++The lifespan of an elf and its true consequences can be seen most clearly in their progression through the Higher Classes. Though such things are, of course, impossible for a human to grasp, mastery over them comes so slowly that even were our kind to gain one, we would achieve little in its pursuit. To reach a Tier above 4 will usually require more life than any human has. To reach 5 will take time, even for our rulers.++

  Book 2: Chapter 19

  Reggie didn’t feel a damned thing as he fed the men his ichor. They were cunty cunts who killed people, people like him. People like him even back when he’d been a person. A soldier’s job was to keep things from changing by fighting anyone who tried to fix them.

  It wasn’t exactly the satisfaction of revenge touching his mind as he enthralled them, it was just…nothing. The hardest part, really, was that he had to stand outside the cave now, to keep his new subordinates from suffocating. That left him tense.

  But it didn’t matter what he was feeling, in the end. What mattered was them, and they perked up almost as soon as the ichor hit their lips. Struggling stopped, drowsiness faded fast and then Reggie was watching three men looking up at him from where they were seated.

  “You’re my thralls now,” he told them.

  “Of course!” One agreed, while the others nodded eagerly. It was actually a bit disturbing, and when Reggie turned to Ludvich he saw that the ex-Witchfinder was just as lost as him.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he shrugged. “But only in the end stages. Never behind the scenes, if you get me.”

  Was that a theatre reference? Reggie would have to ask Ludvich where he’d found time to see plays later, though knowing him he’d probably found out some actor was secretly a demonologist and lit him on fire mid-performance.

  “We’re going to take control of Norvhan,” Reggie told the enthralled men. “And I want the three of you to help me.”

  Instantly they were all on their feet, showing more enthusiasm than starved men who’d just been told they were to fight a roast dinner.

  “We’ll get them right away!” the thralls declared.

  “No,” Reggie sighed. “Not…not immediately, we need to build up to it, fuck.”

  Thralls were strong, actually stronger than baby vampires most of the time, but not that strong. Sycily had said they could expect to gain one tenth of Reggie’s own rating in each Attribute, with the exception of Charisma. That wouldn’t be modified by his Form of The Beast, so each of these men was looking at a +3 modifier.

  Certainly, it was more than nothing. +3 across the board was a huge difference. It meant they were half again as strong, as durable, it meant they could easily run down things a match for their former Speed and react with a proportional quickness. But they wouldn’t be fighting Circumscribers any time soon.

  “What are all of your Attributes at now?” Ludvich asked. “Exactly, I mean.”

  Right. Reggie was falling into old habits and trying to guess what they could do, as if they were some enemy he was surveying from afar. But they’d just tell him now. Not everything was a conspiracy, only most things.

  [It’s funny how you didn’t think of that, isn’t it Reggie. I think most people would.]

  Shut up.

  The men—the thralls—were quick in explaining their abilities, fortunately. Reggie was pleasantly surprised to see all of them were, bolstered by his blood, above 20 in everything except Charisma.

  “Figures,” Ludvich grunted. “I’ve met plenty of soldiers before. They don’t tend to be as well trained as Witchfinders, but they’re more specialised than us too. Less of their training time is spent on study and investigation.”

  “Because we handle our problems the proper way,” one of the thralls growled. Reggie was surprised by the open animosity there considering how deferential they’d been with him. He was more surprised to see another man one-up it.

  “You won’t catch one of us betraying our own kind, like a Witchfinder, either,” he spat. “Too much reading. Makes you all soft and weak.”

  Ludvich just punched him, really hard. The man wasn’t that hurt, he was actually above Ludvich’s physical Attributes by a lot when Form of The Beast wasn’t in play, but he certainly didn’t like the blow. Ludvich just smiled.

  “Always wanted to just do that,” he admitted. “Soldiers are cunts. Murdering bastards, the lot of you. Almost as bad as Witchfinders.” Ludvich spat at his feet, then punched another one.

  “Please stop brutalising them,” Reggie sighed. He didn’t exactly disagree with what Ludvich was saying, he knew enough to be aware that these men mostly served to help elves forcibly absorb human settlements that weren’t already under their power, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed seeing them suffer violence while they were helpless against it. Apparently unmasked sadism was still over the line for him.

  Ludvich clearly didn’t agree, but reluctantly stopped the punches. “Not like I can even really hurt them,” he muttered darkly. “I need to eat one of those elves. Sycily told me my Attributes’ll shoot up if I do that.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Reggie thought the old man was being a bit greedy considering he’d started his undeath out with a buffet of several dozen ants, but he had bigger things to complain about right now anyway.

  “You don’t have decent weapons,” he told the thralls. “Or rather two of you don’t, Ludvich and I have exactly three Circumscriber swords and uh…we’re taking two of them, sorry. So two of you need to figure out a way to arm yourselves.”

  [Why didn’t you take their weapons, too, Reggie?]

  “Because I’m an idiot, shut up.”

  He realised he’d said it outloud only after a few odd looks, and quickly moved on before he could be asked any awkward questions.

  “We need more thralls,” Ludvich pointed out.

  “And undead,” Reggie growled. “And I’m the only one who can get both.” He shot a look at Ludvich. “Can you take these ones hunting and try to get yourself more power? You know these woods better than…honestly maybe any other person on the planet, at this point.”

  As usual, the compliment bounced right off Ludvich as his mind made room for more practical areas of thought.

  “You know it’ll be a risk. With all the depopulation you’ve already done, these grimwoods will take years to recover. And in the meantime their remaining predators, the wolf spiders and the like, are going to be more active than usual.”

  “Everything we do is a risk,” Reggie sighed. “I won’t make you, this isn’t an order or anything, but we need power and the sooner we have it, the sooner we can take shelter somewhere other than the grimwood, and the sooner we can avoid having something randomly stumble onto us anyway.”

  He was getting a bit tired of everything he did being a risk. What was it about Norvhan that had him so fixated on taking control of the place?

  It’s my home.

  Well there it was. It had been Reggie’s home all his life, and no amount of hatred or threats from the other bastards sharing it had ever been able to change that. Death wouldn’t change it either. Reggie was going to take back his home, and this time he’d be living there in peace.

  As long as he didn’t die first. Again that was.

  Nights passed uneventfully, ish. Except for the time Reggie got set on fire. He’d been scouting out the town in the hopes of finding more opportunities to take people, and find them he had. He got two more thralls before bad luck and stupidity took a bite out of him by letting the Wizard sight him.

  One on one, up close, Reggie actually would’ve fancied his chances against the elf. They weren’t up-close, though, and as powerful as his Blood Magic had become since going up a Tier and benefitting from its new Trait, it was nothing compared to the elemental fury thrown at him then.

  Reggie was caught at the tail end of the flames, and nonetheless found them pretty damned hot. They felt almost like that magnesium torch he’d been lit up with by the dumbass who thought he was Varkuun, and he just knew, even running from the conflict, that his body would be slow in recovering. Days, at least.

  But then, he had days. The more Reggie terrorised the town, the clearer it became to him that they didn’t have the option of retaliating anymore. He was reducing their forces bit by bit, and all they could do was keep defending in the hopes they’d get lucky and catch him.

  Which, of course, they had. Once. Meanwhile he was snatching more people by the day. Within a week, his biggest concern had stopped being actual bodies and become keeping his thralls fed. Between his increased Tier and Ludvich’s presence, they were already going through a lot of blood. Needing to use more ichor on keeping his new minions loyal and strong was an extra drain that Reggie could’ve done without.

  Now, though, he had options. He’d been picking up weapons for the last few abductions, and he’d ended up totalling over a dozen armed and armoured thralls. He’d managed to snatch another few undead during his hunts, too. A pair of woodlice, which brought back not-so-fond memories of his first nights among the dead, and another handful of peelers which freaked the fuck out of his living subordinates, but would nonetheless be helpful in a fight.

  As more time passed, Reggie was growing more and more confident that he didn’t need to wait any longer.

  ***

  Oleri barely felt the strain of her sit-ups, now. She’d bound weights to her chest and shoulders, heavy slabs of stone buckled into place by thick leathers that would’ve turned aside a sword swing but nonetheless strained to hold their charges in place. Strained more than her abdomen did to move them, even.

  Exercise. If a Wizard wanted to raise their Class, sharpen their Abilities, maybe advance their Tier, they needed to read, to study, to sit around and learn. Oneri was a Warrior, and that meant exercise. It was getting harder as she grew more powerful. Early on a thousand situps had tired her, even with only her body weight to work against the tightening of musculature.

  These days, she was up to nine hundred pounds. Another Attribute improvement or two and she’d be forced to find a new set of chest-weights just to keep exerting herself again. One day her chest would run out of room for lead weights and she’d need to fork over the price of gold ones instead.

  Sweat beaded on her skin, then the beads turned into rivulets. She kept going. Exercise was a painful and inconvenient way to gain power compared to reading some damned books, but right now Oleri relished that pain. It meant her mind was too busy to focus on her situation.

  And her situation was the most painful thing of all.

  Trapped in a doomed town with the biggest idiot she’d met in a good while left in charge. They couldn’t send for help, at this stage the vampire was doubtless keeping an eye on Norvhan and they’d simply be throwing out their own defenders to feed his army.

  And Arydaq had been getting worse. He was more than just a smug wizard, more than just ignorant about combat. He seemed to genuinely believe his magic could do anything, seemed unable to even fathom the idea that it would be insufficient.

  He certainly seemed unable to grasp that a Circumscriber veteran who fought vampires for a damned living might know more about doing so than he did.

  And he was killing them.

  One idiotic call at a time, he was killing them. Oleri kept at her exercise and gritted her teeth so tight she thought they might crack. Warden Erindor was hardly better than Arydaq of course, he was the one who’d seen fit to leave that moron in charge.

  He was killing them, too. She wished she could hate him for that as much as she did the Wizard.

  The humans liked to think any elf was as supreme as any other, but Oleri had long since learned better than that. There were a thousand gradations to their competence, as with any other creature. And if any given elf was suited to rule over any given human…well, Oleri had seen enough of the world to know that there was more to that than mere nature and ability.

  It was a simple fact that the world needed one race above another to function with any level of stability. That it was her race was likely not arbitrary, she had read enough of the great shortcomings of pre-System humanity to know that, but it was less to do with divinity and superiority than most of her kind thought.

  Humans could be clever. Humans could be scarily clever. In fact, Oleri had seen first-hand how scarily clever a human could be. She’d killed him for it, fifteen years ago now. She wasn’t so old that a decade and a half felt like it was recent, but his face still stuck in her eyes.

  And that was how she knew that however much Arydaq was cocking everything up with his stupidity, at the end of the day, everything happening now was her fault above all else.

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