Redux: Lineage

I came face to face with a wrought-iron gate, heavy as a house and locked up tighter than a treasury. There seemed to be no release mechanism, crank, or lever anywhere nearby to get it to open. I took a step backwards, looking right up to the top of the arena to see that the gate didn't reach the ceiling. There was a good ten or so feet of space between the top of the wall and the ceiling of the room. I grinned widely, sheathing my sword and climbing, using the gaps in the gate as foot and handholds, soon reaching the top of the gate... coming to the part I always hated when free climbing.

The gate itself didn't slide right into the very edge of the piece of wall above it, instead sliding in the middle of it with a good three and a half feet of distance on either side. That meant that if I wanted to get my hands on the edge of the wall above it, I'd need to jump outwards, off the gate entirely, and try my hardest to get my fingers on the edge of the wall and hold on. If I didn't, I'd go plummeting fifteen feet to the floor, land on my back, and probably fucking die.

I got to the top, looking backwards to see where the edge was exactly and tried to reach for it. It was a no-go, with my fingers barely reaching the edge of the incline to the top of the wall. I was going to have to jump for it. I took a deep breath and tried not to overthink it. It was a simple move: jump back as gently as possible, grip the wall, and pull yourself up, getting at least my chest over the top to stop the rest of my body swinging and pulling me off the wall. If I over thought it, I'd end up psyching myself out every time and getting nowhere with it.

I could feel my toes sweating already and the skin of them feeling like it was creasing, a weird nervous reaction if there ever was one. I closed my eyes, exhaled once, and jumped, keeping my fingers extended outwards as far as I could and successfully gripping down on the edge. Using the momentum of the jump, I hefted my waist up to the wall with a basic muscle-up, feeling the burn of exertion in my chest as I lay my body flat on the top of the wall.

I sucked in a breath, lifting a knee up and over the edge, then using the leverage it gave me to pull myself entirely over the wall, lying on the wide top of it and sighing quietly. The adventure upwards had been more than successful. Now all that came was the way down. Usually, down was a much easier experience. You weren't actively fighting against gravity, your legs did even more of the work just acting as support for your weight, and you didn't exert your muscle nearly as much as you did heaving yourself upwards.

But there was usually an exception to that rule: the overhang.

The overhang was an absolute bastard of an obstacle that, while easily dealt with going up, going down it was a much different story. Going up you felt your way with your hands and remained steady with your feet until you were able to grab a handhold. Didn't work so well going down as if the overhang didn't have a handhold on the underside of it, you were in a much more difficult position as you were probably going to reach for something with your legs, find no handholds, and drop like a limbless rock to your death.

Luckily, the arena was only about fifteen feet tall, and I could cut about seven or eight feet out of that drop if I used the simple, child-friendly 'hang from your arms off the edge and let go' method. So that was what I went for. Keeping a good grip on the edge with a finger lock, I lowered myself down as far as I could go, kept my eyes on the ground as I looked for a position to drop, let go with one arm to allow myself to face forwards, and dropped.

I hit the hard ground with a pained grunt, my shoes not really being suitable for high-impact contact with the ground, dropping to a knee to lessen the impact as much as I could, before standing up straight again. I looked around the area outside the arena, noting old statues of what appeared to be gargoyles and dragons, unlit torch sconces, and a cold wind blowing through the place.

"There's a draft..." I muttered to myself. "So there's gotta be an open door somewhere around here... or a window... or a loose brick."

I shook my head, knowing I couldn't be wasting my time demoralising myself, and that I had to keep moving. If it was a door, it was a door, if it wasn't, it wasn't. No sense in wasting my time getting worked up over it. I took off at a sprint, following the cold draft up the long, dark corridor, soon hearing what sounded like the rattling of a loose-fitted window being pushed and tugged by the storm outside.

I reached out to Grael, trying to get a general location of where he and the others were. I could feel his presence, his general direction feeling like a warm tug in my skull... and that direction was almost directly above me. And judging from how weak the 'temperature' felt, we were some distance away from each other. Of course we were. This was a giant fucking castle that I was most likely in the lower bowels of. Didn't make any sense to have your giant minotaur arena in the reception area of the-

"Halt!" I heard exclaimed from a good few feet to my right, just around the corner of the corridor I'd run into.

My eyes shot to the side, readying sword and shield as I spotted a group of lightly-armoured soldiers. The glow in their eyes and the symbols on the foreheads; small wings with a sword in the centre, told me all I needed to know: Thralls with their minds willingly stolen. Meant I didn't have to feel guilty about cutting them down. They wasted no time charging me, knowing full-well I wasn't one of theirs. Their equipment wasn't anything special, seeming to be the usual guard armour: gambesons with a few plates stuck here and there, leather helmets, and pikes.

A pike was no major issue to deal with on its own. Hook it under your arm, bat it aside, get under it. Made even easier to deal with if you had a shield. But four of them? Bit more challenging than I'd like to admit. They'd keep me at a distance, probably stick to a formation, and try to skewer me. Getting behind them would be hard, getting up close to them even harder. I raised my shield up to a defensive position, knowing full-well it wasn't gonna protect me from any kind of shots to the legs. If I went low to block one stab, another one of these fuckers would probably end up stabbing me in the skull before I could even blink.

No... there were too many of them and too large of a weapon disadvantage here. Facing them head on would be suicide, so I had to pick the only other option I had: fleeing. I turned tail, bolting in the opposite direction as fast as I could, hoping I wasn't about to run into the Vampire barracks on their meal time break. If I ran into so much as one more of them, it was only a matter of time before they hunted me down and tore me to shreds. I came to a door, no idea if it was locked or not, as I was able to shoulder-charge it down without much pain or effort, the old castle's structure not being what it had once been.

I sucked in a breath as I ignored the slight pain in my shoulder, gritting my teeth and rolling the joint quickly, eyes scanning the room for any sign of where to go. I darted right, leaping over a table, knocking candles, plates, and other silverware noisily to the floor as I did so, heading for a door I spotted on the other side of the room. The Thralls were slowed down by their armour if the distance between us was anything worth noting. If I could put several rooms between the two of us, that would increase my chances of escaping and regrouping with the others.

Only issue with that would be them reporting to whoever else was in command here and getting the whole place on high alert... if they weren't already. Every able man and woman would be called to arms, formations would be organised, and the Vampires we came here to look for would probably disappear at the first sign of trouble, their task too important to risk being jeopardised by one of them dying. That is if we were right in what they were doing. I slammed through another door, rounding a corner and charging headfirst into another person, this one appearing to be a genuine Vampire. I attempted to stab her in the stomach as quickly as possible, but the proximity between us made it difficult to raise my sword before she was able to recover, tossing me over her shoulder with ease due to her enhanced strength.

I landed hard on my back, my hips taking the worst of it as they slammed into the floor in an almost whiplash-inducing fashion, making it all the more painful to scramble back to my feet. Before I even had a chance to think, a stream of red energy was being fired at me from the pale hand of the Vampire, appearing to be another member of the House of Kaine. It was once again instinct that kept me alive here, bringing my shield up and allowing it to absorb the blast. I was thankful that the absorption drained the stream of all impact force, as my legs were sore enough as it was after that landing.

It took the Vampire several seconds to notice her blast was doing nothing, killing the beam and staring at my shield with a curious expression, noting the near-blinding glow as it absorbed yet more power. She didn't speak, instead bore her fangs and charged towards me, knife in hand. A knife was a much better match-up so long as I didn't let her get too close to me. Needed to keep her at a distance with sword pokes and a lot of side-stepping, or else she'd get within an engagement range I couldn't strike at due to the size of my sword versus the shorter length of her dagger. It also didn't help that I was going up against a Vampire; a being that already outclassed me in strength, speed, and stamina already due to their magical nature.

I ducked to the side, keeping my shield up as I did do, to dodge a lunge, slashing outwards from behind the shield at her exposed left side, catching her deep in the muscle and gouging a good hole with the sharp edge of my sword. I could also make out a brief sound of burning flesh, the similar hiss made to meat laid out on a grill, as the holy power of the sword burned the cursed undead. She screamed loudly, whirling around with her right hand and lunging at me. I deflected the strike off my shield, a loud, metallic thunk sounding all throughout the relatively-quiet corridor. It was a move that left he wide open and allowed me to drive my sword straight up through her skull, hopefully killing her immediately.

Just as the blow was landed, the sound of footsteps came through the door I'd entered as the guards I'd met previously had caught up to me. The battle between the Vampire and I had been brief, but had also been all-too long at the same time, as it had ruined my plan for a clean escape and put me back at square one. The guards readied their weapons as I wrenched my now blood-soaked sword from the skull of the Vampire, the corpse dropping to the floor with a final, dying gurgle, before I took to running again.

"After him!" one of the Thralls hollered, the blood I'd spilled now probably having them baying for blood.

I reached out to Grael once again, sensing him still high above me but also much further 'behind' me than he'd been before. This meant we were moving in opposite directions, all of us scrambling wildly to find the other and having to deal with the maze-like layout of this fucking castle. I ran through door after door, seemingly unable to lose the guards as I did so, all the while burning through my stamina and knowing that if I didn't reunite with the others, I was more than done for. Another corner came and brought another collision, this time allowing me to take whoever it was to the floor with me. I pinned them down and readied my sword, hiking it up quickly and efficiently before spotting the raven locks and eyes of a familiar face.

"Anne?!" I demanded, confused as to why she was here.

She threw me off of her, sitting up an launching a throwing knife right into the eye of the first of the Thralls giving chase, killing him quickly and reducing the numbers in our favour. She scrambled up, drawing her sword and gripping it with two hands as the other three prepared their weapons, lashing out at her with a sloppy formation. Annerose deflected the point of the pike with the flat of her sword, then catching the shaft of the second stab with her hand, ripping it out of the grip of its wielder and tossing it over to me.

With the second disarmed and defenseless, she flicked her wrist over and lunged, plunging her sword into the skull of the disarmed guard and moving to take the third. Not wanting to stand there like a lemon, I cocked my arm back and launched the pike at the fourth and final guard. It wasn't a clean shot and nor was it a kill shot, the pike's tip poking into the gambeson the Thrall wore and doing nothing more than causing him to stumble back slightly, but it was enough for Annerose to take advantage of it. Like lightning she dispatched the third guard with a dagger through the neck and then, as gracefully as a swan, pirouetted on her heel to lash her blade through the final guard's jugular, sending him gugrling to the floor with his hands at his throat, pooling on the ground as he tried his best to cling to life.

She wiped the blood off her sword using the crook of her arm, then turning to me with a thankful expression.

"Nice throw," she acknowledged.

"Nice kills," I said, watching her as she closed the door they'd come through and rushed over to me.

"Tell Grael I've found you and to meet up back at the grand staircase," she said.

I relayed the information, the wolf's deep voice echoing a confirmation through my head before Annerose began leading me to our new destination.

"Where the hell did you end up, anyway?" she asked.

"Big arena, fought a minotaur," I said briefly. "Seemed to be the pet project of a high-ranking member of Verella's family. Gotta ask her about it when we get back. Why aren't you with the others?"

"We split up to try and find you faster," she answered. "It'd be useless Grael going off by himself as you'd have no way to contact us when you met up, so I came after you."

"Makes sense," I nodded. "Find out anything interesting?"

"Didn't really have too much time to study the architecture after you got poofed away from us," she said. "Spent too much time in a panicked frenzy."

A staircase came into view thanks to the torch sconces on the wall; a large, ancient spiral staircase that seemed to go up and down throughout the entire castle. I could hear footsteps thundering down it, most likely Zane's, followed by the heavy breathing of Grael. We waited for several moments after arriving at the stairs, seeing the other two round the final few and come to a grinding halt. From the four of us being together again, I felt a wave of relief and safety wash over me. Call it conditioning, self-confidence, or delusions, I always believed that when the four of us were together, it made the odds stack up evermore in our favour, even if we weren't invincible.

"Are you okay?" Grael demanded.

"A little bruised, but no worse for wear," I said with a confident nod. "We still on for the plan?"

"Of course. I see no reason to back out now," Zane chuckled, looking down the corridor to our right. "We going for the clearance strategy?"

"Definitely," Anne nodded. "It'll be much easier to take our time and explore the place if everyone else in it is dead."

"Right," Zane nodded, drawing his sword and smirking. "Shall we begin the hunt?"

"With pleasure," I smirked, my expression hardening as I readied myself for combat once more.