Redux: Lineage

Four of us... the four of us.

It was at that moment that I realised something. There wasn't four of us. There was meant to be five.

"Guys, where the hell is Svea?" I asked, whirling around on the group with a worried expression.

"You didn't tell him?" Zane asked, turning to look at Annerose.

"I was a little busy, didn't really have time for a recap," she shrugged, then turning to me. "Svea was able to track down those Vampires we're looking for. Said she was going off to find them by herself and make sure they didn't escape while we found you."

"How nice of her to outright abandon the rescue effort," I said in a disgruntled fashion.

"It was moreso because she knew we'd be able to handle it," Grael sighed, shaking his head slowly. "Do you have any method of contacting her?"

"Uh... not that I can recall right now," I said, scratching the back of my head.

"Then how the hell are we supposed to find her?" Zane asked.

An explosion proceeded to rock the entire castle from foundation to top floor, causing dust and stone chips to rain from the ceiling briefly as the ancient stone was tested. The four of us were silent for a long moment, looking at the direction the blast had come from before slowly turning our attention to the staircase.

"Three guesses..." Grael commented.

"Of course," I nodded, the rest of us taking off up the stairs and trying to track down the explosion.

I'd expected Grael would be of great use here, using his nose to track down the scent of the explosion, whether the scent trail was smoke, fire, chemicals or burning flesh... but the large amount of bodies that started on the eighth floor were a good indicator that Svea had probably gone this way.

"Is she really that dangerous?" Anne asked in a queasy expression, stepping over the disembowelled, beheaded, and berserk-ed corpses of both Thrall and Vampire alike.

I crouched down, looking at the injuries on the bodies for a brief moment.

"Large incisions, pairs of three, slight serration on the upcurve of the slice..." I muttered. "I believe Svea's shifted into a dragon form."

"A dragon form?" Anne questioned.

"Clearly not her usual one," I said, standing up and moving towards the door at the end of the corridor, being careful not to slip on the blood. "A proper dragon transformation would be too big, too bulky for combat in here. If I had to guess, I'd say she's switched into that half-and-half form she mentioned earlier."

"And it seems to be dangerous," Zane said, taking point on the group and readying himself to protect us.

As we made our way through the hall of corpses, we could see signs of magical battle; walls scarred with fire, ice, and rot. Bricks shattered and torn out of the walls still crackled with telekinetic energy as we made our way past them, the sounds of draconic roars and ongoing battle getting louder and louder. I imagined the battle was going Svea's way... until I heard a very loud, very pained scream from what I presumed was her.

The four of us bolted, weapons in hand and teeth gritted, charging down a large wooden door, and entering what seemed to be the central chamber for the place. Eyes darted in all directions, Zane noticing the five Vampires firing some kind of magic energy at their foe, Anne noticed the large altar behind them, Grael noticed the piles of bodies...

And I noticed Svea, in that half-dragon form with a spear in her side, an ice spike through her shoulder, and blood smearing the white scales that covered her body. With shield in hand, I broke formation, ordering Anne and Zane to disrupt the magical beams that were seemingly holding Svea down. Grael followed after them, making it over to the Vampires faster than the other two and sinking his teeth into the throat of one of them, killing off their beam.

I got in front of Svea, holding my shield out and allowing the beams of magic to slam straight into it. I wasn't pushed back by them, but I stepped back voluntarily against Svea's chest, feeling the heat of the blood-dragoness' body radiate through me.

"Richter..." she groaned. "Stand clear..."

"Not a chance," I said, hearing my shield begin to hum louder and louder as it absorbed more magic.

I looked up, seeing the beams getting cut off as the remaining four Vampires were forced to deal with the other three. Zane cut one so deep in the neck that it's head nearly came clean off, Annerose slicing through the neck as she'd done before, pirouetting once again and delivering a second slice that took the head clean off, while Grael used his powerful back legs to kick the one of them so hard in the chest it sent them flying back into the altar, snapping their spine over the back of it and breaking their neck as it hit the table.

One more remained standing, backed away into a corner as they charged up their magical power, an enormous blue ball of energy that they looked more than ready to fire off. I knew I couldn't make it to them in time, so I had no chance of blocking that shot with my shield. I tried my hardest, putting on the best sprint I had in me as I struggled to close the gap... only for a bolt of ice to fly from over my shoulder, spearing the Vampire in the skull and pinning them to the wall. The ball dissipated almost immediately, the sense of terror in the room dying down in a matter of moments as I turned around, seeing Svea's clawed hand outstretched with the remnants of an ice spell on it.

Now that the moment was calmer, I had a better chance to go over her injuries. Her draconic body had stood up to most of the damage, but those weakened scales around her stomach had left her exposed. The spear in her side didn't appear to be lethal, moreso something that had sunk in just enough to be painful. I made no attempt to remove it, instead gliding my eyes up her flat, scaly torso to the shattered fangs she had in her mouth and the large cut she had over her eye.

A brief inspection told me the cut was mostly superficial, nothing more than a large slash in the flesh that hadn't caught anything major. Svea collapsed onto her haunches in an exhausted fashion, pulling the spear from her side and tossing it away, the large metal weapon clanging loudly as she healed her injuries, soon returning to an uninjured, if still blood-soaked, version of herself.

"You holding together, soldier?" Zane asked, sheathing his sword and walking over to us.

"About as much as I need to," Svea panted, clearly exhausted from the battle.

"That must've been some scuffle," I said, noting the damage to the room. "You're already plenty strong, magic and otherwise. What the hell did they hit you with?"

"Protective wards," she spat out, leaning her head against the wall she rested near and trying to regulate her breathing through her long muzzle. "The explosive kind, too. You finally manage to deplete them and then they use their last ounce of power to explode. Caught me off-guard... opened me up more than I'm proud to admit."

"You're alright, right?" I asked, gently patting her shoulder and smiling. "Nothing more than your pride hit too badly?"

"No, I'm more than okay," she smiled. "Thanks to all of you."

"I'm sure you could've handled it without us," Annerose shrugged. "Big, strong dragon like you."

"If only," she said, getting back to her feet and taking a deep breath.

She waved her hand briefly, shifting back into her normal human form in a flash of light and set to adjusting the fit of her dress afterwards.

"I'll perfect that eventually," she muttered, rolling her eyes at her inability to fit it properly. "Now, shall we take a look around?"

"Can you tell me how to work this first?" I asked, holding up the bright, almost screaming-with-energy shield I was carrying on my left arm. "I've been in nearly three situations where it would've been a lot of help where it's been fuck all more than a torch."

"Ah, yes," Svea nodded. "I never did get around to explaining its finer workings before you vanished."

She walked behind me, placing her hands on my shoulders as she instructed me on how to fire the shield.

"Raise it to defend yourself, place your other hand on the flat of it, and merely will it to fire," she said.

I did as told, squaring my stance, just in case it were to push back, and focused my mind. After a quiet grunt from myself an ungodly large torrent of fire, ice, and all the other kinds of magic I'd absorbed with it blasted a hole through the wall across the chamber. I was thankful Svea was there to steady me, as the blast did give some push back that probably would've knocked me flat if she wasn't. I staggered back briefly when it first fired, only for Svea to push her large, warm form against me to keep me as steady as she could.

"I'm sure you figured it out yourself, but I'd advise not letting it get that overcharged again," she said, stepping back from me and gently pulling her sleeves down, getting them in the right place. "You want to wait until the entire face is glowing, but if it starts making an audible noise, it needs to be fired, or else you'll risk hurting yourself when you next come to use it."

"Right," I said, looking at the shield's much quieter face with a knowing expression. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks, Svea."

"Not a problem," she beamed, turning her attention back to the altar. "Now, when I interrupted out Vampiric friends, they were spending a good amount of time and energy into working on whatever it is they've got up there."

The rest of us followed behind Svea, wanting to see what was on the altar, as she continued to speak.

"Now, I never got a good look at exactly what it was they were working on, but the kind of magic they were using appeared to be some kind of necro..." she said, trailing off as we got to the altar.

I wondered why she'd fallen silent, casting my eyes to the table and finding myself rather speechless as well. It was a coffin, an extravagant coffin, laden with gold, jewels, and inscriptions worth more than even the greatest of rulers. It was a murky green colour, whether by design or age, I knew not, and it sat at an enormous seven feet in length, with the thick lid on the other side of the altar.

The coffin itself was impressive on its own, but it was what was inside the coffin that brought terror to my eyes. It was a skeleton, not a mummy, not a decomposed body with some hair and clothing still on it. A skeleton in the coffin that looked as it if had been picked clean intentionally with the bones being coated in what appeared to be silver. My mind flared up with memory, something about the silver skeleton seeming familiar. I looked over the rest of it, seeing a necklace... no, a prisoner's collar set with a blood-red ruby locked around the skeleton's scrawny neck, its hands locked to its chest with solid black cuffs, almost appearing to be made of charcoal.

This all sounded familiar, I knew I'd heard of a body like this before. I looked up at the skeleton's head, seeing a ruby-studded circlet on its head... and then my eyes trailed to the teeth. The fangs. The Vampiric fangs. It was at this moment all of the pieces fit together to tell me exactly what this was.

A body burned, dipped in silver, bound by ancient iron, locked down by a prisoner's collar, trapped inside an enchanted coffin and locked away to the deepest, darkest hole man could ever seek to envision. That was the last chapter of a story I'd read when studying Vampires, the exact same story I'd believed was nothing more than a fairy tail for so long. That process, that sealing ritual was done by those wishing to make sure this dark creature was never resurrected or even found again. But here they were... laying right before me in a room in a castle as real as the sword on my back. I could barely believe it, I didn't want to believe it, as the validation of this being's existence brought too much terror, too large a threat to the world around us.

"Somebody wanna fill me in on why you two are shitting yourselves?" Annerose asked, looking between Svea and I as she noticed our pale-faced and terrified expressions.

"This..." I mumbled, my throat dry and my heart pounding. "This is..."

"What?" she snapped. "This is what?"

"Sanguine," I snarled in a gravelly tone. "This is the Vampire God Selana's been attempting to resurrect. The one that's not supposed to exist."