The Vampire & Her Witch

On the ground floor of the Tangled Tower, Captain Aiss stood with three columns of the fiercest fighters from the Dark Wolf Brigade as they prepared to execute the orders Hamdi had given him after he delivered Nyrielle’s message.

”Captain, isn’t this excessive?” one of the soldiers standing nearby asked. ”Three columns is already sixty men, why do we need to wait for Captain Gawel to rouse and arm another three columns?”

”You don’t understand,” Aiss told the young soldier. ”Our masters may look down on the vampires of the Vale of Mists but we cannot. Even if they were as weak as the vampires of the Mongrel Horde, we would still send at least two columns to subdue a single vampire.”

”The woman in the servant’s dress,” the Golden Eyed captain said, shuddering as he remembered the way she’d frozen him in place with a single look. ”She’s not simple. Remember, our job is to take them captive if we can and to buy time for Master Savis or Madame Birsu to return.”

”Don’t worry kid,” a grizzled veteran with a pair of rings in one ear said reassuringly. ”I’ve fought against the Mongrel Horde before. It’s possible to overcome a vampire with numbers as long as you don’t lose your head. Follow your seniors and you’ll be hanging your first ring before you know it!”

A few minutes later, the sound of a high-pitched whistle, inaudible to most people, pierced through the night, announcing that the other force had arrived at the opposite stairwell and was ready to begin their half of the assault on the people who followed Nyrielle and the vampire she had left to watch over them.

On the floor above Nyrielle’s battle, Zedya’s ears perked up when she heard the sound of approaching footsteps and the clink of armor and weapons. There were only two entrances to the large hall they had gathered in while awaiting permission to bring Nyrielle’s baggage to the lower level.

One entrance lay in the center of the long, north wall and the other in the center of the narrower east wall. From the sounds she heard approaching, the enemy intended to enter through both sides of the hall to catch them in the middle.

”Keep your men back to defend the drivers and servants,” Zedya told Captain Lennart as she hopped off her daybed and walked towards the entrance to the hall where she heard the loudest sounds of soldiers approaching.

By sound alone, there were at least fifty of them, if not more. More than enough to overpower Captain Lennart’s less than twenty men even if all of the wagon drivers and attendants joined them to fight back.

The only saving grace was that the coordination between the two hastily assembled forces was poor and one of them seemed to be advancing significantly faster than the other.

”I can watch your back, Madame Zedya,” Captain Lennart said, pulling on his darksteel fighting claws and stepping up next to the simply dressed vampire. ”You don’t need to face them alone.”

”Barricade the east door,” Zedya ordered as she took her position in front of the north door. ”Don’t use any of our baggage, but a few of the benches and other furniture should suffice to buy me a few moments.”

”After that, pull back and watch over the people who can’t fight back,” Zedya said with a shake of her head as she pulled out a set of darksteel fighting gauntlets of her own, much to the surprise of her bearish companion. ”Don’t give me that look, Little Lenny,” she said. ”I can move more freely if the only people around me are enemies.”

”Besides,” she added as her amethyst eyes began to glow. ”I don’t intend to fight fair.”

”As you command, Madame Zedya,” Lennart said with a brief salute. ”But one of these days, I would be honored if I could help you for once.”

”Lennart,” Zedya said, catching the bearish soldier’s sleeve before he could return to the rest of the soldiers. ”You are helping,” she said with a sincerity that would have been difficult before Nyrielle had begun to restore pieces of her heart she’d felt were long lost.

”You may not share the same dangers,” she said. ”But what you’re doing relieves me of burdens that would otherwise prevent me from doing my best. Please, don’t ever diminish how much I rely on your support.”

”Thank you,” Lennart said, flashing a slight smile before he turned away and returned to his men. There was more he wanted to say, but those words would have to wait until after the battle.

With a thundering crash, the north door banged open as Aiss and his men charged into the hall.

”Tangled nets of briars bind. Thorns pierce into your mind,” Zedya intoned as the Golden Eyed soldiers stormed into the hall. Her eyes glowed brilliantly and her hands made a grasping gesture before a cloud of faint purplish energy descended from the ceiling onto the heads of the charging soldiers.

Zedya was no witch, but in the time she had studied with the Mother of Thorns, she’d learned a number of methods of empowering her Mesmerizing Eye,s and the sorcery she’d just unleashed was one of the most cruel.

”Thank goodness you’ve come,” Zedya said, putting on a helpless appearance. ”Traitors are charging the east door, they intend to bring an end to the rule of vampires in the Tangled Wood. Raise your weapons high and stand with me against the traitors!”

As she spoke, her words wove through their minds, combining with her sorcery to distort and confuse their minds. Was this why their captain had exhorted them to rush here so quickly? They had to stop the traitors?

Many in the front ranks faltered in their charge only to stumble when the ranks behind them ran into them. The once-organized columns fell into immediate disarray as several stopped to raise their weapons while the ones behind were still struggling to reconcile the conflicting instructions they’d received.

Unlike when she used her Mesmerizing Gaze to interrogate Torsten or to strip away the Frost Walker’s sense of self, this time, she only sought to distort their perceptions slightly, pulling them into a world that was little different from the real world by planting a suggestion in their minds that many would find reasonable, especially under the confusing and chaotic circumstances of a sudden attack by enemies within their own fortress.

A few managed to resist, finding her suggestion so laughable that they instantly rejected it. But when those men pushed back against the distorted world that Zedya tried to pull them into, their heads were wracked with piercing pain as the thorns conjured by her sorcery dug into their minds. The harder they struggled to resist her attempts to drag them into her twisted world, the worse the pain became!

”Traitors in our midst!” Zedya shouted, rushing into the crowd of soldiers and catching the throat of a man who was clutching his head in pain. ”Death to the traitors!” she screamed as she used the claws of the fighting gauntlet to tear the man’s throat from his neck in a spray of blood and thicker fluids that quickly stained the white lace on her black dress a deep, crimson red.

The instant she made her declaration, madness ensued as sixty men of the Dark Wolf Brigade turned on each other like maddened dogs, alternately convinced that they had discovered traitors in their midst or horrified that their companions had been turned into puppets by the vampire sorceress.

Zedya used the chaos to her advantage, flowing through the tangled mass of soldiers with inhuman speed as her hands tore weapons away from their wielders, blinded soldiers who had removed their helmets to clutch their heads in pain, and tore limbs from those who were strong enough to resist her mind destroying sorcery long enough to take a swing at her.

Behind them, Captain Lennart and his men looked on in shock and a small measure of horror as the mild-mannered maidservant followed the last orders Nyrielle had given her and soaked herself in the blood of their enemies. What shocked most of them is that, unlike Thane, Marcell, and Nyrielle’s other human progeny, Zedya fought with her claws in the same manner that the Clan of the Great Claw would, laying about her enemies with the power and fury of a rampaging bear.

Thane had trained for years to become a knight before Nyrielle took him into her household and Marcell’s business dealings with the human underworld had honed his skills with easily concealed weapons in a way that only became more deadly when he gained a vampire’s enhanced physical abilities.

Zedya, however, had been nothing more than a maidservant when she arrived in the Vale of Mists. Her implements of vengeance against the nobles who destroyed her family had been poison and deception. So when the day came for her to learn how to fight for herself and master weapons in case she should ever be required to defend her Mistress, she had turned to the Clan of the Great Claw and learned to fight the Eldritch way.

No words could describe the carnage of those few moments but by the time the door in the east wall began to shudder and shake under the assault of the other team trying to force their way into the hall, only twenty-six of the sixty men who had charged the hall from the north were still alive... and each and every one of them possessed the glowing amethyst eyes of a man who had fallen fully under Zedya’s spell.