Heading to the Meeting

  “Tell me more about Dusk.”

  I sat on the parapet of Castle Bled, looking out at the lake stretching beneath me. Cazimir stood next to me, and I could feel his brooding even without looking at him.

  I’ve just told him that I wouldn’t be taking him to the meeting with Proximus. I trusted him well enough to keep him around, but that trust was not yet great enough for me to take him to a meeting with his former master. I’ve insulted him with that decision, I knew it the moment I said it to him. Vampires put a lot of stock in their word. If I had been properly raised, properly taught, perhaps I would’ve understood that culture more. As it stood, I had no need of it. It was arrogant to say, but I was above it, I had no requirement to follow their rules.

  “Dusk is an alchemical elixir,” Cazimir started, his voice painfully even. “A drug really. It greatly enhances an individual that takes it.”

  That I already knew. I had seen him and Nadja take it during our fight. It had made them stronger, not enough to match me, but close. Which in itself was insane. From what my sire told me, there were only a handful of Vampires in the world as strong as I was, and less than five that were stronger.

  Dusk was also how Aurora was overpowered and captured. Cazimir didn’t have any more of it for me to test out, which was unfortunate.

  “Who makes it? I assume someone with a Alchemy-type Mask?”

  “Proximus guards the source stringently. I don’t know anything beyond the rumors that I overheard.”

  “Which are?”

  “As you suspect, an Alchemist, an Exemplar like yourself. Proximus is keeping him imprisoned somewhere in Hohenwerfen Castle.”

  “How long do the effects last?” I asked.

  “A couple of minutes, the duration and effects depend on the person. It is also highly addictive for humans, to the point that prolonged usage can leave physical effects.”

  “Such as?”

  “Facial deformity, it can scar their skin. I saw a few people like that. They turn almost mindless, get reduced to just a basic primal instinct, no better than beasts. Proximus controls the distribution in order to make sure no one gets to that point. Dusk is only to be used in emergencies.”

  “Any idea why it doesn’t have the same effect on vampires? Are you even certain it doesn’t?”

  “I’m certain,” Cazimir answered. “The thirst seems to like it even, it’s… It almost has the same effect as shifter blood.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You tasted shifter blood?”

  Cazimir gave me a long look. “I can tell from the way you asked that question that you have as well.”

  I simply inclined my head.

  He looked away before answering. “Once, a few centuries ago, during the Ottoman wars. Sultan Mehmed the Second had a military unit of them serving under him. By vampire law we are not supposed to drink the blood of shifters, I’ve always heard it said that it can make us sick. When I drank it I was on the battlefield, hurt, the only source of blood was an injured shifter. I had no choice.”

  “And you learned the truth,” I said.

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t push him. I knew that there were things about vampire culture that I didn’t understand. I also knew that the reason why they thought that shifter blood wasn’t good for them was because of the things that happened in the past. Still, I didn’t know if the effects it had on him were the same it had on me. My Mask influenced things a lot.

  “Proximus himself is not an Exemplar, right?” I asked, changing the topic.

  Cazimir shook his head. “He is not.”

  “How strong is he? Do you know at what Investment his Mask is, or what it even is?”

  “He doesn’t speak of his Mask, he is strong enough to kill an Elder Vampire, which I had witnessed and decided that it was smarter to follow him. True, his power is greatly skewed against our kind, but it does the same to humans and monsters.”

  I grimaced, I wasn’t really worried about his power. I doubted that he would be stronger than I was, but it was good to always be at least a little bit paranoid. Not knowing what his Mask was, was an issue. He could use sunlight somehow, and if it was powerful enough to kill a vampire then I assumed that was the actual Mask. But he was also a king, so perhaps some leader-based Ornaments?

  “I don’t remember anyone who went to the first Challenge looking as if they were part of his kingdom. Nor do I remember anyone named Proximus on the list.”

  “I don’t know what your experience is like, but no one in the kingdom, at least I don’t think, was strong enough to get on that list. Proximus perhaps, his Alchemist maybe, but I don’t know if they went or not. Proximus isn’t his real name, he could’ve just gone undercover.”

  “You don’t remember any time when he was missing?” I asked.

  “He is almost always missing,” Cazimir answered. “Going through those rifts, or fighting monsters in the wilderness.”

  I cursed myself for not really paying attention to the people that joined the Challenge, beyond those that had gotten directly involved with me.

  “You said that he killed an Elder Vampire?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Yes,” Cazimir put his hands on the parapet and leaned forward. “I’d known Volk for a long time, we weren’t ever friends, but covens in Europe know each other closely. It is a small place, especially when we talk centuries… I digress, Volk’s coven all died in the early days. Vienna was overrun by monsters, chaos erupted. Some were killed by humans, others monsters, others fell in a rift. We met a week or two later in Austrian forests, decided to stick together. That’s when we came up on Hohenwerfen Castle and found Proximus.”

  Cazimir turned his head to look at me. “By that time, Proximus already had people under him, was already calling himself king. He had cleared the few towns along the river and brought people together. He was strong enough to protect them, so they followed him.”

  “Volk… he saw the chance to take over, he challenged Proximus. A human against an Elder Vampire? It obviously didn’t go as we were expecting. Proximus burned him to death, light shone from his palms, it was over before anyone could react. I did the smart thing and bent the knee. I didn’t survive for centuries just to tempt fate for no real gain. The world changed, power shifted.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. As I was now, I would never agree to anything like that. Never let another rule me again.

  “Is there anyone else I need to worry about? Anyone strong that Proximus might bring with him to a meeting?”

  “There are a few humans that are strong, I don’t know them personally, they didn’t really interact much with me. And if I’m being honest, there wasn’t really any time for that, I was so focused on surviving and making sense of all the changes that I didn’t pay much attention. There wasn’t anyone aside from Proximus who I considered a threat in any way.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I wasn’t surprised. A vampire wouldn’t really pay much attention to humans. Masks really did change a lot. I didn’t think that any of the humans could be anywhere near my or even Aurora’s Investment, but I couldn’t be sure. With our victory in the first Challenge the Investment gain on Terra was increased, some people could’ve caught up.

  “I guess I’ll just have to be on the look out for any threats.”

  “You could bring me and Nadja with you,” Cazimir said.

  I had been thinking about it a lot, but even if I trusted them I probably wouldn’t have brought them.

  “I need you to survive, and by your own words Proximus can kill you with relative ease.”

  I could tell that he wanted to argue, but ultimately didn’t say anything. Whether he didn’t think it was his place, or he agreed with my assertion didn’t matter.

  “Proximus is… dangerous. You can’t lower your guard with him.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  I headed out to the meeting spot a day in advance. I had to prepare the battleground so to speak. I flew over the forest, until I finally reached my destination. The transition was subtle at first, then abrupt. The dense, almost claustrophobic press of ancient spruce and fir began to relent. The endless sea of trees thinned. I didn’t know if this area was switched around like so many others. I didn’t know this terrain, these trees.

  I flew down, Saia following after me, then angled through the gap in the canopy to land on the forest floor. I shifted back to my base form as I looked around. Moss-throttled logs and thick carpets of fallen needles covered the ground, patches of wildflowers added splashes of muted color against the dark earth. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp decay of the woods. Something had died nearby, I could scent the rot in the air.

  “Saia,” I said and the dragon split. A portion of her body flowed over me and formed clothes. Simple trousers and a shirt. Though slightly thicker as I had her pad the mass a bit so that she could have extra to work with in case we needed it. They would obviously look strange to the naked eye, but with the rifts and rewards in them I felt like it wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for this new reality. It looked like a cross of some kind of heavy modern combat armor and a casual military dress.

  We walked forward, making our way to our destination. The trees fell back entirely, revealing the clearing like a secret exhaled by the forest. It wasn’t merely an opening; it was an arena, unexpectedly vast, carved into the heart of the wilderness. A natural amphitheater, perhaps half a kilometer across at its widest point, carpeted in a thick layer of wild grasses that rippled like a green sea in the gentle breeze. The grass wasn’t uniform; it grew in clumps and waves, interspersed with tougher, knee-high bushes, vibrant purple thistles standing guard, and clusters of resilient mountain daisies nodding their white heads. The ground beneath was uneven, hinting at old roots and buried stones, a surface that demanded careful footing. A large boulder was near the center, and I made my way toward it.

  Sunlight poured into this space, bathing the center in a warm, almost dazzling brilliance that made the surrounding forest walls seem even darker and more mysterious. Shadows lay long and cool at the edges, clinging to the base of the trees, offering respite from the direct sun.

  Yet, this wild place wasn’t entirely cut off. To the west, I knew was the road. It was hidden behind a particularly thick screen of trees and a rising bank of earth, perhaps fifty meters from the clearing’s edge. One couldn’t see the much of the asphalt itself anymore, nature had reclaimed it. But evidence of passage was still there, it was a path that was trodden.

  Framing everything around me, dominating the skyline beyond the forested rim, were the mountains. They weren’t distant, hazy suggestions; they were a commanding presence, close enough to discern the texture of their granite faces, the deep scars of ancient glaciers, the jagged silhouettes etched against the brilliant sky. Peaks rose on all sides, draped in darker forests on their lower slopes, giving way to bare rock higher up.

  The air here hummed with a quiet energy. Birds darted across the open space—the sharp cry of animals that had been changed by the Source, circling overhead, the cheerful chatter of smaller birds flitting along the treeline. Insects buzzed lazily in the warmth, some as large as my fist. They all kept their distance from me, understanding at some deep level the differences between us, my nature.

  The wind whispered through the grass, and I closed my eyes as it sighed in the high branches of the surrounding trees. This, at this point in time, was a place of profound peace. And it was about to become a perfect, secluded stage, hidden in plain sight, waiting for actors to arrive. A meeting here would feel both sheltered by nature and exposed under the vast sky, watched only by the silent trees and the impressive mountains.

  The place was chosen by Proximus, and I could immediately see why. A place open to the sky. The meeting would take place tomorrow at noon, at the peak of the sun’s trek in the sky, when it was at its strongest.

  The sun still affected Cazimir and Nadja, the same way it had affected me before the Challenge. They were stronger than a human, but greatly weakened. Proximus probably assumed the same of me. He didn’t know anything about me other than that I was a vampire.

  Still, he was obviously being cautious, but I was also.

  “Saia,” I started. “Let’s set up a perimeter, as we discussed.”

  “Feedback: Acknowledged.”

  Saia’s main drone rippled, and the horse-sized body split into a dozen smaller drones—all still dragon shaped. I had tried to convince her to take the shape of a bird or something, but she was actually insulted by it. She didn’t have a problem taking the shape of weapons or armor, but another living thing… well. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t something programmed in her, but her actual choice, so I didn’t press her too much.

  With the way every animal had changed, even if Saia was spotted, she wouldn’t be too much of a strange sight.

  Her drones split and flew in different directions, exploring the surroundings and scouting for any underhandedness coming from the Sun Kingdom.

  A piece of my Saia-shirt, flowed over my neck and nestled itself in my ear, hidden, but enough to allow her to speak directly and discreetly with me. I didn’t want to reveal her presence at the start. We had a few contingencies we came up with, but I didn’t expect to need to use them. I was trying to temper my arrogance, but it was hard to do when I knew just how much more powerful than nearly anything else on the planet I was.

  I closed my eyes and settled in a sitting position with my legs crossed on top of the boulder. I waited for them to arrive.