Chapter 56: No Sleep for the Wicked

  After the audience, Lily had brought Tessa upstairs and given her one of the guest rooms on the upper floor. The girl had barely murmured a soft “Good night” before slipping inside and closing the door behind her. Lily had stood for a moment in the hallway, suddenly aware of how heavy her limbs felt, how tight her skull felt around her own thoughts. And then she had retreated too, into her large room, pulled the curtains of her four-poster bed shut, and simply collapsed onto the mattress.

  Now she lay on her back, staring up at the embroidered canopy while her head still throbbed. It was getting better, slowly, but the lingering ache sat behind her eyes like a hot needle. At least she could be grateful for one thing: the skills she was apparently “learning” again came back to her naturally. If she had received the complete flood of knowledge—every instinct, every calculation, every hidden mechanic of her entire skill set—dumped into her brain on the first day she awakened here, she would probably have ended up screaming in a corner for days. Or be dead. Hard to tell.

  So yes. She should probably try to use a few more spells soon, get the worst of that backlash out of the way before it built up into something catastrophic when she needed it most.

  Ahhh why is everything so weird here…

  Lily groaned into her pillow and pushed her face forward until the soft fabric swallowed half her words. Lying on her side was difficult, because her horns got in the way, and every time she tried to adjust them against the pillow she felt ridiculous. She still was not fully accustomed to their weight or angle. Maybe there was a proper technique to sleeping with horns? Maybe she should ask Igrath. But no, this guy probably slept on rocks anyway.

  If only this was her biggest problem.

  Her thoughts drifted back to Tessa. The girl was more like a frightened deer than anything resembling a vampire progenitor. After spending the entire day hunting with Vessikar, she had probably regained more of her former personality, because that was how vampires functioned. Lily knew enough about the class tree to guess it. Hunger amplified instincts, suppressed memories, warped personality. Now that the hunger was gone, the girl felt more human again.

  Which… was going to cause problems later, definitely. Later, when everything caught up with her.

  Lily sighed quietly and shifted again under the blankets.

  She already liked the girl. Not only because she felt responsible for Tessa’s condition—well yes, mostly because of that—but also because there was something strangely grounding about her presence. Lily hoped the demon aspect of the vampirism had not twisted too much inside the girl. She had never heard of “demonic” vampires before. That alone worried her more than she wanted to admit.

  But for now Tessa was shy, overwhelmed, and trying to comprehend her new reality. And Lily understood her completely. On a very strange level, they had something in common: their entire world had been altered without their consent. Only difference was that Lily was the one at fault in Tessa’s case. Which made everything worse.

  Because Lily, deep down, always believed that people should have the freedom to choose their own fate. That was all she ever wanted, really. And yet… her own life had been full of plans made by others. Plans from her parents. Plans from teachers. Plans from a society that expected certain things and punished anything else. And Xantia had been her escape from all of that.

  Ironically, waking up here—inside the game world—felt like being thrown back into a cage someone else had arranged for her again. The nagging inner voice that pushed her toward certain actions, that strange pull toward specific decisions, that subtle emotional nudging… It all made her feel like she was following someone else’s script.

  It would be so much easier if I were just crazy, would it not…

  She exhaled long and hard. Then buried her face in the pillow again.

  Then at least I could claim, “Shit happens,” and be done with it… Ahh yes, I am crazy anyway. No real chance to deny it. I should really try to sleep…

  She closed her eyes and tried. She really tried. After ten minutes of rolling around and failing to find a position that did not stab her skull with horn-induced inconvenience, she opened her eyes again and stared into the darkness above her.

  Her thoughts spiraled.

  I really hope the others are not too upset that I left them behind… I still can’t figure out how Lissy reacted to my death…

  Her breath caught.

  Well… I would have died for her anyway later in a sense... So maybe better this way…

  She swallowed hard. Her throat tightened as a wave of guilt crawled up her spine.

  I am just sorry I never had the chance to say goodbye to them… and to excuse myself to her… for what was coming…

  “Ah damn, damn, damn.”

  Her fist clenched and she slammed it into the mattress. The entire bed frame jolted violently and the floor below emitted a cracking, rattling thump—like something very heavy had dropped from the ceiling.

  She froze.

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  “…oh. Ehm. Oops…”

  She poked the mattress with two fingertips as if testing whether it would collapse.

  Lucky my furniture can withstand this…

  She closed her eyes again and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

  I should just leave it behind. I cannot change the past anyway…

  For a few heartbeats she hovered on the edge of sleep, her thoughts finally slowing, her body sinking deeper into the soft bedding. And right in that moment, when her mind was about to disconnect from consciousness at last, something nudged her awareness.

  One of the gargoyles perched above the mansion’s front gate had sent her a signal. They did not speak or form words; they simply pushed the alert into her thoughts. It felt almost like a doorbell ringing somewhere inside her head—polite, but impossible to ignore.

  Lily opened her eyes again and stared at the canopy above her.

  “…Are they for real?” she whispered, incredulous.

  She pushed herself up slightly, hair falling over her shoulder, the throbbing behind her temples threatening to return.

  “How late is it? Three? Four in the morning?” The air felt cold when she exhaled. “I swear, if this is not important, I am done pretending to be civil. I will actually give a fuck about my appearance never again and kill them on the spot…”

  She rubbed her face with both hands, groaning quietly.

  ???

  When Vessikar left the forest where the Princess and the girl blessed by the god living inside the Demon Moon had been, he went straight in the direction where he assumed the church should be. Unlike Ekkra, he did not really know what a church was supposed to look like. He had only a faint understanding of it, nothing more. Fortunately, he sensed the presence of another Demonbound from the group that had entered the mortal realm with him—Thirra.

  Vessikar followed the sensation across rooftops, leaping lightly from one to the next until he found him. Thirra was crouched on the edge of a roof, eating some kind of bird while observing mortals through a window below.

  Vessikar landed beside him without any greeting and spoke immediately.

  “Thirra. The Princess ordered me to find Ekkra. Do you know where the church is?”

  Thirra did not look up. He chewed, swallowed, and answered with his strange rolling r’s.

  “These morrrrtals arrre quite fascinating, do you not think? How they move, how they behave…”

  “Yes, they are,” Vessikar said. “I cannot quite understand them, but I think they have potential. The one I watched was even blessed by the god living inside the Demon Moon.”

  Thirra finally turned his head. His features had shifted throughout the day, becoming more demon like as the vessel-body deteriorated. “The God has rrrecognized a human? Interrrresting…”

  He nodded toward a large building with tall spires. “I saw Ekkrrra therrre last. That should be your churrrch.”

  Vessikar nodded once and jumped off toward the building.

  Inside, he sniffed the air. The scent of demon essence lingered faintly. Ekkra had been here. He followed the traces deeper into the building until he found a hidden passage inside some kind of tomb. The scent grew stronger.

  After following the dark corridor for some time, he emerged into a larger chamber, a room branching into several passages. Two human corpses lay slumped on the ground.

  Vessikar crouched beside them and sniffed. “Ekkra played around with his prey…” he muttered.

  He could tell Ekkra had been wounded at this point. How severely, he could not say. But his experience in the Ashen Lands told him enough. Ekkra had been a demon of the calmer circles, one of those soft-bellied predators who hunted only where nothing dared to hunt them back. Vessikar, on the other hand, had survived in places where he had to fight every waking moment just to stay alive. So, at Ekkra’s place he would have stopped the hunt, since Ekkra had been wounded and it would be too dangerous to follow wounded prey. Even the weakest prey could bite back when cornered, and Vessikar knew better than to chase after something that still had enough strength to take a final chunk out of its hunter.

  He spat on the ground. “Dumb Ekkra.”

  Then he inspected the corpses more closely, took the amulets they were still wearing to present them to the Princess later, and followed the strongest trail again. After that, he chose one of the passages where Ekkra’s scent led and followed it for quite a while, until he found an exit behind a waterfall.

  “Dangerously…” he muttered, realizing this was a weak point where foreign troops could sneak into the city the Princess had claimed today.

  Behind the waterfall he found himself in another forest, on the opposite side of the city from where he and the girl had hunted earlier. He jumped into one of the treetops and sniffed again. The demonic scent was stronger now. He was getting closer to Ekkra—or at least what remained of him, since the Princess had said Ekkra was already dead.

  But the scent trail… it was too easy to follow, and it led him straight into the perfect place for a trap. So, was this a trap after all? Something meant to lure more of his kind here to kill? Did the attackers know Vessikar would search for Ekkra?

  Vessikar intended not to make the same mistake as Ekkra and fall into a simple trap. No. Vessikar had been the one setting traps for the tallest beasts in the Ashen Lands. He was not someone who got fooled easily.

  His essence had already anchored more firmly in this realm, but he was still not at full capacity of his former self. Since Ekkra had fought hours ago, he would have been even weaker than Vessikar was now. For this failure of oversight, Vessikar had no understanding.

  “Dumb deep-circle demons and their lavish lives…” he murmured.

  Then he cast [Hollow Ash Clone]. Slowly, ash flowed from his mouth to the ground, more and more, until a pale doppelganger stood there, made entirely of ash.

  Vessikar crawled a bit down the tree into the foliage and sent the clone toward where he believed Ekkra’s corpse would be. The ashen clone had almost no weight and moved without a single sound. Vessikar could see through its eyes as long as it remained close enough.

  The clone moved out of the shadows toward a clearing. The signs of another battle were obvious. Scorched soil. Crushed plants. Blood that was half-dry.

  Still no attack.

  Vessikar pushed more of his senses through the clone and searched for Ekkra’s remains. Eventually he found the scent beneath loose earth. The clone scraped the soil aside, careful, prepared for traps…

  But there was nothing except what remained of Ekkra.

  Ekkra’s vessel was hacked apart. Severed cleanly, each limb separated, the body chopped into individual pieces and shoved into a hastily dug hole.

  Since still no one attacked, Vessikar came out of his hiding spot and jumped into the clearing himself. He stayed prepared, but he could smell no one other than a few wild animals he had hunted earlier. The attackers had already left.

  He sniffed the air again. Their scent lingered. He could probably follow it. But that would be foolish.

  He looked down at Ekkra’s butchered remains.

  “What a dishonor to the Demon Moon who granted you a new chance. And to the Princess you had sworn to serve.”

  Since he could not learn how Ekkra had died, he took Ekkra’s severed head and began his jump back toward Tiara.

  His ash clone, instead, leapt in the other direction, following the attackers. Since Vessikar moved away, he could no longer share senses with it, but the clone would follow its rudimentary orders and return after scouting.

  If it returned, he would see what it had seen. If it did not…

  Then the attackers had found it, and that alone would give Vessikar an advantage when he needed to deal with them in the future, since he would know they were capable of getting hold of something as fleeting as ash.