Death After Death

When Simon reformed, it was only a few feet from the nearest sentry. The man had just enough time to look to the trees and wonder what had agitated the birds, but not enough to raise a defense or an alarm as Simon lunged for him.

It was not a graceful attack. He was still half dizzy from the feeling of having legs and seeing out of only two eyes again. He was hungry, too. The strange transformation magic had sapped what little strength he had. Still, none of that would save the watchman.

Simon’s trembling, misshapen hands covered the man’s mouth even as his fangs sank into the guard’s jugular, and he started to drink deeply. The soldier was able to make a muffled scream and even draw his curved saber, but with the way that Simon was holding him, he couldn’t bring it to bear before he began to weaken.

Simon bore the man to the ground with his weight more than his strength, and as he did so, he noticed that the guard had two wooden stakes tucked into his belt. So they’re ready for me, he told himself. There were countless nights when all he’d longed for was to have a weapon like that which he could plunge into his own heart, now though he wanted to feed more than he wanted to die.

Before he could give that more thought and decide whether he should take one of those with him, there were sounds in the darkness. It occurred to Simon only slowly that he drank his victim’s lifeblood, that they were words. Someone nearby had heard the brief commotion. They were checking on the man who he was draining.

Simon warred with himself then. The bestial, instinctual part of him that had grown so strong during those long, dark years bricked into a coffin wanted to keep feasting until the final drop. It didn’t care that it wasn’t the right move and that they would get caught. It was nothing more than a dog with a bone.

The rational part of Simon forced it to break free. The man wasn’t dead yet, but he was too enervated to do much but lie there. With great effort, Simon unlatched his fangs from the soldier’s neck and then dragged the man deeper into the nearby brush.

Then, once he was sure that they were hidden from at least a cursory search, Simon drew his short sword and waited. It was those two actions that made all the difference because moments later, he saw a pair of soldiers with their weapons out creeping through the moonlit clearing.

“I’m telling you, I think it came from over here,” one guard told the other.

That struggle didn’t go as easily as the first one had, both because he got his sword up in time to impale Simon through the stomach and because he wore a gorget. If he’d screamed for help, he might have lived, but instead, he was too fixated on trying to kill Simon himself, right up until Simon grabbed the man’s helmet with both hands and used it as leverage to spin his neck almost completely around before he lay still.

Simon wanted to feast on his corpse while the blood was still warm, but his body rebelled at the taste. So, instead, he devoured the last drops of life in the man who was still flailing and drowning in his own blood. When his heart had beat its last, Simon drew his sword and rose to his feet. The wound that the guard’s soldier had inflicted on him closed almost as soon as the sword was removed.

“Well, that’s handy,” he said as he looked down and felt the smooth, pale skin.

He’d been stronger in plenty of other lives than he was right now. He’d certainly been far stronger the night that he helped Ara and her sister escape from the castle, but he was strong enough to slaughter these bastards now, or at least give a good showing and die in the attempt.

Simon crept through the trees toward the light of the campfire and the smells of life. Part of him worried that resisting his growing hunger would be the real enemy here. Fighting these men would be one thing, but resisting the urge to drain them mid-battle was something entirely different. It was an ever-present temptation, and he could see any number of ways that it might cost him his life.

He approached from the far side from where the soldiers had tethered their horses to a picket so as not to startle them. Then, he observed, looking for any warlocks. He’d fought the Murani enough times now to be certain they had magic in the mix somewhere.

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I might even be able to use those suicide bomber necklesses they like to wear as a distraction, he told himself.

Simon studied the jovial group for several long minutes before deciding on the two most likely users. One appeared to be the captain, and his breastplate definitely had runes of power etched into it. The other was a quiet man near the far side of the fire. None of the men around the fire really looked like a mage to him, but then, he usually didn’t look like a mage himself, and excepting this life, he definitely was.

The problem was that he could only take one of them first before everything exploded into chaos. Who’s the bigger threat? Simon asked himself.

In the end, he decided that the captain was the greater threat, but Simon chose to kill the other guy first anyway. That was based solely on the familiar amulet he glimpsed as the quiet man shifted and talked about going to bed for the night.

Simon could wait for all of them to fall asleep, of course. Killing them one by one in the night until he was finally caught was a seductive plan, but he’d already started the clock on himself with the first three deaths. As soon as someone went to relieve those men, he would be discovered.

So, instead of doing this slowly, he decided to start with a bang. Simon stole out of the night as fast as he could, with his sword still sheathed, and ripped out the throat of his warlock. Then he pushed him toward the fire as he leaped back into the night.

Everyone was on their feet then, drawing weapons and shouting in alarm as they tried to understand what had just happened. Most of them were so focused on him that they completely forgot what a ticking time bomb their mage was, and when the man expired and detonated, most of them were washed in a wave of fire.

It lasted only a moment, but as soon as it dimmed, Simon was ready. He burst out of the shadows once more. This time from the other side of the fire, holding his sword and shield. He took one man in the eyes and another in the guts before his sword got bound up on the second man’s hip. So, he smashed a third in the face with his shield and stole his sword to continue the fight.

After that, it was just a bloodbath. There were screams of pain and shouts of alarm, but more than that, there was blood and death. It overpowered the smell of smoke and charred flesh, and as steel rang against steel, he lost himself in the flow of battle.

Normally, Simon was a careful fighter. He created opportunities and then pressed his advantage wherever he found it. He used positioning and timing to leverage opportunities against his enemies, but not today. Today, he was a demon, and no matter how many times swords glanced off his ribs or severed tendons in his arms, he came back stronger and fiercer.

With the cinders scattered everywhere by the mage’s dying blast, the battlefield the cramped forest battlefield was dominated by shadows to human eyes, but Simon could see everything, and as he moved between the small knots of fighters desperately trying to figure out who was their ally and who was their enemy, he left only death in his wake.

Once Simon took down the captain in the enchanted breastplate, though, the fight was over. The man’s sword had glowed faintly and sheared right through Simon’s buckler, but the healing magics that seemed to be stamped into the man's armor were entirely overwhelmed as Simon dropped his own weapons and grabbed the man’s sword hand, forcing his swing to continue until his own enchanted sword was embedded deep into his own chest.

The light of the blade went out slowly, but it told Simon enough to say that there was no point in him using it. Unlike the unspoken blades, which were powered by strikes on the victim, the Murani blades seemed to be powered by their own wielders, which wasn’t very useful when you were a vampire.

Simon left him there as the survivors fled into the woods and then spent the next few hours hunting them down. The last few he took his time with, allowing the inner predator inside of him to break free once more so he could hunt them down and drain them one by one.

It was only when all of that was done, and he returned to his blood-soaked senses, that he noticed how late it had gotten.

Simon unfolded into a flock of ravens once more and raced the sunrise back to Castle Gravenstone with a feeling of growing dead. It was still far too dark to see his dark wings in the sky, but even so, it was far too close to day to still be out and about, and that rising terror forced him to beat his flock’s wings ever faster. He had been nine crows when he left, but now he was eleven. He had no idea if that was important or not in the grand scheme of things. Right now, all that mattered was finding somewhere dark and safe as the minutes crept by.

He considered simply finding somewhere between here and there to wait out the day. If he’d known the valley better, he would have done exactly that. A basement or an abandoned goblin lair would be bearable if only he could have it right now. He couldn’t, though. Anywhere he picked might leave him vulnerable to any number of hazards, and no matter how much he wanted to die consciously, his instincts feared that almost as much as the sun.

So, he kept going, and as the strip of blue on the horizon began to brighten, he reached his destination with only minutes to spare. There, he reassembled himself in a swirl of feathers and shadows in the courtyard and staggered toward the door that led below.

This time, his weakness wasn’t because he was starving or even because of the strange power he was using. It was because he was out of time. Despite being underground, he grew weaker with every step in those final moments before sunrise.

By the time he reached his coffin in the dungeon, there was no time to give anyone a report on how the night had gone, but of course, he didn’t have to. The waiting army would receive no update because everyone was dead, so they would not march. He had bought Ara exactly the time she hoped he would.