Glonek, unsurprisingly, recovered fast. He had lost a lot of his composure, his face twisted in a scowl as he reached for me again, shrieking out a curse.

A futile effort, because a chunk of the ceiling even bigger than the vampire slammed into his back.

I had thrown myself backwards just in time so that both the Scarseeker and the oversized broken masonry sailed over my body. Another heavy crash resounded through the hall, which was growing dimmer thanks to the crimson fires from the vampire’s blood finally starting to die out.

No time to waste. No time to even look back to see just what state Glonek was in. I held my mace tightly and dashed straight for Escinca.

“Elder!” I shouted as I got closer. “I need you to—”

A scream, more of frustration than pain, ripped into my ears and made the air itself ripple. I didn’t even get to finish speaking, much less actually reach my goal, before I found myself getting body slammed.

Tural was back. He was almost entirely naked too, having ripped off not only the offending clothes keeping him tied down thanks to Gravity, but also nearly anything else I could do the same too. It was all I could do to keep his biting, snapping face away from my own.

“Get off,” I said, trying to kick back. But he just snarled and clung to my limb instead, a parasite driven to hold me down where his master couldn’t.

I cursed. Then I just threw my mace straight at Escinca.

The motion made me ignore Tural for a moment, which gave him an opening to claw over me and bite into my stomach. I screamed out, hammering him away with my fists. This time, a vicious kick nearly sent him sprawling backwards, but he still latched onto my foot.

“Elder,” I shouted, trying to ignore the pain in my ass that an ensorcelled Tural was presenting. “I need you to Bless the mace. Now.”

I didn’t want to break his concentration and I really hoped that his Ritual wouldn’t be screwed if he paused it and focused on something else for just a bit. But he heard me. Even as I struggled to keep Tural off me, I saw him register what I said. I watched him look at the mace dropping not far from him. My aim had been accurate enough. He reached for it and froze.

Shattering laughter barked out from the other side of the hall. Glonek. It was him. Again. He was trying to control the Elder because I felt Tural’s efforts lessen in ferocity just a bit.

My fingers dug into the Thrall boy’s face a little too hard. I didn’t want to hurt him overmuch, but in the middle of a situation like this, I wasn’t exactly prioritising fine control of my muscles.

“Yes, yes,” Glonek said from where he was trying to push the huge chunk of the ceiling off him. Half his body looked crushed, but he was still making an effort to free himself. Worse yet, he was succeeding. “I know this will work.”

“What the hell are you babbling about you fucking piece of shit?” I shouted. Almost. I had almost pushed Tural off me.

“This fight is glorious. I hadn’t thought you would pose such a challenge, but now I know for certain I will cross into Gold after I have eradicated you, cultist.”

I spotted something strange. For all that his body was trying to heal, Glonek’s eyes and nose and ears were all pouring copious amounts of blood out of them. I had no idea how to tell what that was for. Was he straining himself too much trying to control both Escinca—or at least, restrain him—and also Tural at the same time?

Still, I struggled. We all did. It would almost have been comical if it wasn’t so tense. Me and Tural wrestling against each other, Elder Escinca trying to forge onwards against Glonek’s ensorcellment, and the Scarseeker also struggling to free himself from under the chunk of the roof.

A trio of strugglers, we all were.

I laughed and kind of lost it. My fists turned heavy as I infused them with Gravity, then pummelled away at Tural. I forgot any notion of mercy. One sock turned into two which turned into a dozen as I reduced his skull to fleshy, bloody putty, ignoring the effects of his scratches on me.

When I finally, finally managed to kick him off, I didn’t waste time making sure I wasn’t faced with the same problem anytime soon.

There was no time to waste on him.

So I crushed half his body by leaping up and jumping right on top of him, landing with all the weight of a steamroller. Bones snapped, flesh oozed, blood spilled everywhere. He didn’t even scream, not even allowed that one small mercy under the spell that Glonek had put on him. I crippled Tural as best as I could, then quickly ripped off a piece of my robes.

I just stuffed it inside the cavity I had crushed and torn open in his chest and dropped it there, turning it heavier than even I was at that moment with Gravity.

Hopefully, once his wound closed around it, he would be trapped.

Maybe it was my success against Tural—even though a distant part of me hurt to even think of it as a success of some sort—or maybe Escinca finally found the strength needed to work past Glonek’s ensorcellment.

Because with a grunt and a spurt of blood from a few wounds that appeared, he finally managed to lunge forward and grab the mace.

I was next to him in seconds, reaching out to take the mace now glowing with shining golden light. Escinca hadn’t just Blessed my weapon. It was practically gleaming with the power of the sun.

“I’ve done what I can,” Escinca whispered.

I nodded. “And it’s more than enough.”

“The Ritual…”

“I’ll let you finish while I take care of that asshole.”

Said asshole had finally managed to rip himself free from the chunk of the broken ceiling, and he was mostly healed up back to normal too. I ought to have been thankful that I had gotten the opportunity to get my mace blessed, but that didn’t mean Glonek was going to make it easy.

“You think a meagre Blessing like that will stop me?” the vampire shouted.

I just growled and charged, my weapon both a shining beacon of hope and a blinding promise of death.

In a few quick steps, I was on the vampire, swinging as hard as I could. He dodged backwards, evading more swings, even the feints I added in. Glonek didn’t counterattack, perhaps wary of activating the Oath again. But I was careful too. I didn’t want to get caught around the neck again.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I wasn’t going to reach him at this rate. So I began Sacrificing again. This time, I focused on the speed of my swings, on how fast my arm could move towards my target.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Minor] Instance of Speed. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Speed raised by 1.5x in next instance ]

Glonek’s eyes were immediately suspicious of my intentions as the pace and pattern of my hits changed way too quickly. I wasn’t going to let him get a clasping grab in again, however. Once, twice, several times, and that was enough. This next blow was going to—

The vampire leaped back far.

I cursed. I had just barely managed to stop myself from wasting the enhanced speed of my next blow, because Glonek was well out of reach now.

Which seemed to amuse the vampire. His fanged grin was followed by him almost languidly raising his arm above himself, a burst of blood emerging from his limb to climb high into the air. He was flooding the whole area with a rain of burning blood.

I had my own counter to that. Field Manipulation came alive. A circle of repulsive violet force gleamed with writhing threads.

The flaming blood landed all around me with burning splashes, but not on me. Several of the droplets floated overhead instead, little burning stars daubing me in ruddy light. But I was surrounded by a sea of crimson fire.

Which was what made Glonek laugh. Because the next second, he rushed to his left.

Straight for the Elder.

“No!” I shouted.

My body instinctively hesitated. I was surrounded by pure agony. Then I forced myself to move as fast as I could using the Sacrifice-enhanced speed for a rapid dash towards the vampire.

Pain burned up my leg. Even if my pace meant I only placed three steps on the pool of burning blood, they still caught on, digging into my flesh, burning right through to my bones. It made me scream again, but nothing was going to stop me from reaching Escinca. From stopping the vampire.

It helped that the mana threads generated by Mana Injection was being used up by Mana Heal to take care of injuries from the burning blood.

I wasn’t going to reach the Elder in time. Despite the faster dash, the pain was slowing me down and Glonek was almost there.

The sprites slammed into the vampire just a few feet before he reached Escinca. It was Glonek’s turn to scream. Their bodies burned brighter than I had ever seen them do so before, each one a miniature sun as they attached themselves like enraged parasites onto their target’s body.

He countered immediately with his blood, spurts of it sizzling out and attacking the sprites back.

I didn’t know how many of them were getting wounded, how many of the sprites were perhaps dying at that exchange. I couldn’t tell if Enrico was still alive in that burning, blistering, branding mess.

All I knew was that they had stopped the vampire for me and I was not letting the opportunity go to waste.

With another bound, pained though it was, I was right where I needed to be. My mace glowed with all the shining power Escinca had blessed into the weapon. I swung.

And missed as Glonek’s body shifted in less than a blink.

My heart plummeted as, for a heartbreaking second, I heard the flutter of leathery wings, saw the vampire’s body morph into furred little creature that shot away as fast as a blink. Before I had even finished my swing, before I could even get over the surprise and muted realisation that of course a vampire would turn into a bat, Glonek was already transforming back into his more humanoid form right in mid-air.

His kick lased out with shrieking speed. It was all I could do to react instinctively, to turn my head just enough so that it wasn’t dislodged entirely off my neck.

As it was, I still screamed as I was sent flying. The world blurred, whirled, and even blinked out of existence for a heartbeat. When I came to, head throbbing like I had been punched with an anvil in my jaw, everything was still twisting around me. Shit. This was bad.

I spat out a tooth and a lot of blood, trying to force myself to rise as nausea threatened to overwhelm me. Fuck. Why weren’t my legs working? My vision was still woozy and slightly warped, but I managed to locate what was going on.

The Elder… the vampire…

A wall of fiery blood was partially blocking my line of sight. Worse, they were blocking off the surviving sprites too, preventing them from reaching the Elder, before whom stood Glonek.

“I really wished I could have kept you around,” the vampire said, almost with mournful regret. “You could have been my crown jewel, Elder Escinca. My greatest Thrall. And in fact, once I’ve killed your pesky cultist, I’m certain that being Gold will allow me much greater control over you.” His grip on Escinca’s kneeling chin tightened. “But I cannot risk it.”

I tried to scream and shout, but even that only came out as a pained grunt. Work, stupid body. It had to move.

Glonek didn’t immediately harm the Elder in any way, which gave my still clouded mind the briefest glimmer of hope. He was expanding his burning blood wall, pushing the sprites back as he walked over to Tural. There, he stabbed his hand into the Thrall’s chest and pulled out the weighted piece of cloth I had stuffed in there with a spurt of blood as well as a spike of bone, like a broken rib.

Then he kicked Tural’s twitching, now moving body straight at the Elder, throwing the bone after him.

“Kill him,” Glonek said. “Now.”

My worries and fear threatened to overwhelm my already pain-riddled mind, but I latched onto one detail. The swing of my mace had missed, but my Power had still generated threads of mana with its Augmentation. Just what I needed.

I used Mana Heal drawing the external mana back into me. That worked. That finally did it. My legs kicked back, letting me finally get upright, the throbbing around my jaw lessening at the same time. I wasn’t constantly spitting out blood anymore.

But I was still too slow. I screamed out as I ran.

Tural, ensorcelled by Glonek, stabbed the curved spike of bone straight through Escinca’s heart.

I was running full tilt. Glonek laughed as the Elder’s body slumped, even as new golden flames wreathed his body and burned him alive. I didn’t care. Not even about the wall of burning blood. New pain burst all over my body as I rammed through the crimson flames, dashing in fast and shoving away Tural’s suddenly motionless form as Glonek was too busy with his burning state.

“Elder.” My voice caught in my throat as I knelt next to him. My hands were trembling. “You’re fine. You’ll be fine. I’m here.”

Escinca just coughed up blood, his eyes growing glassier. “Ross… I cannot. He’s preventing me even now…”

I cursed Glonek silently. Even now, burning away, he was being an utter fucking prick. “Get it together.” I was too scared to just pull out the bone staking through his heart. “You’re a fucking vampire, now. You can survive this.”

“Ross. The Ritual is complete.” The Elder was wheezing but he was forcing the words out too. “I managed it, just before…” He coughed. “But it will take a little time to activate. I had to rush.”

“Just rest, Elder. I’ll defeat them, and then we’ll get you back to tip-top shape.”

Escinca almost seemed to ignore my words. “Ross…” He clutched my hand and brought it to his chest, right where the bone was poking out. “I’m leaving it all to you. You—”

“What?”

“When you came back, when you returned from the Sacrifice and told me plainly about your situation, I hoped that it was a success. And then—” H paused to wheeze, but went on quickly before I could say anything. “And then, when you continued to live here, to grow here, I began to believe that our Sacrifice really did work. Just in a different way than I had envisioned.”

It was surreal to hear that now. To listen to the Elder spilling his thoughts while Glonek screamed against the Oath flames consuming him.

“I’m proud of you Ross,” he choked out. “I have no right to be, not for my sin of dragging you here. In forcing this new life upon you. But I am.” He coughed out more blood for a second before going on. “Nevertheless, I must atone. And you… I have no right, but for you, I implore that you continue. That you use all the tools available, that you never falter, and that you allow me to make amends in the small way I can…”

He pressed my hand even harder against his chest with his shaking grip. Against his heart, my fingers tangling around the bone sticking out.

My face burned like I was the one who had broken an Oath. I was blinking rapidly, my eyes feeling wet. The emotions roiled within me worse than they had all night. Worse than they had in ages.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had lost something—someone—who had made me feel this sort of aching loss. Who had made such a gaping, cloying hollowness start to consume me from within. Maybe when my dad had died, but that had been ages ago.

But I was done letting this night—this fucking plan of Glonek and his army of Scarthralls—make me dance to their tune. I was done being the one reacting.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, Elder,” I said, my hand squeezing on his chest.

He gasped lightly. “You are, Ross.”

“I will be.”

I had enough Power to crush into the Elder’s chest, especially thanks to the wound already there, and find the heart. One that was barely even pulsing. With a wet ripping sound that branded itself into my soul, I pulled it out, thick but withering veins and arteries still connected to it.

Then I Sacrificed it.