++Queen ants are another difficult-to-document sight, for although the common drones surrounding them by the thousand are scarcely more dangerous than a man, the warrior caste that lurks deeper in their nests have been known to give individual Witchfinders a fatal challenge. The queens themselves are, if my sources are to be trusted, almost a match for wolf spiders.++

  Chapter 37

  Reggie actually missed the grimwoods. That harrowing realisation aside, he had to focus on hunting in his new local area. Monsters weren’t exclusively found in the unnatural growths that most notoriously spawned them of course, peelers could appear anywhere there were dead folk and he’d heard tell of other beasties that made travel hell for merchants.

  The trick was finding that nice middle ground between something powerful enough to strengthen him, and something powerful enough to kill him.

  He dialled his Royal Presence up and started blasting out ‘appetising’, switching between as many synonyms for it as he could think of. No luck. Reggie tried switching to other things; ‘threatening’, ‘rival’, playing at every kind of motive he could think of that a creature might bear to attack something.

  So many in fact that, in the end, he didn’t know why the ants erupted from a nearby mound to charge him, just that they did.

  But there were only a few of them, which took Reggie all of four claw-slashes to finish and stroked his ego nicely by reminding him how far he’d come. It also refilled his ichor reserves…

  …and gave him a new point of interest to study. Reggie didn’t have any more promising leads so he dipped down into the hole they’d erupted from and started stumbling around it.

  Progress to next Tier, 45/50

  Another normal ant later, and he came across the big one. Had to be ten feet long, maybe one third or half the size of a wolf spider. Mean. It closed a pair of mandibles right around his leg and cut down deep into the meat, which got the ball rolling on their fight nice and fast. Reggie returned this gesture by clawing for its head, succeeding in scraping free an antenna and leaving a few deep scores in its carapace. Tough carapace, it was. Tougher than a woodlouse’s by far, tough enough that Reggie didn’t wound the creature beneath it.

  Then he was flying, shaken through the air like a toy caught in a particularly enthusiastic dog’s jaws. He hit a wall of odd stone that cracked on his impact, meat ripping in his leg.

  Ripping enough that suddenly he could turn as the ant’s grip on him shifted, letting Reggie slash at its head all over. Twice, thrice, more. Blood finally started weeping from the cuts. That blood snagged on Reggie’s mind as he wrapped his Blood Magic around it, then started pulling.

  Now the ant was bleeding, and he kept clawing and biting, weakening it more as he strengthened himself. His wounded thigh surged with power and in a few moments more, Reggie had won.

  +1 Speed

  Progress to next Tier, 47/50

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  (S)Strength 35(+12)

  (P)Speed 35(+12)

  (P)Celerity 34(+12)

  (S)Toughness 35(+12)

  (P)Charisma 11(-12)

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic I

  Form of the Beast II

  Royal Presence I

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration I

  Addictive Ichor

  It felt good to have gained strength again after so long. Reggie made himself promise not to put off hunting anymore. Of course that was easier to say than do, because by the time he got back to Lorwick all his free time was gone already. Walyn was waiting for him just like he’d promised.

  The guard captain of Lorwick was not in charge of all its law enforcement. This was because there was not a guard captain of Lorwick, but several, and all of them covered only so much territory while answering to the unifying authority that was their guard overseer.

  That overseer, perhaps inevitably, was an elf. Reggie suppressed a shiver when he heard that news, and another one when he saw the elf’s residence.

  “Dial up your Royal Presence,” Walyn advised him, “you’ll need the extra kick here.”

  Reggie did as he was told, though he was surprised by how much force was an apparently acceptable amount behind the ability. The building ahead of them wasn’t as big as the Lady’s, but it was close to half its size. That made it bigger than anything in Norvhan. Than any two things combined, Reggie thought. It was wide and tough and looked like its architect had enemy cannon-fire in mind when he set the place up.

  And it was guarded, though not by law enforcement. Looked like common mercenaries to Reggie, meaner and armed with blades instead of bludgeons. So breaking in was a killing offence and the guard overseer wanted everyone to know that ahead of time.

  It wasn’t exactly the nastiest display he’d seen from a person in power.

  Further inside, Reggie was hit by how orderly everything was. There were more people scurrying around than he could count, and yet each of them seemed to be moving in time with some unseen rhythm. All had a place to go and a place to be, all had things to do and were doing them. It was impressive.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Reggie wondered how many actually were working, and how many were just feigning it. He’d never been able to hold down a job long enough to do this himself, on account of everybody watching him like a hawk all the time for no reason, but he’d gotten the impression that a larger work force would generally get away with more.

  Here, though, there seemed to be overseers working for the overseer, keeping an eye over people, managing them like a shepherd did his animals. It was…repulsive. Wrong. It struck against Reggie’s sensibilities and flooded him with the urge to transform and start altering the number of limbs everyone here had.

  [Do it Reggie!]

  He didn’t of course, but it was an idle thought to keep him company. Was he getting more violent in his undeath? Probably. A problem for later though, they were reaching the main office.

  Big room, as expected. A big room with a big door. The thing looked just as reinforced as the building’s exterior and Reggie wasn’t surprised to see the half-dozen mercs waiting outside it, weapons at the ready, eyes twitching towards him.

  Two elves were with them, and it was they who really concerned him. Four Workers would be an easier fight than even one Classed elf any day. Best not piss the overseer off, even if Walyn was here with him.

  “Alright you dumb cunt,” Walyn began, because he was the dumbest motherfucker in history, “we’re here to discuss our employer’s arrangement with you.”

  Reggie was glad to hear the thick door close behind them right before Walyn said that. It meant the guards felt more removed from the situation than they were.

  The overseer, however, was very much stuck in it, and his glare back at Walyn was just as sharp as Reggie would have expected. Elves didn’t take kindly to sass from humans, including dead ones. Maybe especially dead ones.

  “You do not speak to me like that,” he snapped, turning his voice into a threat with volume and unmasked anger. Walyn took this a step further, apparently not even noticing it at all.

  “Just name your offer,” Walyn snapped. Reggie got the distinct impression that these men did not like each other. Why that was, he couldn’t possibly guess at. They both seemed like such nice, charming fellows.

  The overseer at least was more controlled than Walyn. He didn’t go berserk on the spot and start throwing punches.

  “Five thousand ryven now, then another five thousand every year this deal of ours continues.” He said the figures with enough weight that Reggie knew, at least, the money wasn’t nothing to him. That it was being bargained over at all felt insane to him either way. Five thousand ryven? You could buy half a town for that. Literally, he thought. It couldn’t be so far away from the combined worth of every property in Norvhan right?

  Walyn didn’t spit and snarl like a man who’d just had the impossible demanded of him, though.

  “Five thousand? You were fine with four before.”

  “That was then, this is now. Lorwick has gotten busier. Things are on alert. I received a report, just this morning, of an incident over in a little town called Norvhan. A Circumscriber killed. Killed by one of your kind. It’s making it much harder for me to keep news of your presence here from spreading.”

  Reggie had to exert every screed of his will to keep a straight face and a still set of lungs as he heard that. It helped that the news didn’t hit him as much of a surprise, he’d known it was only a matter of time before his deeds in Norvhan caught up to him here.

  Apparently the event was news to Walyn though, because he wore his shock openly and started blabbering about fairness and blame and a whole list of other things that anyone with half a brain would’ve realised the overseer didn’t care about.

  People in general didn’t care about fairness, they cared about opportunities. This was a good excuse for a twenty five percent increase to what Reggie gathered was the overseer’s bribes. The overseer had seen that excuse, and now he was using it. Simple as that.

  How had Walyn survived this long without realising something so basic about the world? Too easy a life, Reggie suspected. Unlife. Whatever.

  “You can jabber on all you want,” the overseer sighed, “we both know who has the leverage here.”

  Walyn smiled at that.

  “Yeah we do.”

  Apparently the overseer wasn’t that stupid, because he stopped grinning as he saw Walyn cheer up. Leaned forwards, started paying more attention. For all the good it’d do him.

  “We met with a few of your men today,” Walyn added, “I’d give you their names but that’d be telling. They’ve done us a favour. A big one. Killed a few people who’d seen too much.”

  The overseer was staring, waiting for the shoe to drop. Walyn let it down hard, and didn’t hide how much he relished doing so.

  “They killed a few people in uniform, overseer.”

  Reggie was piecing things together fast and didn’t take long to work out that a deeper game had been played. The look of shock and outrage on the overseer’s face was his final component.

  Apparently the elf had been careful to not have his men do that sort of thing, at least not in uniform, under circumstances that might come back to haunt him later. That’d probably been the real purpose in dosing them with vampiric ichor and turning them into thralls, to make them go against his orders in the hopes of sating their addiction.

  It had worked, going by how quickly the overseer paled. Now the man was thinking, and talking fast.

  “Do you think that you can just fuck me like this and nothing will come of it?” There was a dangerous edge to the elf’s voice now, one that brought back memories of Reggie feeling enchanted metal enter his body and carve it around.

  Shit, he wished he’d stolen the Circumscriber’s sword from back in Norvhan. It would’ve been nice to have a proper weapon now, even just his knife. Best he could do in the meantime was make sure to pick up a sledgehammer or lumber axe once he was done here. Better that than his fists.

  “I know I can,” Walyn replied smugly.

  The elf didn’t say anything, and Reggie didn’t either. He glanced at the door behind them, expecting at any moment for a call to ring out and those guards to burst in. Maybe he’d last ten seconds, if he was lucky. Maybe not. More silence, tension thickening. Death stalking.

  “Four thousand,” the overseer hissed through clenched teeth. Walyn grinned wider, apparently eager to die but not quite willing to just go out and request that he be killed.

  “Pleasure doing business with you,” he goaded the elf further. The elf did not rise to his bait.

  Not while they were looking at least.

  Reggie and Walyn were allowed to leave, though Reggie didn’t believe it until they were already safe and outside of the building.

  And even then, he speed-walked his way around the nearest street corner just to make sure. Walyn, the idiot, didn’t seem to understand exactly what had him so nervous.

  “You need to relax, it’s just a damned elf,” he chuckled as he said it, the sort of laugh a man gave out when he thought he’d just said something funny and was waiting for the humour to catch on. It didn’t of course, Reggie had too much close-up experience with elves to find the thought of their threat even slightly amusing.

  “If he holds a grudge, do you think he’ll bother to pick you out from me?” Reggie asked. “I didn’t come here to get dragged into trouble with anyone, let alone someone who has power over the damned city’s law enforcement.”

  Walyn smiled. “Relax,” he repeated infuriatingly, “he’s all bark. The Lady has him shackled nicely.”

  “How?” Reggie pressed. “I thought I was okay being left in the dark but this is getting to be too much. Come on, I’m freaking out here, can’t you give me something? I can’t fucking keep up with all this scheming you’re doing.”

  Reggie actually had a fair idea of what was happening, but he figured Walyn would be a lot more likely to tell him if he felt his ego stroked by proximity to someone a lot dumber than he was.

  It was a good guess. Walyn’s mouth opened up as surely as if Reggie had shot him in it, and what slopped out was pure information.

  Well, as pure as information got when it was filtered through a guy like Walyn in any case. Reggie was careful to note down any possible inacuracies so he could verify it all later.

  “To properly hide, we need the cooperation of the guards. Nine times out of ten. You can’t keep a secret as big as us without them. They hear all the reports of weird shit in Lorwick, they see all the drained bodies left by over-eager feeders, the works. So we try to get them on our payroll. This city’s guard overseer was smart enough not to get himself enthralled, but we’ve managed to leash him with blackmail now. At this point we have enough proof of his own men doing things they shouldn't, that if he chooses to spill secrets about us, he’ll be burying himself too.”

  Reggie thought he got that. The explanation was good enough that he also doubted Walyn coined it himself, it had the ring of being repeated from somewhere else.

  “So why pay him then?” Reggie asked.

  “We don’t have unlimited influence over him, and money just makes it go down easier. Give someone money and they can tell themselves they’re being persuaded instead of threatened, it stops pride from pricking up and making them do something stupid. Also, it’s money. People are less likely to look for solutions to a problem they’re being paid over. Shocker, I know.”

  It all made sense, and made Reggie a little bit sick. He’d not guessed the vampires of Lorwick had a conspiracy this big going.

  But then, the fact that he hadn’t guessed there were vampires in Lorwick told Reggie that those elsewhere in the world had a much bigger one anyway.