Horseman of War (High School DxD SI)

Chapter 2 - The Crimson Communion

(Many years ago)

[Velouris castle]

“Oh, Nate, did you try to escape again?” Drusilla Velouris asked with the bored amusement of someone commenting on something trivial.

I answered her with silence. Fuck her. If words had any value in this place, none of them were worth wasting on that psychotic bloodsucking bitch. I stared straight back into her crimson eyes and refused to lower mine, even though I knew exactly how much she hated it. She lounged across a sofa worth more than every miserable shack in the breeding pens put together, lazily swirling a glass of human blood as though it were vintage wine, while two of her noble parasites, Elmenhilde Karnstein and Millarca Vordenburg, sat nearby enjoying the spectacle like carrion birds waiting for a corpse to stop twitching.

“How many times must you fail before you learn to accept your fate?” Drusilla sighed, sounding genuinely puzzled by my stubbornness. “I have treated you with a generosity far beyond anything your station deserves, even though you are spoiled stock, and yet you repay every kindness with another pathetic escape attempt. I simply can’t understand why you insist on behaving like feral stock.”

That was the way vampires sorted humanity. Domestic stock were the obedient cattle who had forgotten they were ever anything except walking blood bags. Feral stock were the unlucky bastards who still lived beyond vampire rule, hunted like animals whenever the nobles grew bored enough to organize a proper chase. Then there was spoiled stock, people who could still read, or had enough magical talent to become dangerous. We were the weeds they failed to rip out early enough, and every noble believed weeds eventually cracked stone if left alone.

“I have often thought that Veinlings are incapable of recognizing what’s best for themselves,” Elmenhilde observed, speaking with the detached curiosity of a scholar dissecting an insect. “It’s the tragedy of existing in a perpetual half awakened state. They glimpse enough of reality to become dissatisfied, but never enough to understand the harmony of their place within it. They struggle against their own purpose with admirable determination and utterly predictable failure. I sometimes believe it would be an act of mercy to put spoiled stock down. Once a Veinling has been spoiled, it will always be spoiled, forever snapping at the hand that feeds it like a rabid dog that has forgotten every instinct except to bite.”

“Is that truly the heart of it?” Drusilla asked, smiling over the rim of her glass before turning those scarlet eyes back toward me. “Tell me, Nathan. Are you simply incapable of learning?”

I kept my mouth shut. There was nothing to say to parasites who mistook themselves for philosophers. They looked at me with the same indulgent smile people wore when a dog barked too loudly, a look that carried neither fear nor respect because neither ever crossed their minds. Every time I saw that smug, patronizing glimmer in their eyes I wanted to tear their throats out with my bare teeth, even if they killed me a heartbeat later.

Fire exploded through my veins without warning. It felt as though every drop of blood inside my body had turned into molten iron and someone was forcing it through arteries too narrow to contain it. My knees slammed into the marble floor before I could stop them, and a grunt escaped through clenched teeth. 

That bitch was using Blood Manipulation again. A few months ago I would have been screaming until my voice gave out or blacking out from the agony. Now I did neither. It still hurt like hell, but my body was learning. One day that trick of hers would stop working, and on that day I was going to wrap my hands around her elegant little neck and squeeze until those pretty red eyes burst.

“Answer me when I am talking to you, boy!” Drusilla commanded, her voice suddenly stripped of its false warmth. “Is the destiny of you and your kind an everlasting struggle against the inevitable?”

“What inevitability is that?” Millarca Vordenburg asked, genuinely curious.

“Why, my dear lady,” Drusilla replied with a satisfied smile, “to perish as nourishment for their betters. Surely that much is self-evident.”

Elmenhilde let out a delicate laugh. “She doesn’t share your certainty, Lady Drusilla. Millarca is blessed with a heart every bit as oversized as her breasts. She is something of a cattle sympathizer and, most scandalous of all, she occasionally attends those absurd Veinling Rights gatherings.”

Drusilla turned toward Millarca with a smile that never reached her eyes. “Is that so? Shall we remove the collars from our nutrition, invite them to our tables, and ask their opinion before dinner?”

“N… no, my lady,” Millarca stammered with an embarrassed smile. “Nothing so extreme. I simply believe humans deserve a measure of dignity. They are intelligent creatures, and the cruelty practiced on many of the farms is… excessive.”

Anyone with half a brain knew she had just stepped on a landmine. Drusilla Velouris owned some of the largest human estates in the Carmilla Faction, and beneath all the polished manners and refined speech lurked a narcissistic bitch who took the slightest criticism as a personal insult.

“Have you ever wondered why the human neck is so vulnerable?” Drusilla asked softly, her voice sinking into something almost reverent. “Why the pulse rests so close beneath the skin, why the great arteries lie so exposed that even a fledgling may reach them with ease? Nature does nothing without purpose. Every creature bears the marks of the life it was fashioned to live. The wolf carries fangs to hunt. The eagle possesses talons to seize the earth below. Humanity carries warm blood close to the surface and skin so delicate that it parts beneath the gentlest bite. Their bodies replenish that blood with astonishing speed and after repeated feeding many even develop feelings of attachment toward the very vampire sustaining himself upon them. Our bite itself is experienced as pleasure. Tell me, Lady Milacra, why would nature reward feeding with comfort and attachment unless it served the order she intended? A vineyard replenishes its grapes every season. Does the grape imagine it exists for itself, or for the hand that harvests it? Feeding upon humans is no more immoral than breathing.”

“Like they have any fucking choice except to love the bastard abusing them,” I spat, disgust curling every word. “You break them until obedience is the only thing keeping them alive, and then you call it affection. You steal their freedom, lock them in cages from birth, and act surprised when they cling to the only hand that isn’t beating them.”

A faint smile crossed Drusilla’s lips. She did not even bother looking at me as she answered, choosing instead to address her guests as though I had merely barked.

“The greatest lie humanity has ever told itself is that freedom is its natural state. Observe them in the wild and you will find endless wars, famine, crime, loneliness, and rulers changing with every generation while millions perish beneath banners they scarcely understand. Bring those same people into a well-managed estate and they are fed, sheltered, protected from disease, spared the burden of governing themselves, and given lives of remarkable stability. They sing, they laugh, they raise children, and they sleep without fearing the next harvest or the next war because those burdens belong to us. Every civilization they have ever built rests upon hierarchy and submission. They require guidance because their nature demands it, and we answer that demand as faithfully as the hawk answers the rabbit.”

“Then explain him,” Millarca asked quietly, nodding toward me. “Why isn’t he happy to serve you?”

Drusilla chuckled. “Why should I concern myself with one defective specimen when tens of thousands live contentedly beneath my care? An exception proves nothing except that perfection remains elusive, and defects can always be corrected with sufficient patience and proper reeducation.”

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                  x x x x x

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[Bucharest - Romania]

[At Mcdonalds]

“So let me get this straight.” Lavinia pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. “You made a pact with some unknown entity imprisoned inside an evil artifact, for reasons known only to whatever defective part of your brain handles decision-making. An artifact, mind you, officially classified as Grade One Dangerous and directly connected to the evil god Angra Mainyu, whose dangers we have explained to you repeatedly.”

Somehow, I got the feeling she wasn’t exactly thrilled.

“I already told you, he wasn’t some unknown entity,” I shot back. “The guy had the decency to introduce himself first before offering me phenomenal cosmic powers.”

“Ah yes,” Lavinia said dryly. “Nothing inspires confidence quite like an apocalyptic vision of countless massacres. Do you know anything whatsoever about this Horseman of War? His motives? His purpose? Entities of that caliber don’t simply bestow fragments of their power out of generosity.”

“He wants me to spread his gospel. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.” I shrugged before taking another bite out of my burger. “Besides, I probably won’t live long enough for that shit to matter anyway. We need every advantage we can get if we’re gonna have even the tiniest chance of pulling this off. Sometimes you’ve gotta roll the dice, even if the dice are loaded and trying to fuck you in the ass without lube.”

“There is a huge difference,” Lavinia replied sharply, “between accepting calculated risks and enthusiastically diving headfirst into the deepest pit you can find because someone at the bottom promised you candy. I swear, one of these days I’ll physically hammer the distinction into that absurdly thick skull of yours.”

“Franky, I think that's a lost cause at this point but I'll assist you in that endeavor.” The halfbreed bastard grinned while somehow managing to look like he belonged in a cathedral choir despite sitting in a fucking McDonald’s.

“Et tu, Elijah?” I said, placing a hand over my chest in exaggerated betrayal. “Funny, that. When we summoned Ophis and begged her for power, I don’t remember you giving me nearly this much shit. What, you jealous War picked me instead of your pompous ass? Worried I’ll beat the shit out of you next spar?”

“First of all,” Elijah replied without the slightest trace of annoyance, “that’s not true. I repeatedly told you that attempting to summon the Dragon God of Infinity was an act of extraordinary recklessness bordering on insanity. You simply chose to ignore me. Secondly, I have already compromised my principles once by accepting Ophis’s blessing. That concession will forever be a stain upon my conscience, albeit one I deemed necessary. I have no intention of degrading myself further by accepting power from yet another higher entity. If I am to borrow strength, it shall be solely from my Lord and no other.”

I couldn’t help grinning.

Notice how the smug bastard didn’t actually deny that I might actually kick his ass now. That little present from War wasn’t some minor stat boost. The difference was fucking ridiculous. My body felt stronger, my instincts sharper, and more importantly, it had cracked open an entirely new arsenal of abilities I’d barely begun to understand.

“We should nevertheless investigate these Horsemen thoroughly,” Elijah continued, effortlessly steering the conversation back toward something productive. “The only canonical reference of which I am aware appears in the Book of Revelation. There, the Four Horsemen emerge only after the Lamb opens the first four seals of the divine scroll, each rider embodying a distinct calamity destined to befall mankind. I always thought of them as symbolic representations of humanity’s inevitable descent into conquest, war, famine, and death, rather than literal entities possessing independent existence.

“To the best of my knowledge, there are no other meaningful mentions elsewhere within the Biblical canon, nor are they afforded a more concrete identity in the broader traditions of the Abrahamic faiths. If beings such as these truly exist beyond allegory, then either our understanding of sacred history is woefully incomplete, or someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to erase every trace of them.”

“The Horseman of War got dogpiled by a whole fucking pantheon of gods in the visions I saw,” I said, trying to untangle the clusterfuck of memories still rattling around inside my skull. “They couldn’t kill him, so they ripped him into seven pieces instead and sealed each shard somewhere different. Makes sense, doesn’t it? If something takes an entire army of gods just to cut it apart, you’d scrub every mention of the bastard from history too. You don’t leave instructions lying around for the next idiot to put him back together.”

“Which should tell you precisely how dangerous these beings are,” Lavinia replied, her voice growing noticeably more serious. “There must have been a reason their existence was erased so thoroughly. Nathan, you need to stop treating this so casually and tell us exactly what he wanted from you. It’s possible he intends to use you as a vessel to resurrect himself.”

I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out.

“You honestly think I’d make the deal if the end result was me getting evicted from my own fucking body? Give me some credit for fuck’s sake. I’m reckless, not braindead.” I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temple as I searched for words that actually fit what I’d experienced. “The problem is… calling it a vision doesn’t really explain what happened. It wasn’t like watching a movie or getting memories shoved into my head. It was… fuck, there aren’t words for it. For one brief moment I was looking straight into its very fucking essence. Into the thing that makes war… war. 

“Every soldier who ever picked up a weapon. Every kingdom that rose through conquest, every empire that burned, every battlefield drenched in blood, every revolution. Past, present, future. All of it existed simultaneously. You can’t lie about what you are when someone is experiencing the entirety of your existence all at once. It’s like asking fire to convince you it isn’t hot. The shard didn’t tell me the truth. It was the truth. For all intents and purposes, the First Horseman no longer exists. Only War remains.”

I could still see the skepticism lingering in their eyes, and honestly, I couldn’t blame them for it. I’d call bullshit too if our positions were reversed. They were trying to make sense of it like it was some bargain with a powerful entity pulling strings behind the scenes, but that wasn’t what happened. They hadn’t seen what I’d seen. They couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to stare directly into a being of that magnitude and come away knowing it more intimately than I knew my own fucking heartbeat. 

There is no ancient monster sleeping inside me, waiting to seize my body one day. I am still the same person I’ve always been, but I am something else as well. I have existed since the first savage cunt picked up a stone to cave in another savage cunt’s skull, and I will endure until the final star gutters out into darkness and the last living creature draws its final breath. War is eternal and so I was eternal. Nathan was War, and War was Nathan. 

“I still don’t like this. We should proceed far more cautiously,” Lavinia said, sounding no less stubborn despite realizing she wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Caution?” I snorted. “I am eternally tired of hearing that word. Caution is nothing but the language of cowardice. If it is deemed necessary that I forfeit my life or self for the rise of humanity, whose rights have long been discarded by the wicked, the cruel, and the unjust, then so shall it be.”

Lavinia shot me a hopeless look before turning to Elijah, silently asking him to help talk some sense into me.

“What?” Elijah asked with a small shrug. “If Nathan says he knows what he’s doing, then I trust him.” He turned his gaze toward me. “In fact, I’d say we should go even further if you’re certain your newfound patron is necessary for our plan. You said he was split apart and sealed within seven artifacts, correct? Then we find every single one of them. We track down those artifacts, break their seals if we have to, and let you absorb them all. Your increase in power is noticeable already, but it’s still a far cry from being enough for what lies ahead. If we’re going to wage war against the gods, then we can’t afford to do anything in half measures. We either commit fully, or we don’t commit at all.”

“Exactly what I was about to propose,” I began, right before my stomach reminded me it had other priorities. I stood up. “I’ve gotta go take a shit now. We’ll finish this when I get back.”

Elijah let out an amused laugh and shook his head. “I’ll never understand your stubborn attachment to such primitive inconveniences. Any competent mage can refine their metabolism with a simple spell. It has been standard practice for centuries. Frankly, I can’t comprehend why you insist on clinging to a bodily function that civilization abandoned long ago.”

“Because I am a human, Elijah, and humans take magnificent, glorious shits.” I explained the obvious to this idiot. “You spend your whole life surrounded by leeches and parasites, and every other smug supernatural bastard who walks around acting like their bodies are too divine to produce a single turd, and you start appreciating the simple dignity of sitting on a porcelain throne and dropping yesterday’s dinner into the abyss. A man who still needs to take a shit remembers exactly where he came from. That’s the shared experience that unites emperors and beggars alike. Every single one of my ancestors, stretching back to the first hairy idiot who figured out that eating suspicious berries was a terrible idea, has taken a shit. You expect me to sever that chain because some wizard discovered a bowel optimization spell? Absolutely fucking not. The day I surrender my constitutional right to clog a toilet is the day I cease being a man and become one of those pompous freaks who introduce themselves with eight titles before telling you their name.”

“You have quite thoroughly destroyed my appetite with that revolting speech, you imbecile,” Elijah sighed, setting his cheeseburger back onto the tray with visible disappointment.

“Well, if you’re not going to eat it…” I reached over and snatched the burger without a shred of shame. “The Lord says not to waste food, right? I’d hate for you to commit such a terrible sin.”

“The Lord also says that wicked will deliberately twist Scripture to fit their wicked purpose."

“Well that didn’t save him from being dead as hell, now did it?” I retorted and with that, I walked off toward the restroom, happily taking a bite out of my newly acquired prize. Free food always tasted better.

Part of the reason I still took the time to have a proper shit every day was pure, unapologetic spite. The vampires had a lovely little slur for us humans. 

Latrinefolk. 

Apparently, out of every sentient race, humans were the only ones who actually needed to empty their bowels, and those bloodsucking parasites took that as proof we were beneath them. Every time one of those arrogant leeches looked down their nose at humanity, it made my blood boil. So no, I wasn’t about to erase one of the most fundamentally human things about myself because magic made it convenient. I’d sooner shit myself to death than willingly become even one step more like those sanctimonious bastards. If taking a shit was what separated me from them, then I’d do it with fucking pride.

I lowered my trousers with all the solemn dignity the occasion deserved and claimed my porcelain throne. Then, with the gravity of a general commencing a decisive campaign, I bestowed my generous blessing upon the unsuspecting ceramic beneath me. With humanity’s oldest ritual well underway, my thoughts wandered to the nine abilities War had entrusted to me. 

If this was the kind of ridiculous bullshit I got from swallowing just one miserable fucking shard, then what in the ever-loving hell would I become after absorbing the other six? The thought alone sent a shiver down my spine. This was the sort of power that fundamentally rewrote the rules. I could feel it lurking beneath my skin, waiting to be unleashed, ancient and impossibly vast. The First Horseman had enough power to make gods unite against him. An entire fucking host decided that letting War continue to exist was too dangerous to tolerate. And one day… all of that power would be mine. Every last fucking piece of it.

Still…

I saw the Rider standing alone beneath a sky torn apart by divine light while hosts of gods descended upon him in numbers beyond counting, each one carrying enough power to shatter continents, and even War, the oldest butcher beneath heaven, had finally fallen beneath their combined assault. That memory settled every foolish fantasy before it could take root. Power alone would never carry me to victory. Carelessness would get me killed long before I ever reached the summit. I had to move faster than anyone expected, hit harder than anyone thought possible, and tear this rotten world apart before the bastards ruling it even understood what was happening. Failure wasn’t something I could afford because there wouldn’t be a second attempt. Humanity had spent thousands of years with its neck beneath the boot of monsters, and I had absolutely no intention of dying before I rammed that boot so far up their collective asses that they’d choke on it.

….

The vampires holed themselves up inside a pocket dimension stitched onto the shadows of Romania, accessible through a handful of hidden gateways scattered across the country. The place was about the same size as Romania itself, which was a crying fucking shame because it gave the bloodsucking parasites plenty of room to keep breeding. Their society was split between two royal factions locked in a feud so old nobody could remember how the whole circus started. 

The Tepes faction believed a cock was the highest qualification for political office, so they strutted around preaching that only men were fit to rule vampirekind. Across the border, the Carmilla faction held the equally idiotic conviction that possessing a cunt automatically made you destined to sit on a throne while every man should kneel at your feet. Centuries of war, all because one side suffered from terminal misogyny while the other had elevated misandry into a state religion. Every time I learned something new about vampire society, I walked away with an even lower opinion of the miserable bastards. If humanity ever needed proof that immortality didn’t make you wiser, these parasites were exhibit fucking A.

The three of us stepped through one of the shadow gates hidden beneath Bucharest, and the pair of unfortunate leeches assigned to guard duty barely had enough time to register our existence before we opened their throats. They collapsed without ceremony, clutching at wounds that were already far beyond saving, their blood pooling across the stone floor as their empty eyes stared at nothing. Tough luck. I supposed they could comfort themselves with the knowledge that the rest of their rotten species would soon be joining them wherever parasites went after death. Personally, I hoped the afterlife had a special pit reserved for creatures who farmed human beings like livestock.

The instant the last heartbeat faded, an instinctive certainty settled into my mind, as natural as knowing where my own arms were. Something had crossed an invisible threshold and entered my domain. I could sense several faint presences gathered somewhere within me, waiting for my command. They belonged to me now. Their lives had ended by my hand, and War had accepted them as payment. A slow grin spread across my face as I realized what had happened. Those arrogant bloodsucking leeches had spent their entire existence believing humans were cattle, and now their immortal souls had ended up in the possession of the human who hated them more than anyone else alive. There was a beautiful sort of cosmic justice in that. These bastards could finally provide some use for once in their miserable existence.  

[Trophy of war]

Every enemy personally slain becomes the rightful spoils of the Horseman. Their souls are claimed as trophies of victory and stored within the Authority of war. These souls may be expended to restore the user’s body, paying for flesh, bone, and life with the lives already taken. Greater wounds demand greater tribute, while powerful souls possess vastly greater value than weak ones.

…

We tortured a couple of vampires along the way until one of the bastards finally broke and told us the location of the nearest noble house belonging to the Tepes faction, after which we thanked him for his cooperation by putting a bullet through his skull and continued on our merry way. 

“Why are we attacking Lord Vladi’s stronghold first?” Lavinia asked quietly as we moved through the forest beneath the cover of concealment magic. “And why are we being so… sneaky? It doesn’t really fit your usual way of doing things. The Nathan and Elijah I know would’ve announced their presence the moment they crossed the border and started butchering everyone in sight.”

She wasn’t wrong. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to kick the front gates off their hinges and paint the castle red. Creeping through the shadows like some burglar irritated the hell out of me, but sometimes you had to swallow your pride if it meant getting your hands on something bigger than a pile of corpses.

“I dislike being grouped together with that imbecile,” Elijah said with visible disdain. “I, unlike him, have the ability to think beyond the next two seconds and refrain from slaughtering everything in my path unless I am certain it advances our objective.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back, raising a middle finger in his direction. Annoyingly enough, the sanctimonious bastard was right.

“To answer your question, Lavinia,” Elijah said, ignoring me entirely, “our foremost objective is to secure Valerie Tepes. The extermination of the vampires, while ultimately the purpose of this entire campaign, is still secondary until she is safely in our custody. We chose House Vladi because of Lord Vladi’s close relationship with King Tepes.”

“What kind of relationship?” Lavinia asked.

“They’re old friends,” I answered. “They go way back. Lord Vladi even backed King Tepes during the succession crisis a couple of centuries ago when the king’s uncle tried to overthrow him. Ever since then they’ve been practically inseparable. House Vladi is also the most powerful noble house in the Tepes faction after the royal family, which makes the old bastard one of the most influential vampires in the entire kingdom. More importantly, he almost certainly knows Valerie Tepes personally.”

“How?” Lavinia asked, frowning. “Isn’t she a Dhampir? Even a royal Dhampir would be looked down upon by the vampires with their obsession over pure blood. Why would someone of Lord Vladi’s stature care about her?”

“Because of his bastard son,” I replied. “Gasper Vladi. A Dhampir born to Lord Vladi who inherited the Sacred Gear [Forbidden Balor View]. Funny, isn’t it? The artifacts meant to protect humanity keep ending up in the hands of humanity’s worst fucking enemies. What’s that supposed to mean, Elijah? Another one of your Lord’s mysterious plans?”

My mockery didn’t faze Elijah in the slightest. He simply shrugged, his expression as calm as ever.

“I am not some deluded zealot who refuses to acknowledge reality,” he said evenly. “My Lord is morally perfect and utterly beyond reproach, but omnipotence is a quality no being possesses. Every creation inevitably decays when its creator is no longer present to sustain it, and His system is no exception. Lord Michael and the Four Great Seraphim devote every moment of their existence to preserving His divine order, and I have no doubt they discharge that sacred duty with absolute fidelity. Even so, no servant, however exalted, can ever hope to walk in His august footsteps. Such a thing has never been possible, nor shall it ever be.”

“We’re getting sidetracked.” Lavinia sighed. “What does Gasper Vladi have to do with your plan to attack Lord Vladi?”

“Because Gasper and Valerie were childhood friends,” I answered. “Lord Vladi would’ve known that. Like every other vampire pussy, he was scared shitless of his own son’s Sacred Gear, and the fact that Gasper was a Dhampir only made things worse in the eyes of those bloodsucking parasites. They saw him as an embarrassment to the family, but they also couldn’t afford to ignore a kid carrying a power that dangerous. Vladi would’ve kept a close eye on him his entire life, and that means he’d almost certainly know about Valerie too.”

“You think Lord Vladi knows where Valerie Tepes is, and you plan on making him squeal,” Lavinia realized. “But why go about it in such a complicated way? We could’ve forced one of the vampires we captured to lead us to the capital, attacked the royal castle directly, and made King Tepes tell us where his daughter is.”

“The capital is the single most heavily fortified domain in the entire vampire dimension,” Elijah explained. “The main military force of the Tepes faction is stationed there, along with countless defensive wards the vampires have undoubtedly spent centuries constructing. I would also expect the few Ultimate-class vampires they have to be there. Of course, we’re capable of breaking through those defenses. That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is?” Lavinia asked. She knew the least about our plan, largely because she had not been involved from the beginning.

“Time,” I answered. “Marius Tepes knows exactly what his sister’s Sacred Gear is worth. The Sephiroth Graal has the potential to erase every weakness the vampires suffer from and elevate them into a genuinely formidable race. We could storm the capital and carve our way through the royal castle, sure. The problem is that by the time we’ve fought through the soldiers and smashed every ward protecting the place, Marius will have taken Valerie and disappeared. No idiot leaves a treasure like the Sephiroth Graal unattended, especially when it can literally resurrect the dead. He can afford to throw away thousands of vampire lives buying himself time because he can simply bring them back afterward. I’d rather not give the bastard that opportunity.

Lavinia finally nodded, the pieces clicking into place. “So you’re attacking Lord Vladi to get information,” she said.

“Lord Vladi is the second most influential vampire in the Tepes faction.” I let out a quiet sigh. “He’ll know the capital’s defenses inside and out, the layout of the royal palace, the hidden passages, secret chambers, emergency escape routes, all that useful shit. Most importantly, he’ll know where Valerie is. He’s one of the king’s closest friends, and he knows exactly what her Sacred Gear is capable of. Hell, she awakened it while trying to help his own son escape. We need to find Valerie and get her out before her leech of a brother realizes what’s happening and moves her somewhere we can’t reach. For that, we need someone on the inside. Someone like Lord Vladi. Once we’ve squeezed everything useful out of him, then we can go on as much of a rampage as we fucking please.”

Lavinia narrowed her eyes. “How do you know all this?”

“Surely you didn’t think we’d plan a genocide without doing our homework first, did you?”

…

We finally reached our destination. A colossal castle loomed over the landscape, its towers clawing greedily toward the sky as if the bastards who built the thing thought sheer size could substitute for dignity. The place dwarfed anything I’d ever seen in the human world, which honestly came as no surprise. Vampires had always been obsessed with sucking themselves off. If they weren’t boasting about their ancient bloodlines, they were building oversized monuments to their own inflated egos. 

Every wall screamed, Look how important we are. They had all the subtlety of a drunk noble announcing his family tree to anyone unfortunate enough to stand within earshot. It was expensive, excessive, and completely devoid of taste. Give humans the resources to build something this grand and we’d raise universities and cities of unparalleled beauty. Give them to vampires and they’d build a palace big enough to house their collective fucking narcissism.

The fortress had three massive gates guarding the northern, eastern, and western approaches. We split up without wasting another word. I took the northern entrance, Elijah headed east, and Lavinia made for the west. 

Twelve guards stood watch at the gate before me, armed from head to heel and wearing the sort of polished armor that was purely ceremonial.

“Hey!” one of them barked. “Who are you? You stand before the domain of Lord Vladi. State your identity and your purpose.”

I couldn’t think of a single reason to waste my breath answering.

I raised my hand. An MK18 assault rifle materialized into my grip as naturally as drawing a knife from a sheath, the weight settling into my hands with comforting familiarity, and a vicious grin spread across my face as panic flashed across theirs.

Poor fuckers.

They hadn’t even realized they’d already died.

[Armament Manifestation]

War has birthed every weapon ever forged. As its embodiment, the Horseman possesses dominion over them all. Any weapon may be manifested from nothing, whether an obsidian spear, a holy lance, an assault rifle, or an armored division. Greater creations demand proportionately greater power. Particularly exceptional weapons may be granted unique magical abilities, though only a handful of such masterpieces may exist at once.

…

It was one of the new abilities I’d inherited as War’s successor, and holy shit did it feel glorious. I only had to will it, and any weapon ever conceived by mankind answered my call, materializing from thin air as though reality itself had accepted that it belonged in my hands. I wanted a weapon. War gave me a weapon.

The vampires reacted with admirable speed, even if it wasn’t nearly fast enough. One guard exploded into a swirling cloud of enormous bats that shrieked as they descended upon me. Another’s arms split open, his flesh peeling apart into a torrent of bloated rats that poured across the ground in a chittering tide. A woman’s spine arched backward with a sickening crack before a pair of leathery wings burst from her back while her fingers stretched into hooked talons. 

Another vampire’s torso ruptured as dozens of giant centipedes forced their way out through his ribs, their glistening bodies writhing over one another before charging in my direction. The remaining guards twisted into wolves, ravens, serpents, and other grotesque abominations, their bodies reshaping with wet snaps of bone and tearing flesh until the entrance resembled a fucking zoo designed by a lunatic.

The MK18 didn’t give a shit whether you were a proud vampire noble, a six-foot bat, cloud of rats, or whatever other disgusting bullshit they chose to turn themselves into. I squeezed the trigger, and the rifle answered with a deafening roar. 

BANG! BANG! BNAG!

Holy rounds tore through the charging swarm in a merciless hail of lead, bursting skulls apart, shredding wings, ripping torsos open, and painting the castle gates with blood and chunks of flesh. The entire exchange lasted less than two seconds. By the time the magazine stopped barking, all twelve guards had been reduced to twitching corpses. 

Their remains hissed as though drenched in acid before collapsing into foul puddles of blackened blood. Holy power was the absolute bane of vampire flesh, and watching those arrogant parasites dissolve into nothing brought a smile to my face. It was strangely poetic that creatures so obsessed with the purity of their blood ended their existence as little more than steaming puddles of the stuff.

With my enhanced hearing, I caught the alarm spreading through the castle before the first bell had even finished ringing, doors slamming open, officers screaming orders loud enough to crack their own throats, and somewhere deeper inside the fortress some poor bastard shouting that the northern gate had fallen. 

The sound rolled through the halls like fart spreading into the nose of an asthmatic asshole, and within seconds soldiers began pouring out of the castle in dark armored ranks, spilling down the steps and across the courtyard like a plague of locusts with claws and fangs bared. My blood surged so hard that I could feel every pulse in my gums, fingertips, and balls, and a laugh forced its way out of my chest before I could stop it. 

“Hahahaha, this is fucking glorious. I’ve been waiting for this all my life!” 

There must have been hundreds of them already, with hundreds more forcing their way through the gates behind them, all those pale faces twisted with rage as they charged the lone human standing in the middle of their precious courtyard. I had dreamed of this since Velouris. I had dreamed of walking into one of their castles, kicking open their doors, and showing these immortal cunts exactly how fragile they were when the cattle finally learned to bite. The day has finally come.

I lifted the MK18 and squeezed the trigger as the first rank crossed the courtyard. The rifle bucked against my shoulder, holy fire flashed from the muzzle, and the leading vampires came apart beneath the stream of rounds before their boots could carry them another step. 

BA-BA-BA-BANG! BANG! BNAG!

Heads burst into red mist, jaws vanished, chests folded inward, and bodies spun across the stones with pieces missing. The survivors behind them leapt over the falling corpses and rushed onward, snarling like rabid dogs, which only saved me the effort of finding new targets. I swept the barrel from left to right and walked the burst across their line, letting recoil climb naturally through stomachs and faces. 

The bullets punched through armor as though it had been made from wet paper, and the holy power laced through each round flared inside their wounds until pale flesh blackened and split. One vampire raised a Barrier large enough to hide three men, so I willed the rifle’s ammunition heavier and watched the next shot tear through the shield, arm, chest, and the bastard behind him in a single straight line. 

Another leapt high enough to clear the gatehouse, his legs transforming into the hooked limbs of some vast black cricket, and I tilted the muzzle upward before blowing his head apart in midair. His body struck a gargoyle hard enough to knock the stone beast from the roof, and both of them crashed into the soldiers below in a heap of broken masonry and shrieking limbs.

The courtyard became a slaughterhouse within moments, but the leeches kept coming because their nobles had spent centuries teaching them that human beings existed to kneel and die. Their education ended today. One guard thrust both arms forward and his hands split from wrist to elbow, each finger stretching into the slick body of a serpent with a human eye embedded behind its fangs. The snakes lunged across the distance between us, twisting around one another in a nest of teeth, so I stepped aside with a lazy pivot and emptied six rounds into his chest while the creatures snapped at empty air. 

BANG! BANG! BNAG!

Another vampire tore open his own stomach and released a boiling mass of red rats from inside his ribcage, each vermin carrying the same hateful little eyes as its master. I switched the MK18 to automatic, lowered the barrel, and carved a burning path through the swarm until rats burst beneath the rounds and the stones vanished under blood, fur, and twitching tails. A woman in silver armor reached me through the gunfire, her forearm swelling into the plated claw of a giant scorpion, and she swung hard enough to crack the ground where I had stood half a heartbeat earlier. 

I stepped inside her reach, drove the muzzle beneath her chin, and grinned into her wide red eyes. “Too fucking slow.” 

BANG!

The shot blew the top of her skull across the courtyard. The rifle clicked empty, and the surviving soldiers lunged the instant they heard it because these cunts wouldn't recognize their demise even if death wiggled her ass in front of their faces. 

I released the weapon and allowed it to dissolve from my hands while a broad-bladed claymore appeared in its place, holy script burning along the fuller. I caught the first attacker’s sword on my own, turned my wrists, and sheared through steel, fingers, and throat in one continuous cut. His head rolled from his shoulders with the same shocked expression he had worn while charging. 

I stepped over it and drove the claymore backward through the stomach of a vampire trying to stab me from behind, then tore the blade sideways until ribs cracked and his body opened from belly to spine. Blood spilled over my shoes, warm and foul, and the smell dragged old memories from the deepest pits of my skull. 

I remembered the feeding rooms. I remembered the sound of children crying behind stone walls while vampires complained that frightened blood tasted bitter. The rage came up so fast that my vision sharpened around the edges, and every face before me became every leech I had ever seen smiling over a human corpse.

I swung the claymore in a broad arc and separated three vampires at the waist. Their upper bodies struck the ground still clawing, their mouths opening and closing like a dead fish, so I planted my boot on the nearest one’s chest and pushed the point through his eye. 

“Save it for hell.” 

The blade vanished from my hand and a belt-fed M249 appeared against my hip, already loaded with a box of holy ammunition. I held the trigger down and walked forward through the courtyard while the weapon roared in my hands, every round cutting a glowing line through the horde. 

Vampires transformed in desperation as the fire reached them. Some grew enormous bat wings and tried to climb above the line of fire, only to tumble from the sky with their torsos shredded. One elder split his entire body into a colony of centipedes, thousands of pale legs scattering across the stones, and I swept the muzzle downward until the creatures popped in wet chains beneath the barrage. 

The remaining guards broke at last, their discipline collapsing under the sight of everything they trusted being turned against them, and they ran for the doors while officers screamed for them to hold. Watching vampires flee from a human stirred something warm and beautiful in my chest.

I followed at a walking pace.

The main doors slammed shut before I reached them, thick black wood reinforced with iron and enough magical wards to stop a siege engine. I rested the M249 against my shoulder, dismissed it, and raised one hand toward the entrance. 

A shoulder-fired Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle formed against me with a loaded high-explosive holy warhead seated in the tube. The guards watching through the arrow slits had enough time to understand what they were seeing. 

“Knock, knock, you bloodsucking fucks.” I fired.

The explosion ripped the doors from their hinges and threw them inward through the entrance hall, crushing the vampires who had gathered behind them. Fire rolled across the ceiling, fragments of enchanted wood spun through the air, and the shockwave shattered every window along the corridor. I stepped through the smoke with the launcher resting against my shoulder, coughing once at the dust before kicking aside a severed arm wearing a house ring. 

The hallway beyond was packed from wall to wall with soldiers. They had formed shield lines across the marble floor, men and women, and grotesque beasts crawling upside down across the ceiling. Their commander raised his fangs and began shouting some grand speech about House Vladi, ancient blood, and eternal honor.

BANG!

I shot him in the mouth with a manifested revolver before he reached the end of his first sentence.

“Fucking leeches.”

The hallway erupted. Arrows, spears of blood and bolts of shadow tore toward me from every direction. I ran straight at them, boots striking shattered marble as weapons formed and vanished in my hands according to whatever happened to be useful in the next instant.

A ballistic shield appeared on my left arm and caught the first volley with enough force to drive cracks through the floor beneath my heels. I angled it upward, letting the arrows ricochet into the balcony, then manifested a short-barreled shotgun in my right hand and fired into the shield line at point-blank range. The holy buckshot turned the first rank into screaming torches. 

They came at me from the ceiling next. Half a dozen vampires had transformed their lower bodies into vast centipedes, their human torsos hanging upside down while hundreds of hooked legs carried them across the stone. One dropped toward my back with its mouth split open to the collarbone. 

I caught it by the throat, slammed it into the floor, and fired the shotgun into its face until the skull became a dark stain beneath the barrel. Another wrapped its segmented body around my waist and began tightening, every plate grinding against my ribs, so I dismissed the shotgun and manifested a flamethrower nozzle in my free hand. Holy fire washed across the creature from head to tail. It screamed, thrashed, and tightened hard enough to crack one of my ribs before its body dissolved into steaming blood around me. 

Pain flashed through my side, sharp and deep, and I laughed because dozens of captured souls stirred inside the [Trophy of War], eager little trophies waiting to pay the cost. One soul vanished and my wound healed. The pain died before the burning vampire finished collapsing.

“Not even death can save you from my wrath, ye miserable parasites!”

I drove through the fortress room by room, leaving each chamber quieter than I found it. The barracks became a maze of muzzle flashes and collapsing bunks as I fired through doors, walls, and the cowards hiding beneath beds. In the chapel, parasites wearing crimson robes chanted curses from behind an altar made from human bones, so I manifested a heavy machine gun on a tripod and turned the entire raised platform into a storm of shredded flesh. 

In the dining hall, nobles tried to barricade themselves behind an overturned table while servants begged for mercy beside them. Vampire servants were still vampires. I gave them the same mercy they had given the humans they fed upon. 

The deeper I went, the stronger the resistance became, which only made the whole thing more entertaining. One man had grown six arms ending in the heads of starving wolves. A woman’s hair writhed around her as hundreds of black leeches, each one spitting needles of hardened blood. Another had turned his skin into a colony of blinking eyes surrounded by lamprey mouths. They stood together beneath the crest of House Vladi and promised to tear me apart for defiling their ancestral home.

I looked at the coat of arms above them and spat on the floor.

“Your ancestors had shit taste.”

The wolf-armed bastard attacked first, all six jaws snapping toward my limbs, while the others flooded the corridor with blood magic. I manifested a long cavalry saber and moved between the strikes with feline grace, turning every dodge into a flourish because slaughter deserved some fucking style. The first wolf head passed over my shoulder, and I cut through its neck while stepping under the second. 

I pivoted on one heel, coat sweeping around my legs, and severed two of the vampire’s human arms at the elbows before burying the blade through his heart. The woman sent her leech-hair screaming toward my face, so I drew a flintlock pistol with engraved silver along the barrel and fired once. 

BANG!

The holy ball passed through the swarm, through her forehead, and into the eye-covered creature behind her. Both bodies began dissolving together, their blood mixing on the floor in one ugly puddle.

“Classy.”

At last I reached the great hall. The doors opened onto a chamber vast enough to swallow a football stadium, with black pillars rising toward a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow and galleries circling the walls at three separate levels. Every surface crawled with vampires. Giant centipedes coiled around the columns. Bats the size of horses hung from chandeliers. Pale soldiers covered the galleries with fangs exposed and nails lengthened into black claws. There had to be thousands of them in that single hall, gathered from every wing of the castle for one last attempt to preserve their miserable little house.

I walked to the center of the floor while they watched me.

The echoes of my boots traveled across the chamber until I stopped beneath the largest chandelier. My suit jacket had become stiff with blood, so I reached behind myself and slowly opened the rear button to loosen the fabric around my hips. The gesture drew confused looks from the nearest vampires, and I took my time - a proper entrance deserved patience. 

Two Heckler & Koch USP Tactical pistols appeared in my hands, each fitted with extended magazines and chambers full of holy rounds. I raised them toward the galleries, rolled my shoulders, and smiled at the sea of parasites surrounding me.

“Gentlemen, shall we?”

They swarmed me from every direction, climbing over one another in their desperation to reach me, and I laughed until my throat hurt. This was everything I had wanted. The fear on their faces, the disbelief, the dawning realization that their castle had become their tomb, all of it fed the rage that had carried me through four years of hunger and sleepless nights. 

BA-BA-BA-BANG! BANG! BNAG!

I fired until both pistols locked empty, threw them into the faces of the nearest attackers, and manifested fresh ones before the first pair reached the ground. A giant bat swooped low across the hall, so I jumped onto its back, ran along its spine while shooting the riders clinging to its wings, and drove both barrels into the base of its skull. 

Bang! Bang! 

The beast crashed into the ranks below with me still standing on top of it.

Eventually the gunfire slowed. The final vampire stood at the far end of the hall beneath the shattered throne of House Vladi, a young looking vampire trembling so violently he could barely stand. He looked across the field of dead surrounding me, dropped the weapon, and turned toward a side door.

I raised one pistol.

Bang!

The round entered the back of his skull and carried his face across the throne.

Silence settled over the great hall. I stood alone among the dead with smoke curling from both barrels, my jacket soaked black-red, my shoes submerged in vampire blood, and thousands of captured souls pressing against the edges of my awareness. The chamber stank of burnt flesh, cordite, and old debt finally paid in full. I breathed it in, tilted my head toward the ruined ceiling, and laughed until the sound rolled through every empty corridor of Castle Vladi.

“Now that,” I said to the corpses, “was a fucking good time.”

A little while later, I heard two sets of footsteps approaching, one from the east and the other from the west.

“Look what I caught trying to escape,” Elijah said with a faint grin as he casually hurled a man across the blood-soaked floor.

The vampire skidded several meters before crashing onto his stomach. He looked to be in his late twenties, with doll-like features, crimson eyes, and neatly combed blond hair that was now matted with blood and dust.

“Perfect,” I said, my own grin widening. “I was starting to wonder where the owner of the castle had fucked off to while his home was being turned into a charnel pit.”

Lord Vladi looked up at me, every trace of noble dignity gone from his face.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Holy rounds tore through both wrists and both knees. Lord Vladi’s hands and lower legs were blown clean off as his severed limbs tumbled across the marble floor. He collapsed into a shrieking heap, writhing helplessly in his own blood, dragging himself forward like the worm he’d always been.

“Hahahahaha!”

I wandered over at an almost leisurely pace, picked up one of his severed hands and one of his feet, and began rhythmically tapping them together while slowly circling him.

“Run, run, run as fast as you can,” I sang cheerfully. “You can’t catch me! I’m the gingerbread man!”

The poor bastard could only stare at me with wide, horrified eyes.

“P… please…” he whimpered, his voice breaking between sobs. “W-whoever you are… spare me. I can make you unimaginably wealthy. Gold, jewels, estates, titles… anything. I can give you beautiful women, servants, an army. Name your price. I swear upon the blood of my house, whatever you desire shall be yours. Please… please don’t kill me…”

“No, no, no! That’s completely wrong!” I shouted, throwing my hands into the air in frustration. “You’re butchering the script! Your line is supposed to be, ‘You’re a monster!’ Then you spit in my face. That’s how this scene goes! For fuck’s sake… let’s try that again.”

I calmly walked back several steps to where I’d been standing before shooting him, cleared my throat, and straightened my jacket.

“Action.”

I strolled forward with exaggerated swagger before stopping in front of the limbless vampire.

“Hahahahaha!” I laughed, once again tapping his severed hand against his foot. “Run, run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread man.” I looked down expectantly. “Well?”

Lord Vladi stared at me as though he’d been dragged into a nightmare that refused to obey any recognizable law of reality. Every instinct screamed at him to flee, but his mutilated body left him no choice except to lie there shaking. Sucks to suck.

“Y… y-you’re…” he stammered, his lips quivering uncontrollably. “Y-you’re… a… a m-monster…”

The delivery needed work, but it was not bad at all. I gave him an approving nod but stayed in character. I crouched until we were eye level, my grin stretching wider.

“I’m not the monster here. You are! You and every other bloodsucking fairy tale trash poisoning my perfect world.” I rested the barrel of my pistol beneath his chin. “Now here’s how this ends, Vladi. You’ve got two choices. The first ends with you dying so slowly and so creatively that mothers will use your fate to scare misbehaving children for the next hundred years. The second ends with you telling me exactly where Valerie Tepes is being kept.”

“V-Valerie…?” His eyes widened in genuine confusion. “The… the half-breed…?”

“If you state the fucking obvious one more time, the-” I began, then stopped halfway through the sentence as a faint scent reached me through the stink of blood, burnt flesh, and holy powder.

“What is it?” Lavinia asked, watching me turn toward the nearest mound of corpses.

“I smell a cockroach.”

I walked slowly across the hall, following the scent until I reached a heap of half-dissolved bodies piled against one of the pillars. Beneath a dead soldier whose chest had been reduced to a blackened cavity, I found a pair of red eyes staring back at me, wide with the kind of terror that left no room for thought. 

A young vampire woman lay buried beneath the corpses, her black hair soaked in blood, her pale, doll-like face frozen so completely that she seemed afraid even breathing would give her away.

“Well, well, what have we got here?”

I plunged one hand into the pile, caught her by the back of her dress, and dragged her out while limbs and chunks of dead vampire slid off her body. She let out a broken cry as I hurled her across the floor beside Lord Vladi, where she landed hard on her knees and immediately curled inward.

“You tried to survive an honest-to-God massacre by hiding beneath the corpses of your own people?” I said, grinning down at her. “Shame on you and exactly the kind of disgusting behavior you'd expect from a leech.”

“Katerina?” Lord Vladi whispered, his voice trembling harder than before.

“Oh, you two know each other?” I looked between them and gave an exaggerated hum of consideration. “Let me guess, she is your daughter. I can see a bit of resemblance around the eyes, though all that sniveling is making it difficult. What do you think, Elijah?”

“All these creatures look identical to me,” Elijah replied absently. He had taken a seat upon the ruined throne and now watched us with a bored expression. “I have never seen any value in memorizing the faces of parasites.”

“W-wait… no… please, my lord,” Katerina pleaded, her entire body trembling as tears streamed down her face. “Please… have mercy. I beg you…” She lowered her head until it nearly touched the bloodstained floor. “I never harmed anyone of my own will. I have never commanded soldiers, never ruled over anyone, never decided anything for myself. My father chose where I lived–learned–whom I spoke to–whom I would one day marry. Obedience was all I was ever allowed to do.” Her voice cracked into a sob. “Please… I have never even lived for myself yet. I don’t even know why you’re here. If my family has wronged you, then it was never by my hand. I beg you… please don’t make me die for sins I am innocent of.”

I could tell she truly believed what she was saying. She sounded like someone who had spent her entire life being passed from one pair of hands to another and had finally realized that every order she had obeyed had led her to the same bloody floor as the men who gave them.

“She is a woman of the Tepes faction, Nathan,” Lavinia said softly. “Women here have very little agency. Their fathers, husbands, and lords decide the course of their lives, and refusal is something they can’t afford.”

She is just as much a victim of this system as you are - was left unsaid.

I understood exactly what she was trying to do. She wanted me to see Katerina as another victim, to believe there was still another path besides genocide, one where the innocent could be separated from the guilty.

I looked at Katerina. She was staring at Lavinia with desperate hope, clinging to her like a drowning woman reaching for a lifeline. Then she looked at me with hope. The sight filled me with disgust.

“Ahahahahahaha!” I laughed at the pathetic display. “Innocent, you say? Then I want you to squeeze that corpse-cold brain of yours as hard as it can manage and answer me one simple question. Have you ever stopped feeding on a human because they begged you to spare their life?”

Her silence was all the answer I needed. The terror that flooded her eyes as I drew my pistol and leveled it at her was exquisite. Like the cockroach she was, she bolted, desperately splitting her body into five grotesque creatures in a last, pathetic attempt to escape.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

She never made it more than a few steps. Each holy round tore through one of the creatures, reducing them to bloody pulp until nothing remained but a scattering of flesh and blood across the marble floor.

“That was ill done, Nathan,” Lavinia said sadly.

“Why?” I replied with a shrug. “Last I checked, the Geneva Conventions only applied to humans.”

“To innocents,” Lavinia corrected, her voice firm despite the sorrow in it. “She was born a woman in a society that refused to see her as her own person. She may never have had any real choice. She could truly have been innocent.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!" I roared, the words echoing through the ruined hall. “Do you think the humans they farmed ever had a choice in being born as cattle? Every single one of these leeches could have stood up and said, No. We will not behave like animals anymore. We will not build our lives upon the misery of another. There has to be another way to satisfy our hunger. But none of them did! Not one! Don’t you dare tell me that simply refusing to take part makes them innocent. If you stand by while your neighbors butcher innocent people and do nothing to stop it, then you’re just as guilty as the ones holding the knife! There are no innocents among them! Every last one of them is at least guilty of being born a vampire!”

Lavinia looked at me as though she were seeing me for the first time. There was fear in her eyes now, and beneath it a sorrow so profound it left her looking on the verge of tears, but she never lost her composure. The sight made me feel like shit. There had been no reason to snap at her. She wasn’t defending the vampires, she was only trying to stop me from becoming something even worse.

I turned my attention back to Lord Vladi. The moment our eyes met, what little composure he had left crumbled. He looked as though he had aged a millennium in the span of a few seconds. His limbless body writhed helplessly across the blood-soaked floor like a worm, every movement accompanied by cries of agony from pain he had undoubtedly never experienced before.

“Now then, Lord Vladi,” I said coldly. “You were telling me about the whereabouts of Valerie Tepes. I want everything you know about the capital and the royal castle. Their defenses, their weaknesses, their hidden passages, their secret chambers. Everything. Leave nothing out.”

And he sang like a canary. What else could be expected of a creature that valued self-preservation above all else? Vampires feared pain more than anything. They would abandon their pride, their convictions, even those they claimed to love if it spared them from suffering. A pampered noble like Vladi had likely never known true pain until today, and it showed in how quickly every last shred of resistance evaporated.

“…That’s everything I know, my lord,” Vladi said at last, his voice hoarse from sobbing. “Please… I can still be of use to you. I know where my people keep the wealth they have amassed over countless generations, their libraries, their vaults, their archives. Centuries of knowledge, treasures beyond imagining, all of it can be yours. I have lived for a very long time, my lord. I have seen much and learned much. I can serve you. I will swear any binding oath you desire. I will devote the rest of my life to your service. Please… please, my lord… spare me.”

“Are you a religious man, Lord Vladi?” I asked suddenly.

He looked at me in utter confusion at the abrupt turn in the conversation before slowly shaking his head.

“Well, you see, I’ve recently been made a priest of a new faith,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ve been wondering how best to thank my new god, how to offer a prayer to a deity whom no one has worshipped for millennia. Here is what I came up with so far.”

I closed my eyes, turned away from him, and extended my pistol with one arm as though delivering a sermon before an unseen congregation.

“The path of the righteous warrior is beset on all sides by the tyranny of monsters and the wickedness of those who feed upon the children of Adam. Blessed is he who, in the name of righteous war and just vengeance, takes up the sword against the devourers, for he shall be the shield of his brethren, the breaker of their chains, and the avenger of the forgotten. Cursed are those who make prey of men, who fatten themselves upon innocent blood and build their kingdoms upon fear, for the Lord of War remembers every drop that is spilled. And I shall strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, all ye who hunt the children of Adam and seek to poison His creation. Then you shall know that War has come, when my judgment is laid upon thee.”

BANG!

Lord Vladi’s head exploded into a spray of blood as fragments of bone and brain scattered across the marble floor, his headless body twitching for a brief moment before slowly dissolving into ash. I lowered my pistol and turned toward Elijah, who remained seated upon the throne, watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher, while beside him Lavinia simply looked down in silence, her sadness plain for all to see.

“What do we do now?” Lavinia asked at last, finally pulling herself out of her daze.

“We start a revolution,” I replied, already walking toward our next destination.

Neither Elijah nor Lavinia questioned me. They simply fell into step behind me as we left the ruined castle, its halls still littered with cooling corpses and rivers of blood. We took to the skies, and after only a few minutes of flight the next landmark rose over the horizon. Two enormous industrial complexes dominated the landscape before us, each stretching for hundreds of feet with endless rows of concrete buildings, towering chimneys, and reinforced walls that resembled factories.

My footsteps slowed. The sight clawed open memories I had spent years forcing into the darkest corners of my mind. I remembered endless rows of cages packed so tightly together that sunlight never reached the floor, the stench of blood, and despair that never left the air no matter how deeply you breathed, the sound of children crying until exhaustion robbed them of even that, and the hollow expressions of men and women who had long since accepted that their lives belonged to someone else. 

These two sprawling facilities were among the many human farms owned by House Vladi, one of the countless estates where humans were harvested like livestock. The noble houses had built their fortunes upon places like these, and generations of vampires had called that prosperity civilization.

I drew a slow breath and forced my heartbeat to steady before continuing toward the entrance, then turned my attention to Elijah.

“Each building has a sizeable vampire garrison responsible for managing the humans,” I said, pointing toward the second facility. “Take that one. Kill every vampire inside and bring every human you find back here. I’ll clear this one.”

Elijah gave a single nod before vanishing in a blur of light toward the neighboring complex without another word.

I inhaled deeply once more and lowered my gaze to my hands. They were trembling.

Why?

The frightened boy who had once been dragged through these halls, beaten into obedience, and treated as little more than an animal no longer existed. I had long since grown strong enough to wipe every vampire in this dimension from the face of the earth if I had to, yet standing before those gates made my body remember everything my mind had tried so desperately to bury.

A gentle hand rested upon my shoulder. I turned and found Lavinia looking at me with quiet understanding, her expression carrying neither pity nor concern, only steadfast support. I offered her a small, grateful nod before facing the gates once more and walking inside.

I conjured a pistol into my hand and pushed open the heavy steel doors leading into the human farm.

The first thing that greeted me was the smell. Blood, disinfectant, shit, and despair lingered so deeply within the concrete walls that no amount of fresh air could ever wash them away. Long corridors stretched ahead of me, lined with reinforced cells behind thick iron bars, each one packed with frightened humans who shrank deeper into their cages the moment they saw another armed figure enter. Somewhere further inside, a whistle echoed through the complex, followed by hurried footsteps as the guards rushed to investigate.

The first vampire rounded the corner with a rifle in his hands.

Bang!

A holy round tore through his forehead before he even realized I had raised my weapon. Boots thundered against the metal walkways above me as dozens of guards poured into the corridors, shouting orders while spells and bullets flew in my direction. Holy rounds answered every one of them. Heads burst apart and bodies crumpled onto the cold concrete before they ever came close enough to threaten me. Those who managed to survive the opening volley rushed forward with claws and fangs, only to collapse after another pair of shots punched through their chests.

They were slow. Every movement announced itself before it happened, every attack lacked conviction, every spell had been polished through centuries of comfort and it fucking showed. They had spent generations terrorizing prisoners who could neither fight back nor flee, and somewhere along the way they had convinced themselves that made them warriors.

Every vampire I found died before they could utter more than a scream or a prayer. I lost track of how many magazines I emptied, how many corpses dissolved into ash beneath my feet, or how many souls flowed into the Trophy of War. Time disappeared beneath the rhythm of gunfire until the last echo finally faded and the only sounds remaining were the terrified breaths of the humans locked behind iron bars.

Were they always this weak?

These parasites had inherited power through nothing more than the accident of their birth, then spent centuries abusing the innocent simply because no one had ever possessed the strength to stop them. They called themselves rulers, and shepherds of civilization, but every fucking one of them folded the moment they faced someone who could fight back.

When I finally lowered my pistol, I found myself standing alone amidst the corpses of my enemies. Blood covered the floor, smoke lingered in the air, and the empire House Vladi had built within these walls had ceased to exist in the span of a few minutes.

I looked around me and found hundreds of frightened eyes staring back through rusted bars, their expressions caught somewhere between terror and disbelief. The cages were impossibly small, welded together into endless rows of steel compartments where women were crammed together with women, men with men, and children with children, each enclosure packed far beyond anything a human body could endure for long. 

They watched me in complete silence. The smell settled over me. Rotting waste, dried blood, infected wounds, mold, stale sweat, vomit, and the sour odor of people who had gone months without a proper bath clung to every inch of the building. The air itself felt diseased, thick enough that every breath coated my tongue with the taste of rust and decay. I remembered that this place smelled bad. 

Dear God… this was worse than I remembered. 

The cages had been built with efficiency in mind, each one designed to hold as many bodies as possible while wasting as little space as possible. People slept sitting upright because there was no room to stretch their legs, and every movement forced someone else’s shoulder, knee, or elbow aside. Buckets overflowing with human waste stood forgotten in corners where they had long since ceased serving their purpose, flies swarmed over them in dense black clouds before settling upon open sores, cracked lips, and bowls that still contained scraps of spoiled food. 

Was it always this bad?

A violent spasm seized my stomach, and before I could stop it, bile surged up my throat with such force that it burned all the way to my mouth. I dropped to one knee as a torrent spilled from my lips, splattering across the filthy concrete in thick waves. Half-digested burger, wilted lettuce, strips of onion, chunks of tomato, and greasy yellow cheese tumbled out in a steaming slurry, mixing with bitter stomach acid until it became an unrecognizable sludge whose sour stench instantly merged with the filth already poisoning the air. 

I finally gathered myself and activated one of my new abilities.

[The Thousand Blades of Victory]

Condenses countless silvery-white blades of pure light into existence. These spectral rapiers travel at extraordinary speed, carving through everything in their path with overwhelming penetrating force. They produce almost no sound or magical disturbance, making them exceptionally difficult to perceive before impact.

…

Thousands of spectral rapiers blossomed into existence around me, bathing the entire complex in an ethereal silver radiance that swept away the suffocating darkness. At my command, every blade shot forward at once. The walls trembled beneath the deafening chorus of impacts as each rapier pierced a single prison door with flawless precision. Steel bars and chains shattered into glittering fragments before dissolving into motes of fading light, while every prisoner remained completely untouched.

The humans stared at the open entrances of their cages as though the very concept had become incomprehensible. Their eyes drifted from the missing doors to the scattered corpses of their vampire captors, then toward me before returning to the empty spaces where solid steel had stood only moments earlier. 

No one moved. Years of captivity had taught them that stepping beyond those bars invited punishment, and lessons carved into flesh were not forgotten simply because the cage had vanished.

At last, one man gathered enough courage to place a trembling foot across the threshold. He hesitated, expecting a whip, a shout, or the crack of a rifle that never came. When nothing happened, he took another step, then another, until he found himself standing in the middle of the corridor, staring at his own hands as though he had forgotten what freedom felt like.

Someone followed him.

Then another.

Then another.

Within moments, hundreds of prisoners slowly emerged from their cages, each one looking around in stunned silence as if waiting for someone to explain the impossible.

Several women suddenly broke into desperate sprints toward the children’s enclosure. Mothers threw themselves to their knees and wrapped trembling arms around sons and daughters they had only been allowed to glimpse through iron bars. Their sobs echoed throughout the complex while tiny children, too young to understand what had happened, clung to them with uncertain hands, frightened by the tears even as they instinctively returned the embrace.

“Who are you?” one man finally asked, and every pair of eyes turned toward me.

“My name is Nathaniel,” I answered simply. “I have come to enact justice and throw the wicked into a fiery pit. Follow me.”

Without another word, I turned and walked toward the exit.

For the first few heartbeats, I heard no footsteps behind me. Still, I never looked back. I had absolute faith that my people would follow, and they did. One man found the courage to take the first step, then a woman, then an elderly couple supporting one another, until the silence behind me gave way to the steady rhythm of hundreds of weary feet. Before long, every survivor walked behind me, following me out of the prison that so many of them had believed they would never leave alive.

Together we emerged from the sprawling complex into the open air, where another procession of humans was already waiting outside. They looked no different from those I had rescued. Their clothes hung from their bodies in patched rags stained by years of neglect, dirt clung stubbornly to their skin, and every face bore the unmistakable marks of hunger and exhaustion. 

Many of them stood rooted to the spot, their heads tilted upward as they stared into the endless blue sky with quiet wonder, breathing deeply as though the open air itself were something miraculous. Some stretched trembling hands toward the sunlight without understanding why, while others simply closed their eyes and stood motionless, letting the breeze wash over faces that had spent years beneath concrete ceilings. I knew that feeling all too well. A lifetime spent confined within narrow cages made a person forget that the world was vast enough to swallow every prison ever built, and that the sky stretched farther than the eye could ever hope to follow.

I crossed the gathering and stopped beside Elijah, who stood silently before the thousands of liberated humans. Fury smoldered behind his eyes with such intensity that it looked capable of setting the world itself ablaze. His fists were clenched so tightly that fresh blood trickled between his fingers where his nails had bitten into his palms.

“Is this everyone?” I asked quietly.

He gave a single nod. 

I could tell he was barely restraining himself. Every instinct in him wanted to march back into those farms and continue killing until there were no vampires left to draw breath. He wisely kept his silence, understanding that the humans were already staring at him with fearful curiosity as they took in his crimson skin, black horns, and swaying tail, wondering what manner of being stood before them. I rested a hand upon his shoulder in silent gratitude before stepping forward and turning my attention to the thousands of gathered humans. I activated another of my new abilities.

[Man’s Highest Calling]

Words spoken with genuine conviction carry the authority of War. Those who hear the user instinctively perceive their words as more credible, inspiring, and emotionally compelling than they otherwise would. This influence cannot force obedience or override free will, though it greatly strengthens morale, conviction, courage, fear, or determination depending on the user’s intent. The effect only functions while the speaker sincerely believes in the truth of their own words.

…

I used my [Armament Manifestation] and countless rifles of polished black steel shimmered into existence behind me with but a mere thought. Gasps rippled through the crowd as the strange weapons floated above their heads, gleaming beneath the sunlight while every eye followed them in stunned silence.

“My name is Nathaniel,” I said, my voice carrying across the open fields. “I was born where you were born. I wore the same chains once, breathed the same poisoned air, and watched the same monsters drag screaming my people away like cattle. Hear me, ye dispossessed folk, why should we continue to crawl before creatures who stole everything from us? Why should we accept a world where our mothers become breeding stock, our fathers become laborers until their bodies fail, and our children inherit nothing except the cage that held their parents? They are parasites dressed in silk, cowards hiding behind titles, and every last one of them deserves a bullet through the fucking skull.”

The rifles slowly descended until each floated before a single human, patiently waiting to be accepted, while thousands of trembling hands hesitated between fear and longing. Some reached toward the unfamiliar weapons before pulling back again, while others simply stared, unable to believe that such instruments of death had been offered to people who had never been permitted to defend themselves.

“You stand at the edge of a new age,” I continued, my voice rising until it echoed across the farms behind us. “You may walk away from this place and spend the rest of your lives praying that another monster never places a collar around your neck, or you may swear that no child of Adam shall ever kneel before another predator again. Say farewell to your chains. Say farewell to your fear. Say farewell to the miserable peace they purchased with your blood. The road before us shall be cruel, and many of us shall die before the end, though I swear upon my own life that every drop of human blood spilled upon that road shall be repaid a thousandfold. We shall hunt every vampire, every devil, every fallen angel, every monster that fattens itself upon mankind, and we shall carry this war to the last corner of creation until no child is born beneath the shadow of a cage again. They have fed upon the children of Adam since the dawn of history. I say no more!”

The first rifle was finally grasped. Then another. The sound of metal being lifted echoed across the crowd until hundreds of weapons were held in uncertain hands, and with every soul that accepted one I felt the Crimson Communion stir within me, waiting only for my command to bind them beneath the banner of War.

“I promise you neither comfort nor wealth nor long lives,” I said, extending my hand toward them. “I offer you war. I offer you vengeance. I offer you the chance to repay every scream, every whip, every child stolen from its mother, and every woman violated beneath the laughter of monsters. Come with me, and I shall make you Riders beneath the banner of War. Together we shall drown this world in righteous retribution until the wicked curse the day they first laid a hand upon us. Let every parasite hear our footsteps and despair. Rise, children of Adam. Take up your swords, your rifles, and your wrath. We shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit!”

[The Crimson Communion]

The Horseman may establish sacred pacts with chosen individuals, elevating them into Riders beneath his banner. Each Rider receives a fragment of the Horseman’s authority in the form of abilities personally bestowed by the user. These blessings vary according to the Horseman’s will and may be altered or revoked at any time. Riders remain independent individuals, yet become living extensions of the Horseman’s ideals, ambitions, and military strength.

…

[Arma Ominia]

The Horseman recognizes every weapon ever conceived. By merely touching any weapon, the user instantly acquires complete mastery over its operation, techniques, maintenance, and optimal combat application, regardless of whether it is an ancient blade, experimental firearm, siege engine, or weapon never before encountered.

…

War and I fit together like a perfectly forged blade and its scabbard. Every ability I had inherited felt as though it had been created solely to serve my ambition, and for the first time in my life I found myself wondering whether all the misery I had endured had always been leading me here. Was this my destiny? Had I always been meant to become the successor of War?

By themselves, these people would have stood little chance against even ordinary vampires. Most had never held a fucking weapon in their lives, let alone fired one. The moment they accepted my Communion, I granted them a fragment of [Arma Omnia]. Their hands instinctively found the correct grip, their fingers settled upon the trigger with practiced confidence, and knowledge of reloading, aiming, clearing malfunctions, and disciplined marksmanship became as familiar to them as memories from childhood. Every rifle had already been loaded with holy ammunition, placing one of the greatest weaknesses of vampirekind into the hands of those they had spent centuries treating as livestock.

The Communion achieved two of my purposes. It forged the first soldiers beneath my banner, and it concealed my true intentions behind the appearance of an ordinary slave uprising. The rulers of the vampire capital would see frightened humans taking up stolen weapons and conclude that another desperate rebellion had flared to life. By the time they realized they were fighting the opening campaign of a holy war, it would already be too late.

I watched as one man after another, one woman after another, accepted the Crimson Communion and became Riders beneath my banner.

And I saw that it was good.

AN: The whole castle slaughter sequence turned out to be much harder to write than I expected, but it's finally here. The promised genocide has arrived, my friends.

I originally planned to showcase all nine of Nathan's new abilities in action during this chapter, but I couldn't quite fit everything in without turning the battle into an endless showcase reel. The remaining abilities will be revealed in future chapters.

The vampire arc should be wrapping up next chapter. I'm trying to keep the pacing fairly fast, which, as anyone familiar with my writing style knows, is a challenge of near-mythical proportions. But I shall persevere. I will bravely continue cutting every beautiful paragraph, every unnecessary tangent, and every scene that exists solely because I thought it sounded cool - doing so with tears streaming down my face and my artistic soul slowly leaving my body.