++Rumours of vampirism among the rebels to the South are greatly exaggerated. It is believed that they hate the undead almost as much as the elves do, perhaps the only understandable part of their deranged culture.++

  Chapter 25

  Though his un-transformed state wasn’t as powerful or fast as the strange woman’s body, even in her wounded condition, Reggie ended up having to slow himself down to let her keep pace after a brief period of running. Once again, having unlimited stamina proved itself among his best qualities. The dull throb in his stomach persisted though, entrails not bleeding much as living tissue but still stinging where he’d messily carved them open. Stinging more than he’d come to expect actually, like a memory of how wounds had felt before his death, slowing him down.

  That would need healing. Healing meant less burns. Reggie’s irritation started bubbling up again, he really needed to come up with some better way of disguising himself. Couldn’t vampires change their face?

  Another myth he’d have to try and test out whenever he had the chance to gain more power, but for now there were more pressing concerns. Like always. Though she was slowing down and heaving like someone with a gunshot wound, the woman kept going long enough that Reggie became rather nervous about just where they were heading. Minutes passed, at least a dozen turns, and he saw the grimwoods change around them, trees thinning out into a clearing as the earthen ground became hard stone.

  Along the way they encountered another woodlouse, which was more than a little bit lucky. The woman seemed somewhat put out to see Reggie feasting, but he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to empower himself more in light of recent events.

  +1 Toughness

  Progress to next Tier 26/50

  It wasn’t much, individual feedings never were, but it was more strength stacked onto the rest. Reggie enjoyed that sensation as the woman continued leading him to wherever it was they were going.

  Then, up ahead, he saw it.

  Reggie hadn’t ever laid eyes on a castle before, but he knew what they were at least. Another benefit of consuming so many books. This one seemed a bit more impressive than most he’d read about, most human ones at least. It had a central base of wide and thick walls that formed a sort of square foundation, out of which several towers protruded. The peaks of each one went higher than he’d have thought any building could. Not just many stories, tens perhaps. Reggie was pretty tough now, but for the first time in a while he felt like he was staring at a structure that he could die from falling off of.

  Drawing closer to it, more details made themselves known. The whole fortress was made of either stone, glass or, to Reggie’s shock, what looked like steel. It was dark, jagged. It seemed to him almost hungry, like a thing growing upwards in search of fresh meat.

  And it had definitely seen better days. There was a quiet dignity to the place that struck Reggie as being the product of a great many years, maybe generations, but however long ago it had been made, it hadn’t been maintained for a while. He saw the wear in cracked walls, in pits and pockmarks, even in full holes right through the stonework at some parts.

  “What is this place?” Reggie asked, hearing the awe in his own voice as he did. It sounded almost childish, but then he was a child as far as this place was concerned. It was so far beyond the scope of anything he’d experienced that he might as well have been an infant staring up at it.

  The strange woman did not appear nearly so awed by it all, though, and she was quick in answering.

  “According to my information, an àìkú built this place a century ago. àìkú—a vampire as you say.”

  “I know, I remember your word for them. Us. Whatever. But how was this…I mean, how do you build a castle here? The elves must’ve known, right?”

  The woman’s face twisted up at that. Reggie hadn’t seen so much hate anywhere in his whole life, not even directed at him.

  “The elves don’t know as much as they want you to think.” Without another word, she headed for the castle and slipped into it through one of the many holes in its walls. Reggie once again considered parting ways then and there, but ended up following. He wanted to find out more about what this woman knew, the little tidbits he’d had revealed already had pretty much rearranged her place to be at the top of his list of priorities.

  “What do they know?” Reggie pressed as he followed her inside. It was dark within the castle’s confines, and smelled…odd. Not rotten exactly, more like a crypt. It smelled less of dead things than it did things that could never know life.

  Vampire castle. It was fitting.

  “They don’t know where I am, at least,” the woman replied as she ventured deeper, “and I plan on keeping it that way.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me in that regard,” Reggie pointed out.

  “I know,” she said without turning, “you’re a vampire. And you don’t need to worry about me because I am ìràwà.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “ìràwà,” Reggie echoed, “I’ve heard that word, I don’t know what it means though. Can you explain?”

  He saw the woman’s eyes narrowing from the corner of his own. Took a while to answer. Took so long in fact that they reached their destination by the time she finally did.

  “We live in another land, one not quite so far from this as you might think. ìràwà is our kingdom, and it is one of the world’s few bastions against what you call the elves.”

  Something lit up in Reggie at that, a feeling he’d not had in weeks.

  “What do you mean bastion against the elves?”

  She met Reggie’s eyes with a ferocity in hers.

  “For fifteen hundred years, the elves have been trying to take our lands as they did yours, to make us their well-behaved pets as they did you. They haven’t managed it yet. That’s what I mean. The people of ìràwà control their own lives to this day, and I serve only them.”

  Reggie took a seat, because he was actually worried his legs might give in if he tried to remain standing after getting hit by news like that.

  “There’s places in the world where humans are free,” he said. His voice was dull and numb, a blunt instrument sounding almost without his meaning it to. A bell tolling because someone hit it, not a tongue moving with purpose. Reggie had known about some of what the woman told him, he’d known there were humans out there fighting. That they had a nation of their own, though…

  Slowly iit all sank in, and Reggie was full of questions.

  “Why don’t we know about this? I’m guessing the elves keep it all hushed up because they’re evil cunts who eat babies, but why aren’t your people spreading word? Helping us out? Doing…something?”

  She actually looked annoyed at him for even asking.

  “Because your people are cowards who surrendered rather than fight for your freedom, we work to keep ourselves pure and untainted by the elves. We don’t have the resources or people to spare on uplifting a bunch of hairless monkeys who were so eager to let themselves be collared.”

  “Fuck you,” Reggie told her, quite reasonably he thought. Apparently she disagreed.

  “I don’t need to take this from you, parasite.”

  “Not a parasite,” Reggie shot back, “parasites don’t kill their hosts. I’m a predator.”

  “Actually you’re a weird, smelly man who drinks animal blood in the woods. “

  She had him there, he had to admit.

  “So what are you doing here then?” Reggie asked, “I’m guessing you’re not just passing through the area, you’ve been staying here.”

  “That’s none of your concern, monkey.”

  Reggie ignored the hostility, there really wasn’t much to it compared to most of the shit he’d always had to deal with in Norhvan anyway, and focused more on figuring out what was going on with this woman.

  “You’re hanging out in a castle,” he noted, looking around the room. “Hm. This chamber, you’ve touched it up a bit. Those logs plugging holes and barricading alternate entry paths are new, must be. Wood would’ve rotted if it was half as old as this place. So you’re fortifying the room right? Are you part of some scouting party in this region?”

  She swung her sword for his head without even saying anything, which might’ve come as a bit of a surprise if Reggie hadn’t already clocked how dangerously secretive and contemptuous of his life she so clearly was. That gave him just enough warning to lunge back from the blow.

  Reggie landed, and was transforming before he’d finished rolling back up onto his feet. The woman’s blade came low and he parried it with his elongated claws, or would’ve done if the heavy metal hadn’t cut right through them and scratched deep into the hand behind. He snarled, an animal noise as more pain than he’d expected flooded through him.

  Magical weapons hurt you more than mundane tools, your undead body isn’t as desensitised to their touch, Sycily told him. Better late than never, Reggie supposed, but fuck was this pain hard to focus through. He stumbled back as the blade kept coming, waited. Then threw a punch.

  It hadn’t been gentle, he wasn’t feeling in a particularly gentle mood. The mystery woman’s feet left the ground and she shot across the room to bounce off its far wall. She seemed more hurt today than she’d been when Reggie had hit her last time, probably on account of her being smashed against a fucking stone wall instead of a tree, but she bounced back faster for some reason. Her sword had fallen from her grip, and Reggie beat her in the race for it.

  “You think I know too much so you want to silence me, right?” he guessed as he kicked the weapon away. The strange woman kept her eyes on it, but didn’t make another move. She clearly knew, as he did, that with the blade so far beyond reach Reggie could stop her from snatching it back up ten times without breaking a sweat.

  “Yes,” she spat.

  Reggie punched her. There wasn’t much in the way of strategy behind the move, but he’d not had the most positive of experiences with people deciding he needed to die for some greater cause, and this seemed like a fine time to vent that pent up frustration. He held back a little, enough to be sure he wouldn’t seriously injure the woman.

  “Fuck you,” Reggie snapped, “I’m not an obstacle for you to just kick aside.” The woman groaned and shifted around where she lay in a heap, while Reggie started pacing. “What, are you going to try and kill me now, is that it? I have to kill you because you’ll do me first?” She said nothing. Reggie found himself snarling. “Well now you’re an obstacle to me. An obstacle against my life, now you’re threatening me because you decided to imagine a bunch of bad fucking shit you think I’ll do and concluded that my existence is a price worth paying to make sure your fantasies don’t become real. How is that fair?”

  Again, she said nothing. He kept pacing.

  “Fuck you,” Reggie spat out again. “I’m going to keep quiet, if you come after me I’ll kill you.” He snatched up the sword and stormed his way out of the castle, hurried so much that his pace would’ve been faster than most people’s sprints. As soon as he was out through the hole he’d entered from Reggie threw the sword as hard as he could in a random direction, because fuck the mystery lady, and picked up the pace. He got about fifty yards from the castle before the woman was calling for him, her words reaching his ears just barely over the sounds of his own footsteps, her urgency halting him only after a good few moments of deliberation on his own part. Why was he stopping?

  Because she still had answers, of course. Reggie sighed out of reflex and habit, then ignored all the instincts telling him to keep heading off and moved back for the woman. So he needed to associate with someone who wanted him dead. Fine. Nothing new there, right? What was one extra person added onto that list?

  He expected as much reluctance from her, but Reggie was surprised to see a thoughtful look on her face as he approached instead.

  “Why do you keep sparing me?” she asked him.

  “Because I’m an idiot?” Reggie didn’t exactly have a better answer than that, he didn’t even need Dvo to tell him killing this one was a better idea.

  She just eyed him. “Maybe we can work together,” she suggested at last.