BOOK 11: CHAPTER 22: CHARNEL HALL

22 – Charnel Hall

There were no lights in the vampire’s castle. At least, there were no lights meant to illuminate the environment. However, here and there, Victor saw objects—trinkets, pieces of art, weapons mounted on racks—that shed a very faint glow. No doubt, they were enchanted in one way or another. His primordial titan eyes could pierce the gloom, casting everything in shades of blue and gray, with warmer objects, like the two rats that scurried out of the hall, practically glowing in warmer yellow and orange tones.

He was tempted to summon a light, blasting the chamber in rays of hope-attuned Energy, but he could see, and he didn’t want the vampire to taste his most potent Energy yet. He took a single step and paused, reconsidering. Was he being too prideful? Was he trying to show the vampire he didn’t need light in his darkness? Wouldn’t it be better to make the creature think he did need it? Moreover, wouldn’t some inspiration help in his current situation?

Victor concentrated briefly, tugging a thread of hope-attuned Energy from his Core and stripping it down to the bare elements of inspiration. Then, he cast Prismatic Illumination, summoning a brilliant globe of inspiration-attuned light. The shadows fled, and Victor saw the dreary entry hall for what it was. The fabric of the furniture was worn and frayed; the once-luxurious sheen of the antiquities was dry and cracked, in desperate need of proper care and restoration. Even the artwork was faded, the oil paints caked in centuries of dust.

Victor took another step onto the thick rug, noting the worn tracks in the fabric from doorway to doorway, and the dust and cobwebs that covered the rest. “Hard to get your mindless thralls to clean competently?” No response came, other than a soft, wordless hiss that drifted through the air, echoing away into nothing.

Clutching Lifedrinker in both hands, he stalked forward, glancing from the doors on the left to those on the right, but choosing to go straight, into a wide, arched hallway. At sixteen feet, he stood about halfway to the ceiling, which made the vampire lord’s castle quite grand, indeed, in comparison to the other construction Victor had seen so far on Dark Ember. Still, the overall neglect of the place made it feel more like a ruin than an opulent palace.

As he walked forward, his gaze fixed on a distant pair of double doors, he became aware of the deepening chill and the much heavier blanket of malignant, Death-attuned Energy in the air. The shadows pushed against the light of his orb, and his area of illumination shrank, bit by bit. If nothing else, Fausto was demonstrating a powerful wellspring of dark Energy. It was so potent that Victor felt a shiver tickle his spine, despite his primal heat and powerful will.

“Come on, then, pendejo! Let’s get this shit over with!” he growled.

“Does fear tickle your mind? Dread? Come, young flesh. Come. Provide a taste that will quicken my fading interests. Give me a reason to rise forth and ply my potent flesh among the mortals. Too long have I languished in boredom.”

Victor scowled. He hadn’t anticipated the vampire to be so…strange. Was he being literal? Had he been languishing in boredom here? Was that why the castle was in such a state? Hadn’t the peasants spoken of him as though he were a living terror, present in all their lives? Maybe they were fearful of the memory of Fausto, and his underlings provided all the terrorizing. Whatever the case, the vampire needed to die.

When he reached the double doors, Victor gave them a push and was surprised to find they weren’t locked. As they swung open, a great chamber was revealed. It, too, was dark, but in this case, high stained-glass windows let in some crimson-tinted moonlight, throwing the setting into macabre shades of red that failed to penetrate the shadowy corners. Victor stepped into the great hall, and his light illuminated a twenty-foot circle around him, but beyond that, the shadows continued to thicken.

Still, looking up, he saw the red-tinted windows and how they illuminated the plaster ceiling, gilded in filigrees of gold. Continuing forward for a dozen steps, his circle of light finally illuminated a raised dais, and atop it, a dust-covered, golden throne. He stood there, staring at the empty chair, irritated at the games Fausto played. He was about to turn, determined to search the perimeter of the room for a likely-seeming hallway, when dozens of sibilant whispers came to his ears, slithering and sliding against each other through the cold, shadowy air.

His mind jumped to spirits; Fausto was a Death Caster, so it made sense he’d employ all manner of undead. He spun, Lifedrinker held ready, peering into the shadows, waiting for the authors of those wordless whispers to make themselves known. They didn’t, however. Instead, the sounds amplified and multiplied, and soon the air was thick with hissing, inarticulate voices. It grew so maddening that Victor mentally prepared to do something—breathe fire, summon a domain, scream his rage.

Then, in a great rush of cold, sickening Energy, the shadows closed in on him, and his light was extinguished. The floor gave way beneath his feet, and he fell into darkness. Victor didn’t panic; a large part of his Core was made up of fear, and his will was strong. It would take more than a little dark and the lack of a solid floor to make him lose his cool.

He channeled some Energy into his magma wings and, as they burst to fiery life behind him, stabilized his descent. He hung there in darkness, cracking his wings periodically as he made a slow circle, looking down, watching the glowing orange-red droplets of magma as they fell. The frigid air cooled them rapidly, and he lost sight of them before they hit the ground. He continued to circle, descending through the pitch black.

Even the fire of his wings failed to penetrate the shadows, and his titan eyes revealed nothing, proving it was more than just dark; the shadows were palpable, driven by Energy that the lord of that castle provided. The tiniest mote of doubt entered Victor’s mind as a question, barely acknowledged, ran through it: had he made a mistake challenging his first veil walker in the heart of his domain?

As he descended, those wordless whispers returned, thick in the air, blending and contrasting with each other until they created such a din that Victor found his frustration mounting. His desire to act was almost overbearing, but he crushed it with an effort of will; surely the vampire was trying to make him do something rash.

It took a long time—many minutes—before the faint glow of his fiery wings revealed solid ground beneath his feet. He set down on an ancient, dust-covered red carpet. Victor stood there, straight-backed, listening and feeling, allowing his other senses to provide him with some feedback.

The voices had a different quality down there. They seemed to be more substantial—more physical. He could feel the faintest vibrations in the shadow-thick air, and Victor developed the opinion that the people or creatures making those whispers were there with him, just beyond the carpet on which he stood. He strode forward, and the carpeting stretched on under his feet.

He turned to the right and walked in that direction. Before he’d taken two steps, he saw the edge of the carpet and, beyond it, rough gray stone. Victor continued, and then he saw a rusty iron spike driven into the stone, stretching up into the darkness. Victor moved closer, until the glow of his wings illuminated more of the iron spike, and he caught his breath in horror at what he found.

A naked man was bound to that metal spike, hung there with iron chains, and as Victor got close enough to see his face, he saw that an iron mask was bolted over his head. He hung there, swaying and, from the gaping maw in that iron hood, one of the sibilant whispers issued. “Fucking hell,” Victor growled, twisting his gauntleted hands on Lifedrinker’s haft.

“You found another guest…” Fausto’s whispering voice said, so clear and close that Victor whirled, swiping Lifedrinker in a side-to-side cleave.

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“Haha! Fool.”

Victor scowled and turned back to the man staked to the metal spike. He was determined to set him free, but then a dark thought came to him: judging by the whispers filling the air, there were hundreds or thousands of victims like that in the dark. Was it some kind of ritual? Was Fausto getting some sort of power from their torments, or was he just a sadistic psychopath who’d grown bored with his existence?

He wanted to see more, but he knew that to battle those shadows, he’d have to burn a lot of Energy. For the first time in a long while, he regretted not having his coyotes at his disposal. Their senses were keen, and he could send them out into the dark to hunt for Fausto. He supposed he could cancel their current incarnation, sending them back to the spirit plane, and resummon them. As he had the idea, though, he came up with a better one.

Victor reached into his pathways and severed the thread holding his raven on the material plane. Then, with a thought, he cast the spell again, using inspiration-attuned Energy. The bird burst from a rip in the veil, the membrane that separated the material plane from the spirit plane, and the brilliant white light that shone through that aperture exposed a dozen writhing, hissing prisoners nearby, chained to their rough, metal pickets so tightly that their flesh tore and bled.

The bird squabbled and squawked, jet black, as always, but with glowing white-gold eyes. He immediately flapped his wings and flew up to perch atop one of the metal stakes. Victor didn’t speak his commands; he didn’t want Fausto listening in, but he mentally urged the bird to fly and to keep moving, using its unnatural vision to find his quarry. Thinking in those terms, Victor recalled his old ability to weave justice-attuned Energy, and he took a moment to regret not learning a new weave for it.

It was a fleeting thought and not fully serious; his alter ego, the Inevitable Huntsman, was certainly good at chasing down prey, but would he be strong enough, skilled enough, and versatile enough to kill a veil walker? Perhaps he’d explore the idea one day.

As it was, Victor decided that, while his raven hunted, he’d see what was going on with Fausto’s victims. Were these people the missing citizenry? Had he really done this to thousands? Victor reached up to the nearby prisoner and felt along his chains until he found a lock. With his gauntleted hand, Victor squeezed and twisted until the iron padlock came apart in pieces. Then he unwound the chain until the frail, bloody man began to slide down from his perch.

Victor did the same thing to the bolts that bound the iron mask over his head, then he took it off, fearful of what he’d find beneath. The man’s lips were cracked and dry, and even without the mask on his head, he continued to whisper his gibberish hoarsely. Victor shook him gently until his eyes opened, but they were cloudy and unfocused. That was when Victor saw the bite marks on the poor bastard’s neck, and he knew there wouldn’t be any rousing him until he’d done away with Fausto.

Gripping the man’s shoulders, he gently set him down at the base of the spike, and then he walked back to the carpet. Looking into the darkness, he shouted, “Come on, you chicken shit! Let’s fight!”

“Fight? What makes you think the fight hasn’t already begun? Even as you rail against the dark, your mind slowly slips away, drifting into madness.”

Victor was weighing a response when his raven sent him a mental nudge filled with excitement. An image came to Victor’s mind’s eye, and he saw a tall, pale figure, cloaked in red silks and wearing a ruby-encrusted circlet on his brow. He lurked in the shadows, not far at all from Victor, watching from the base of a gigantic stone pillar. The spirit totem’s shared vision, as always, gave Victor an impression of the distance and direction to the object of focus.

Mentally, Victor praised his bird and encouraged it to keep watching Fausto. Meanwhile, he didn’t look in that direction. He continued to face the dark shadows above him, and he shouted, “What are you afraid of?”

“Feckless fool. Good! Continue your descent to madness!”

As he accused the vampire of fear, Victor thought about his Abyssal Tyrant spell. Would his terror-fueled alter ego fare better in that place? Would it see through the magical shadows? Would it spot Fausto’s rich Core, a blazing inferno in the blackness, and, more importantly, would he be able to feast on it? Could he awaken genuine fear in an Ancient Vampire Lord?

Victor wasn’t terribly confident about any of that. It might be able to see through the shadows, but he had his doubts about whether it would be able to feast on Fausto’s Core. More importantly, it wouldn’t be a quick kill, and hadn’t he decided that he needed to end this quickly? Once engaged, once he was using his Energy, he’d be racing against the clock. Fausto surely had more Energy to burn, especially there in his castle.

He'd made a plan of attack, but his plans had all involved a straight-up fight, not a sneaky bastard hiding in the dark. Still, now that he had eyes on the vampire, Victor felt like he could pull things off. He didn’t think Fausto was right about the efficacy of his strange whisper and shadow assault. It was irritating, and it made Victor want to lash out, but he didn’t think he was losing his mind. Maybe if his will were lower…

Regardless of that, Victor wanted to keep Fausto content, believing his assault was working, so, while he prepared his own assault, he continued to gnash his teeth, brandish his axe, and rail at the darkness, shouting increasingly incoherent insults. Meanwhile, he ensured his raven had eyes on Fausto while he built the patterns for several spells in his pathways.

He hated that Fausto was surrounded by his chain-bound prisoners, because there was no way the ones nearby would survive their clash. Still, he knew he was out of his league and that any holding back would likely result in his death. If that happened, then all those prisoners would die. All the people on Dark Ember would lose their shot at freedom, at least from Victor’s hands. No, he’d try not to impact those people on those stakes, but he had to accept the chance that the violence might engulf them.

When he had the patterns ready, he checked with his bird one last time, memorizing the distance and direction of his prey, and then Victor completed the spells, one by one. First, he cast Velocity Mantle. As his mind and body quickened, he turned and began to run toward Fausto.

When his first boot hit the ground, he cast Core Domain, charging it with rage-attuned Energy. His eyes were focused on his destination, or, at least, on the shadows in the rough vicinity of Fausto. Victor had used that attunement of the spell a few times when he and Arona were clearing Du’s dungeon. It was an interesting domain, not so much in appearance, but in its effects. It filled the air with a crimson haze that undulated like heat waves. It made angles sharp, and the sounds of screaming and weapons clashing filled the air.

Beyond those physical changes, it had a profound effect on the people inside the domain, depending on who they were. For Victor, it focused his fury. It sped his movements, and it made him stronger. It dulled his pain and drove all thoughts other than a focus on fighting from his mind. His allies experienced something similar, though to a lesser degree. His foes, however? His foes received all the worst aspects of fury. They lost focus, experiencing something very much akin to a mad berserk, though without the benefits of added strength and rapid regeneration.

Victor’s hope by casting that domain as his second spell was that it would keep Fausto right where he was or even draw him into melee combat. He didn’t know if it worked, but that didn’t stop him from moving on to the next part of his plan. He activated the third spell pattern, slamming his foot into the stone as he ran and rocking the underground chamber with Wake the Earth. As the ground bucked and fissures split the stone, Victor did two more things simultaneously: he released a great cone of abyssal magma from his Breath Core, and he cast Volcanic Fury.

In his domain, and under the effects of his Volcanic Fury, Victor’s burning, sepia-hued vision cut through the shadows, and he saw, amid the cracking stone and fiery eruptions, Fausto cowering behind his crimson cloak, shielding himself as the void-laced magma splashed over him. The garment must have been robustly enchanted because it served its purpose, though he had to throw it aside, ruined, as the last of the magma washed over it.

All this happened in two blinks of the eye, and then Victor was on him, and Lifedrinker was screaming her mad battle-lust as she split the air—twenty thousand pounds of razor-edged metal moving so quickly, she might as well have been a bolt of lightning.

Fausto, his face a mad grimace, lifted his arm, clad in a dark, engraved metal bracer. It met Lifedrinker’s edge with an explosion of gas and charged red light, as the axe tore through it, releasing a tremendous amount of stored-up Energy. Victor was twice Fausto’s size, clad in incredibly dense artifacts. The explosion rolled over him, and he hardly felt it. Fausto, on the other hand, was thrown back, his arm gone, a terrible groove cut in his chest, but otherwise saved from Lifedrinker’s bite.

Victor was still bolstered with speed and power, and the heat of his rage rampaged through his mind. He leaped after the downed Vampire, but then, in unison, the pilloried prisoners began to wail, and dark torrents of Energy flowed toward Fausto. Lifedrinker was already cleaving toward him, but the air got thick, almost solid with the weight of the shadowy Energy. Despite his prodigious strength and mass, Victor couldn’t push her edge to the finish line.

“A brutal assault,” the vampire, clutching his pale, severed stump, gasped. He slid backward, inhaling deeply as the shadows continued to stream into him. “But now you’ll face the fruit of my toil.”

Victor growled, his mind thick with rage, struggling to think of a proper response, a proper spell to counter what was happening. Meanwhile, thousands of wails, truly desperate sounds made by people feeling their lives draining away, echoed through the hall.