++It is by the grace of the elves that humans still retain the rights to own property and businesses, within reason. Though all of the state’s vital productions are overseen by the elven rulers themselves, private ownership extends to a great many commodities and pastimes. This, among so many other things, is a mark of elven generosity.++

  Chapter 20

  Reggie had spent a lot of time acquiring a lot of skills, it had always been a simple necessity for him to do that. He’d never had the option of stagnating in his competence, not if he’d wanted to keep from dying when some drunken pricks burned his house down for a laugh one day.

  He had hoped that this familiarity with the grating art of newfound mastery would prepare him for going through it all over again. Shit, maybe it would. Maybe it had. He was practicing claw-fighting and doing well at picking up the underlying logic, practicing a bunch of other things related to the idiosyncrasies of moving in his transformed body and managing somewhat less so.

  None of that was his concern now though. What needled him was trying to practice burning himself.

  It was, he realised, made harder to do so consistently by the fact that his Toughness was improving over time. He wasn’t fireproof just yet, not by a mile, but pooling naphtha was taking longer to achieve the same depth of scarring every few days. The faster his power improved, the quicker he’d reach the point of not being able to properly disfigure himself at all. What then?

  Future concern, that, though. Right now he had to focus on doing it right in the moment, or else he’d be exposed all the sooner.

  As far as exercises in willpower went, burning your own face off was about as good as it got. Reggie spent most of that day doing it to himself over and over, feeling the agony of flames licking his skin, then looking at himself in the mirror. Then he’d Regenerate, wait for the burns to fade, and try it all over again. After the manyeth time he managed to do it pretty consistently thrice in a row. Not exactly, in all likelihood, but Reggie himself couldn’t spot any glaring differences after observing each burn pattern at length in the mirror. He figured that would keep him safe until he met someone much smarter than he was.

  Not a lot of risk in Norvhan, there. The people here were dumb enough to burn a toddler for hearing voices.

  He was famished by the time he finished that, but of course Ludvich and he had already prepared a solution. That solution was grinning and bearing it, unfortunately. He was hungry, but not so much so that he’d be starving within another day, and even keeping up his Royal Presence wasn’t worsening the drain of blood to an extent where he felt at risk of emptying his blood reserves outright.

  So that blood loss was annoying, but not dangerous. It was still a shame. Reggie would’ve liked to experiment more with his powers since he had nothing else to do but lounge around. What was that Addictive Ichor ability of his? He thought he had an idea, thought it sounded nasty and evil, but he’d like to try it out. Instead he settled for just asking Sycily.

  Addictive Ichor, your blood is an intoxicant that bonds living beings to you and renders them your servants when fed. Each pint given to the same being mildly empowers them for one month and leaves them compelled to serve you. Pints of blood after the first do not strengthen their abilities more, but deepen the strength of their bond up to a maximum of five pints. Powers gained by creatures that feed from your blood are equal to 1/10th of your own Attributes.

  That sounded pretty useful, but as Reggie had thought it was basically slavery. Humans had done that, once. Before the elves came. Put their own kind in chains, beaten them, abused them, raped them. Owned them as property. It had been one of the great many evils used to justify the Olyngrit—the settlement of elves into human lands.

  Elves, Reggie had since learned, were assholes. But that didn’t mean he liked the idea of owning people.

  This principal line in the sand was very admirable, and truly brought Reggie a gift greater than any power—moral righteousness. It also meant that he had nothing else to do but heed Ludvich’s advice and head out into town.

  So Reggie did so, bracing himself for the sun.

  It wasn’t as bad as he’d heard it was for vampires, at least. Only of Journeyman Tier, for now, Reggie’s weaknesses had yet to swell and mutate into the debilitating curse stories told of. That didn’t mean it wasn’t damned painful. Overcast, with winter mists creeping in clouds, Reggie figured he was catching maybe a tenth of the actual light shot down over Norvhan by the sun. That was still enough to leave his skin itching after a few minutes, aching after an hour, burned black within a day.

  He wasn’t out for as long as any of that, though. Just walked around long enough to be seen walking under the sun, to be seen doing something a vampire supposedly couldn’t, and then headed to Garwin’s tavern.

  Except it wasn’t Garwin’s anymore. The owner had been an aging man fifteen years ago, and had since graduated to an old one. Too old, apparently, to run a tavern. So his daughter had taken it up and everything was now Anne’s tavern. Beyond that, there was little different about the place.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  It was decorated largely the same, furnished largely the same, kept as identical, Reggie suspected, as the new owner had been able to make it. What few differences he saw were mild things, repairs done here and there or alterations made for practicality rather than taste. There was a lot of love between Anne and her father, he thought.

  Reggie couldn’t relate there of course, Anne’s father had been a prick who banned him from ever entering the place for no reason. But then if he held a grudge against everyone who’d ever wronged him for some accident of birth, Reggie would get nothing done at all besides spewing out hatred.

  So instead he headed for the bar.

  “Hello there,” Anne greeted him by paling and trembling only for a few moments as she stared at his ruined head, “uh…you’re the newcomer then.” It wasn’t a question of course, Reggie knew already that Norvhan didn’t get many new arrivals, let alone new arrivals whose head looked like a scorched testicle.

  “I am,” Reggie confirmed anyway, “just got here a few days ago, hoping to join the Witchfinders.”

  Her eyes went weird at that as a big thought swelled up behind them.

  “We could always use more Witchfinders, these days,” she murmured.

  Reggie kept quiet, waited for her to keep talking. Silence often got you more answers than questions.

  “You walked through the grimwoods on your way here?” she asked. Reggie had, so he decided to say as much. Always best to lie as little as you can get away with, makes it easier to remember where you’re deceiving people if nothing else.

  “I did, yeah. Didn’t see much that made me think more Witchfinders than usual are needed.”

  Also true. Reggie hadn’t had much trouble in the grimwoods unless he looked for it, though he realised only now that it might not be such a great idea to volunteer the fact. If the local undead were aggressive he’d not have noticed as a fellow undead.

  “Must’ve gotten lucky then,” Anne shrugged, apparently making nothing of it, “we’ve heard nothing but chaos from those woods. Worse than it was when I was a girl, even. Did you see that shack on the edge of town? The ruined one, all burned-out?”

  Reggie would’ve felt his stomach lurch, if the organs there hadn’t atrophied into hard mineral already. “Yeah?” he asked, forcing his voice to be neutral and only passively interested.

  “That was where it all started. Monsters came up out of the grimwoods and attacked the one living there, tore him apart in his sleep, they say, burned the house down around him.”

  Of course that hadn’t happened. It had been elves who’d killed the one living there, Reggie knew this because they were talking about his house.

  “Anyone see what did it?” he asked, feigning nerves rather than anger. Like a man worried about running into that creature himself.

  “No, there were no witnesses.” Anne looked sad, suddenly. “I…wish there had been. Doesn’t feel right that Reginald…uh, the one who died, doesn’t feel right that he went out alone.” She seemed to remember herself, blinked. “Sorry, that’s…I shouldn’t have said that, I’m rambling. I knew him when I was a girl was all. He was kind. You’ll be wanting a drink?”

  Reggie was glad she asked that, because he’d not have known what to say otherwise.

  “Yes please, whatever’s cheap.” He slapped a shilling down on the counter and felt a strange sense of loss at sacrificing one fourth of his income so casually, even if it had been won without any real effort.

  Maybe he should’ve shown off more for the Witchfinders, made himself seem like he was holding back, cocky. There was room for young men to grow fast, at least. If Reggie waited a few weeks or months he could make a passable case for having grown his Attributes into the low 20s just as a Worker. Give himself an excuse to bring back bigger yields, provided there were no claw marks on the corpses.

  For now, though, one drink was all he could afford. It wasn’t particularly nice to taste either. The beer wasn’t different exactly, Reggie could tell that much, he just didn’t like it anymore. It felt desaturated, wrung out. Emptied of some ineffable substance that gave the drink whatever life it used to have. Apparently a dead body meant dead taste buds.

  Another thing he’d lost. Reggie felt his anger bubbling up, somehow finding this one small thing worse than all the others. Thinking, again, of the people who’d taken it from him. Of the one of those people he knew was still in town.

  He kept thinking and sipping his drink to blend in, sitting at the counter, enjoying the new feeling of not drawing looks of hatred and judgement where he sat. Maybe burn victims had it bad, all that staring and whispering, but it was a fucksight better than when you were thought to be possessed.

  Reggie finished his drink and started plodding off, but was halted when Anne called after him.

  “Your name’s Smith, right?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, not at all surprised to see the pseudonym had already finished circulating this far through Norvhan.

  “Welcome to town Mr. Smith,” she smiled, “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

  “Thanks.” Reggie said it awkwardly, exactly like someone whose only interaction with humans consisted of children too dumb to heed their parents’ advice, a demented Witchfinder and people who wanted him burned. All the same, Anne kept smiling until he turned and headed out. The air was cool outside, but he barely felt it. Higher Toughness meant a lot of things like that.

  For a while he just walked around, took his chance to study the town by day. It almost felt novel. Even before his vampirism, Reggie had mostly gone out at night. Harder to see faces at night, less chance of someone recognising him and deciding that it was the day he died. That was one thing about everyone thinking he’d died, nobody was trying to make it happen anymore.

  Reggie’s ruminations lasted until his skin started to itch, at which point he stayed out just long enough that someone familiar with vampires would know he was in agonizing pain and maybe doubt that he’d subjected himself to such agony. Another odd benefit to burning his face off was growing accustomed to tolerating such states of being. Then he headed back to Ludvich.

  ***

  A thought had been bouncing around in Reggie’s head, one he’d not been able to give voice to until now. It surged up as he made his way into the house and walked over to find Ludvich in his living room. Just exploded out of Reggie without his wanting it to.

  “The elf in Norvhan now, the one watching over it. The Circumscriber. He was there when I died. He was one of my murderers.”

  Ludvich nodded, like it wasn’t news to him. “And?”

  And. Good question. And what?

  “And I’m going to kill him.”