The Attack On the Silver-Peak
The dwarf party was surrounded. Behind them, the bodies of vampires cooled on the ancient stone, in great heaps; the forms of shattered supplicants were there too. Broken stone and rubble spoke to the great battle, whence many of the Lahmian's best warriors and the dwarf's mightiest alike.
But many more were the bodies of dwarfs. Shattered Longbeards, killed slayers, daughty miners, even a killed runepriest-- and worst, heroes of the Dawi people both killed and not rested in the heap. A crown shone...
At the center of the circle, Kragg and Neferata shared fiery glares. She had her hand around his neck, and in her other was her dagger. Wounds dealt by the damned kings and the runesmith wept blood, staining her dress; and the Grim's own staff was flecked with the stuff, slightly sizzling as the runes burnt it. The greatest was a cut above her eye that blinded her.
"Did no one tell you, dwarf, that it is rude to invade homes?"
The ancient dwarf spat in the ancient beast of evil's eye. With a wrathful shriek she planted her knife in his ribs, sliding it into the ancient lord's heart.
He fell, dark blade planted in his heart. His breaths came slow, fitful; stopped. Neferata kicked the body, to be sure.
"That ends that." It was only then that Neferata dared speak. "Would anyone else like to challenge me today?"
"I would."
The vampire whirled about, and saw the the Enchantress. She hissed as the font of purity walked into the hall of evil, gripping a scepter and with a good sword grasped in hand. She was tall, leaves were twirled in her hair, and her dress was crafted of white silk and shining gold.
Moving her scepter, the Enchantress cast a spell-- and in that fiery, vampiric hell, the shattered forms of dwarfs began to breathe once more, air flowing through their battered frames. Kragg's body began to shake and jerk and move, until with hateful glare he ripped the dagger from his body.
"I have come, Neferata, to remove you from the world as one removes the poison of a snake's bite from a vein."
"You dare, witch?" The vampire took up her power; and it was mighty, and terrible in its wrath, sure and dark and terrible, beauty and power in equal, grandiose measure. Mortal man would have felt the need to kneel in subjugation to the beast, and her wrath; even the dwarfs, but for Kragg, felt some slight twinge of fear.
Morgiana lifted her scepter and with a whispered incantation sent a great bolt of fire towards the she-beast. The vampire moved, swiftly; and the illusion was shattered.
"Grip your blade and fight, vampire."
Neferata grabbed her dagger from the floor and gripped it hard. She leaped, then at the enchantress, swinging her blade at the font of good.
"I am the Lady's Will made flesh!"
The scepter stopped the blade of dread Nehekara, arresting it as it fell for her flesh. A moment later her own blade slid through the Vampire's arm.
She fell back, barking curses; and then the vampire looked, and dreaded. For her flesh was falling to ash, decaying under weight of ages, as the blade forged in the cursed Waters of Death burnt through her. "What have you done, witch?"
"Irony is clearly lost on you, blood-sucking fiend. Now protect yourself."
The Enchantress moved; and a moment later there was a clashing of blades as the two mightiest women in the Old World clashed. The Breton blade danced through the air; but even as it danced the vampire it hungered for dodged under the blows, her own dagger flitting through the air. It opened weeping cuts on the Enchantress' flesh, even as her Golden Girdle flared to life to protect her.
The two were quick, quicker than the dwarfs could follow-- though even as they watched they saw the vampire knock the Enchantress back, the Bretonnian's arm ending up letting out a loud crack as she landed funny. Her nose began to bleed, leaking the light from the wound. Her scepter landed before her on the stone, and her sword clattered away from her hand.
The vampire launched another attack, flitting through the air and gripping her blade.
The Enchantress slapped her hand down; and a moment later a rocky hand burst through the earth and gripped the Defier of Death, and slammed her to the ground, disorienting her for precious moments even as she slid her leg out from the hand.
Neferata swore as she hit the ground; only to hear the sound of her foe rising back to her feet. She turned, willing her leg to heal; and when she did, something happened, something that hadn't happened for centuries. She, who had stared Emperor's in the eye; she who had ruined Strigos; she who had unleashed the Red Duke without ounce of fear. The Spider at the Center of the World's Web let herself do something she had not done in Millennia.
She worried.
For when saw the form of Morgiana stalking towards her, sword and scepter in hand, she saw not the Enchantress; but the form of a far different servant of the gods.
She saw Khalida.
Neferata gripped her dagger, and praying to the gods she had betrayed, rose to her feet. With a last burst of strength leaped, and managed to open a cut on the Enchantress' cheek that rose up to her eye, ending on the forehead, making her look as though she wept blood.
The Enchantress stumbled back, just before the great pit of drained bodies; and then Neferata struck her, kicking her hard.
The Enchantress fell over the Edge, and Kragg rose back up to his feet, gripping his staff ready to finish the fight the lad had started.
Neferata cackled.
"That's right, child. Who are you to come and try and challenge me? Lord have died at my slightest. I have drained the kings of Karaks dry. I broke Ushoran for Fun!" The blood-drinker walked over to the edge, gripping her wounded arm. "You were never any competition, you would-be Khalida!"
She looked over the pit, dark, sadistic smile splitting her face.
The Enchantress was hanging on by her good hand while the other dangled behind her, looking down to the pits of the vampires' past meals. She huffed, and looked down, then back up to the Vampire, hateful glare on her face.
"I won, Enchantress. Your kingdom is mine, and I will have my revenge on you through it foolish, stupid little girl."
She leaned down, to pry off the witch's fingers.
"Blood shall flood the streets as I clap your men in chains and burn the forests to the ground."
One finger away from the edge.
"The Cathedral burnt by my own hand, its art defaced, its stories of 'chivalry' and 'honor' destroyed in flames."
A second.
"The damsels my slaves, and they shall suffer for your temerity."
A third.
"I will parade the body of the king before me."
"Stop. Talking."
Then a moment later she felt the cold steel of the Enchantress punch through her chest. Neferata hissed-- but then she was falling, falling towards the pit where her sins lay to meet her, as the Enchantress used her to leverage herself up.
She fell through the air-- and even as she did she felt the power of the waters of death flowing through her like stormy ice.
Neferata looked at her hands. The flesh on them was flaking, the falling apart to ash. The world was growing dark and cold; and blackness was intruding upon her vision as she felt the Dream God's brew work upon her.
The air whistled around her, even as she grew nearer and nearer to the floor. Time seemed to slow for the vampire.
"Hm. Took you long enough, Nehekaran." A man spoke. The voice that spoke to her was wrought with age, the weight of millennia, of the lives and rest of untold millions, if not billions.
Then Neferata, mistress of the dark finally passed fully as her mortal shell struck a particularly sharp stake; and suddenly there before her was Morr, clad in his resplendent glory, wrath written on normally calm flesh. Behind him the dead streamed to their eternal rest, to pass, to end. The realm was dark, and cloaked in shadows, and before her were spirits of the court of dreams.
"I have waited long enough for this."
And Neferata despaired. For she heard wailing, and the gnashing of teeth.
--
>TFW You actually get to be important
