eat!"

  Marnn kept his staff training on Draagh's face, as he started to recite one of the most terrible cantuses in the entire universe - the one meant to permanently eradicate a Primulus from all existence.

  Draagh gazed upon permanent death. He only regretted not having assisted in the salvation of mankind. He closed his eyes and accepted his demise.

  "Morteincantatio permanente…"

  ###

  Liliana hid for a while in Jennie's room, the familiar smell comforting her as she stayed under the large bed and listened for sounds, while staying alert for the scents of approaching vampires. Unable to detect any imminent danger, she eventually crawled out and started exploring the room, looking for anything that could be useful. Still hearing the sounds of screaming and fighting outside, she knew that there was danger, but all she wanted to do was to help Jennie. The sparse room offered nothing to her, until she leaned up against a bookcase and was nearly clocked in the head with Jennie's power gauntlet, which had been precariously balanced on a shelf near the top. Startled, she looked down at the spiked, metal glove and slowly picked it up. Even though she had played with it before, she had seen Jennie wear it on her left hand and keep her wand in her right, so she did what children do best - she imitated Jennie's movements. As she had previously done with her wand, she wore the gauntlet and attempted numerous cantuses, unaware if any of them even existed. After exhaustively trying to make something happen, she dropped the gauntlet and fell to the floor in despair, tears coming out of her coffee-brown eyes, which looked surprisingly similar to Jennies. In fact, if one saw them together it could have been inferred that they were r
elated, even though Liliana had lighter skin than the dega.

  What can I do? I don't want to die. Please, Krynos, protect Jennie and Max.

  Suddenly, a thought popped into her head. She remembered what Jennie had said that night when they were shocking the cat in that very room.

  "Draagh said we could be returned to our day form with a sufficient electrical shock."

  Picking up the gauntlet and placing it on her hand, she steeled herself and took a deep breath.

  "Electrincantatio quassatio!"

  A massive electrical shock shot out from the gauntlet, almost lighting Jennie's bedding on fire, and causing the little girl's arm to be thrown back from the force of the cantus. Her face aghast, she thought, Well, if I use this cantus I might light her on fire, but it is the only one I know.

  She smelled and listened for signs of vampires, or even phase 3 lycans, and detecting none, bolted out the door and down the corridor, directly for the access tunnel. She knew what she was going to do.