Chapter Text
When the Scourgers come for him, it is strange to think that the first and foremost emotion that Essek feels is relief.
Not that he had any particular desire to die— no, far from it. It is merely that, after some threeish years of collaboration with the Empire, he has begun to feel the decline of his usefulness. Were he a more frivolous man, he might even deign to measure the extent of his leverage in half-lives. Every six months or so, their desire to keep him as a collaborator diminishes by fifty percent. Once below a certain threshold, consequences occur. How long before shit hits the fan?
It had occurred to him that there is also, perhaps, another aphorism that is more apt for his current predicament: What goes up, must come down.
Such a saying is silly, he thinks to himself, because it is strictly untrue. With enough kinetic energy, a projectile launched from the surface of Exandria will never land, instead locked forever into orbit. With even more still, it will bypass the gravitational pull of the planet altogether, careening endlessly into the stars beyond.
Perhaps his dislike of the saying comes from its lack of audacity. Within the purview of mundane life, a projectile in free fall will simply make contact once again with the ground, because the amount of focused energy required even to reach orbit is as of yet unattainable with modern magic and technology.
Likewise, there is no such escape velocity to attain in this light-forsaken world for even a being as powerful as the Shadowhand. Even he is not exempt from experiencing consequence, and the best he can do is to characterize how and when that consequence may come to fruition.
The thing about kinematics is that with even a juvenile's grasp of functions and basic arithmetic, it is possible to calculate the precise state of any simple system. Where objects will be at any time, how fast they will go, and in what direction. For more complex systems, chaos can be likewise minimized with a precise understanding of initial conditions.
The thing about people is that they are not balls in a box. They are not even balls in an infinite frictionless plane. Barring certain gravity spells, they are rarely even spherical at all, which is incredibly frustrating. The result is that there is an inherent stochasticity to any sort of behavioral model Essek has attempted to construct to better understand them. For every hour he puts into physics, he has had to put five into people to obtain similar standard of result. Fortunately, Essek Thelyss is a man with many hours at his disposal. Fortunately also is the fact that he is surrounded by politicians. Shady though they may be, politicians make for excellent model organisms. A good politican is a rational actor (read: easy to predict) and a bad politician is hardly competent enough to be a concern of his.
If only calculating the projected response of the Assembly were so simple. By his measure, if they were going to do something, they'd have done it two months ago, taking advantage of a spuriously unfortunate disease outbreak within Rosohna. So when his projected time window of consequence from the Assembly has come and gone, Essek has to contend with the fact that his internal model of those foreign mages does not hold up to observed results. It is a terribly harrowing thing, to wait for a blow that never comes.
Until it does.
There are two of them, briefly. As he commands space-time to rip apart the nearest one, Essek wonders, insulted, if his collaborators think he is stupid. Dangerous and untrustworthy, he could handle. Perhaps they could have thought him likely to put himself on the chopping block for the sake of leaking the meager Empire secrets he had been able to glean. (Ha. Ha ha.) Perhaps an actual threat to his life could signal that he was still of some value to those fuckers. Sending half-baked assassins after him meant he was truly not even an afterthought, and he begins drafting in his mind the most scathing message to one Martinet he can muster, without profanity, in under twenty-five words.
But he has business to attend to first, he thinks, as he draws back his other hand to finish off the companion.
A companion he swore he could have seen nary a moment ago. Action, consequence. What goes up must come down. There's a movement at his back, but nothing is there when he whips his head around to look, and his prior question is answered as the remaining Scourger grapples both his arms and there is an excruciating pain in his neck.
There is a moment where he waits for a deadly pulse of magic through the entry wound. That much he did know about the Scourgers— due to their enchanted tattoos, their weapons channeled arcana just as fiercely as any spell. The moment never arrives, and it is only when he clocks that the Scourger has captured one of his wrists in each hand, that he realizes that the source of the pain is no crafted weapon, nor is it a spell.
Even with his arms pinned in this manner, it is simple enough to complete a short-range teleportation out of his assailant's grasp. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the duo had accosted him in his study. While home-field advantage was nice, expending powerful magic to dispose of low-grade assassins bore too high a risk of destroying his personal belongings. Besides, his escape had cost him the opportunity to use any powerful magic in the immediate following moments.
As he raises his arms to cast, a wave of nausea hits him and causes him to stumble. The Firebolt sails wide over the Scourger's head and scorches a section of stone wall, but Essek can hardly hear it over the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears and the sight of strange lights dancing in his vision.
Must have hit an artery, he thinks, and instinctively presses a hand to his neck. Sure enough, it is slick and warm with blood that continues to gush out of the bite wound. Deeply incongruous, he thinks, with the size of the wound. The man's teeth had barely pierced his skin, and thus it made no sense that he could have reached a blood vessel so deep in the neck—
—no, it made perfect sense, actually.
Essek wasn't unfamiliar with vampires, per se. He'd read most of the relevant literature regarding vampirism, and his family's status had granted him some degree of awareness of all that drama regarding the Briarwoods some odd decades ago.
Vampire spawn did not possess the ability to turn other creatures. Full-fledged vampires, on the other hand, could not only create spawn from its victims, but could probably give Essek-at-full-power a run for his money. The former he could deal with. In case of the latter, he was truly, truly screwed.
The baser instinct within him screams to Teleport away, manipulating threads of fate to nullify whatever Counterspell the Scourger may throw his way. If the choice lies between death and a politically sticky situation, well, Essek prefers to be alive.
Except he won't be alive, if he escapes now, he reasons. If he leaves, there is no way to hide the fact that he has been attacked within his home, and the Scourgers sure as hell aren't liable to cover their tracks given an entrance as explosive as theirs. Additionally, if he does not wish to bleed to death after teleporting, there will be witnesses.
Hostile as tensions may be between his nation and its neighbor, such a brazen attack on a high-ranking political figure during peacetime qualfies as a deeply suspicious anomaly. An investigation will be quickly underway, the Lens agents are rather effective at their job, and Her Majesty His Boss does not take kindly to traitors.
So he will stand his ground, and if he's truly facing a full-fledged vampire then whatever happens will happen. A chance at survival, however slim, is objectively preferable to certain death. If his gamble pays off poorly, they will find his exsanguinated corpse in the towers and eventually figure out cause and effect. It will be of little matter to him, anyways, although he hopes they will at least be somewhat kind to Verin about it. If he is instead lucky, if this Scourger is the weakling he appears to be, then Essek can continue going about his day.
First order of business, incapacitate. Essek knows, from a treatise on dealing with various forms of intelligent undead, that vampires have an aversion to sunlight. It is a touch ironic, he thinks to himself, that he had deliberately passed over the offer to transcribe the Sunbeam spell not but a few weeks ago.
It is uninteresting, he had said. The only functional novelty of this spell lies in its duration and emission spectrum. From a runic perspective, it is a glorified, disappointing Fireball that overstays its welcome. He had expressed his staunch doubt that Leylas Kryn's pet deity would consider this particular spell tantamount to any form of divine worship, before turning his attention once again to exploring gravitational anomalies.
What he wouldn't give now for a deadly beam of focused light, simplistic though it may be. He'll settle for the next best thing.
By some miracle, he makes it to his desk. His free hand, the one not currently focused on keeping his neck intact, scrabbles at the combination to unlock the third drawer from the bottom.
As part of his position, and by virtue of being a spellcaster, Essek had been required to lead some number of rituals during religious holidays. He hadn't minded it— it was a small price for maintaining a status quo— but had paid these duties little mind otherwise. It is perhaps ironic that his requisite participation in his people's bullshit religion had allowed him a path, potentially, to salvation.
His fingers close around a spell scroll, and he all but yanks it out, unfurling it as he goes. Casts with a familiarity that indicates that he could have written this spell within his spellbook, but chose not to.
Essek is thankful that the Scourgers had possessed the goodwill to draw his curtains, presumably to murder him without witnesses. The curtains now block the magically conjured Daylight from outside view, saving him a good deal of future explanation.
It is odd how physical trauma compounds. Sunlight as direct as this is unbearable on the best of days. However, Essek has lost maybe around half his blood volume. At the same time his body threatens to stumble out of control, thanks to the… toxin? Enchantment? Whatever means the vampire has of controlling its victims. All things considered, the wave of nausea that hits him under the concentrated light of day is made mild by everything else about the situation.
Between gasps and dry heaves, Essek observes that at least the Scourger-vampire is not faring much better than he is under the deluge of radiant light. He raises his arm to cast— something, that no one other than he will ever know, because Essek rips the spell out of his fingers without a moment's hesitation. To his credit, the Scourger does attempt to return the Counterspell, but his attempt was futile. Essek mourns the loss of his highest level spell slot and acknowledges that it has served its duty.
Finally, Essek gains his bearings enough to conjure another Gravity Sinkhole. And… it was almost anticlimactic, really, how easily the other man had crumpled in response to that. Between the adrenaline and the sun-blindness, cowered as he was behind his desk, it had genuinely taken Essek a few moments to realize that he was properly out of danger.
Stumbling slightly, Essek draws himself to full height and activates his levitation cantrip. The world around him sways and flashes as if his frame of reference were a storm-tossed boat, threatening to capsize. Thankfully, his neck has stopped gushing blood at this point. He has healing potions, which he will certainly need to take later, but he is no longer in immediate danger of death.
Essek does not know what it is that compels him to investigate the corpse of the vampire Scourger. For all intents and purposes, knowing the identity of a Scourger had little value— they were, after all, trained to be anonymous blades. Likewise, it would be deeply unusual for Scourgers this deep within enemy territory to carry any crucial intel on their person.
The mangled mess is nearly bloodless, and Essek realizes with distate that the pooling of red liquid on the floor must have all originally belonged to him. As he kneels, he sends ripples across its surface and his fingers squelch through the meat, catching bits of flesh under his manicured nails as he searches compulsively for—– something, he's not sure what.
It is precisely as he locates and holds up the Scourger's severed head that Essek realizes the enchantment placed on him had not faded upon the Scourger's death. It completes, as Essek turns the head to face him. One of the Scourger's eyes has been ruptured, and the back of his skull is shattered like eggshell. The lower jaw is missing, somewhere. That turns out to be irrelevant as a flash of necromantic energy discharges, causing the head to dissolve into pulp in Essek's hands.
Then the world begins burning.
Of course, he thinks, because certainly there are consequences to being bitten by a vampire. Of course he couldn't have gotten away from this encounter scot-free.
The signs had been there from the beginning. Stupid. Stupid. The Scourgers were inexperienced, likely younglings, had no real experience in the way of combat. They had merely been a carrier for what appears to be some form of vampirism, although Essek had never read nor heard of vampires under a certain power level being able to turn other humanoids. But the Cerberus Assembly had deep pockets, vast reaches, and no shortage of skilled, morally corrupt mages. It was not out of the realm of possibility they had managed to develop a form of vampirism that spreads without the need for a powerful vector in the form of a full-fledged, difficult-to-control vampire.
If Essek had his full mental capacity at the moment, perhaps he would have the means to reason about his current state of being. Intuitively he knows that this is not the full story. The Cerberus Assembly would not simply make vampires for fun. Currently, though, he is well and fully blinded and his skin is beginning to peel away in spots where he is being cooked in place by his own spell. He falls back on his ass and dispels the Daylight with a wave of a gore-covered arm.
His sight returns to him, but the gnawing and awful buzzing sensations remain. He screams and paws instinctively at the viscera beneath him, surrounding him. He is going to have to calm down. He is going to have to figure something out. He cannot, because he is now technically more monster than man, and there is no future to speak of for such a creature. He is going to be sick. He is going to starve.
He is going to starve. Sure, it has been a while since he'd had his last meal. His last real meal. But upon completion of the curse, or spell, or whatever, it was as if a void had suddenly opened up in his stomach, taking most of his energy with it. Whatever energy was left he had been foolishly expending in the form of pushing out heaving, gasping sobs and frantically clawing at his viscera-covered robes. His next lucid thought, once he calms down enough to form those, is that he is going to die soon. If he does not want to die, he has to feed.
It is at this point that he realizes what must have been the purpose of the other Scourger, the one he had all but forgotten about.
Standing proves to be too much of an effort for him. Fortunately, he somehow finds it within him to cast his float, and it is in this pathetic state that he drifts across the floor to the second crumpled mess in the corner, his ruined robes dragging behind him, painting a red-pink trail.
Something in him knows, inherently, that this isn't the same as a live victim. That whatever reprieve he seeks from the dripping, crimson handfuls he shovels into his mouth in hopes of extracting the fluid within, is merely an echo of the sustenance that he could have sought from warm, living blood. He brings to his mouth, suckles, and spits out chunks of tissue he can only partially identify. Muscle, lung, brain. Liver. Something else. Multiple things else.
By the time he is sated enough to be aware of his surroundings, the remains of the non-vampiric Scourger resemble something like ground meat, and his hands are soaked so thoroughly in dark red that he can no longer see the lilac underneath.
He wants to be disgusted but can't. There is a thrumming in his limbs, the likes of which he'd only ever gotten before while researching, experimenting, being so close to untangling some arcano-mathematical conundrum. The room reeks, and he must too, he knows it. He will have a hell of a time Prestidigitating it, he is sure.
He feels warm, and he feels alive, and when he places two fingers over his carotid artery, over his bite wound, his skin is cold and clammy to the touch and his pulse is nowhere to be found.
Consequences, indeed.