Blood Shaper

Book 6: Chapter 2

The scrambling, maddened vampyr scraped at Cindy’s armor, desperately trying to pull itself closer to sink it’s fangs into her neck. The one hand she had pressed against its forehead was the only thing keeping it from tearing out her throat. Her nails were sinking into it’s skin with the force of how hard she was pushing to keep it off of her, drawing sickly ichor instead of blood from the tiny abrasions. Doing her best to keep calm Cindy drew one of her sidearms from the bandoleer on her chest and shoved the pistol’s barrel into the gaping maw of the vampyr. In a scene directly out of a movie she blew the brains out of the monster and it slumped on top of her.

Gagging, Cindy tossed the dead vampyr off of her and struggled to her feet. The battle around her was dying down as she looked. Here and there the Sentinels accompanying her cut down one of the stragglers, but most of the attacking vampyr were dead on the ground and Avalon’s forces were cleaning up the mess. Panting slightly, Cindy pulled back the mechanism of her pistol, clearing the spent shell as she scanned the environment for more threats. There was only one vampyr she could see that was still moving, a legless torso dragging itself across the grass with it’s mouth wide open and it fangs dripping with toxic saliva. It inched closer and closer to the nearest source of blood, a nearby adventurer that was beheading the vampyr he’d just killed. With a dull thud sound it’s head exploded.

Cindy finished reloading her pistol almost absentmindedly as she shared a quick nod with one of her trainees. Not that they were trainees anymore, but the first wave of people she’d trained up into getting gun related Classes were still arguing about what to call themselves. That group had approached her en mass after she’d gained her title and had informed her that they were going to be her version of Kay’s Blood Guard, her bodyguards and personal troops. With Colen’s, her personal butler who’d just shown up one day before the Shatterplate War and told her he wanted to serve her, help she’d managed to talk them down a little. They were still going to be her personal troops, since practically everyone was telling her she had to have some, but they weren’t suited to be bodyguards. They’d agreed after some convincing, and the settled right in to arguing over what they should be called as a group. “Arquebusier” was currently winning, against Cindy’s strong objections. They didn’t carry arquebuses dammit!

Her soldier, since she didn’t have a better term yet, looked around for threats, his hand against the butt of a pistol. With single shot weapons it was definitely faster to switch to a pistol over reloading, even if they could reload in a matter of seconds. Everything was clear, so he pulled his rifle around and started reloading, and Cindy did the same. After slinging her long gun over her shoulder she looked down at herself and sighed. She was covered in sweat, muck, blood, and the ichor that vampyr bled instead of blood. It felt incredibly gross to be standing there in her own skin, but she wasn’t going to be able to clean off for a few hours at least. Her group didn’t have any Water Mages or Manipulators and there was still work to be done.

The vampyr bodies were piled up and burned, the wounded were healed or sent back home with a light escort, there hadn’t been any infections thank goodness, and then they were off, continuing their patrols along the edge of Avalon’s territory, searching for packs of vampyr. The most animalistic of the vampyr were chasing refugees from Nelam and the surrounding areas hundreds of miles in mindlessly dedicated hunts. The flood of refugees and escaped slaves that had gushed into Avalon, and into Tumbling Rapids to a lesser extent, had slowed to a dirty, exhausted trickle. But the vampyr were still coming.

Cindy’s grip on her gun tightened. They were coming, but they wouldn’t be allowed a single step further into Avalon.

The civil war that had sprung up had wrent Nelam into pieces, and the vampyr attack tore those already fragile shards into tiny shreds. It was like they came out of nowhere, spreading waves of bloodshed and madness that just appeared in the midst of the fighting. Small cities and nations on Nelam’s borders that had invaded, looking for a bigger piece of the pie or vengeance for Nelam meddling in their lives were hit first, with vampyr popping up in the middle of their attacks on villages and towns. Days later a score of vampyr attacked a fortified outpost between two of the warring factions of nobles that had both proclaimed that they were the true inheritors of Nelam. Then one of the groups fighting to reclaim their conquered nation had gone silent. No battles, no messages, nothing. Then vampyr had erupted from their fortifications, hundreds of their soldiers and leaders turned into monsters and now terrorizing the countryside. The chaotic mess only continued to devolve from there.

People had stepped up even as death and terror destroyed everything in sight. Adventurers, soldiers, and leaders had all set aside their enmities and wars to protect the innocent. Many died in heroic last stands letting people escape the oncoming vampyr. The smugglers and abolitionists that had helped slaves escape Nelam became guides to safety for hundreds instead of handfuls, using their knowledge of safe paths and monster territories to bring entire villages out of the vampyr infested east. People opened their homes to others, donated or gave away supplies and foodstuffs, and gathered stragglers and orphans into their own groups and families as they ran for safety. Tens of thousands of people managed to make their way to freedom and escape the imminent threat of death or turning. Hundreds of thousands had died, or were still trapped, holding out as best they could against the vampyr that besieged them.

Amanda’s secret position as the shadowy leader of many anti-slavery groups that worked in Nelam was out in the open now. There was no point in keeping it hidden any more. Originally Amanda had kept it a secret to protect herself and her people from Nelamian attacks. After becoming Prime Minister of Avalon and Kay’s right hand woman they’d continued to keep it a secret, at least publicly, to keep Avalon from being dragged into a war with Nelam. It became something of a moot point when they ended up at war with Nelam anyways, and now it mattered even less. Nelam was gone. Every report they could get their hands on said that King Glowl was dead and everything else that remained were tiny outposts and fortified towns surrounded by a sea of hungry vampyr.

The first refugees and escaped slaves had come following the normal smuggling paths Amanda had created that led into Avalon, already designed to free any slaves that made it there and send them on to other lives, whether in Avalon or even further from Nelam. When the war broke out many smugglers started increasing the size of their loads, bringing more and more people running from the fighting. Then the vampyr hit and it became a race for everyone’s lives. Only half of the total people that Avalon’s government had confirmed made it out of danger had come to Avalon itself, but that was still tens of thousands of people that needed food, homes, and to feel safe, most of them with nothing to their names but the clothes on their backs. Sometimes not even that much.

It had been, and still was to a smaller extent, a complete mess. People made demands and tried to take over, whether it was the town or village they were staying in, parts of Avalon City, or in two cases a direct attempt to take over Avalon entirely. A few different bands of escaped slaves that had been in fights against multiple factions of Nelam’s civil war fled the vampyr and made their way into Avalon. Two different leaders of some of those bands decided that they were in charge now, and tried to take over. One of them just started telling people what to do and refused to listen to multiple people telling him to stop. When some random citizen of Avalon had disobeyed an order he’d given them, he started beating them and got arrested. His followers almost rioted and had to be arrested with him.

The other leader who wanted Avalon as his own had been sneakier. He’d made friends and connections, doing his best to seem calm and helpful. He managed to use several connections to get within range of Cindy and challenged her for her title as King of Avalon. It didn’t work, both because challenges didn’t work exactly like that, anyone with a title greater than “Lord” or “Lady” couldn’t be challenged completely out of the blue like that, and also because Cindy wasn’t King of Avalon. When it hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, the man attacked. Cindy shot him dead before he made it halfway to her.

After that Amanda stepped in to take control of the devolving mess. Publicly revealing herself as the leader of many of the groups who’d evacuated to Avalon, she’d started giving orders and using them to restore public order. Many people had protested it, denying that their leader was some high placed official in a foreign nation. Direct meetings with Amanda had calmed down several of the recalcitrant and Amanda’s push to keep people safe, fed, and healthy got everyone else moving the way she wanted.

Avalon had already been expecting a population increase after Kay had been crowned king, and that allowed them to keep everyone’s heads above water while construction crews scrambled to build more homes and farmers did their best to pump up the production of food. A huge amount of the treasury ended up getting sent to Tumbling Rapids to buy enough food and other supplies to bridge the gap, but they’d made it.

No one had died of starvation or exposure and things were starting to settle back down. Slums that had sprung up around Avalon city and other towns were being removed and replaced with real housing and the government was doing its best to make sure every new citizen had a job and an income to support themselves with. Many people were still considered refugees, refusing to swear fealty to Avalon and become citizens. Those that just wanted the nightmare to end so that they could go back to their homes were fine for the most part, it was the people who wanted things that were still causing trouble.

None of that was really Cindy’s problem to handle though. She’d given speeches, fought would-be usurpers, helped suppress riots as peacefully as possible, in many cases just by being there, and had led countless patrols to find refugees and get them back safely or to kill vampyr but the social and political problems that Amanda was dealing with were still beyond her. She wasn’t Kay’s figurehead, but she was only his temporary placeholder, representing the might of Avalon’s monarch to it’s people and the rest of the world. She was getting a lot of experience from listening, watching, and learning from everything that was going on, but she still wasn’t ready to make decisions of that level.

Finishing their sweep for the day, Cindy led her patrol back to the camp that’d been setup along the edge of the forest that Avalon claimed as their southernmost border. She couldn’t guarantee it but Cindy was pretty sure the camp would grow into a fortress and potentially a city in time. It was well placed to defend Avalon’s borders and she didn’t think they’d be giving it up anytime soon.

She was just finished cleaning herself off in her quarters, erected by an enterprising Earth Mage, when Colen knocked on the door and stepped inside.

“My lady,” He greeted her, “A messenger has arrived from the capital. Prime Minister Amanda is calling you back to Avalon City.”

“Is it important? We’re heading back after tomorrow’s patrol anyway, so if it can wait a day…”

“The Royal Avalon docked two days ago and a messenger made it to Avalon City yesterday. His Majesty King Kay has returned.”

Cindy sagged in place, her eyes closing. “Thank goodness.” She took a deep breath and pulled herself together. Straightening up she resumed the persona Colen as helping her build, one worthy of a Duchess of Avalon. “If we leave tomorrow as planned will we beat Kay back?”

butlers name smiled at her with no small amount of pride before slipping back into his own professional mien. “It’s possible, but unlikely, especially since his majesty will likely be moving quickly as well. We’d probably get back the day after him.”

“A messenger made it here in a day.” Cindy pointed out.

“One person with Classes and Skills built around moving quickly to deliver a message did.” Colen replied.

“Good point. Actually, the messenger doing alright?”

“They’re fine, milady. Tired, but eating and resting.”

“Good. Alright, grab the command staff and let’s let them know what’s happening. We’ll prep everyone as best we can to be ready without me, since reinforcements to replace me aren’t going to be here until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Of course, milady.”