Chapter 210

Chapter 210

Chapter 210

The dining hall had been redecorated according to the description Riven had given Allie prior to this, though she couldn’t be certain because it was her first time here after all. She’d never had reason to visit the compound before now, but the looming threat of planetary annihilation by an intergalactic vampire empire that her mother had been part of was nothing to take lightly - should she spurn the rules of the Queen and council. Despite not knowing much about the greater multiverse, she was relatively certain the Blood Moon Requiem could follow through on that promise after Riven had described the visit to their inherited planet and the fleets surrounding it. If her mother’s house alone had such a force, what kind of force did the main army of the Blood Moon Requiem have?

The room contained only a singular rectangular table, carved from a strange deep gray wood that’d been polished to a shine. Dozens of dishes formed through works of art were on display, with numerous bottles of fine wines. Two very attractive thrall men and two equally attractive thrall women on a table of their own were decorated in sauces and flowers for live feeding out to the side of the main dining table - similar in fashion to how Genua had been displayed by Kathrine to Riven. Ruby chandeliers cast warm auras, and hundreds of candles all around the room gave off a gentle glow. Black banisters with the red crescent moon, outlined with gold trimmings hung overhead, and servants were standing next to the kitchen door and around the room to heed the call of the nobles at a moment’s notice.

Aside from those servants of both vampire and thrall origin were the soldiers standing on the perimeter of the room - either those that’d first arrived with the commune, or the ones that sported green flames on their breastplates that’d come with the young lord. The people sitting at the elongated table numbered only four however.

Lord Justo Barimont sat at one end with his head held high and a cocky smirk on his face as he blatantly eyed Allie from across the table while slowly stroking the green flame emblem on his chest. Allie sat at the other end, having placed her skull mask on the wood beside her plate - glaring defiantly back at him. Kathrine sat inbetween the two, uncomfortably crossing her pale legs and clearing her throat while servants poured her a drink, and finally there was Lady Muren - another vampire noble who had her hair up in a vibrant orange ponytail and wore a form fitting red robe.

The small orchestra of string instruments on a raised platform started as the final deserts were placed on the table, and the scent of perfume wafted through the air.

“Do you like it?” Lord Justo Barimont asked with a fanged smile, head-nodding to the small orchestra of violins and cellos nearby. “I’d heard they were the best in your city, and that this was what many high class citizens of your home world listened to. I hope I was not misinformed.”

Allie raised an eyebrow, slouched in her chair, and spared the human musicians dressed in fine attire a momentary glance. “Yes, it’s quite nice.”

She turned her head to Lady Muren with a frown. “Weren’t there supposed to be more of you? Riven told me there were also two other lords present. Duke Blemrich, and Lord Carsion. Are they not attending the luncheon today?”

Lady Muren spared Lord Barimont a quick glance, then smiled Allie’s way. “They decided to leave the planet after Lord Barimont...”

“After I secured your hand in marriage, my dear.” Lord Barimont said with a wide, greedy smile. “I’m sure you’re already at least partially aware of these things, but my family wanted me to meet you after the fact so we could become more intimately acquainted with one another.”

Allie snorted in derision, then took a fork and - very un-lady like - tore off a piece of finely cooked meat and began chewing while continuing to glare across the table. “Humorous.”

“What is?” Lord Barimont asked pleasantly, folding his fingers together between both hands.

“That you seem so entitled to me.” Allie then turned back to Lady Muren. “And why haven’t you left? Didn’t Kathrine already take Riven from you?”

The orange-haired vampire’s eye twitched, but she kept a pleasant smile. “Princess Kathrine Vonsilla Crushada has indeed secured Riven’s hand in marriage, but unlike us who can only incubate one pregnancy at a time - Males obviously have the opportunity to sire many children at once. Malignant Prophecy is a highly valued gift that the queen wants more of. I know marriage is now out of the question, but I was hoping I could perhaps become a concubine. A shame really, my family outbid Kathrine’s but it was deemed by the elder council that her relationship with Riven had already taken fruition after she whored herself off a while ago.”

Kathrine adamantly rolled her eyes, huffed, and started digging into her own food with rather exaggerated stabs. “That’s rather a funny thing to say, coming from someone with aspirations to become a concubine. He hasn’t even met you more than twice.”

Allie continued chewing on a roll and wiped her hands on a napkin after swallowing. “Mmm. So I can assume, Kathrine, that the person you wanted me to meet so much is this pleasant gentleman ogling me at the other end of this fine dining table? Let’s just cut to the chase about things shall we?”

Kathrine frowned, then gave her an uncomfortable nod. “Yes.”

“And he really is my betrothed, according to the queen? THIS guy?” Allie shoved a finger in Barimont’s direction, getting a scowl from the overly handsome man as Kathrine nodded once again. “Is it normal for the royalty of The Blood Moon Requiem to be pawned off as breeding partners like this? Without any say about who they get to marry? Or is it just Riven and me?”

“That is a complicated question...” Kathrine began while pulling at a brown lock of hair hanging down her shoulder. “The short answer is sometimes. In your case, your parents weren’t there to help navigate the political agenda concerning who it would be. So your great grandmother the high queen, as your closest of kin holding a royal title, was the one who decided an auction should occur after being pressured by the rest of the elder council to choose.”

A heavy silence ensued afterwards, the sound of Allie’s nails digging into the wooden table mixing with the sound of Lady Muren’s chewing while Lord Barimont continued to stare with a forced smile. Was the queen really on her side, or was she not? It was hard to tell.

“You should be honored to marry one such as me, Allie Wraithtide.” Lord Barimont said, putting his elbows on the table to rest his chiseled, pale chin on his hands. “My house is incredibly wealthy. We have conquered newly settled territories on the outskirts of the empire, owning large shares of two planets and a smaller portion of a third. Millions of slaves, entire cities erected in our names, and a military force that rivals many of the best in the empire. You would not be lacking in resources once you joined my family name.”

Allie glared at the man again, eyes narrowed. “And yet here you are, basically trying to buy me as little more than a sex object. And for what? To raise yourself in the political hierarchy? That’s what Riven told me.”

Lord Barimont’s eyebrows rose. “And just what does your brother know about political hierarchies? You and yours have never been to the empire.”

“Not in person, but Riven did recently visit to discuss running Luteski. General Viku filled him in on some of the details.” Allie leaned back, lying through her teeth. Viku hadn’t been the one to tell them about the political landscapes and how to navigate them, it’d been their great grandmother the high queen - but Allie still didn’t know what High Queen Nephridi’s game was. Was her grandmother playing both sides of the field? Or was she truly on Allie’s side? If Nephridi really was her ally, it’d be stupid to claim she’d been sent information from her grandmother if other elders of the empire council were at play.

Lord Barimont sighed, then shook his head. “General Viku is known to me, and is a military man. He does not concern himself with politics, but I’d really like to convince you that I am a worthy Lord to marry without needing to do things the hard way. Is there no chance I could win your favor? At least let me make the attempt. Reasons for why we bid for your hand in marriage are reasons of our own, and you will be treated fairly as my wife. When you raise our children, I will shower them with the finest of gifts and our house name will only grow stronger between your inherent gift of prophecy and the might of the Barimont legions.”

“I’m not interested.”

“It is your duty. I’m afraid you can’t decline.”

Allie sneered back at the blankly staring man in front of her, then she leaned forward with a hiss. “I’m already courting someone. Someone a lot better than you.”

Lord Just Barimont blinked twice, then pushed back on the table and began to uproariously laugh. His cackles boomed across the large dining hall as Kathrine blankly stared at the table, Lady Muren smirked, and Allie glared. Eventually he calmed himself down, then used a handkerchief to wipe the literal tears streaming out of his eyes from the sheer amusement he obviously felt about her statement. “Are you talking about that crippled cattle welp? The one with the shriveled limbs!?”

“His name is Lahn!” Allie said, slamming a fist onto the table as she got to her feet with a roar of death mana. The chair and her side of the table exploded into fragments of wood and food, and both Kathrine and Lady Muren yelled out in shock while scrambling away.

She spit blood as she stood up, cracking her neck and holding out her hand to summon her mask that flashed to her. Putting it on and sizing up the vampiric soldiers who’d drawn swords and conjured unholy fireballs in front of their lord who was cursing loudly across the room in a pile of his own rubble - she pointed her wand one more time.

She visibly shook with anger, wiping off the saliva he’d left on her lips. “Now that your toys are broken, let’s see how strong you really are.”

The iron scarecrow cocked his head to one side. “On your order, master.”

Allie screamed, and the room around her exploded as her formerly suppressed death mana howled in a storm above her head with flaming skulls materializing out of the air above her to come hurling down onto her enemies. Fimrindle’s odd body blipped inbetween positions in unbelievably elegant sweeps and scythe attacks - dancing inbetween elite vampire soldiers and her flaming skulls while killing three of House Barimont’s men within seconds; before vanishing and reappearing once again.

Lord Barimont’s soldiers rushed the metal scarecrow and a few of them tried to lunge directly for Allie - a few of them activating movement abilities only to be set upon by dozens of cloaked skeleton assassins that seemingly phased out of thin air to clash with the vampires head on. Her bone creations flashed forward, each of them the best of her minions as they twirled enchanted shortswords and daggers. They ripped into vampiric flesh with precisional strikes or were crushed and demolished in ivory explosions as their bodies were ripped open by vampiric blades, but none of them felt a thread of fear as their necromancer master urged them onwards.

“ALLIE WRAITHTIDE!” Lord Barimont roared over the din of battle that’d erupted between Allie’s own minions and Lord Barimont’s soldiers. “THIS IS TREASON! YOU WILL BE WED TO ME WHETHER OR YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, AND THE MORE YOU RESIST - THE MORE THINGS WILL END BADLY FOR YOU!”

Allie grinned underneath her mask. “You should be more concerned about yourself.”

She held up a hand to the sky, and from the hole in the ceiling and up in the clouds far above them - cracks in space began to tear themselves into reality. Screams erupted from the beyond, and a gigantic neon teal eye wreathed in deathly flames glared downwards upon the vampiric compound like the eye of the death god itself.

Stone shattered, and those she viewed as enemies all began to scream as its judgement radiated down hatred and crashed into their bodies like a tidal wave of pain. Lord Barimont was one of them, screaming in agony as his bones cracked and shattered - the sheer weight of the eye’s presence causing him to slam into the floor and create a crater there before his broken fingers managed to pry out yet another item from a pocket on his right side.

He crushed a pill of some sort, and a blinding flash of radiant white light blew open the doors to the room and raced towards the heavens - quickly blasting the ‘eye of the Scythe’ spell Allie had conjured apart with a flare of golden-white energies.

The backlash was not insignificant, and Allie stumbled - blood dripping from her nose while she caught herself on a wall. Princess Kathrine, Lady Muren, Captain Rusof, and the other elite warriors of the Blood Moon Requiem all stood silently and helplessly by - not willing to impose themselves on this fight lest they be caught up in a power struggle involving people far above their paygrade. Be it the High Queen Nephridi and Elder Thune, or Princess Allie Wraithtide and House Barimont - the bystanders didn’t seem willing to put themselves in a line of fire regarding this dispute.

“KNOW YOUR PLACE!” Lord Barimont Shrieked, blasting Fimrindle when the demon-undead hybrid managed to bypass two guards to take a swipe at the lord himself.

The iron scarecrow was sent skidding across the ground, head over heels only to recover with inhuman agility and blurr back to engage. He was quickly intercepted by House Barimont elites though, who doubled down on their efforts to kill the creature and keep their charge safe in a whirlwind of clashing, sparking metal between blows exchanged.

Lord Barimont then charged with collar in hand, flames erupting along one arm as he torpedoed through the air with a boost of power from flames at his feet. He crashed into Allie’s position as the bystanders backpedaled towards safety, only to be repelled by Allie’s bone armor and a whiplash of death-mana strings that cut deep into his chest and spiked the vampire into the ceiling.

Allie blurred left, dodging a thrown fireball from one of Barimont’s men and retaliating with another roar of death mana from her wand before her free hand rose into the air. While Lord Barimont crashed into the ground and stood up, snapping his neck back into a corrected position and then an arm - she closed her eyes and began to focus on the scattered bones and corpses around her.

The air hummed as she activated ‘Speaker of the Dead’ and ‘A Path of Bones’, combining the spirit-summoning spell with the ability to bend and sculpt bones to her cause. The afterlife responded with a howl of shrieking voices that filled the sky, and the remnants of the ceiling shattered as a roar of ghosts rushed at Lord Barimont in an attempt to possess him like a tidal wave.

Lord Barimont screamed in horror, and the room flared with an explosion of infernal energy that rocked the very building they stood in - killing numerous guards, skeletons and thrall servants in the attempt to ward off possession. He huffed, his flaming body reducing to cinders only to go wide-eyed when he saw an avalanche of bone erupting from Allie's spatial sack on her hip.

She grinned mischievously, waggling a finger at him as the ocean of ivory soared high - ghosts still circling him like birds of prey would a rabbit. “I don’t marry maggots.”

She shoved her hand forward, and the ocean of ivory descended like a maelstrom of violence - crashing into Lord Barimont and cutting into him in hundreds of places while simultaneously trying to flatten him into a pancake. The ivory ocean began to compress, compress, and compress even more as it turned into a sphere with the vampire lord inside.

He roared in pain and cursed her, spurts of flame trickling out of the dense ball of ivory hovering in the ruins of the dining hall. Ghosts began to shriek and dive into the mess of magic, using Allie’s own death mana to keep them safe from the infernal fires as their spirit bodies dug into Lord Barimont’s own - causing his pained cursing to turn into that of a frantic and horrified wail.

Allie’s fanged sneer grew wider, her crimson eyes burning with malice while her hand continued to tighten on the strings that connected her will to the swirling orb or compacting ivory. “DIE!”

“AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!” His screams were growing fainter, and the struggles were growing less obvious as less and less flame escaped the holes in her bone prison, but a neon red blast of light from one of the soldiers tore across the room and shattered the hold Allie had on the young lord. The bones disintegrate, and the ghosts trying to tear into the man’s soul were evaporated instantly.

“NOOOO!!” Allie screamed in rage and summoned more flaming skulls, launching them at the vampiric soldier and turning him into paste before she was slammed back into the wall with a sickening crunch.

The flaming chains from earlier tore out of the wall, and from one of Barimont’s hands, binding her to the stone and wrapping around her neck, legs, and arms to hold her still. Meanwhile Lord Barimont picked himself up - a bloodied, haggard mess with one eye missing as he glared hatefully towards her. Standing in a pile of ash, he slowly began to regenerate as his vampiric body healed the wounds inflicted upon him.

“You raggedy BITCH!” Lord Barimont howled, only to turn at the sound of a door being flung open - and his hate filled sneer turned into a look of absolute glee.

There, in the entrance to the hall, was Lahn. He was in his wheelchair, frantically looking around and taking in the sight with growing emotion. He saw Allie’s figure bound and burning as she screamed against the wall - her mana battling the suppressive effect of the chains that were extending out of Lord Barimont’s hands. He saw her minions battling the vampiric knights in fierce combat with Firmindle at the head of them all. He saw the one-eyed mage smiling sinisterly his way, and Lahn drew out the gift Allie had given him all those weeks ago.

A brilliant white light illuminated the darkness of the vampiric compound, and Prophet’s artifact tome blazed with holy energy that radiated across Lahn’s skin while his shriveled hand frantically tried to flip the pages. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he glared daggers at the man who was hurting Allie while he screamed at the top of his lungs. “I’M HERE TO HELP, ALLIE!”

Allie’s body twitched, and her death mana roared in an explosion that sent ripples up the chains binding her - causing Lord Barimont to stumble and giving her a moment of respite. She turned her head, a look of absolute horror in her eyes when she saw who it was.

She screamed, her voice shrill. “LAHN! LAHN GOD DAMN YOU, RUN! FUCKING RUN!”

Then Lord Barimont lunged.