Blood Shaper

The lone vampyr making it’s way in the general direction of Avalon’s border was unmistakably an “it”. Dehumanizing the enemy was an old tactic to make it easier for your soldiers to be able to kill other people, it’s not “murder” it’s “putting down dangerous animals” and such. Kay hadn’t been huge on real life military history and tactics back on Earth, he’d mostly focused on fictional military history and tactics, but he was pretty sure he remembered it being generally discouraged, and it had been heavily discouraged by Eleniah and other teachers of specific topics that had been brought in to help him become a well rounded King. In was somewhat useful in the short term, but in the long run it encouraged your military to underestimate the enemy, which was always a terrible idea. It also gave your enemy a driving reason to fight to the death without surrender. Treating people like animals meant you had no reason to stand by treaties or hold back from war crimes, so why would they surrender or stop fighting and why wouldn’t they escalate to atrocities of their own, maybe even before you could?

Vampyr as a whole lacked the intelligence to make that kind of logical leap and once the infection reached a certain point a vast majority of vampyr descended into something less than true sapience, their bodies and minds twisted into a state so feral they really did stop being people. The purpose of dehumanizing them was also to make it easier to kill them, although for a different reason. The person that had been warped into the monster was dead, even with the ones that still looked like the same person, and putting down the vampyr they’d become was a mercy, not murder.

This particular vampyr didn’t need any extra dehumanizing, it’d already become something so monstrous that there was barely anything left of the person it had been. It was still vaguely humanoid, with four limbs, a head, and a torso in roughly the right configuration, but the legs had shriveled and partially melted together into a small tail that dragged behind the body, two ignored feet bouncing off of the rocks and roots the vampyr dragged itself over. It’s upper arms had pulled back and solidified into wider shoulders, and the forearms had stretched out in jagged growths that made them both longer and covered in thorns of bone. It’s hands Were covered in smaller bone spikes and it had more growing from the tips of it’s fingers like claws. The head was the most unsettling part. The neck had shrunk back and pulled the head back into the torso. It was flat, like a lizard’s head, with the eyes where the poor person that had been killed and turned into this thing’s temples would have been. The two empty eye sockets in between where the eyes now sat quivered like nostrils as it swung its head back and forth, questing for the trail it had been following.

“That is the most warped vampyr I’ve seen that hasn’t actively seemed to dive into its corruption to try and kill me.” Kay muttered quietly, resisting the persistent urge to go over to the creature and stamp it out.

“Inspecting it doesn’t say too much,” Lauren told him from where she was crouched next to him. “But it is interesting and mildly informative.”

Kay looked for himself.

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Twisted Vampyr Spawn

Tier ? Equivalent Monster

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“That does tell us something new.” Kay stopped for a second and scoffed lightly. “The Shatterplate or Crusade might already know that’s a possibility, but learning it is good either way. Anything else we need from it?”

“No, your majesty.”

“Then here.” Kay floated some of his blood up to her and let her take control of it.

Lauren shaped it into a massive arrow, then formed a bow as tall as she was to fire it from with her own blood. The creature paused in its ascent of the slope it was climbing, one spiked hand digging furrows into the tree it’d grabbed. It turned about, looking for whatever had changed, and managed to just glimpse Lauren as the arrow drove into the center of it’s head. Kay seized back control of the blood as it hit and detonated the arrow, sending it surging through the creature. The vampyr screamed in pain and it sounded completely inhuman as it thrashed. The bone spines on its arms and hands grew several inches, making it look like it had erupted with spikes. After rolling about screaming for several seconds it’s cries of pain suddenly stopped and it went still.

Kay wrapped the thing’s corpse in blood and began to dissolve it. “I’m sorry this is how we have to dispose of your body,” He whispered to the person who this had once been, “But we can’t risk this tainting someone or something.” When the last traces of the vampyr were destroyed he stored the blood back inside himself. “We’ll keep going in this direction,” He pointed down the obvious path the vampyr had left. “I want to see more before we head back.”

They roamed for several more miles, picking off stragglers and small groups of vampyr as they encountered them, until they reached the site of the closest settlement to Avalon’s borders. What had once been a small town or a village was now a muddled mixture of burnt husks and demolished buildings. Figures dug through the rubble, occasionally stopping to fight each other, biting, kicking, and scratching in animalistic combat. One figure pulled out something from under a collapsed wall and greedily shoved it into their mouth. Kay was glad that they were far enough away that he couldn’t make out exactly what they were eating.

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Kay stared down at the vampyr swarming the ruins of the town they’d destroyed. There were dozens of them clustered near the edge of the ruined buildings that weren’t digging through the rubble. Some where fighting each other, some were screaming or ranting at other vampyr or just the air, and some where just sitting in place, barely moving. Deeper in there was more movement, evidence of a greater number of vampyr present than just those that Kay could see.

“Let’s get closer and see if there’s anything we need to discover before we start wiping them out.”

“Is there anything we’re looking for in particular?” Lauren asked.

“Evidence of planning or a direction to what they’re doing. You were there for the parts that have gotten me wondering, and worried. The one vampyr in that village closer to Tumbling Rapids said something about a “Great One” and the one that tried to turn me had some similar epithet for the person who apparently ordered them to capture me. If there’s a vampyr with most of their brain intact controlling all the rest, or even just a large amount of other vampyr, we need to know about them so we can kill them better.”

They snuck closer to the destroyed town, killing the lone vampyr that had a decent or better chance of detecting them as they approached. None of the vampyr they encountered displayed any evidence of cognizance, they were all the kind that had been degraded into predatory instincts wrapped in a humanoid shell. A few of them had visible manifestation of the corruption that had made them into monsters, but none were as twisted or warped as the one they’d first run into.

The closer they got to the center of the strewn piles of rubble that had once been a place to live, the more activity there was and the more purpose was behind the movement of the vampyr. Vampyr that could talk and ostensibly think to some degree ordered about packs of lesser vampyr as they demolished what was left of the destroyed buildings and carried the debris away somewhere while an entire squad of upright vampyr marched past in something resembling organization, although a few of them started hitting each other and it devolved quickly. �

Kay wasn’t that stealthy and the Blood Guard with him were bodyguards, not scouts or infiltrators, but the vampyr were easy to maneuver around even for them. They were easy to distract and more than once completely failed to notice another vampyr disappearing entirely. After passing by or eliminating several “patrols” Kay and his Blood Guard found their way to a building that was only missing a few chunks instead of being completely leveled and that wasn’t currently being worked on by anything or anyone. They moved inside and Kay and Lauren moved to the wall closest to the center of the activity. They both peeked out a window to see what was going on.

A circle of vampyr stood around two more of their kind who were viciously arguing. At some point it had devolved into a physical fight as both were covered in slowly healing wounds and the ground around them was torn up, but at some point before Kay and his people had arrived they’d moved to fighting with words. Most of it was unintelligible at the volume and intensity they were shouting at each other, but some random words made their way to Kay’s ears. One of the vampyr, who resembled an old human woman with long white hair snarled like a wolf at the other, who looked like an unnaturally tall and skinny man with a domino mask over his face, and gestured at the crowd of watchers. They cleared away as a pair dragged a third into the circle. The vampyr they were dragged struggled to get free, snapping like a trapped animal at the hands holding them in place and shrieking wordlessly.

The female vampyr stalked over to a piece of rubble, grabbed it, and slammed it into the ground between her and her adversary. With a better view of it Kay saw it wasn’t a piece of rubble, it was some kind of obelisk or pillar with unnatural runes carved across the surfaces facing him. The female vampyr grabbed the struggling one’s neck and slammed it’s head into the top of the object, holding it there. The runs began to glow with unseemly light that flickered with nauseating colors. The struggling vampyr shrieked again and violently increased their efforts to be free, before suddenly slacking and lying still. All of the other vampyr watched as the one being subjected to this twitched and began to smoke, before it’s body suddenly began to twist and change, growing larger and more muscular as it’s body swelled.

“You see!?” The female vampyr yelled out, “Direct application is the best way!”

“Fool!” The lanky one cried back, “You number your alligators before they hatch! Don’t assume that all will be well before it is done!”

The swelling paused in a single second and the body of the changing vampyr began to literally twist as their limbs cracked and broke. Their arms and legs tried to make spiraling shapes but couldn’t as the bones supporting the limbs broke into tiny pieces. They then began to compress inward toward the torso and it’s head shifted to sprout from the middle of its chest. Large vent-like openings rent themselves in it’s skin and began leaking brown and green smoke that was timed with each labored breath that the newly corrupted creature took.

“There!” The tall vampyr cried, “It is useless as a soldier now! It best if we harness the power of the relic in bursts not in a single application!”

The female vampyr sneered at the twisted monstrosity in disdain. “A weakling! One of the stronger ones would be changed into true weapons with ease!”

“It matters not! You have had your chance, so now it is my turn!”

“Fine!” She spat at him. She gestured dismissively at the twisted spawn. “Herd that toward the enemy, same as the rest.”

Kay pulled back from the window and gestured at Lauren to join him. “I think that’s more than enough. There’s a level of planning involved, and whoever’s doing the planning considers Avalon an enemy. Turns out that any bargaining anyone wanted to try and drag us into this mess has been a moot point, we’re already involved whether we like it or not.”

“What next, your majesty? Straight back home?”

“No, I think we’ll stop to grab Zeia and bring her back with us. We’re going to need her for any real planning what’s next. Do you want the lanky one or the one with the white hair?”

Lauren glanced in the direction of the window. “I’d prefer we see what they’ve got before we make any permanent decisions about who takes which one.”

“Practical, if a bit boring. Anyone got any issues to bring up before we start?”

The Blood Guard all shook their head, weapons already out and ready.

“Fantastic. If anyone runs into one that’s particularly strong make sure to take it together, I’d prefer if no one got infected or dead while we’re here.” He turned and held up one hand toward the wall. A pressurized blast of blood erupted outward and destroyed half of the building they’d been hiding in and sending the vampyr closest to it sprawling. The entire congregation of vampyr watching another of their kind get warped by the obelisk being repeatedly pressed against there chest spun toward the commotion.

“Kill them all.” Kay ordered calmly. “Try not to touch that thing they’re using on each other while you’re at it.”