The Tower of Blood

Skufruss' eyes widened, though he proved his great intellect once more by not reaching to try and take it from Sack. He shook his head and chuckled. "How in the world did you get hold of that?" he asked in a voice that cracked slightly. "I would have thought Gozan or the Firstborn would have got that by now!" "You know what it is, then?" queried Surya.

"Oh, most certainly I know my Father's Sceptre," answered the Kin; "the question is, do you know what you have there?" They signalled assent. "With that in my hands, victory in this war will become certain. Vane's forces would become mine, and we could crush this nest of corruption!"

Skeptical looks - especially from Sack - were his only answer. He spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I know we have not been friends in the past," he began, "but you must admit I dealt with you honestly and fairly."

"You threw us out! Gave us 24 hours to leave the country!"

"True; but it was the right thing to do with you for the good of my city," Skufruss responded reasonably. "And I honoured my word; I sent no murderers after you; I didn't chain you in cells and then kill you for refusing to leave. I give you my word, and will swear it under any magic you want; If you give me the Sceptre, I will use it in our common cause and good here, and henceforth swear never to use it against any of you, unless I am attacked first."

This unequivocal declaration stunned the group, and some of them seemed to waver. Then Surya said "No. We'll think about it." Sack tucked it back into his Bag of Holding.

"But what will you do with it?" Skufruss pressed. "To you it is useless; only in the hands of a Kin does it have power. There; I show my honesty by telling you that! What will you do with it?"

"Keep it away from you," answered Surya levelly. Skufruss sighed and dropped the subject.

Hildraft said, "I thought we were sure to win anyway, now we've got you?" Skufruss grimaced. "With the Sceptre, we have a chance to win, yes. Without it, we have a chance of escaping the city alive..."

"Why choose our side? " Surya asked the Kin. "That's another Kin up there, why didn't you join forces?" Skufruss looked outraged. "They're vampires!" he stormed, "We may be rather different, but I'm still a living being; real, alive, sentient, mortal (probably); they are a blot, an abomination, a hole in reality, foul mockeries of the people they once were." He sat back down, panting. "I need to sleep."

Everyone was wearied after their busy night, and settled to rest or sleep or pray as was their way. Sack rousted Hansen the Bard - who'd been busily scribbling notes, unable to believe his good fortune at being present during a conversation between Skufruss of the Kin and the Dragonslayers - and demanded food. Grinning, Hansen set to work.

Around two o'clock in the afternoon, refreshed and with their magics renewed, the group gathered their equipment and set out for the Castle, their intent to secure entry during the hours of daylight, locate some or all of the vampires (especially Vane and Rhendal), and slay them while they were vulnerable.

At the base of the crag, Hildraft worked his Wind Walk magic, rendering the party gaseous and insubstantial, and they drifted up the outer face of the crag supporting the Castle. While Hildraft studied the rocks to judge the best place to target an Earthquake spell so as to drop as much of the castle as possible, Sack examined the tiny windows to select the best way in.

The windows were no more than two feet square, hatched with grilled bars reducing the apertures to two-inch squares. Beyond the first one, the half-orc saw a plain stone room, ten feet square, with a table and chairs; two humans sat at the table, one eating and the other idly tossing and catching a small dagger. They moved on. The next window opened onto a similar, but empty, room. The group flowed into this, and out through the door - a fortunate decision as it turned out to be a locked prison cell.

For the next hour, the group drifted up and down the passages honeycombing the rock under the Castle, searching for the helpless vampires trapped in their coffins. They found prisons, guardrooms, storerooms, dungeons, oubliettes, torture chambers (showing signs of recent and regular use) and a small crypt, bearing the arms of the old Tellaran royal family and clearly dating from before the Invasion and construction of the current castle. This last contained coffins, all right - but their contents were merely dead.

Frustrated, the group returned to the dungeon corridor they'd first entered, planning to interrogate the two guards they'd seen from outside. As they did so, Hildraft happened to glance in at another of the cells, and called his comrades' attention to the contents.

Chained to the wall, badly battered and lightly wounded, showing signs of recent torture, were Ariella and her two companions from the resistance. After some discussion, the group decided to leave them where they were until they had concluded their operation.

Resuming their solid forms, the group opened the cell door and entered, Surya holdinq Tormentor at the nearest's throat as the two guards sprang to their feet and began to reach for weapons. Sensibly, the two frightened soldiers sat back down.

Looming over them, Surya demanded their names, which were Dalton and Barcrest. Next, the Tellaran asked them where the vampires "slept". Although not obstructive, the two were unable to help much; again, anyone speculating about this sort of thing here tended not to live long. They insisted that "only officers" knew that sort of thing, so Sack cracked their heads together and and tied them up.

Down the hall, following Dalton's directions, they discovered a guardroom, with a sergeant and two more guards. The sergeant was pressed to reveal more, and told them that the bulk of Vane's vampires did not stay at the Castle throuqh the day, and that Lord Vane was almost certainly in his tower - to which living servitors seldom visited.

"What about the other one?" asked Hildraft, "the scarred one?" The sergeant blanched. "He is terrible," he whispered, "worse than all the others. He doesn't live here, visits occasionally." Hildraft grinned. "We gave him those scars," he said rather smugly. The sergeant looked at him with a bleak, brutalised expression that made Hildraft feel just a little ashamed. "Many people died that day," he said quietly. They left it at that and tied him up securely.

It seemed clear now that the next move was an assault on Vane's tower before the daylight failed. Moving again as smoke, they passed through the inner Great Hall, avoiding the men set there on guard. As they did so, they noticed the table was set with places for the castle's Lord and his inner circle. There seemed to be two general styles; some places were laid with ordinary-seeming food, whereas others had merely large crystal goblets set before them, each filled with a dark, rich red fluid. Was it wine? They didn't think so...

The tower was joined to the hall by an arched entryway on each of the first two levels. Once the party was in, Hildraft worked a Stone Shape to close off these arches, blocking access to the tower from outside, and preventing Vane from being reinforced.

They ascended the tower. The second floor was a training room, with combat practice equipment, a cleared fighting area, and racks of weapons attached to the walls (except where the Stone Shape had caused them to fall off). On the third floor they found five tables, clustered around, packed with maps, charts, troop lists, battle plans, and even scale models of military targets across Alair. There was a reasonable estimate of the fortifications at Belamir, diagrams of Vorsand, and even a scale model of the city defences of Thornal, capital of the Erlyid Empire. Vane was equipped to run a major war from here if he so desired.

The next floor was the top, and it had no windows. The room was bare of ornament, and contained only thing; a massive stone catafalque, ten feet square, squatting ominously between four braziers which burned with a purple flame.

The group stared at this for a moment. Something seemed wrong, and Sack strained his eyes trying to grasp it. Suddenly it struck him, there was something odd about the way the braziers rested on the floor. He looked closer, and suddenly saw through the illusion. The floor was not solid stone at all. Instead, the whole floor was one pool, two inches deep, of fresh, red blood.

No-one wanted to step into this! Sack went up the wall with his Spider Climb, working around to a point where he could drop onto the top of the tomb. He managed this, though there was a heart-stopping moment when he scrabbled for a grip on the elaborately carved lid. He began examining the surface, establishing that the lid could be slid off, though moving it was beyond even his massive muscles.

Hildraft meanwhile had used another Stone Shape to extrude a crude bridge from the wall near the stairs, allowing the rest of the group to walk across dry-shod. Upon reaching the coffin, they attached a rope to one of the carvings, and readied themselves with Bulls' Strength. Sack, Blade of the Sun poised, placed himself where the opening would come, ready to drive the weapon inwards.

Hildraft then used yet another Stone Shape to open apertures in the walls, letting the daylight in, and Skufruss pointed a finger upwards and Disintegrated the vaulted wooden roof, opening the top of the tower as well. Finally, Hildraft opened dozens of drainholes in the floor, allowing the blood to pour out downwards. Sizzling noises, the odd crash! of collapsing furniture, and some smoke came up the stairwell, suggesting that they'd been wise not to step in the stuff...

Then they pulled mightily.

The coffin lid slithered away, revealing the contents to the intruders - and the daylight. Vane the Mace had once been a mighty Kin of human stock, but his transformation to a Son of Cain had hollowed and harrowed his appearance. Thin, gaunt and horrible, his black veins distended in the grip of the Thirst, he lay there like a filthy leech, and as the sun struck him, he opened his eyes and began to scream an awful, hissing, tearing scream.

Instantly, Sack struck, stabbing the Blade of the Sun downwards through the centre of the vampire's chest, and calling up its' mighty Sunburst at the same time. The blazing energy of Life and Sun flared within the dark coffin, searing and consuming, and within seconds it was all over.

Of Vane the Mace there remained nothing but a sifting of grey ashes in the bottom of the stone tomb.