Chapter 18-468: Blood of the Fields Beneath the Sky (1/2)
Kiev had also been its own Shroudzone. While the greater Shroudzone hadn’t had any Dark Clergy, there were those tied to Kiev itself, and as it withdrew, a ‘blob’ now extended off the Russian Shroud, centered over that city.
Kiev’s Shroud ended less than a mile away. They were still in its Deadzone, but they were pretty sure no undead would be spawning here come dusk, because they’d come into it while it was still Shrouded and cleared the area of anything and everything unliving.
The city itself would wait, sitting over there on the horizon, its Dark Buryar and minions stewing and waiting for the living sitting there vulnerable at the edge of its domain, but unable to do anything about them.
Half the radius of the city’s Shroud had dissipated, too. The forces coming in had been very dangerous indeed in their attacks, although nothing like the main assault drive to the north of the Opening of the Sky.
Amaretta had seen her family here. Sometimes twice. The corpses of the servants and lower classes that had served her family had naturally enough attacked them. So had their chained and writhing spirits, cursed into becoming incorporeal energy-sucking wraiths and spectres, while the ghost of the chamberlain of the manor had been particularly nasty as far as such things went.
And then the Blooded, transformed into full starving vampires, had been here as well.
The undead hadn’t expected to see Tomb Clanners, especially ones who actually knew Blood Magic and were ready for the powerful undead, unafraid and totally willing to show the vampires that magic for fighting undead applied to vampires, too. The undead Blooded who had followed their ancestors to undeath had not died to staking, but to vivus and cutting blades trailing black and white fires.
Some were even Blessed by Holy magic, imagine that!
-They be restoring the graveyard, and carving the names of those they saw and finally laid to rest,- The Mick /replied to Lady Traveler’s calm voice, watching them work. -Ye’d think the bastards’d be fine with raiding the crypts, but nae. There were six Tombstone Elementals here, Grave Elementals guarding the manor, Cairnguards, and four Bone Golems. The place were defiled six ways to Sunday, and then ten more on the Lord’s Day, just to shit upon His name.-
Amaretta had let him have his time and sorrow, and he would let her have hers.
-How many did she have to put down?- Traveler /asked quietly.
-All of them. Some had tried to destroy themselves, and were near hard to recognize. Her mam and papa, uncles, older brothers and sister, childhood friends, her stepfather’s extended family, the folk who worked the fields, an’ they pulled the grandparents and more out of the ground...- He turned his eyes towards Kiev, crimson gleaming in the dark of them. -They be whispering that the Dark Buryar of Kiev be the Ancestor of the Family, waiting for them.-
- A Vampire Dark Bishop. You know the drill. You can’t kill it while it is connected to its Congregation. Wipe the minions, and the Dark Clergy falls in power and loses a great deal of their might. Kill them, even with vivus, and they jump bodies to a minion and return to full strength.-
He watched dwarves, humans, and Tomb Clanners placing the gravestones that had been jumbled together to form the Tombstone Elementals back into the ground, and they spent Scrolls and magic preserved from combat to restore shattered cairns and tombs, bring back shattered statuary and cryptwork, and dig out and reverently place new stones upon the churned ground.
The carving on the stones was fresh, and done by hands sharp enough, strong enough, and hard enough to work on the stone with no tools. He saw the red streaks down the pale cheeks of his girl as she slowly and carefully worked on a tombstone for her sister. He watched her carve the date of her sister’s birth, two decades before her own, and the date of death on that cold October 11 in 1941, so long ago, with a second date of undeath-ended below it, a tradition that all the Tomb Clans recognized, prone as their dead were to getting up and walking around even before the Shroud came.
December 21, 2019. The Winter Solstice, the longest and darkest night of the year, lit up by vivic fire as the wheel of the seasons turned, and now every day would be longer and brighter, for a time.
Next to her sat Hank Blakhamar, dark beard wet with his own tears as he carved a tombstone for his brother. A mound of fifteen slabs more waited next to him, Shaped up by Amaretta herself for him to carve with the fingers of a master of the Crystal Dragon, no need for a hammer and chisel there.
Once Hank Blakhamar had been a mere servant here, and arguably was now a greater lord than ever his Blooded master had once been. But he’d come all this way for one reason alone, and that was to lay his kin to rest.
Staring the nightmares of seven decades and more in the eye and spitting in them, that were just a bonus.
Those kin had been undead, and once human, aye, for they’d died before the changes had taken place across that horrible and dread year. Still, they’d recognized Hank, as they had Amaretta, calling out their names in hate and rage that the two of them still dared to live, and were so arrogant as to come with family to fight them!
Tears in their eyes, shouting curses and greetings in the old tongue with the same breath, the two had led their living family against their undead kin, and put the fallen down permanently.
There was no thought of saving them or succoring them. The undead were tied to the Shroud, and as long as Shroud-bound remained, the Shroud remained. Lock away the dead for some necromantic purpose and Ritual, take control of them as he surely could figure out a way to, aye, and the Shroud would be around forever... or, at least, until Traveler came looking for the anchors left upon this world, and dealt them a proper traitor’s fate.
Well, morelike Shvaughn would, as she’d quite the touch for it. That fucking fool who thought he’d be more clever than the others and wrap up some Cultivators to milk for their blood, aye, he’d been milked himself, kept alive by Revenance as his blood vessels were filled with acid and melted him away from inside. He’d felt it all, unable to die until the Revenance finally gave way when his whole body was reduced to hissing sludge all at once.