BOOK 11: CHAPTER 23: THE CLOUDS PARTED

23 – The Clouds Parted

Engulfed in the fury of his transformation, Victor fought for control of his mind. He’d yet to figure out how to properly modify Volcanic Fury to give him the clarity of thought he could exercise under his other berserking abilities. Even so, he’d grown immensely since he’d first cast it. His will was like a mountain compared to the foothill it had been back then. He might not be able to act exactly how he wanted while under its influence, but he could, with a tremendous effort of will, sever the Energy that fueled the spell.

His internal battle took seconds, and during that time, Fausto continued inexorably gathering that dark Energy into himself. Nevertheless, the pilloried citizens were still screaming, the Energy was still pouring forth, and Victor felt he still had time to act, perhaps only seconds, but time nonetheless. He couldn’t strike Fausto. The dark Energy kept him at bay. Still, Victor had other options open to him now that he’d regained his mind.

Reaching into his Core, he pulled forth a broad swath of rage- and fear-attuned Energy and fed it to the pattern for Maw of the Broken Will. He’d hoped to kill Fausto quickly and not have to rely on a spell like that, primarily because he wasn’t so sure a veil walker would succumb to it. After all, Fausto would have a chance to pit his will against the spell’s effects. Victor had no frame of reference for the attributes of the average veil walker, so he didn’t know how his will would stack up.

Victor focused the spell right on Fausto, hoping to open the maw directly beneath him. Fausto’s Energy, thick in the air, deflected it slightly, causing its yawning crevasse to open just to his left. The chasm seemed to rip the stone cavern floor asunder, stretching wide as shadows, different in nature and texture from Fausto’s, filled the air, streaming out like purple-black smoke. Wind howled in Victor’s ears, and the swirl of the tear in reality, deep in the center of the maw, filled his eyes with hypnotic, pulsing patterns.

What Victor saw and heard, though, was only the maw’s natural appearance. Fausto, on the other hand, was subjected to its magical effects. Where Victor saw gathering shadows, Fausto saw his worst nightmares made manifest. Where Victor heard howling wind, Fausto heard the screams, roars, and death-cries of a thousand lost souls. Things pulled at Fausto, snatching his arms even through his thick Energy, yanking his bloody stump toward the chasm, inciting it to bleed again, in great spurts and splatters.

If Fausto needed to concentrate for his ritual, that was out the window. His eyes flew wide, his mouth opened in a rictus scream, and the shadow Energy stopped flowing from his many tortured citizens. Victor grinned. The vampire lord was resisting the pull of the maw, but he was wide open to attack again.

He took a single step and hacked Lifedrinker down at the vampire as he writhed, tugging and pulling against the invisible things that had hooked their talons into him. Despite Victor’s speed—he was still bolstered by Velocity Mantle—Fausto managed to twist at the last second, and instead of hacking his torso, Victor severed a leg. The vampire screamed, and fresh dark blood, black as ink, sprayed from the stump of his thigh. Even as he lifted Lifedrinker for another hack, the flesh knitted on his arm and leg, and strange, probing tentacles began to grow from the raw wounds.

Victor inhaled deeply, hacked Lifedrinker down, and blew out a cone of nullfrost. The vampire lord, struggling against the things tugging him toward the abyss, rolled to his side, and his silken robes, like a living creature, stretched up to wrap around Lifedrinker’s blade, deflecting her. Even so, Victor’s breath weapon blasted the vampire from head to toe, and his magical garments only protected a portion of his torso.

The effect was immediate. Fausto’s exposed flesh paled and cracked as icy frost coated it. His face, his neck, his legs—only one arm escaped unfrozen. Meanwhile, the dark things from the void that dwelled in the frost worked against him, worming into his flesh, poisoning his mind, and sapping his will. Fausto grew still, and the maw pulled him greedily into its dark abyss. He didn’t even scream.

With Fausto ousted from his hall, at least temporarily, the dark shadows began to retreat, and the bound citizens ceased their constant wail. Grunting as he hoisted Lifedrinker to his shoulder, Victor looked inward, judging the power remaining in his Core. He’d used only a tenth of his Breath Core’s Energy, and his Spirit Core was bright still—perhaps half depleted.

Victor stepped back from his maw, out of the area of its influence. He gathered his hope-attuned Energy and summoned his Standard of the Last Light. With Fausto more than indisposed, the shadows couldn’t fight the brilliant glare of the silvery sun on the flapping tabard that appeared behind him. Silver-blue light blazed forth, blasting the darkness from the great hall and exposing the thousands of iron spikes adorned with their human talismans.

Most of the chained men and women—and children!—were hooded with crude iron masks. Some wore leather or burlap hoods, however, and Victor wondered if that was a sign of Fausto’s hurried preparations. Had he run out of iron stock? Had his smithies been unable to keep up with the demand? Had he pilloried his smiths? Victor focused on the present, watching as the poor people turned their sightless eyes toward the blazing standard, somehow aware of it despite their bindings.

He wanted to run among them, breaking them free, but his fight wasn’t over. Fausto would be thrown from the abyss soon, and he needed to finish him. At least his hope-attuned Energy was giving them some relief. He readied Lifedrinker, watching and waiting. Would the veil-walker vampire be able to resist the horrors of the abyss, or would it break his mind as it had the steel seekers Victor fought on Ruhn? He’d badly injured Fausto in more than one way; surely that had to have an effect.

Victor stood in the bright light of his standard, watching the pulsating, dark abyss—somehow untouched by the hope-attuned light—and waited. Hopefully, when he’d broken Fausto from the ritual sacrifice of his populace, he’d ruined the spell. The last thing he wanted was for the creature to arrive, ejected from the maw, only to begin the process anew.

The maw howled and undulated, and Victor lifted his axe. A moment later, Fausto, still short one arm and a leg, was thrown from the chasm. Victor charged for him, ready for anything, but the vampire lord lay there, limp and listless, his flesh pale as snow, his eyes blank as his mouth soundlessly made the shapes for words. Victor felt no threat from him. He surely didn’t feel pity, either. No, the only feeling that came to him as he regarded the broken Ancient Lord was disgust.

He took two steps and brought Lifedrinker down with the finality and precision of a headsman. Lifedrinker effortlessly parted the flesh of his neck and snipped through the bone before sinking several inches into the stone ground. Fausto’s head rolled away from his body at the same time that the Maw of the Broken Will closed with a howling rush of shadow-laced wind. When it was gone, Victor lifted Lifedrinker to his shoulder and regarded the broken, dead vampire.

Was he dead? Victor picked up the head, gripping the thick black hair. It certainly felt inert. The eyes were blank, the tongue was lolling from the mouth, and the black blood dripping from the severed flesh of his neck was already running out—most of it had emptied into a pool on the stone floor.

Victor set the head beside the corpse and then searched the vampire for rings or other jewelry. He found seven rings and a ruby necklace. Most seemed like mundane jewelry, but two of the rings struck him as magical.

He stood, gathered his breath, and then exhaled a plume of magma onto the body, thoroughly drenching it. To his amazement, it twitched and thrashed, and Fausto’s eyes flew open—only for a moment, though, before the lava cooked away the flesh and filled the sockets. Seconds later, a black steam escaped the lava, rising into the air with a horrific wail before dispersing into nothingness.

The signal that he’d succeeded came in the form of great globes of silver-white Energy that started bubbling out of the magma, rising into the air, and gathering into a massive orb. Victor smiled, watching as it continued to grow, and then it streamed into him. With a mantle active, the Energy was immediately applied, and he felt the rush of the infusion just as he used to. He stretched his arms back and howled his victory into the massive hall, his voice echoing and rebounding, as the System sent him messages:

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***Congratulations! You have advanced to level 106. Because of your current mantle, you’ve been awarded 20 strength and 20 will. Your feats have awarded you an additional 5 vitality. Finally, you’ve been awarded 20 unallocated attribute points.***

***Congratulations! You have advanced to level 107. Because of your current mantle, you’ve been awarded 20 strength and 20 will. Your feats have awarded you an additional 5 vitality. Finally, you’ve been awarded 20 unallocated attribute points.***

***Congratulations! You have advanced to level 108. Because of your current mantle, you’ve been awarded 20 strength and 20 will. Your feats have awarded you an additional 5 vitality. Finally, you’ve been awarded 20 unallocated attribute points.***

As soon as he recovered from the euphoria of the infusion, Victor stood and walked over to the captive whom he’d earlier released. The man was sitting where he’d left him, but his eyes were no longer blank. He’d made the effort to cover his groin with his hand as he looked around, blinking.

“Can you speak?” Victor asked.

The man looked up at him, clearly disoriented still, but he managed to croak out a raspy, “Aye.”

Victor nodded. “I’m going to get help. It’ll take me hours—days, maybe—to break all these chains alone. Here.” Victor reached into his spirit space for a storage ring and pulled out a hammer and a pair of leather pants. “You can get started if you want. Let them know that help is coming.”

With that, Victor walked back to the long, red carpet that bisected the great hall and walked toward a pair of double doors. They’d been obscured by shadows before, but now everything was laid bare. He had the thought that he might make better time flying up to the ceiling and out the way he’d come in, but whatever magic Fausto had used to make him fall through the castle floor was gone; all he saw up there was solid stone.

The doors opened onto a wide stairwell with stone steps going up into darkness. Victor focused as high as he could see and cast Tactical Reposition. When he appeared on the stairs, his standard threw light on the rest of the journey, revealing a landing perhaps a hundred feet higher. Victor leaped up and threw the door open. Beyond it was the great hall that ran the length of Fausto’s palace.

The place was different now that the lord was slain. The unnatural shadows were gone, and Victor’s standard exposed every corner and cranny. He didn’t have time to explore or marvel at all the oddities and antiquities, however. He hurried to the front doors and, once outside, he cast Prismatic Illumination, fueling it with a tremendous outpouring of hope-attuned Energy. With a nudge of his will, he sent the globe high, so it hung over the palace and shed light on a vast section of the city.

Then, Victor summoned his wings and flew as fast as he could toward his army’s encampment. The light from his orb, much like the one back at Brighton, was already burning away the mist, pushing it to the outskirts of the city. That said, Victor had a clear view of the encampment, and he could see the soldiers had made good time working to build the perimeter fence. Their efforts would be wasted when he interrupted them and had them break camp, but he supposed it was good practice, regardless.

All in all, he had to admit some relief and a little surprise at how easily Fausto had gone down. He was his first, true veil-walker kill, and the vampire had hardly used any abilities, let alone anything overwhelming. He’d relied on trickery and a massive sacrifice to try to handle Victor, and it hadn’t been all that hard to disrupt. The fight changed Victor’s outlook. He’d always thought that elder races and societies that discovered Energy on their own, without the System, would be better at using it. After facing Fausto, and knowing he’d come to power long before the System had come to Dark Ember, he had to wonder if some of them weren’t all that good at manipulating and using Energy to improve themselves.

Would all the veil walkers of Dark Ember be like that, or was there a massive divide between the minor “ancient lords” and the “great masters?” Were the more powerful lords the ones who discovered great abilities and kept the secret to themselves? One thing was certain: the guy had been worth three levels, and Victor had to assume that was no small thing post level 100. It made him wonder if he was being smart about leveling his mantle. Sure, it was epic, but if he continued to bank his Energy until he developed a legendary or even mythic mantle…

His thoughts were interrupted by his arrival at the camp, and he slowly descended toward the large crowd that was gathering near the unfinished northern end of the make-shift palisades. When he landed before them clad in his armor and still carrying Lifedrinker, they cheered, and Victor held the axe up, savoring the brief moment of glory. Lifedrinker savored it too, vibrating in his hand, sending waves of satisfaction through it.

Tasya and Timmet were there, in the front of the crowd, and when Victor lowered Lifedrinker, they hurried forward. “You were successful!” Tasya was breathless, her eyes bright with excitement.

“You could tell?”

“Aye, milord!” Timmet responded. “We all felt it. Like the sun taking the chill off a spring morning!”

Tasya pointed to the sky. “Look!”

Victor turned to follow her finger with his eyes and saw what she meant. The clouds were thinning, and they’d parted to reveal the sun, making it more than just a brighter spot in the gray. “Good.” He nodded, turning to face them. “We have to hurry. Fausto has tortured the citizens of that city; they’re all bound in the depths beneath his castle. I couldn’t free them all as quickly as the army can. Break camp and fall into marching order. We take the city now.”

The two captains threw him a salute and turned to start barking orders, and Victor watched as the camp descended into chaos. He looked back at his bear, still sleeping in the roadway, and waved. “Go home for now, hermano.” As he severed the Energy to the spell, the totem broke apart into a cloud of silvery mist and was gone.

Victor walked through the surging soldiers as they ran to and fro, preparing to march, and summoned one of his storage rings from his spirit space. When he reached the center of the encampment, he began collecting the camp supplies, sending them all into the ring. As he worked, he concluded that this was a task he needed to delegate. It was time to designate a quartermaster.

It took them half an hour to get lined up and march the army to Fausto’s castle. This time, as he passed through the city, Victor was surprised to see sickly looking peasants crowding the alleys and streets, watching the army pass by, and shouting questions to the soldiers. Apparently, the citizenry had felt the vampire’s demise as well. If not, Victor’s massive beacon of hope was enough to give them a clue.

Victor led Tasya and two hundred soldiers with hammers and pry bars to the stairway leading down into the vampire's awful vault. When they reached the bottom, he summoned his Standard of the Last Light again and then set about helping to free the thousands of prisoners. For every one that a soldier could free with tools, Victor could release ten by smashing the locks in his hands. So, he went about the work, taking pleasure in every hopeful face he revealed beneath those awful masks and hoods.

Once they’d freed the last of the citizens, the soldiers moved among them, handing out blankets, cloaks, and clothes—supplies donated from the soldiers and scavenged in the early explorations of the castle. Victor watched for a few minutes, then moved to stand at the center of the great hall where he bellowed, “The vampire lord Fausto is no more! I have killed him, and now this city is free from his tyranny.”

To his surprise, the shell-shocked citizenry was more responsive than the people he’d rescued from the Pale Warden. People cheered and clapped, and Victor had a feeling it had to do with the fact that they’d been present when he killed the bastard. They’d felt things change. Still, the response was muted, and most of them simply sat where they were, staring at him. He cleared his throat and yelled, “Does anyone know this castle? Did any of you work here?”

He watched, waiting to see if anyone would come forward, and after a few seconds, a woman pointed to another person, a long-haired fellow who sat against the metal spike from which he’d been freed, staring with blank eyes at the ground. “He did, milord.”

Victor worked his way through the crowd of former prisoners and soldiers until he stood before the man. He glanced at the woman. “Is he unable to speak?”

“I know not, milord, but he was the caretaker for these grounds while the m-master slept. He—well, milord, he wasn’t treated kindly.”

Victor squatted before the man. Now that he was closer, he could see that the man was well past his middle years. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

The man slowly turned to regard him, his eyes coming into focus in slow motion. “Yes, milord.”

“Are you sick? Is there something wrong? Other than the situation you were in a few minutes ago, I mean.”

“I am Herringbone, milord.” He smiled, revealing several gaps where teeth had been lost.

Victor frowned, wondering if he was wasting his time trying to talk to the guy. He seemed either traumatized or simple-minded—probably both. “Listen, Herringbone. Do you know where the System Stone is?”

“Yes, milord. Fausto says ‘Keep out!’” He laughed shrilly, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down.

Victor took his elbow and helped him to stand, tugging the blanket one of the soldiers had given him close around his neck. “Let’s go, then. You show me where the stone is, and then you can rest and have a good meal.”