CHPT 525: Revenant Blood

The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Maris was insane. So was Claude. But it seemed he was also an enabler of sorts. He treaded a very thin line inside the Royal Mirage of Vampires. He treaded a line of life and death that he didn't plan to so soon. He should've known better when facing Vampires. Then again his paranoia was blowing it all out of proportion— he was sure of it.

Maris wouldn't die in the truly dirty and dilapidated halls of Dark Elven Vampires and their Elder.

Unfortunately, they no longer took her serious. He'd been there a million ti—

FWOO!

Sloane's sword whistled across his shielded vision. Her snarls echoed off the metal walls of his helmet.

"Pay attention. Respect me."

"I am."

"You're not."

She swung again. Her broadsword was a simple and painfully plain weapon of pure silver. He could smell the faint burns on her hands when her grip slipped above the leather wrapping to the hilt. Full power swings.

Again… again…. A—

CLCK!

Claude caught her overhead strike, making an x guard with his spears. It was a casual attack full of inhuman strength.

Before she could swing her clawed freehand at him, he leapt into the air. The freshwater creek biome they'd suddenly been plunged into erupted with splashes and small echoing waves as he rose.

He took aim at Sloane and threw his spear. Without hesitation she lowered her sword and spun a small, insignificant appearing Hex into existence with the twist and contortion of her fingers.

FWOO!

She flipped out of the way in a burst of crystalline droplets, leaving the rainbow hex where she stood. The spear stabbed straight into the Hex and bounced, flipping back at him with a spiral of magical expulsion.

Claude activated his Aura and caught the spear by the blade before flipping its grip and landing on Sloane in a downward slam.

"URAGH!" The two collided.

All the while winds and shadows spun, swallowing the shapes of flaming dragons and bats made of lightning. Maris was in their somewhere trying to find herself…. Or what she desired for herself.

"Why let her stay if it's at the cost of your sanity? She's not your pack."

Before Claude could answer she front kicked him in the chest plate. The water slowed his backwards steps and almost made him fall on his back. He skidded to a stop just in time to duck a wayward blast of fire and smoke.

"Uhhhh yes she is. And I let her stay because I've been there. It's better to lose on your own two feet than be spared by someone else. At least for someone like Maris. Plus, she's close to learning something."

"Tell me, how are you so sure?" Sloane asked. The biome shifted to a desert and the sun rose, beaming off her canine fangs.

"Once again, I've been there…"

Sloane kicked up a wave of sand and stone as her foot broke through the earth to distract him.

Claude shut his eyes and let the sands graze his armor and skin in a pelleting rain of debris. He swelled the muscles in his legs and tendons, giving him short explosive bursts of controlled speed to side step and evade the solid stones.

Sloane— despite her apparent greenery, didn't flinch when she charged the sand wave and found Claude charging her. Then again, her eyes weren't her best sense either…

He tackled her, low enough that her strong legs couldn't overpower the physicality of his mass. They rolled. She used his weight and threw him off, slapping a hex on his back that quadrupled his weight just in time for him to sink into the six inch deep snow tundra that welcomed them all.

The aurora borealis twisting across the northern night sky swallowed the brightness of the elemental warfare surrounding them.

"You've been there…" Sloane held out her freehand. The hex shed slapped onto his back reflected there. Sparks and bursts of light emanated as she poured more of her magic into the curse. Causing Claude's shoulders to grow heavier. His neck strained to hold his head…. At one point.

"Yep."

"But you're here now. I get you don't know WereWolves, Final Lupine, but you openly disrespect me in front of my most trusted betas by not attempting to kill me. Fight. Stop watching for the Red Queen. She's a chicken with no head at the moment."

Claude could smell her exhaustion over the scents of blood, fire and hair raising magics. She was beyond tired. She was at a place you had to be taken too. Claude went there once, when Dolion scouted him through combat. Just from the winds he could form a picture taken with his overpowered olfactory nerves.

He could see her standing in the snow. A field of red really, from all the blood leaking off her wounds. Her burns and bruises and cuts. Even as he tried to heal her passively whenever the biome was made of something natural. She was being broken down. And all that blood…. All that essence of the Red Queen. Sylvia laughed once. But it was now silent. Only combat. Only her labored breaths. The winds on her blade. The eyes of the hungry….. —

"Even now!" Sloane pounced. Her hard face twisted into a reminiscent shape of the wolf within— fighting against the lacking moon. Veins bulged in her neck going black and pushing against her spiked collar.

In those moments the fencing matches taking place across the snowy lands felt incredibly orchestrated.

Ursula held off Sloane's betas, absorbing their rage and growing her own. Cassidy fired arrows at the smoking ethereal forms of Vampires. Rupont began leaving his chair, entranced and amazed by something—

"AHHHHHH!!"

The screamed pulled at his limbs like a puppet on a string. He twisted and transformed, slamming his foot into Sloane's stomach with a roundhouse kick, sending her flying at the throne where Rupont stood.

He faced Maris— where the scream originated. The same scream he'd heard in the village all those months ago. Now that he thought about it, Maris screaming didn't make much sense if she didn't feel physical pain.

Now he understood as he stared, even then. The scream was for something else. From somewhere else.

Maris stood in the snow. All around them the snow shook and twisted until it vibrated into tumultuous low waves of water. It darkened and soaked up the blood until that's all it was.

It moved like snakes around her as she stood. A blue sheen of her magic shuttered off her skin in a way he couldn't describe. It looked inconsistent. Incomplete and violent. It made her hair stand on end and her sword float.

Claude's throat caught as he focused less on Maris and more on the aura.

It was inconsistent and incomplete appearing because he was seeing the shape of someone else at an odd angle. Built around Maris. Coming from within her.

A woman. Seven feet tall at least. Shadowy and hard to decipher like age old art of a hunter from the woods. The form wasn't a hulking monster of disaster. It was a wispy limbed woman with an air of intensity. But a woman nonetheless. Still commanding submission from horrific beasts all the same. Hair so long it fell into the water. It was the slithering snake like shapes beneath the blood pool. It was who held her sword. It looked like a toy in her giant hand.

The shape faced Rupont. He bowed. The other Vampires did not.

"Maybe it was good we stayed. Bow in the face of a Queen, Sylvia. If not for Maris, then for the ancestor that stalks in her bloodstream."

The Red Queen grown over Maris turned and faced Claude.

Slowly, he walked over. He'd spent a hundred nights with Fenrir— a destructive god. He knew pressure like the back of his hand.

Frosty, Loba and Diamondback dragged themselves with him. The shapes Ruby killer eyes scanned over them all, possibly witnessing vestiges of the modern world for the first time. The inspired results of her seed hybridizing and becoming its own.

Claude came to a stop, facing Maris instead of the Red Queen. Then finally looking up at her. Black smoke pooled around him. Green lightning danced on the outer rim. His pack was ready.

"You came when Maris was caught by the Goblins too…"

The ghost nodded a single time.

"Thanks."

Suddenly they were back in the broken down dark castle left untended to for centuries. The aural form of the Red Queen of old felt more fitting suddenly. Like a ghost. A revenant come back to remind its doubters it never left. Only slept. Soon to awaken anew…..