As far as places one might want to break into went, the Dark Lord’s fortress wasn’t one. It wasn’t just the air, which Hexeri actually found quite pleasing, or the location, which wasn’t any great issue for her preternatural body. It was the damned security.

  Casters were, as anyone of note knew, rather paranoid people. Hexeri imagined she would be too, were all of her supernatural might compressed into a tiny, squishy human body. The Dark Lord had kicked King Galukar around like a loose pebble though, so she didn’t see what excuse he could possibly have for the absolute excess of security he was forcing her to avoid.

  If there were not undead by a door, there were bound spirits. If not those, then strange runic structures which a quick glance told her would hum with alarm at any intruder’s proximity. It was like trying to break into the inside of Collin Baird’s mind, but with dark magic added on for good measure.

  That was why, despite a solid hour of skirting around the structure in search of a vulnerability, Hexeri had yet to even enter it. She buried her frustration, ignoring the animal urge to vent it and start kicking down walls. Firstly, she didn’t even know if she could kick down these walls. Whatever they were made of, she didn’t recognise it. And she’d seen Shaiagrazni’s armour stop far too many death blows to underestimate the powers of a caster’s mystery substance.

  And second, if she made so much noise her unlife would be measured in minutes. Hexeri was not the predator, not here. She was a rat in the walls.

  She wished Collin were here.

  Eventually Hexeri’s orbiting of the place naturally petered out, only as she found her memory already stuffed with details of its features. There would be no more to glean from the exterior.

  So she took in a breath she didn’t need, held it an endless period, and sent herself off to infiltrate the fortress.

  Of all the places she might attack, a single balcony was the greatest vulnerability. Still guarded of course- casters and their ridiculous paranoia- but only by two undead. Dullahan, beings which would have been impressive anywhere else.

  The Dark Lord himself, let alone Shaiagrazni, had made them wither into nothing before Hexeri’s eyes.

  She came down on the nearest from above, hands crashing into the top of its head with all the strength and weight she could muster. The ground actually cracked under the Dullahan’s feet, and she felt its spine crumble. Before it had even finished falling, before its ally had turned, Hexeri twisted around the sluggish corpse and struck the other with a kick.

  Dullahan were no smaller than humans, and their armour was impossibly heavy. But Hexeri was Vampire. Her strike sent two hundred pounds of undead and three hundred of black steel flying off the edge of the balcony to drop down out of sight. Below, the cold ground awaited it beneath a thousand feet of air. Hexeri wasn’t sure how fast it would be moving exactly, but she doubted even an undead of such power as that would survive impact.

  There was no time to dwell upon it either way, she made her way into the fortress- hastily barging down the heavy door barring her way- and began hurrying through its corridors.

  A study of outer windows had given Hexeri some idea of probably makeups for the corridors and rooms beside exterior walls, other than that she was forced to map the place out as she went. The centuries had expanded her mnemonic powers well beyond most of humanity, and she put them to good use as she went. It was still a dangerous lack of knowledge on her part. But then desperate times called for dangerous missions.

  It helped to be faster than was human, and helped more to be lighter-footed than was even feline. Neither helped enough. Hexeri was only a minute into her infiltration when she made her first mistake, a minor error on checking her periphery that saw her caught by the sights of an undead.

  The Fomori came at her like a thrown axe, and behind it a dozen or more middling reanimates shambled after. She turned, sprinting away and hearing a great shriek run through the fortress, dancing along its walls and doubtless reaching the ears of a hundred or more other enemies.

  A Vampire Elder of Hexeri’s age was certainly a match for the Fomori, even if those undead had thrown themselves into the affair as well. The fight would have been difficult, but not insurmountable. That had been her second mistake- she should’ve silenced the foe quickly. Hexeri cursed herself even as she tore down the corridor.

  A horse would have taken five times her time to cross it, but the Fomori at least kept pace. Hexeri turned corners, focused on building her map even now. Right up until she saw another Fomori rear up ahead of her.

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  She cursed again, made her decision fast. Picked up speed and went to ram the blocking enemy. If she was very, very lucky Hexeri might kill it before the other could engage her. Hexeri’s impact wasn’t like a warhorse- it was like an entire formation of them, barded and manned by heavy knights to boot. The Fomori weighed ten times what she did and still found itself driven backwards to hit the wall five paces back. Cracks ran along the material- not so much stronger than stone after all- and Hexeri tightened her grip in its torso.

  Fingers dug in, compressing undead flesh, hooking hard and deep. She roared, threw it down to the floor and started punching. No time for magic, no time for anything fancy. She released the control on her instincts, let the animal that lived in any Vampire come out to play. Fangs slashed, nails raked, skin tore and rotting blood hissed out.

  And the other enemies grew closer by the stride.

  Hexeri’s concentration only slipped for a second before an arrow-fast tendril struck her, blasting her back against the wall and forcing her to retreat from more. The blood in her enemies was dead stuff, not even feigning animacy like in a Vampire, and so she called on the shadows to rake sharpened darkness across the attacking limbs. One was severed entirely, dropping heavy and stiff against the ground as others were opened up and whipped back.

  She lunged from the charging Fomori right before it arrived to aid its ally, hitting the wall and smashing almost fully through it. Hexeri glimpsed starlight from outside the feet of rock. She didn’t stop moving.

  If Hexeri let herself be caught, she’d be grabbed, slowed, then beaten past the point of even her superhuman body’s ability to reconstitute itself. So she kept her feet active and her wits aware. The lesser undead were arriving now, and she halved their number with a contemptuous flick of shadows that tore through bodies and littered the corridor with isolated limbs. That single moment gave the closest Fomori opportunity to attack once more, and this time the one she’d bowled over was rising up to join in as it did.

  Hexeri was forced to guard the first strike, feeling strength not so short of her own run deep down into the bone. Her shoulder hit the wall, then a tendril hit her head and floored her. Before she was up again, the Fomori were on her.

  But not for more than an instant before something smashed into one of them, moving so fast that the impact sounded like a bell tolling. The Fomori was launched back, trailing an arc of blood in the air, and Hexeri scrambled back to her feet to stare at the newcomer. Tall, covered in white armour, practically aglow with divine magic. It made her eyes water and skin sting, tasted like acid on her tongue. They didn’t return her stare.

  The figure moved like a Hero, or close to one. A Hero of physical combat more than magic, clad in plate from head to toe but seeming not to feel its weight at all. Their helmed head was a blur, gauntleted fist even moreso. Mace the greatest blur of all. Hexeri’s eyes barely caught the weapon’s head as it streaked to impact the other Fomori, unhinging the undead’s jaw, breaking the bone clean in half, and sending it spinning back. Precious moments were bought by the motion, she used them well.

  Dead blood was stagnant, less inclined to answer her will, but it was still blood. Hexeri concentrated while the Fomori reeled and rounded to fight back, and by the time the first was lunging back at the newcomer her attack was ready. Hexeri lunged too, planting a palm against the enemy’s chest and concentrating on its precious ichor.

  The blood heated, boiled, then boiled even past boiling. Bursting capillaries, veins, arteries, bursting the cells themselves. Crimson fountains sprung out at a hundred places as the Fomori’s body contorted and twisted, growing misshapen as the internal pressure fought to be external.

  Stories of Vampires bursting a person- literally making them explode- were exaggerated. But not by much. The ruin Hexeri’s attack made of the Fomori was enough to leave even a reanimate still and unmoving.

  Though she could only use it on the one at any given time, and in the time she needed to do so a Fomori could do much indeed. It was fortunate, then, that she wasn’t fighting alone anymore. Long before the other could attack her, the newcomer struck it; once, twice, a half-dozen times. Their mace moved like falling meteors, crashing into the hardened body of its target to smash bones and leave jagged shards protruding up through the very skin. The Fomori weakened, slowed. Hexeri didn’t even waste her time boiling its blood, just sent an arc of shadow into all the open wounds she saw and left them deeper.

  It didn’t take long for the undead to fall, even with its impossible vitality. When it did, Hexeri turned to the newcomer. Her saviour, she was forced to admit.

  “Thank you.” Hexeri growled, taking a moment to pause, biting back her…Instincts. She was not a thing to appreciate aid from a newcomer, certainly not to have her vulnerability seen. Every predatory, solitary instinct in her deathly mind urged her to kill the newcomer, to hide her shame by tearing them apart with tooth and talon, to crack them open and drink of their vital essence.

  But Hexeri was too aged to succumb to such purile urges, especially when doing so would cost her a crucial ally in perhaps the most dangerous territory she had ever set foot within. The newcomer, a paladin she now realised, didn’t say anything until they’d already turned on the remaining lesser undead and mashed their bodies into pulp. Then, at last, they removed their helmet to speak.

  The paladin’s helmet came off to reveal a surprisingly young woman with eyes a good deal older than her face, though not nearly as much so as Hexeri’s. Her hair was blonde, features sharp, face stern and…Weathered. She turned to affix her with a gaze that might have cut steel.

  “I know what you are.” She declared, and Hexeri prepared herself for an attack. “But…Clearly, we have more important issues here than each other. What do you say to us..Cooperating?”

  Hexeri actually paused a moment, ashamed to know that her surprise showed.

  “Let’s do it.” She nodded. “My name is…” She paused, winced, then revealed herself. “Hexeri.” The paladin did not seem surprised by her name, though recognition was clear as day.

  “I thought so. An ally of Silenos.” She sighed. “I am Ensharia.”