“Leon!” Narses the Black called out as Leon arrived at their prearranged staging point.
It was a fairly innocuous camp on the edge of the Ilumerian Wetlands, hidden by the thick canopy of the swampy forest. It largely consisted of a few hastily built stone huts, all of which were little more than single-story cubes with little in the way of decoration.
Narses now stood in the doorway of the largest of the handful of buildings waving Leon inside. None of the buildings had much in the way of defensive wards, so Leon was easily able to count a dozen more mages here, too, and all of them fairly powerful, ranging from the fifth to the seventh-tier. Narses himself was an eighth-tier mage, bringing the power potential of his force up quite a bit. However, even with all of that, Leon alone still outclassed him and his group.
And yet, Leon forced himself to stay on-guard, even as he plastered a relaxed smile over his face. There were plenty of ways to hide enemy forces, and Leon knew he was walking into a trap. Better to stay alert than be caught off-guard and take casualties.
With Leon was Anzu, Anna, Valeria, and Gaius, all flying at his side as he touched down in the center of the camp, and all of them fully armored—in Anzu’s case, he wore a suit of armor that Leon had made for practice several years prior and kept just in case. He and Sid would make the griffin a suit of his own in time, but for now, Leon’s spare armor would do just fine. They were all tense and ready for battle, but Leon didn’t think that Narses’ trap was going to be sprung here. There just wasn’t enough magic around for him to think that this was the place, and given his skill in the enchanting arts, hiding such preparations from him would be a feat unto itself.
So, Leon led his small force forward to greet Narses the Black.
“Narses,” Leon replied in greeting.
“Good to see you’re here,” Narses said, grinning at Leon in a way that Leon could only see as predatory. “I was almost afraid that you’d leave this to me…”
“If there’s a threat,” Leon stated as he walked over, “I deal with it as quickly as I can.”
“So I’ve heard,” Narses replied. “With you here, this operation should go off without a hitch.”
With a smile of his own, Leon stated, “Here’s hoping. Why don’t we step inside and go over your plan?” As he spoke, Leon removed his helmet and approached Narses.
‘Better for him to steer me into another prepared location if he wants to spring a trap…’ Leon mused. He was a ninth-tier mage, and Narses knew that. A typical ambush, as clearly demonstrated by the one two nights before, wouldn’t work, not with the power that Narses and Leon had, respectively.
Narses waved Leon inside, and with a look, Leon directed Anzu and Valeria to follow him, while leaving Anna and Gaius outside. The rest of Narses’ retinue appeared gaunt and pale, but none of them out-and-out looked like vampires—though Leon guessed that they all were. It would’ve been quite the coincidence if they all just so happened to share some vampiric traits just as they were hunting vampires…
The stone building that Narses led them into amount to one barely-furnished room, though Leon had been able to tell that from miles away. The room was empty save for a table in the center and two more mages, one rather pale but the other quite dark of skin. On the table was a surprisingly accurate hand drawn map of the region, complete with markings indicating their camp, the blood farm, and several approach routes.
“This is what we’re looking at,” Narses said as he indicated the map. “About thirty miles west of here, in the middle of a dense swamp, is our target location. Large, fortified estate, robust defenses, surrounded on all sides by a swamp.”
Narses pointed to the location, and Leon saw six marked buildings. One was quite large—some kind of rural villa, he guessed—while the other five buildings appeared to be smaller guest houses or supporting structures. All the buildings were surrounded and linked by a reasonably thick wall.
“How many people are inside?” Leon asked, wondering just how detailed Narses was prepared to be.
“We’ve counted more than fifty guards just outside the central structure,” Narses explained. “The entire place is surrounded by a wall that’s been heavily reinforced with magic. We can’t see inside with magic senses, so we’ve had to rely entirely on using our eyes to see. Unknown number of persons inside, captured or otherwise.”
“Hmm,” Leon hummed in response. “Gatehouse on the south side, not too far from the swamp’s shore. Could hit there.”
“The gatehouse is particularly reinforced,” Narses warned. “Plus, those two towers on either side.”
Leon lightly frowned and projected his magic senses, hoping to see the estate for himself. As Narses warned, however, he was only able to see the outer wall and couldn’t get his magic senses past the wards within the stone. Just seeing the outer wall, however, was enough for Leon to get a general feel for the kinds of wards present within it, though not to get a good grasp of the enchantments themselves. At the very least, he revised his earlier assumption up from ‘villa’ to ‘castle’.
“No warding against flight,” Leon observed.
“An aerial assault would make this fairly easy,” Narses commented.
Valeria added, “A ground assault could still come in handy.”
“Then Narses’ people will attack from the ground,” Leon decided, “and we’ll attack from the sky. Does that sound good?”
Narses smiled without a hint of bitterness. “I’m not exactly happy about it, but I agree that’s probably our best bet. We can approach from the east, where there are the fewest towers and get the attention of the defenders. You head into the main structure from the sky while the defenders aren’t looking and see to the hostages.”
“I don’t suppose you could even hazard a guess at how many people are being held and farmed for blood?” Leon asked.
“I can’t say,” Narses admitted. “Could be ten, could be a thousand, I have no way to tell.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t that many,” Leon growled. “For now, let’s get organized. I won’t dictate to you how to get your people there, but let’s launch this thing in… how about three hours? We’ll head out now and hit the estate once you get the defenders’ attention…”
“That sounds good,” Narses said, once more smiling at Leon quite pleasantly, though to Leon it looked like a grin of triumph.
The two went over a few more details before they had their plan. Without much ado, Leon and his people turned around and left the building, linking back up with Gaius and Anna before taking back to the sky.
As they rose, Leon left his helmet off and sent a quick mental message to his waiting reinforcements. If they were going to spring this trap, then he needed his hidden reinforcements moved up.
---
As Leon hovered over the target compound, he found himself wondering if he was mistaken in Narses’ intent. If Narses was luring him into a trap, then he was mobilizing quite a few resources to do so—or at least, sacrificing quite a few resources.
There were more than fifty guards on the walls; Leon counted at least eighty. Within the walls, he counted at least another eighty, let alone those inside the keep itself—and it was a keep, his revised assumption proving accurate. Heavy fortifications, ramparts, towers, crenellations, machicolations: the place wasn’t as hardened a target as a castle could be, but it was quite close.
Leon felt no small amount of pleasure knowing that, in hovering over the place, he was rendering most of those physical fortifications moot.
As he observed the compound, he watched half a dozen guards escorting ten chained and manacled individuals from one of the outer buildings into the keep. He didn’t notice any overt signs of vampirism, but it was clear that there was some kind of human trafficking going on here. A little more concerning, however, was the dock on the west side of the veritable island in the Ilumerian swamp, which hadn’t been marked on Narses’ map. If Leon had to guess, these people were pirates of some kind, though their ship wasn’t present, meaning some of them might not get swept up in this operation.
Leon could only sigh; that was a problem for another time, and one that he wouldn’t be dealing with. He’d brought with him some people who could, though.
Deeper in the swamps to the east, he could see Narses and his people creeping through the swamp as best as they could. Narses and his top mages were strong enough to get through without exerting any effort at all, but the swamp was thick enough that his party’s weaker mages were struggling a bit at the back. In all, his group numbered twenty-five, with four seventh-tier mages among them.
As they waited in the air, Leon covered his people by conjuring a fluffy white cloud beneath them, letting it slowly gather and spread. No one below seemed to notice the sky growing more and more overcast.
By his estimation, about ten minutes before Narses got into position, Leon, his helmet beneath his arm, felt a brief pulse against his mental defenses from a familiar source. It seemed that his people were in position, just waiting for his signal. One quick exchange later, Leon put his helmet back on and readied himself for violence.
Right on time, Narses got his people into position, and then opened up on the walls with a torrent of flame. A veritable ocean of bright orange fire erupted from him and crashed upon the walls, but to their credit, the walls held. Barely. The same couldn’t be said for those within, as they were roasted in the towers.
At the same time, Leon let the charge he’d been building up in the clouds he’d conjured loose. Twelve tremendous bolts of lightning fell upon the compound, killing more than twenty guards with their strength. The force of his thunder shook the castle to its foundations, and Leon grinned like a madman when the section of the wall weakened by Narses’ fire partially collapsed.
“Let’s go!” Leon roared, and he and his people descended upon the castle like the wrath of a furious god.
A number of guards had started pouring out of the castle keep, and Anzu was the first to hit them, tearing into them with his hands. He’d manipulated his wind magic into extending his fingers like razor-sharp claws, ripping through the guards with practiced ease. Anna came next, her expression—what little of it that was visible behind her helmet—one of tranquil fury as she swung her blade and sent a wave of white light hitting those guards that Anzu hadn’t taken care of, tearing them all to pieces.
Valeria and Gaius followed, though neither had much more to do with Anzu and Anna having taken care of most of their opponents. However, perhaps due to feeling a little left out, Valeria glanced back at the nearest tower, which held five guards desperately firing enchanted crossbows in a vain attempt to keep Narses’ people from advancing, and outstretched her hand. A moment later, a massive iceberg seemed to grow out of the earth at her feet, enveloping the tower completely in thick magical ice, likely killing those guards within.
Gaius, oriented on the goal, went to the castle’s heavy, reinforced front door and slammed it open with seeming ease, storming inside with Leon just behind him. Leon prepared his lightning magic, but he didn’t even need to bother as Gaius took one look at the atrium within and killed the three guards within by conjuring stone spikes to impale them from the floor.
Once inside, Leon projected his magic senses, finally getting an idea of where to go and what awaited them. He was a little confused to see no hostages or captives, despite seeing at least ten earlier, but he immediately mapped out the interior of the castle and all of its inhabitants. Then, he led his people to storm right through, cutting through all that dared to raise their blades against them. On occasion, a few of the guards would surrender, and Leon would spare time only to tie them up. But no matter what those who resisted did, Leon’s party tore right through them, hardly slowing down at all.
Fortunately, their interior defenses mostly consisted of magically-reinforced doors, but in the face of a ninth-tier mage, their doors might as well have been open for all the obstacle they posed to him.
The castle was four stories tall and contained about thirty total rooms. Within were about fifty guards, and of them, only seven surrendered.
When they reached the top floor, only five guards remained in the last room, defending their leader, a sixth-tier mage who looked as pale as the driven snow, was so gaunt that he appeared little more than skin and bones, and emitted an aura that Leon found rather demonic in nature. It was no stretch of the imagination to identify him as a vampire; the only one that Leon had found so far that was unambiguous as to what he was. His hair was as black as midnight, and by looks alone, he seemed physically strong and was no stranger to violence. The sword in his hand was wielded with practiced ease, and dark red demonfire sparked at his off hand’s fingertips.
Leon wasted no time in smashing his way into this man’s bedroom, and with barely more than a thought, swung his blade and fried his five guards with silver-blue lightning. He didn’t hold much back, and each of the guards practically exploded as his power washed over them, leaving little more than blackened ash of the men they once were.
The vampire, however, Leon didn’t touch. Instead, he stood there, suppressing the man with his aura, slowly exerting pressure until the overwhelmed vampire fell to his knees and dropped the sword in his hand.
Only then did Leon deign to speak, the rest of his party forming up at his shoulders and letting their own auras settle upon the vampire.
“Blood farm,” Leon growled. “Where?”
The vampire sputtered a bit, showing off his fangs in the process, and gasped, “Down… below!”
“Show me,” Leon growled, but the vampire’s eyes simply widened in sudden fear before he burst into flame. In barely more than a second, and with a stomach-turning scream, the vampire was rendered into a few clumps of ash as he was consumed by demonfire. Within that demonfire were two familiar malevolent eyes, burning like coals in a furnace, glaring at Leon—or rather, at Xaphan within Leon’s soul realm—with undisguised hatred.
And then the fire died as quickly as it began, leaving Leon’s party standing alone in the vampire’s bedroom, the castle cleared of all enemies, their weapons covered in blood.
“… He said, ‘down below’,” Gaius said, breaking their brief silence.
“Hidden cellar, maybe?” Leon wondered aloud, noting that the sounds of violence outside had died out. With a brief glance, he noted that it seemed that Narses’ people had massacred the remaining guards on the wall, and were moving onto the outer buildings.
Leon quickly led his people back down to the first floor where he tasked them with searching for any hidden doors. As he stepped away, however, he wondered if the ‘down below’ referred to something in the outer buildings… until barely more than a minute later when Gaius shouted, “Over here!”
Leon’s party regrouped on him, finding him standing over a section of the stone floor that had been covered by a carpet that Gaius had thrown to the side. He now knelt on the floor, his off hand pressed against the stone tiles.
“I can sense empty space right below me.”
Leon concentrated his perception on the area of stone around Gaius, but couldn’t sense anything magical. “Seems like it’s only a physical lock, then?” he theorized. He gestured at Gaius, and with a nod, the former nobleman sent his magic power into the stone.
He was proven right as his magic peeled the stone away like peeling a banana, revealing not only a surprisingly ornate and well-lit staircase that descended below the castle, but also the mechanism that would’ve opened the stone hatch had Leon felt they had the time to look.
Without a word, Leon led his people down the stairs, tasking Anzu with watching their backs. He noted his new brother sigh in relief, and he could understand; he didn’t much appreciate the idea of heading underground, either, but that’s where they were going.
What they found was remarkably similar to the last blood farm that Leon had knocked over with Narses the White, only much greater in scale. At least three hundred people in a large underground chamber, held aloft with several dozen thick stone pillars. The people were lightly restrained in simple wooden chairs as blood magic enchantments slowly siphoned just enough of their blood to not kill them. All looked exactly as malnourished and weak as that would imply, save for the ten closest to the stairs, who Leon recognized as having just been brought down there.
There were also twenty more guards—a small number for the number of people they had down there, but given how weak everyone was, twenty seemed almost like overkill. At the same time, there were ten men who seemed to be workers, though given they were already cowering at the other end of the chamber, Leon couldn’t say exactly what their job was.
Those twenty guards surrendered as soon as Leon filled the chamber with his aura, their weapons clattering to the ground, followed shortly by their knees. There weren’t any more doors down there, but Leon did note that about a hundred bottles of blood were by the stairs, so he guessed they were being stored in one of the outer buildings.
As everyone relaxed, Leon had Gaius start restraining the guards and Anna see to the captives. Anzu he ordered to watch the stairs, leaving him to speculate with Valeria.
They didn’t immediately speak, some of the recent awkwardness still there. Fortunately, it didn’t last too long.
“So,” Leon whispered to her, having to raise his voice a bit to be heard over the ecstatic cries of the captives at their rescue, “any of this seem off to you?”
“Much,” Valeria tersely replied. “Lots of assets here. Strange that Narses offered it to us. He is a vampire, right?”
“I’m quite confident he is,” Leon replied. He frowned and glanced up the stairs. “I wouldn’t feel too bad if we’re wrong, to be honest. But I don’t yet think we are. Good traps need good bait, after all. Stay on your toes.”
Valeria nodded, and they turned their attention back to seeing to the captives. Leon, however, found himself growing tenser and tenser as he waited for whatever Narses was planning—the real fight, as far as he was concerned—to kick off.
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