Abhorash had switched with his master just in time as the Necroshade had drawn in the souls around them to power his spell. As the necromantic fire washed over him he felt his wounds heal, his muscles invigorate and even the dents in his armour fix themselves. I had realized it during the fighting with the horde that his armour had grown capable of absorbing a bit of the ambient energy that souls left behind to fix itself.

He didn’t have the mastery his liege had over souls so he didn’t know what would happen if he fed an entire soul into his armour but the stuff of souls repaired it none the less. That was all he needed for now.

With a swing of his greatsword, he cleaved the Necroshade in two. Too bad the thing was a shade made out of soul-stuff so that he simply reformed as the sword passed through him. The Draugr grit his teeth and took a step to the side before swinging his greatsword backwards and bringing it down onto the shades head at the end of the swing.

It disrupted the shade’s spell casting just a bit but the backlash of the half cast spell sent both combatants back a few meters from one another. Small wisps of smoke came off of Aborash’s armour as he stood to see the Necroshade simply looked a bit ruffled by the backlash.

“Give me a flesh and blood enemy any day.” Abhorash groaned as he stood and raised up his sword, clenching the hilt tight enough to let the leather-wrapped around it creak. Angling his upper body forwards while lowering his hips, he sprang forwards, faster than his master by at least a factor of two as he made the same distance as Vlad in only a single second instead of two.

The shade raised his hand conjuring up a wall of spectral bones. “Insolent knight!” He growled as he began to weave his fingers through the required movements as he mumbled a fireball spell. The spectral glow of the blue flame began to take form illuminated the green shade before he stopped. He looked up and the wall exploded from the hard impact hitting it from the other side as the Abhorash not only crashed through but he managed to grip the shade’s neck.

With a grip that would crush a humans larynx, Abhorash griped hard before driving the shade back into his very own conjured wall. “Serve.” He said in a voice of finality and utter dominance, the epitome of a ruthless yet knightly warlord.

The Necroshade’s face twisted up into a feral scowl. “I do not serve!” He screamed as he brought the spell he had been interrupted in casting up to Abhorash’s face and detonated it.

Both shade and knight were engulfed in the blue conflagration which sent all broken tiles and loose debris around them flying in every direction. The Necroshade having been thrown upwards along his conjured wall and towards the other side while Abhorash’s face was the epicentre of the explosion.

The Necroshade rubbed at his neck and turned to look at the fading blue flames only to grow wide-eyed. As out of the flames came the figure of Abhorash, his armour glowing in parts from the heat of the conflagration. His eyes glowing a deep purple shade under his helm as he advanced, his sword gripped tightly in his hand while a deep growl came from his throat.

“What the hell is he?” The Necroshade asked before a fist thundered into his face and impacted his face as if he was flesh and blood. Sending him rolling back along the ground before he impacted his own conjured wall. “H-how?” He then asked as he looked like his lip had been split which baffled the shade even further. This wasn’t supposed to be possible, no matter how much the knight’s magical resistance was… unless.

“I am well made.” Abhorash said in a chuckle as he dropped his sword and cracked his knuckles as he advanced upon the shade. “If you give in, so will you. My master has an eye for creation. I even have most of my memories since my life but I am so much more now.” He said with pride.

This baffled the shade even more and it showed on his face before he was punched once more and grabbed by the knight before he could be flung out of reach. Then the knight gripping the shade’s own spectral robes began to thunder fist after fist into the shade’s face, beating it like they were in a drunken brawl. Then as another fist receded from his face the shade realized it and let out a bellow, a banshee’s screech which he had devoured while alive to grant that trump card.

The force enough to send the knight staggering back while clutching at his ears and groaning.

“You’re a death knight aren’t you!” The Shade screamed as he rose from the floor and stared balefully at Abhorash who almost fell to a knee from the noise. “You’re using ethereal armour just to touch me! Just as insolent as that brat!” He spat before going through the inhaling motion before he screamed, the dead individual might not have to inhale but he still kept some habits from life.

Abhorash fell to a knee as the sound waves hammered into him, rattling his insides while cracking the floor beneath him as well. The knight could feel that not only was his strength being sapped by the attack but his own armour seemed to shake as if growing brittle from the sound waves. In a desperate move he reached one hand up and used Death’s tug on the shade hoping it would work, it didn’t. No matter the exertion he couldn’t pull the shade into his reach.

Thick blood nearly the consistency of syrup was beginning to leak from the Draugr's eyes, ears and nose. He shuddered as he felt pain in all its horrid glory for the first time in his unlife.

Another blast sent Abhorash fumbling over onto his back, his back arched as he felt his veins shake within his own body. Then suddenly blessed relief as the shade cast a spell of necromantic mist, while originally meant to disintegrate the caster's enemies it instead invigorated Abhorash. He smiled at the relief before standing up and delivering an uppercut before the Necroshade could react.

Before the blow could send the floating shade hurtling back through the air the knight reached out and gripped the shade’s leg. With a firm grip, Abhorash pulled the Necroshade out of the air and slammed him into the magical wall over and over again. When the Necroshade attempted to breathe in for his sonic scream another punch to his throat silenced him and once more Abhorash had begun pummelling the shade into submission.

He continued beginning to let out an inhuman growl of sheer fury as he hurt the thing that had hurt him. The instincts his master had given him taking full form as he kept going, seeming to grow stronger and faster as time went on. As the growl turned into a snarl like scream and then reached its crescendo Abhorash’s fist connect so hard with the Necroshade’s ruin of a face that the already cracked stone plate under the Shade’s head shattered. The impact sending cracks spidering out to the next tiles around the Shade’s head.

Huffing as an overwhelming sense of weakness came over him, the sound of each loud exhale coming through his helmet. With each exhale sending out vapour like clouds and changed the sound to an unearthly one. The knight fell to one knee as the weakness magnified and his vision swam as he had to hold himself from falling down onto the floor with both hands, his knee supporting his body.

It was in this state that he saw a blinking light in the corner of his vision. It was strange, a blue blinking dot was at the utmost corner with a green one hovering above it and a red one above the green. Blinking his eyes he focused on the dots and drew them into his mind and he knew what their contents were.

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked new traits upon your bloodline through your actions which have displayed yourself at your core.

Positive trait:

Steadfast: No matter the opposition you will rise to the occasion. As a subordinate bloodline, this will also manifest in your loyalty and most likely the rest of your bloodline towards your master bloodline.

Negative trait:

Self-sacrificial: Your loyalty is a double-edged sword as this causes you to let go of your own preservation instincts to protect those you’ve deemed to serve. This carries over with Steadfast to your bloodline with the same conditions applying.

Congratulations! You’ve awakened a long-dormant class exclusive to the race of vampires! As the first to gain this class in well over three thousand years you’ve gained all starter skills you could have chosen for the Blood Berserker Class!

Do not celebrate so soon, however! This will taint those you sire in the future as well. Due to the unique aspects of your bloodline, the following trait has been gained and will be passed down from you from now on.

Negative trait:

Black Blood: While others might have to contend with their thirst you must contend with your emotions more. Rage and fury the foes you must battle the most when in semi to fully stressful situations. While under the influence of either your strength, speed and durability increase at the cost of becoming single-mindedly focused, skills or training be damned. The longer one stays in this state the longer will the weakness last as well as the severity of the weakness will increase.

WARNING! You’ve overextended yourself with the use of the [Blood Fury] skill in conjunction with being under the influence of the [Black Rage] effect from your bloodline traits. This has caused your body to begin undergoing torpor for the next week. You have 1 minute before this state begins.

‘Oh, so that is why I’m so sluggish.’ The knight thought as his face planted down onto the hard ground, sending up blooms of dust sprouting from under him. As oblivion gnawed at his mind he saw his master falling to his knees and beginning to crawl towards the twitching abomination that he had managed to beat in his stead.

Abhorash felt relief and shame at the same time, relief that he managed the bigger threat to his master and that he’d be safe within this bubble that the Shade had conjured. It wouldn’t hold on forever but it should give the knights time to whittle away the horde and allow his master to recover.

Then he felt the shame of not being able to bring a swift victory to his master and his inability to go on to defend him. Then the fact he had tainted the bloodline his master had gifted him. While he ruminated on that he saw his master reach the abomination and lower his head towards it.

But then he stopped and turned to look at Abhorash directly in the eye. A gentle but proud almost fatherly smile came upon Vlad’s face and as oblivion took Abhorash he felt he had done enough. And he was proud of himself.

A sharp cry emanated down the hallway as one of the Skeletal archers let loose an arrow into the back of a fleeing ghoul. Morice sighed as he tried to keep himself on top of Svadilfara’s back, a task he was still having a very hard time to manage. “Are there any more in this section?” He asked as he looked down at Garm who stood next to the undead horse.

The bone Warg simply looked up at Morice and then let out a slight huffing woof as if confirming that no more were around. Morice rubbed at the side of his head, this wasn’t at all that he’d thought training would be under Vlad’s tutelage as a necromancer.

He looked down at the two rings he had slipped onto his right index and middle fingers. He suspected that Vlad had somehow managed to create a phylactery type of object to allow him to resurrect himself if he died. It did make a bit of sense when he thought of Vlad’s warning when they had first gotten ready to go out to make undead.

This was a type of show of trust that humbled Morice, anyone he thought would be humbled by such a show of trust. That and he suspected that Vlad didn’t think he’d survive the last horde of ghouls and didn’t want him to die along with all of his forces.

His thoughts were so deep that he didn’t even hear the warning growl from Garm before he felt the claws sink into his right shoulder and pull him down off of Svadilfara’s back. He cried out as his shoulder was wrenched out of its socket and as he crashed back down the impact forced the bone back into its socket, though it felt wrong somehow.

Looking up he saw the ghoul lunging down to tear out his throat before two arrows sprouted from its chest and sent it flying backwards. Then a split second later he heard Garm’s growl as he pounced on the ghoul and tore into it.

Groaning Morice rose up and rubbed his right shoulder with a grimace. He looked at the ripped apart ghoul when Garmur was done with it and thought of something. He and Vlad had talked about going to Veta, the capital of the Alocian Empire, once all of this was done while they worked. Looking at the ghoul he thought of something.

While he had been working with or rather under Nazim in the black market he had been made privy of some of their storing locations in the catacombs. If he raised the ghouls he killed as zombies then he could sweep through the surrounding catacombs faster and build up a force to raid those store locations as well.

Sighing he turned and yelped as Garm was sitting right next to him, bloody maw half open while the bone creature seemed to pant and smile at him as it waited for him.

“I’ve been around Vlad too much...” Morice chuckled a little to himself as he stood up. The strange way he thought must have rubbed a little off on him, after all, while making their minions Vlad had talked Morice through a few imagined scenarios. One of which Vlad had called resource acquisition, where he simply talked him through robbing an enemy blind while leaving evidence someone else had done it.

He smiled a little at that thought, Nazim was an ass so why not fuck with him. “All of you, I need you to kill the ghouls as cleanly as possible from now on.” He said to the undead who stared at him after he had spent almost five minutes ruminating to himself.

Garmur and Svadilfari exchanged looks then shrugged a little before keeping their eyes on Morice. Morice then proceeded to tell the undead around him the plan, little did he know that really only two of them could fully understand him, and they were animal skeletons.

Half an hour later Morice on Svadilfara’s back, clad in black robes came charging down one of the hallway’s heading straight for two men standing at a door. While a single black-robed man riding a skeletal horse wouldn’t normally terrify the men the two other skeleton horses with riders along with the large bone warg and the gaggle of zombie ghouls were quite enough.

With shrieks of fear, the men were swallowed by the ravenous zombie ghouls, more savage and ferocious than they ever were in life. Svadilfari rose onto his hind legs and let out a neigh from hell as the door opened and the guard's last vision was of the black-cloaked man with sword and axe upon a pale white horse with a ravenous horde of ghouls devoured their friends. Before their vision became flashes of teeth, claws, bone and blood.

Once the guards had been dealt with Morice moved through the storehouse and smiled wide as he found a void bag of holding. A customisable near-infinite storage space bag that bound to one’s soul. Looking around he saw the small gem, this small blue green stone, a binding stone. One had to swallow one of these and then only you could ever use the item, that is until someone killed you and dug it out of your brain once your soul had moved on.

He almost swallowed it then and there but paused. If he died then Vlad could simply bring him back as a powerful undead right? And Vlad couldn’t really die until the ring on his index finger was destroyed right? Then wouldn’t making this item soul bound to Vlad be a much better choice? Morice only had to die once, Vlad could die again and again and no one but him and anyone he’d allow to use it could use it. He’d have to die a final death which Morice didn’t think would be very easy to accomplish, he’d have to kill Vlad after destroying the ring after all. The man was a special kinda driven, Morice might almost call it crazed but if his story was true then it was deserved.

He shook his head and placed both items in the storage ring he had borrowed from Vlad and he continued to loot the place. Another fifteen minutes later he stepped out of the second storehouse with eight extra storage rings on his other fingers, all chock full of great stuff. There had even been a few boxes he didn’t have a clue about what was inside of.

What Morice had learned from raiding both storehouses was beyond a shadow of a doubt this simple truth. Kamber Osman was that scary special type of dick. A lot of the stuff hadn’t even made it to an auction or anything. Which lead Morice to believe Kamber had killed those sellers off to steal their stuff to line his own pockets. There had also been a few merchants complaining about theft from their hired guards and some of those items were here too.

Morice shivered at the thought forming in his mind about what Kamber was up to. There were some pretty scary things in those storehouses. He shook his head and ran his hand up his face and combed his hair back with his fingers. Then he mounted Svadilfara and they began to head back to Vlad, with self-confidence and a little smug smile.

On the way back he collected every corpse he came across that he had left behind before he began raising them. He was a little surprised and wondered how long he had spent hunting the ghouls and just how many he had killed off. He had maybe twelve or fourteen zombie ghouls and he still picked up almost thirty corpses, he was glad he had found so many storage items in the two storehouses, he’d even took the corpses of the guards.

When he was maybe four or five minutes away he fell off Svadilfara’s back as the undead threw up its hind legs and let out a tortured gurgle. After Morice had gotten his bearings after the fall he looked over and was horrified at the sight of Vlad’s undead. They lay in near fetal positions gnashing their teeth and letting out sounds that were one part tortured plea another part hoarse growl.

Colour drained from Morice’s face as he realized that what the undead were now was a manifestation of Vlad’s own psyche and only a tiny bit of it. Leaving most of his ghouls to guard Vlad’s undead he sprinted down the corridors. All the while chanting in his head. ‘He isn’t dead, he isn’t dead, he won, he won.’ A mantra to keep him going.

Then he heard it as he was maybe two minutes away, just a small faint noise at first. He pert his ears and slowed down just a bit to make the least amount of noise for the most distance travelled. “Fallen on Darker Day’s.” It was really faint, but he couldn’t make out the voice, it wasn’t one Morice had ever heard. “On My own, been betrayed.” There it was again, so faint he almost didn’t catch it. He swallowed as he realized that whoever was speaking was actually singing. “Said things change but nothing does.” But it just didn’t sound like singing at all.

It was like someone that had screamed for twenty minutes straight before stopping to have a tiny sip of water and then decided to sing. “Suddenly there you where.” It was more like speaking than anything but there was just a tad of enough rhythm to the voice to be considered singing.

“Remember when they left me there for dead?” Morice swallowed again as he came to a slight bend in the corridor. “You could hear the screaming in my head.” There impaled in what could only be described as a poorly made but barbed ballista bolt made of bone with three ghouls decorating it. It was a sickening tab-lo with none of the three ghouls in any one piece.

“You were always beautiful and bold. Face of heaven, heart of gold. And you promised me… You’re not alone.” The tone was now haunting as if the chosen song was simply the right combination of words for the singer to express something.

He was closing in on the singer as he could see the corpses that he had helped make before along with many new ones. “You had been the torch to guide me through the night.” The words came a little haltingly and Morice suspected some lines in the song had been changed to fit whatever the singer wanted.

“I still need your warmth to find the will to fight.” Morice stopped right as he was about to leave the corridor. Not because of the singing but because of the hand that came flying past. Then the song continued almost in a mumble, like lyrics to a half-forgotten song, all the while body parts and organs came flying past the opening like someone had kicked or thrown already severed parts.

Morice could feel his legs shaking. Had Vlad lost and this was simply the Necroshade gone utterly mad? “Weak of flesh, Frail of bone.” The song’s words came again right as he was about to take another step, freezing him in place. He swallowed and breathed in deeply through his nose before holding in a gag from the stench in the air.

He instead breathed in and out in short bursts through his lips. “Suddenly there you where.” He grit his teeth and stepped into the chamber.

“Remember when they left me there to die?” Morice stared at the singer. It was Vlad, covered in blood and torn to shreds, still swinging his sword around. “ I swore I could make it on my own. Head of steam, a heart of stone.” Vlad stopped as he locked eyes with Morice and the young man flinched.

This wasn’t Vlad, Vlad was the shell that held this wreck before him together. Now Morice realized that Vlad was the bravado, the defence mechanism to try and keep himself together. Morice saw that Vlad hadn’t come out of his experiences at the hands of Aona as whole as he pretended he had. Before him stood Vlad, his carapace armour in shredded tatters, covered in blood and sobbing uncontrollably as he dropped the sword and fell to his knees.

Morice didn’t know what came over him but he ran to Vlad as the man seemed close to losing consciousness, crabbing him just as he was about to fall onto the piles of bodies around and under him. “But you promised me, you're not alone.” He said hoarsely as if the words themselves clawed at his throat before devolved into a pain-wracked sob and wail against Morice’s chest.

He stayed like that, half-conscious sobbing gripping at anything for just a little stability for almost half an hour. Morice wasn’t sure. But he had learned something when he thought back on the lyrics he had heard Vlad attempt to sing with his tattered throat. Aona had meant the world to him. She had taken him from his old world, saved him it seemed from a boring mundane existence and brought him into this one with a purpose. She had visited him and grown to mean more and more to him one might say a mixture of adoration and love. She had meant everything to the man and then she had had him killed in front of her.

As Vlad finally went to sleep utterly exhausted in every sense of the word, Morice just sat there. Vlad’s head under a sack he had taken from one of his rings. The revelation of just what Aona had done to Vlad scared the living hell out of Morice.

That a goddess did such things and had done such things before without any other god so much as raising a fuss over it was mind-boggling. Where the other gods implicit? Did they even know? Why would she do that? And if she was capable of all of that, such foresight and cunning rolled into one enemy…

A cold shiver slowly ran down Morice’s spine as he realized the scope of Vlad’s goals for the first time. He was afraid. No, he was genuinely terrified. He would have to think of a way to protect both himself, Akasha and Vlad from Aona, in some way, but worse yet also from Vlad himself.

Morice turned his head and looked at Vlad sleeping surrounded by mounds of bodies and he realized another thing. As much as Morice wished for a teacher in necromancy, Vlad wished to be surrounded by friends and family, people he could fully trust. The man was so utterly lonely that he had almost jumped at the change to surround himself with others just to not be alone any more.

Morice let out a long exhale as he placed his head into his hands. He had to make a decision here, this was something he had to decide on. Would he stay with Vlad and Akasha, learn necromancy from someone that somehow had direct access to five minor gods of undeath and didn’t think as many others on the uses on necromancy. Or leave now and either try on his own or find another to teach him.

While the first option sounded very tempting there was a downside to it, two in fact. One, the master was someone who had gone through such emotional, mental and physical pain he was barely hanging on. And two, this man also wanted to take out the Wolfsguard empire and their patron goddess with such a burning vengeance that it threatened to burn everything around him in the process of aspiring to his goal if he wasn’t focused enough on his surroundings.

Perhaps he could be a counterbalance? Try and make sure Vlad doesn’t go burning though everyone around him? Maybe by giving him what he wants and needs, a friend and family. Akasha his daughter would be his family and Morice would be his friend. The girl seemed strong after everything she went through, though it paled to Vlad’s own scars but perhaps that was ok, Maybe he could draw strength from her, if not from then perhaps for her and Morice could support his back in turn.

Another near explosive sigh came from Morice as he stood and began to collect the corpses, he’d separate them into their parts if time allowed. He looked around and was a little puzzled by a few of the things he saw. Bone trees with half a dozen ghouls impaled on them came out of the ground here and there, splattered or tattered corpses making up the base of the trees. It took quite a bit of time to get everything and of course to gather up the laboratory while documenting it all down in one of the ledgers he had found in the storehouses.

And then lastly he looked down upon the somehow broken body of the Necroshade. Somehow a spirit had been beaten to a pulp, Morice had no idea what that left the Neroshade as but he managed to pull the “spirit corpse” into a soulstone then did the same with any available spirit or soul around the chamber and beyond. Simply walking around and channelling his mana into the stone to cause it to suck up anything around it.

With that done he realized the tally of the battle. Vlad had lost any semblance of control and almost all of his undead. That is if he discounted the ones that had gone with himself, the four shades, Vashanesh, the ravens as well as Abhorash. Save those fourteen Vlad had lost every other undead he had. None of the armours had survived but judging by the corpses around them they gave better than they got.

Morice sighed as he had to leave those already raised and fallen again behind. Once raised the bones couldn’t be used again. Same for items that had been possessed like the armours. He grimaced, such wasted potential, resources and time invested in creation. Then again no one said being a Necromancer was easy, though one might think that with the haul they had gathered these past few days and now. It was usually finding skeletons of animals in the woods or sneaking into unguarded graveyards to gather materials for the necromancer to actually shine.

Something told Morice though that the necromancer’s that Vlad would train would be something new entirely from the necromancers of old. With that, he slapped himself, hard, pre-emptively as he made his decision. He’d follow Vlad, try to be his friend and try to help him piece himself back together. He just hoped he wouldn’t regret the decision.

Looking back he sighed with loss as he had to leave behind much of the large crystal in the bottom of the chamber. Only able to take a few hacked off pieces before his self-set time ran out.

Groaning Morice got Vlad onto Svadilfara’s back with the help of the Archers as they returned. With the loss of Vlad’s consciousness, they went back to normal. Thanking the Voidstrider with a prayer for that small grace, Morice lead the undead through the catacombs. Fiddling with a single silvery ring with gold engraving on them, a small storage ring that just barely fit Abhorash inside it. Morice marvelled at the sheer wealth he had just gotten away with from Kamber. He had left the storehouses looking like the guards had taken everything and skipped town after a few ghouls had attacked them. He had left a few dead ghouls at the entrances to the storehouses.

He smiled a little to himself if Kamber would think to try and find his guards they’d already be dead and Morice held both their bodies and souls in his possession. There was no way for Kamber to track him down. He laughed just a tad at the face the man would make when he’d find out or at least his own imagination of his face.

When he had travelled the catacombs to the old smuggling tunnels that connected to the catacombs and to the forest in the outskirts of Bedelev it was already nightfall. Though Morice didn’t know if it was on the first day or second any more, time had almost lost all meaning to him underground. Dragging out the undead deeper into the forest where he knew of a small creek so that the two of them could wash up and use some of the spare clothes he had pilfered.

He was amazed the armour Vlad had given him had held out this long, though it was beyond repair now. He sighed a little at that thought, it had been among the better armours that he’d worn, then he smiled. He was rich now… or apprentice to a very rich master as he intended to give it all to Vlad as he was going to masquerade as a noble in Veta. So to blend in better it would be best if he had as much in the way of funds as possible. Then again Morice was certain that with his addition to the pile Vlad was richer than many of the middling Nobles in the Alocian empire settled in Veta.

Then again Vlad had only told Morice that he planned to search for something in Veta as well as hopefully find more info on his troll friend. To do that he would mask himself as a noble from Lylathas which should grant him some rights that would be helpful to have.

They also had excellent schools in just about anything, magecraft, warcraft, mercantile endeavours and craftsmanship of any kind. It would be good if the two of them could attend a different school there to consolidate their experiences. A schooling would also do Akasha some good, hopefully.

Then again it was the capital, the three major religions of Alocia did contain Aona and her pantheon, then the Pantheon of the golden sand and the Pantheon of the deep-woods but that last one was simply a god for each season. He had no idea why it was connected to the Deep-Woods in the first place.

Once at the creek, Morice woke Vlad up and the two washed in silence. Morice looked at Vlad from time to time and saw the look on his face. He knew he had broken down and that Morice had witnessed it and he didn’t seem to want to mention it. His spirit seemed lessened somehow. Deciding to show Vlad a slight smile he chuckled a little. “I imagine you were exhausted, I mean I come to find you and there you are surrounded by corpses.” He said with a smile and he felt a little better when Vlad gave him a weak but thankful smile clear he wouldn’t mention the incident unless Morice himself brought it up. Something Morice wasn’t willing to bring up.

Vlad chuckled weakly as he dipped a canteen into the stream in the creek to fill up. “Yeah, hell of a fight that was for sure... if it hadn't been for my undead I doubt I'd have survived it.” He paused as he had filled the canteen and almost brought it to his lips. “Shame about my undead.” He then said before taking a sip. His voice had been raw, hoarse and a little broken, like it was hard to actually talk with how raw his mouth and throat were.

Morice smiled a little and then gestured for Vlad to hold out his hand, which he did. Then with a slowly widening smile, Morice watched as Vlad went through the contents of the rings Morice had placed into his palm. He looked astonished and dumbfounded for a long while after he had gone through the last one, then he looked confused. “Ha...” He began but paused again.

Gathering his thoughts again he started. “H-how..” Then he paused again, looking absolutely flabbergasted by what he held in his hand. Then he simply looked up at Morice and let out a breath. “How?!” He then asked as he gestured to the rings and two bags bellow his hand. “Were? When?!” He then finished and waited for Morice, who was smiling like the cat who had gotten the cream and just so happen to be a Cheshire cat.

Morice then proceeded to tell Vlad the tale of how he not only hunted down the ghouls that had escaped but how he had decided to gather funds for the cause. Throughout it all Vlad just sat there and gapped at Morice. Then once it was all over a long silence reigned safe the burble of the small stream in the creek.

“Well, I’ll be… You’ve done a fantastic job, Morice.” Vlad then said as he gave a genuine smile to his apprentice. Then as they both got dressed they laughed a little at how they thought Kamber would look when he found out.

Once they had dressed they made their way to the gates of Bedelev. “I hope we didn’t spend too much time in the catacombs.” Vlad said as they walked down the road, he wore a white shirt with a black travel vest over it with brown pants.

“I hope it’s still the first day.” Morice said next to him. His was a brown jacket with green pants paring.

“Yeah me too.” Vlad said chewing a little on the inside of his lip. “I’m pretty sure that Leila’s going to tear us a new one.” He then said with a slight smile though there was no disguising if he wasn’t at all pleased if it turned out to be true.

“So tell me are there any folk tales from home that you know?” Morice asked before wincing just a little inwardly. Perhaps Vlad had hated his former world and he’d just reminded Vlad of something he didn’t want to.

To his surprise, Vlad laughed a little. “There are a few I could tell you. We had many types of folklore and tales that we passed around. Hmm perhaps this one, it’s from my homeland and it's been my among my favourites since I was a kid. It also spawned a pretty nice melody. Let me tell you the tale of the Deacon of Dark River.” He said with a small faraway smile on his lips before he poured himself into telling the tale.

By then end of the road Morice had a whole new outlook on Vlad’s homeland. It sounded like one scary place where things like that could happen without warning and only hallowed ground could save people. He had a whole new view of Vlad’s old people, they sounded like quite the stubborn lot, perhaps they’d get along with the dwarves… well them and perhaps the Anubians.

Once they finally made it back to the Likeable Owl they were dragged by their long ears into the back. To the laugher and derision of the patrons in the front and the bard set up on top of a barrel. The two were given a stern talking to by Leila before her father managed to pry her off them and send her back out to serve the people.

Thinking they had been safe the father took the daughters place for a while before he went back to cooking for the people.

The two looked guiltily at one another. “So two days almost...” Vlad muttered as the two sat in the back, a happy Akasha devouring her second plate between them. Oblivious to the guilt both men were feeling at the moment.

“Never again?” Morice asked raising an eyebrow at Vlad who nodded and repeated the sentiment.

“Never again.” He said before he looked down at Akasha and ruffled her hair a little. “Now I think the three of us are going to have to go shopping tomorrow before we leave tomorrow night. I have yet to let you hear the little concert I wanted you to hear.” He said as his face grew more relaxed as he chuckled fondly at the cute glare Akasha was giving him for tousling her hair.

“You promise?” She asked with suspicion.

Vlad feigned being struck in his heart at the glare. “You wound me lady Von Carstein. Have I ever lied to you yet?” He asked and at the grumble from Akasha the three then began to laugh lightly together.

“Though we might have the mayor as a guest if these rumours are to be believed.” Vlad said to himself in a whisper that Morice caught with his superior hearing. What was the man planning now?