Hexeri had been surprised to find a paladin so deep inside the Dark Lord’s territory, let alone within his own fortress. She should have saved up her shock- because it was far more appropriate upon being introduced to the woman’s allies.

  All of them wore the enchanted, pale plate armour that signified their order. All carried maces, hammers or axes- mutilating weapons for slaying lifeless beings whose bodies did not need to carry blood or power organs. All of them shimmered with that annoying divine energy that always felt like a sunburn had. Before sunburns threatened to reduce Hexeri into ashes outright, that was.

  “A vampire?” One of the paladins growled, not quite setting a new record for smallest passing timeframe between one of their order recognising Hexeri and moving to attack her. The first one she’d met, Ensharia, held the man back with an outstretched arm.

  “At ease, Gladian.” She urged him. “This one’s an ally.”

  The paladin, a man apparently, was practically quivering with rage as he replied.

  “An ally? Ensharia we all studied them as much as each other, there is no alliance with a vampire. It will use us and betray us the moment it sees fit, at best. And at worst it’s one of the Dark Lord’s minions.”

  “Do I get to speak here?” Hexeri asked, she saw several of the paladins bristle as she did. Evidently, she did not get to speak. Except, unfortunately for them, she was a Vampire Elder, which meant she could do whatever she wanted. “I didn’t come here seeking any of you out, I’m here to kill the Dark Lord. My Sire is known as Lilia, I know you’ve all heard of her because over the millennia she’s personally killed more paladins than have ever existed at any one time. And she was, until his disappearance, working with Silenos Shaiagrazni.”

  They weren’t mollified, at least not for more than a moment.

  “And he’s gone now.” Another paladin noted. “So what guarantee do we have that you’re not here as some kind of emissary to swap to the second-best option?”

  “Not to mention that Shaiagrazni was a necromancer and fleshcrafter himself anyway.” Another cut in.

  Hexeri took a step back, readied herself for things to turn violent, just as the first paladin, Ensharia, spoke up again.

  “I worked with Shaiagrazni myself.” She declared, sweeping her gaze across her peers. “If anyone thinks that’s a sign of the enemy, you can feel free to say so to my face.”

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, none did.

  Ensharia levelled a gaze at Hexeri. “We don’t have time to argue, work with us and we’ll let you go. Betray us and I’ll kill you myself. You’re here to assassinate the Dark Lord?”

  Hexeri hesitated, considering lying. Looked at the woman’s mace.

  “To free Shaiagrazni.” She corrected. Ensharia’s face stiffened at that, eyes clouding with…Something.

  “He’s here.” She croaked. “A prisoner?”

  “We think so.”

  For a moment, the paladin said nothing. Then her eyes seemed to blaze with a redoubled conviction.

  “Then if you aid us, we’ll do what we can to aid you.” Her colleagues protested, and were stifled at a gesture. Evidently this one was the leader of her group. Lucky Hexeri.

  “Deal.” She replied, gaze flickering over the paladins, examining body language. None were pleased, but only one or two even begun moving with violence at the backs of their minds. Gladian, and another. Hexeri committed both to memory, studying their armour to ensure she could identify them through it.

  Any deal could fall through, and the more people involved in one the more likely that was to happen. A ceasefire was only as solid as the stupidest idiot present. Paladins, as far as idiots went, were made of denser stuff than most. Hexeri would gain nothing by taking chances, and possibly lose much.

  And she couldn’t afford to lose now.

  ***

  Ado ran, panted, gasped. She slipped on something underfoot, smacked her face against a tree on the way down and saw stars dancing in her eyes before she landed hard, rolled clumsily, and shambled more than sprung back up to her feet.

  Her lungs were burning like she was breathing magma instead of air, but she didn’t slow down. Couldn’t slow down. She still heard the magi behind her, and heard their men more clearly still.

  Whoever her initial pursuers had been, she’d lost them. Now it was just a few middling practitioners giving chase- she might have fended them off alone were her mana not almost exhausted already.

  Something roared at her back, and she risked a glance over the shoulder. Dogs. Hunting dogs. Man hunting dogs, which Ado had no doubt would have been bolstered by some healer to make them faster, tireless, angrier. She fucking hated magi.

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  But she could do nothing about that now, just ran. Ran even as the sounds of pursuit grew closer, clearer, more imminent. Ran even as a fireball streaked past her head to engulf an entire tree in burning death. Ran even as something pounced at her from behind, barely missed a bite and bowled her over.

  Ado stared up into the snarling dog’s face. Big thing, horrible. Large teeth, wide maw, eyes full of nothing at all but violence. It lunged down to bite her throat out, and she just froze as it came.

  Then its head came apart, just broke to pieces like an apple struck by a hammer. Ado felt gore spray down into her eyes, her open mouth, up her nose. She gasped again, coughed and spat the disgusting mess out, blinked the debris from her vision and scrambled up to her knees. By the time she could see again, the pursuit party had already dissolved into chaos.

  Her saviour had arrived.

  He was the wind, then he was the rain. Whipping around, leaping from one tree to another, moving so fast Ado’s eyes could barely follow him. He seemed to disappear, at times. Then re-emerge from thin air elsewhere, cutting a throat or two and whirling away faster than the enemies could turn on him.

  Magic flew everywhere, and arrows too. Spears clumsily followed after the man, but they were thrust slower than he could move his entire body, and soon almost as many men were perishing to their own allies than his violence. In under half a minute, carnage had taken over the field. By then only a few remained, one magus and several soldiers.

  They all seemed to realise as much, turning to flee. Ado’s saviour simply raised his bow, made by Shaiagrazni himself, drew it back, and fired. Each man the iron arrows hit was simply destroyed, the impacts so excessive as to rip their torsos halfway open rather than merely penetrate.

  None survived.

  “Alright princess.” Collin Baird grinned, swaggering over to Ado- swaggering, the bastard- as if he’d just cut a hundred blades of grass rather than as many men. “Looks like you’re never gonna let me off saving you, eh?”

  “Queen.” She whispered, standing up slowly, thoughts still addled by the shock. “It’s queen.”

  Baird glanced over his shoulder, in the direction of her burning city as if to say, ‘it’s nothing at the moment, sweetheart’. Thankfully however he had the decency not to give his thoughts voice.

  “There were a lot of magi back there, and they had a lot of men with them. Too many. Must’ve hidden them somehow for them to have gotten here so suddenly. The city’s fucked, we can’t retake it.”

  Ado vomited, and did her best not to give Baird the satisfaction of seeing her glare as he laughed.

  “That’s it then.” She croaked. “Right? You have no plan do you?”

  His laughter tapered off, and he thought about it.

  “Thing about Kaltan,” Baird noted, “Is that they’re always ready for a fight. Comes with the territory of being randomly thrown into them year after year for a whole generation. Do you think this Mafari arsehole would waste resources on a target that well defended, when he already knew where it’s leader was and had already sent a force out to assassinate him?”

  Ado followed his logic, slowly, finding her distraction a gnawing blockade against thought.

  “He wouldn’t.” She said at last, feeling a stab of…Something. Hope? “And…You’re my husband now,” She felt some way about that, and forced the emotions aside before they could fester. “Aoakanis is your nation just as much as mine.”

  Flattering, she had to admit. Ado had remained its primary ruler, despite common custom. Then again common custom would’ve decried her for marrying a commoner too. Custom was, she had come to decide, idiotic shit, and she would ignore it at her pleasure.

  Baird just nodded.

  “And it’s strategically important.” He added, almost reluctantly. “Shaiagrazni had all sorts buried here, I don’t want those old bastards getting their grubby hands on his experiments. God knows what they might do.”

  Ado shuddered at that.

  She’d seen barely anything of Silenos’ innovations, and did not practice anything related to either Fleshcrafting or Necromancy. Even she feared them, even she had felt tempted to examine them. Knowing that even a glimmer of understanding gleaned through his work would revolutionize what she knew of magic. And knowing that it would be knowledge well beyond her power, age and training.

  Any magus who lived long learned to fear dangerous knowledge, and any magus who lived famously learned to seek it. Without a doubt, Magira’s denizens would tear apart the entirety of Aoakanis in search of Silenos’ works. And what they might learn from them could leave them unstoppable.

  “We need to stop them.” Ado hissed, remembering Rochtai, remembering her palace, remembering her sense of safety and how instantly it had been blasted apart by those repulsive pigs. “We need to fucking kill them all.”

  Baird got that look in his eye, the one she’d seen a hundred times before. Distant, angular. At once burning with an intense focus, and aimed at something so very far away that Ado couldn’t imagine what it might be. It was like he wasn’t even there, but he spoke with no hint of distraction.

  “Yeah, that much I can do.” Without another word, he started walking.

  Ado followed after, legs still throbbing from the torture of her chase. “You have a plan?” She asked.

  “Not as such.” He shrugged. Distracted, suddenly. He always did that. Disappeared into himself when there was killing to be done, as if it were a higher calling he alone enjoyed. Men, Ado realised, enjoyed killing far too much.

  “We’re heading to Kaltan.” She realised.

  “Right on the money.” He grunted, not seeming to notice himself talking even as he did. “That’s where I have men, weapons, maybe even some of Shaiagrazni’s left-over blasting oil from the siege. If we’re going to kill thousands of people, I’m afraid you’ll need more than just me. Probably.”

  “And me.” Ado wasn’t sure why she said it, thought about taking it back. Didn’t. “Aoakanis is my nation, I’m its queen. That means something.”

  Baird was polite enough not to reply by telling her exactly what he thought it meant, but she could see it in the scorn bubbling up behind his eyes.

  “Think what you want.” She snapped. “But I need to do this, and I can help. You know I can.”

  Her powers hadn’t exactly grown since they’d met, not by more than a percentage point or two, but her skill had, and her experience in using them for combat was exponentially heightened. Ado wasn’t a war-magus, might never be one, but she had more raw power than nineteen out of every twenty who were. She knew she could help even a Hero or near-Hero like him.

  Baird looked at her long and hard, and after a few moments, it seemed, he knew it too. He nodded, slowly at first. Then more confidently.

  “Alright.” He said at last. “Okay. But you follow my lead. This isn’t politics anymore, it’s combat. We’re going to kill, and keep from being killed. If you break a nail you move on.”

  Ado steeled herself.

  “Just hurry up, the sooner we can kill these murderous bastards the better.”