++Many new vampires become ensnared by love for their own power. In most, this makes them vulnerable. Sloppy and easily tricked. In a rare few, it drives them to do great things indeed. When channeled properly. ++
Book 2: Chapter 6
+1 Charisma
+1 Celerity
Name: Reginald Smith
Age: 21
Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]
Class: None
Attributes:
(S)Strength 42(+12)/49
(P)Speed 42(+12)/52
(P)Celerity 42(+12)/52
(S)Toughness 42(+12)/49
(P)Charisma 18(-12)/52
Abilities:
Blood Magic II
Form of the Beast II
Royal Presence I
Traits:
Enhanced Senses I
Regeneration II
Addictive Ichor
Reggie’s wounds were quick in closing, this time. He’d gotten about as hurt as he could have done and, despite this, had ichor to spare. In fact, he was regenerating so fast, and thus walking again so quickly, that he had to pause when he came across his next target and wait to finish up.
That ant didn’t do anything to resist him, really. On its own, Reggie attacked it from behind, clawed it open and bit down into its veins to drain it before a single strike could mark his body.
+1 Toughness
His next fight was more difficult. Four soldier ants, all together. By Reggie’s count they were probably the remnants of the swarm he’d encountered, and fled from, earlier. They hadn’t seen him, and he’d seen them. So that was one advantage.
The major disadvantage, of course, was the damned four-on-one. Reggie gave them a pass for the time being, and promptly stumbled onto another praetorian.
This time, he and his enemy saw each other at the same time. Reggie’s improvements to Celerity and Speed went a long way though, because he closed the distance and slashed his claws across its throat before the creature could make any sounds that might draw over the still-near soldiers.
It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was a muting one. The praetorian retaliated with its own barbed limbs, which Reggie ducked under with mixed success. One out of three scored a cut on his arm, but it didn’t go bone-deep and left the wounded limb with most of its mobility. Reggie’s counters were a quartet of slashes, three of which slid off the carapace. The last one found a weak spot and introduced bloody meat to the air.
He and the praetorian circled for a moment. Reggie thought fast. As he’d expected, his talons couldn’t defeat this creature’s armour. He’d left marks on it, damages, but against an enemy this fast he wasn’t confident in hitting a vulnerability with even half his swings, not even as he continued making more of them himself. That left his options pretty limited.
Reggie braced himself, waited for the praetorian to lunge again, and tackled it. With six legs, he’d never have sent the thing down to the ground. He didn’t need to. While it was stunned and stumbling he snaked around its body and started biting.
Fangs, a vampire’s deadliest weapon. These ones still weren’t reaching the flesh, but they were absolutely mangling the carapace all down one side of its body. By the time Reggie was sent rolling and trailing blood, he fancied he was leaving a full score of bites as a parting gift. All of them were splits and rents in the carapace, most connected to each other by trailing cracks in its surface.
If the praetorian realised what had happened, it gave no indication. Just came flying at Reggie with its spluttered, ineffectual attempt at a scream. He came up to his knees and stabbed his talons out right for the weakened section of armour.
One moment. Reggie felt certain, for one moment, that his attack would be turned away like the rest. Then the needle points of his weaponry sunk into ruined armour and brought blood fountaining up from beneath.
The praetorian recoiled exactly like something that had just received an unexpected stab wound. Reggie stepped in, his injured arm healed now, and slashed at the same patch of broken carapace. This time his claws tore away a fistful of armour plating in five dozen fragments, exposing a patch bigger than his own splayed hand.
Another strike caught him in his hip, but Reggie just ignored this one outright. It hadn’t broken the bone, and bruising didn’t matter to him. Limbs and spine, that’s what he had to concern himself with. And there were no serious wounds on his limbs or spine. So it was without impediment that he stabbed into the now-armourless patch of flesh and saw his talons sink down to almost their full length.
Something important must have been right below that section of removed carapace, there was no way he’d have drawn half as much blood if there hadn’t been.
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Things ended fast after that, and they ended with Reggie getting a new meal. One that took him that extra, small step higher than the creatures he was surrounded by.
Tier 3 creature devoured, bonus Attributes gained.
+1 Strength
+1 Toughness
+1 Speed
+1 Celerity
+1 Charisma
Name: Reginald Smith
Age: 21
Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]
Class: None
Attributes:
(S)Strength 43(+12)/49
(P)Speed 43(+12)/52
(P)Celerity 43(+12)/52
(S)Toughness 44(+12)/49
(P)Charisma 19(-12)/52
Abilities:
Blood Magic II
Form of the Beast II
Royal Presence I
Traits:
Enhanced Senses I
Regeneration II
Addictive Ichor
It hit Reggie, then, that he was just a few Attribute points in every area away from being in the mid 40s, rather than the low. That, he was almost certain, was definitely something the average Circumscriber would be jealous of.
And he wasn’t done yet.
Maybe it was impulsive. Worse, maybe it was some external effect of the blood and strength on his consciousness, but Reggie jumped the four soldier ants nearby before he could think to stop himself. Things were looking promising, though, because he opened the fight by sprinting around a corner and, with only a single slash of his talons, taking one of their forelimbs completely off at the joint.
The remaining three fell back. Apparently these creatures could feel shock, given a sufficient surprise. That would work in Reggie's favour too. What worked less in his favour was when a fifth joined the conflict, but he improvised.
By the end of the fight he was drenched in blood, and only about a third of it was his own.
+1 Charisma
+1 Speed
+1 Strength
+1 Celerity
+1 Strength
Name: Reginald Smith
Age: 21
Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]
Class: None
Attributes:
(S)Strength 44(+12)/49
(P)Speed 43(+12)/52
(P)Celerity 43(+12)/52
(S)Toughness 43(+12)/49
(P)Charisma 19(-12)/52
Abilities:
Blood Magic II
Form of the Beast II
Royal Presence I
Traits:
Enhanced Senses I
Regeneration II
Addictive Ichor
43s in everything. Reggie was quivering. Quivering with power, quivering with excitement at the thought of yet more. He didn’t wait around before heading off to search it out. His next two fights went differently. Both with praetorians, both one-on-ones, but neither was as easy as he’d enjoyed so far. The creatures seemed on guard now and Reggie barely came out of both of them with his life intact. Most of the blood he absorbed was used up on healing.
It made no difference to him, of course, because the real reward was far more permanent than a replenishment to his ichor.
+1 Charisma
+1 Celerity
+1 Speed
+1 Toughness
+1 Toughness
+1 Strength
+1 Speed
+1 Charisma
+1 Celerity
It only meant a single thing, his dwindling ichor. Even as powerful as he’d become, Reggie couldn’t afford to delve deeper and hunt another praetorian. He had maybe one tenth of his blood reserves, and if he used them up in a fight before it ended, he’d be dead for real.
Reggie was reluctant to leave, but the impulsive attack on that praetorian still clung to his thoughts like hot tar. The fear of doing something that stupid again, and getting less lucky, was what ended up motivating him out of the tunnels.
As Reggie moved to leave, he found daylight hitting the ground outside the mouth of the tunnel. Not ideal, but fortunately for him the sun’s rays always seemed muted in the grimwoods. He’d not experimented too closely yet, but by his estimate he could last at least twice as long beneath them as he could a normal sky.
Plenty of time to reach the castle.
Despite the day’s progress, Reggie actually found himself in a bad mood by the time he returned. He’d not done as he promised himself he would, not managed to close the deal of hitting his Tier’s limit on every Attribute he had. His temper frayed and frustration mounted, and the eruption of wrathful energy from him took the form of a fist sent flying angrily against a granite wall.
The wall didn’t fall down, and that was about all Reggie could say for it. A tremble ran through the old structure, knocking dust from its crevices, and he saw long cracks run across its surface as his knuckles sank a good inch or two into the depths of its stonework.
That was new. That was very new. Reggie’s bad mood was evaporating as he looked around in search of something else he could smash to pieces, barely stopping himself from taking another fist to the walls. That wasn’t a good idea. He did, ultimately, plan on renovating this place into some evil, vampiric lair of his own. It didn’t seem like many people would be scared of a demonic creature of the night who was dumb enough to punch holes in all his own walls.
“By God,” a voice rang out from behind him, “how strong are you?”
Every instinct in Reggie’s body sharpened into a combat response at once.
He whirled around and moved five of the dozen paces separating him from the speaker before they could even call out again. He was almost on them when he realised who it was and froze.
“...Ludvich?”
The old Witchfinder looked like he’d been eaten, digested and shit back out, but Reggie recognised him easily all the same. His clothes were worn and tattered, and nothing like the unofficial uniform of his order, but his eyes and face were the same.
His twitchiness was even less changed, but then that was one characteristic which, if anything, would only become more emphasised by recent events.
“I finally found you,” the old man sighed. His gaze looked weird. All wet and trembling.
“Are you alright?” Reggie frowned. “Looks like you’ve had a pair of thumbs jabbed in your eyes.”
Ludvich looked away quickly, sniffing.
“Aye, tough fighting these last weeks, you know how it is. You don’t look so good yourself.”
Reggie felt moistness on his own cheeks, put a finger to them and found blood staining the tips. Shit.
“Uh, an ant did it,” he said. “Acid, yeah. Right in the eyes.” The two men nodded to each other in manly understanding, mannishly, and took a while before the awkwardness dissipated enough for conversation.
“Can I come in?” Ludvich asked.
Reggie burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself, and after a moment he saw that Ludvich had intended his question to be a joke too.
“Sure,” Reggie giggled, “yeah, just—please, just follow me in through the door.” They walked in through the jutting hole in the wall and headed deeper into the castle, stopping once they’d reached one of the rare sections that was not partially exposed to the air beyond. Ludvich politely ignored the peelers, once Reggie managed to order them out of attacking him.
“Not very defensible, is it?” He asked. “Not that I know much about sieges, but if I wanted to kill someone hiding here I wouldn’t have so many places to watch for an ambush on my way in.”
“Not as bad as ant tunnels,” Reggie agreed without thinking. Ludvich stared at him.
“Have you been down in ant tunnels?”
“I needed strength,” Reggie shrugged. “What are you here for?”
Ludvich took a step back at that, swallowed and seemed to choose his words carefully. “To see you,” he said at last. “And…to help you. Maybe. What are you planning on doing here?”
A good question.
