Power.

Valdemar had long wondered what made a Dark Lord who they were. Their immortality? Their ability to command vast armies? Their unrivaled magical knowledge? Their awe-inspiring spells?

Now he knew.

As he opened his eyes, the aura that came from Lord Bethor dwarfed even Lord Och’s at his most intimidating. The lich’s defenses had taken the shape of a mist, mysterious, stealthy, and difficult to fight. Much like his body was a puppet controlled from his phylactery, Lord Och’s magic was difficult to grasp and counter. When he had briefly experienced a glimpse of the lich’s unrestrained might, Valdemar thought he had seen the pinnacle of Blood magic.

He had been mistaken.

As Valar Bethor opened his eyes and the tower shook from his awakening, Valdemar realized that he had never understood what true power was. Lord Bethor’s defenses weren’t a mist but a volcanic eruption; his will was an earthquake. One could disperse mist in theory, at least for a time. But natural disasters could only be survived and suffered through.

If Valdemar were to be honest, he had only ever felt the same way in the Silent King’s presence.

This sorcerer had reached such a level of power that he rivaled the Strangers themselves.

The sclera in Lord Bethor’s eyes was as black as night, the irises a bloody red… and as they manifested, the very fabric of space rippled around the Dark Lord. Tiny cracks appeared in the air, opening and closing almost too fast for the human eye to notice. Crimson bolts of lightning flared up from the boiling pool beneath this absolute incarnation of strength, and Valdemar sensed his own blood echoing the phenomenon. His own bodily fluids wriggled beneath his skin, preparing to erupt out of his veins; whether to flee or fight, the summoner couldn’t say.

Lord Bethor stood up as he emerged from his meditation. As his feet hit the boiling pool beneath him, the blood surged to cover him and crystalized. Crimson plate armor more intimidating than any Knight’s covered him entirely, with a crown of spikes atop the helmet. Only his eyes peered through the visor.

He’s stronger than his old master, Valdemar realized, utterly intimidated. The lich was wiser and more knowledgeable, but his former apprentice had eclipsed him in sheer magical firepower. Much like a volcano, Lord Bethor needed to sleep and meditate to keep his own power suppressed lest it destroy everything around him.

And he was huge too, short of two meters and a half with his armor on. When the Dark Lord walked to the steel platform the others stood on, Valdemar and Marianne had long knelt in submission.

Only Lord Och remained on his feet. The lich and Lord Bethor faced one another, the latter two heads taller than his master.

“Lord Och,” the giant said with a deep voice, and the respect of an old student greeting a favored teacher. “You visit me earlier than I expected.”

“Time is a luxury for us, my old friend, but one that shouldn’t be squandered. Considering the forces moving against us, I thought it wise not to waste any second of your time… or mine. I’m sure you will find these two new students quite promising.”

Though Valdemar didn’t dare raise his head, he sensed Lord Bethor’s eyes looking down on him. “Do you need them alive?” the younger Dark Lord asked his elder.

“I would prefer alive,” the lich said with a light-hearted chuckle, “but I can settle for undead.”

Valdemar grit his teeth in frustration even though he had expected such an answer. He noticed Marianne clenching her fists at his side at Lord Och’s jape.

“Good,” Lord Bethor replied, his tone lacking any amusement whatsoever. “I shall return them to you, one way or the other.”

“I would appreciate it. If they cannot survive you, they won’t last against Blutgang… but I know you shall know what to make of these two.” Lord Och said. “After you are done with this trifling matter, you should visit my abode. I have new breakthroughs that will certainly interest you.”

“I shall consider it.”

“Then I leave you to teach these two the ways of our dark brotherhood.” Lord Och happily patted a silent Valdemar on the back. “Do not worry, apprentice. Lord Bethor teaches with a gentle, caring hand.”

Valdemar doubted that.

The lich left without a word through the elevator, leaving his apprentice and Marianne alone with Lord Bethor in a room without exit.

For a long, agonizing moment, no one uttered a word. The only noise in the room came from the crimson bolts surging from the blood pool and the spatial cracks caused by Lord Bethor’s mere presence. Valdemar glanced at Marianne, neither of them daring to stand up.

“Look at me,” Lord Bethor ordered. “Both of you.”

Valdemar and Marianne raised their heads to meet the Dark Lord’s gaze.

“What is your name?” Lord Bethor asked Valdemar. “You who follow in my footsteps?”

The summoner cleared his throat. “Valdemar Verney, Lord—”

Snap.

A sharp pain erupted in Valdemar’s left elbow, so strongly and so quickly that his mind barely registered it. Warm blood splashed his cheek and covered the metal ground beneath his feet. His left arm started to itch like that time the derro’s lightning struck him. His fingers no longer answered his mental commands.

Because he had lost them.

Valdemar coughed, his breath trapped in his windpipe as he looked at his severed left arm wriggling on the ground among pieces of flesh and bones. Marianne’s eyes had widened in shock, her skin turning pale.

“What is wrong?” Lord Bethor asked, his red eyes peering through his helmet. He hadn’t even moved. “This is but an arm. Reattach it.”

Valdemar hadn’t even sensed his attack. The Dark Lord hadn’t shattered his psychic defenses and magical protections; he outright ignored them.

Realizing his life was on the line, the summoner gritted his teeth to ignore the pain and telekinetically commanded his arm to return to him… but his blood refused to obey him.

A sharp pain erupted in his left knee, his flesh and bones rupturing beneath his scholarly robes. This time, Valdemar’s jaw failed him and he let out a snarl of pure pain as he collapsed on his chest. Only a phantom sensation remained from his left leg.

“I shall cut one limb each minute,” Lord Bethor warned with eerie serenity, “until I either severe them all or you succeed—”

Marianne’s rapier lunged at the gap in the Dark Lord’s visor.

Lord Bethor didn’t even move, as Marianne crashed against the dome above the blood pool. The strength of the impact cracked the glass, while telekinetic force kept the swordswoman pinned against it. An invisible hand tightened around her neck and started choking it.

“Marianne!” Valdemar shouted, only for another psychic attack to sever his right leg and his words to turn into a snarl of pain.

“You should have struck before I even cut the first limb,” Lord Bethor scolded Marianne with scorn. “If you had paid attention, you would have sensed my violent intent.”

“I…” Marianne rasped through her tightening windpipe. “I wasn’t sure if… I could even strike a Dark Lord…”

But Valar Bethor wouldn’t hear any excuse. “A bodyguard’s only duty is to keep their charge safe from threats, any threat. Even if it costs them their life. Even if it means fighting a Dark Lord. That your attack would have failed anyway can be forgiven; your failure to act immediately cannot.”

He’s insane, Valdemar realized in horror. He’s going to kill us both.

Marianne grabbed the rifle around her belt and attempted to open fire on their assailant in a mad display of bravery. The Dark Lord scoffed, and the noblewoman’s fingers released the weapon against her will.

Valdemar tried to think rationally. Could he manipulate his body fluids like ropes, to reattach his limbs? Should he fight back instead? Summon a monster to—

His right arm, the last limb he had left, exploded at the elbow in a burst of blood and bones. This time Valdemar bit his tongue rather than let out a sound.

“If you have time to plot my demise, you have more than enough to succeed,” Lord Bethor said. “This is your last chance. The neck is next.”

He couldn’t defeat this monster.

Think, Valdemar, think… he instinctively turned his neck’s skin to steel to protect himself, only to realize that not all of his abilities were restrained. If I can manipulate my skin, maybe… the flesh too?

That was how biomancers reshaped bodies like clay.

Closing his eyes, Valdemar called upon his reserves of power. Instead of telekinetically commanding the blood in his severed arms, he instead focused on reshaping the flesh in his stumps. It was new and difficult, but he managed to create tendrils of veins and muscles. They erupted from his shattered left elbow and reconnected to his severed arm, bringing it back into the fold. The summoner had his extended veins and muscles stitch back to his limb like a cloth.

Valdemar expected Lord Bethor to behead him anyway, but the Dark Lord didn’t strike him. However, he didn’t release Marianne. The noblewoman struggled so much to breathe that her face had turned almost blue. Her strength left her until she dropped her rapier on the metal platform, her precious weapon out of reach.

I’ve got to save her, Valdemar thought as he gritted his teeth and ignored the pain. More tendrils erupted from his other stumps, reattaching his limbs. It was shoddy work; some bone parts were missing and the summoner’s knowledge of his own anatomy wasn’t perfect. But though they appeared broken, his arms and legs had returned to him.

When Valdemar finally stitched back his last limb, Lord Bethor finally released Marianne. She fell on the platform, landing on the metal next to Valdemar as she desperately gasped for air.

“Good,” the Dark Lord said, before stopping.

A blood bullet had stopped within an inch of his helmet and now floated in midair. Valdemar’s left index bled below the nail, the skin closing to cover the wound.

“What was that for?” Lord Bethor asked, somewhat amused.

“You deserved it,” Valdemar replied coldly.

He hadn’t expected to actually hit that maniac, but it was the thought that counted.

“I suppose I did. I admire your spirit, though not your recklessness.” The Dark Lord turned the blood bullet to dust with a thought, before glancing at Valdemar’s steely skin. “Why only cover the neck? I could have lied and hit another spot.”

“A teacher…” Valdemar gasped. He had reattached his limbs but they still hurt at the joints. “Told me that I should only cover my weak points to avoid exhausting my resources.”

Valar Bethor snorted. “That is the logic of a weakling. Do only what you must to not exhaust yourself? You should instead go beyond expectations and push back your limits, until this armor becomes as easy to wear as a second skin.”

Valdemar ignored the reproach before glancing at Marianne. Her face had regained its old colors, though her voice was raspy as she breathed. He put a hand on his shoulder to cast a healing spell, to help her recover faster.

And as he used his magic, he realized that Marianne’s psychic defenses were intact. The fact he could outright ignore shields and wards was the truly frightening part about Valar Bethor; even Lord Och needed to power through them first.

“You have much to learn,” Lord Bethor said with contempt as he focused on Marianne. “Your spirit is crippled by regrets and hesitation. Your task as a bodyguard was clear, but you hesitated. Just as you failed to make a decision when your retainer needed you most, or how you cannot come to terms with your past.”

“I…” Marianne struggled to make words. “My duty is… to serve the Dark Lords.”

“It wasn’t your duty that made you hesitate, but fear for your life. I could have been a cultist as well as a public official. Would you have let me kill him then? Where do your loyalties lie?” Lord Bethor glanced at her sword and rifle. “Your hesitation reflects in your choice of weapons. There is nothing wrong with using tools, but you use them as crutches instead of force multipliers. You had many ways to escape my grasp. You could have used bone bullets, attacked with telekinetic force, or used the pool. Instead you relied on borrowed power rather than your own mastery of the Blood. How can you protect others if you can’t even believe in yourself?”

Marianne looked down at the metal platform and didn’t meet the archmage’s gaze.

Lord Bethor didn’t expect a response anyway, and quickly glanced at Valdemar next. “As for you, you possess limitless potential… but in your obsession to reach this plane of Earth, you failed to tap into it. You do not know your own body’s limits, and worst of all, you fail to grasp the true nature of the Blood. You cannot even establish dominance over your summoned thralls.”

“I would like to see you,” Valdemar hissed through his teeth as he tried to use healing spells to regenerate the missing bones in his arms. “Tame a Gnawer…”

Lord Bethor took his remark as a personal challenge. The archmage waved his hand, and a small rift in space opened at his left. The tentacled shape of a Gnawer emerged from the crack, hissing in hunger.

He doesn’t use a summoning circle? Valdemar thought as he watched on, astonished. Impossible…

Even more spectacularly, the Gnawer didn’t attack anyone. These incarnations of hunger could barely be kept in check by wards and otherwise attacked everything in the vicinity. But the mass of tentacles before Valdemar coiled like a calm snake, waiting for orders. It looked…

It looked tamed.

“If a dog disobeys, the fault lies in his master,” Lord Bethor replied as he snapped his fingers, the Gnawer turning to dust instantly. “These creatures exist to serve us. But how can you hope to dominate them, when you haven’t yet mastered your own flesh and mind? You have talent, Valdemar, but you have only scratched the surface of the summoning arts.”

Valdemar’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

Lord Bethor’s tone softened, but only a little. “Thankfully, you both passed my test. Though you took your sweet time and should have opted for a better strategy, Marianne Reynard, you did attempt to fight a Dark Lord to protect your charge. This takes great bravery. As for you, Valdemar Verney, you did understand and complete my exercise within the allocated time… which is more than I can say for most of my would-be apprentices.”

Valdemar glanced at the pool, and suddenly wondered how much of the blood within belonged to people who failed to impress the Dark Lord.

“We shall begin with an aggressive training regiment to bring out the limitless potential I see dormant within you both,” Lord Bethor said as tendrils of blood slithered out of his armored gauntlets. “By the end of it, you will either be counted among the empire’s finest mages or its obituaries.”

It wasn’t even a threat, but a promise. If Valdemar and Marianne didn’t improve, this Dark Lord would kill them and forget their existence. Unlike Och, he didn’t even care about their potential usefulness.

A creature of his strength had no need for tools.

Lord Bethor’s tendrils searched through Valdemar’s possessions, examining his grandfather’s packaged portrait and the journal, before grabbing what interested them.

The Mask of the Nightwalker.

“It’s dangerous,” Valdemar rasped.

“And yet you kept it for study… just as I kept mine, when the Nightwalker sent me a gift.” The tendrils brought the mask to Lord Bethor’s hand. “If you want to become a true summoner, you will make its power your own too.”

Lord Bethor slapped the Mask of the Nightwalker against Valdemar’s face without any warning. The summoner’s skin turned cold as the artifact merged with it, transferring fresh air into his lungs.

“What you call your human form is an illusion, a prison,” Lord Bethor explained. “The Blood allows one to reshape their body like clay, even transcend physicality. I have two legs and two arms only because I wish to, and my former master now exists as a possessing spirit. I shall teach you to reshape your body as you will, Valdemar Verney… but to be remade, you must be destroyed first.”

The Dark Lord telekinetically lifted Valdemar above the blood pool. The summoner looked down at the substance as his own wounds fueled it, steam rising from this burning lake.

“A long fall awaits you,” Lord Bethor explained. “This is the main artery of my tower, with the heart waiting at the bottom. The boiling blood will devour your skin and counter your regeneration; if you want to rise back to this room, you will have to heal with outside resources. But my tower will resist your attempts. To use its power, you must conquer it. You must understand the true nature of the Blood.”

…

Shit, Lord Och was the kind one.

As he accepted his fate, Valdemar exchanged one glance with the horrified Marianne. “I have a question, Lord Bethor,” the summoner said.

The archmage snorted. “Go on.”

“Did this happen to you?” Valdemar asked sharply.

To his surprise, the summoner could have sworn he saw a flash of thoughtful sorrow pass in the Dark Lord’s cold eyes. “Yes,” Valar Bethor admitted with a grim voice, “but with dragonfire.”

He released his magic and Valdemar fell into the boiling blood while Marianne could only watch.

The summoner attempted to control it telekinetically, only to be met with psychic resistance. The boiling substance pulled him down, devoured his robes, and ate away at his skin. Valdemar was brought back to his hospital bed in Astaphanos, suffering the exact same agony.

The world turned crimson and he sank.

Marianne woke up blind.

Only darkness and a cold floor welcomed her when she emerged from unconsciousness. She felt sick, her throat still sore from Lord Bethor’s strangling spell. She tried to rise up and almost stumbled. Her gloved hand hit a wall to her left; one made of stone from the texture.

Her hands instinctively reached for her sheathed rapier, only to find it gone alongside her firearm. Even the smaller blades hidden in her boots had vanished.

She had only been left with the clothes on her back.

Even less than that, Marianne thought grimly as she touched her face. She sensed her eyes, open and yet useless. The noblewoman didn’t know if she should be relieved that Lord Bethor only took her sight.

“Valdemar?” Marianne called. She didn’t remember how long she had been out; her memories were a blur. “Valdemar, are you here?”

Her words echoed around her, but she received no answer. Marianne was in some sort of metal tunnel from the sound. “Somebody?”

She attempted to use her psychic sight even without functioning eyes, but the darkness around her remained impenetrable. She sensed the warmth of artificial light on her skin coming from above, even if her magical senses were as crippled as her physical ones.

Had she been drugged with a potion crippling her abilities? For what purpose?

“Your sight will be returned to you,” Lord Bethor’s voice startled Marianne. “Once you prove worthy of eyes.”

Marianne tried to ‘look’ at the Dark Lord’s direction, only to realize his words came from everywhere at once. Maybe they only existed inside her mind, the mental whispers of an insane warlord invading her neurons.

This was worse than anything I expected, Marianne thought as she massaged her throat. “Is Valdemar… alright?”

“You can check for yourself once you get out of this maze.”

Marianne gritted her teeth. She had to find Valdemar and get the hell out of here, Lord Och’s orders be damned. The lich’s former apprentice had clearly gone insane. “Bertrand…” she whispered, her throat hurting. “My retainer thought… that I should go to you to improve.”

“You will,” the Dark Lord’s voice said without malice. “This may surprise you, Marianne Reynard, but I deeply respect people like you. You let go of love and wealth for the sake of your martial pride; this is admirable. Your only fault is that you cannot come to terms with the sacrifices you made along the way.”

“Is this a lesson, or a punishment?”

“I do not punish, I teach.”

The noblewoman let out a sigh. Marianne had expected a harsh training regimen, but the Dark Lord had exceeded even her worst fears. She had heard rumors about his iron discipline, but this was a treatment she would have expected from the dokkars or the derros.

“I only give this training to warriors I expect great things from,” the Dark Lord said.

Still, Marianne found it a little excessive.

“Your comfortable existence is exactly why you have stopped to improve,” Lord Bethor scolded her with scorn. “You have used your retainer, Lord Och’s patronage, and your weapons as crutches. You let your thoughts fester like an open wound, obsessing over the past and constantly second-guessing yourself. You have shackled your beautiful spirit, and we will free you from these doubts as we strengthen your magic.”

“How will blinding me teach me anything?” Marianne protested.

“Your sight, your hearing, your touch… all of your senses can be refined through the Blood and be used offensively. Touch will let you sense weak points in your foe’s body. Your understanding of hearing will allow you to disturb others’ ears. Smell and taste will tell you more than sight. I will teach you how to refine your senses to perfection one at a time. Then we will move on to more complex combat spells.”

Fine. Marianne could see the logic, though she questioned the violence of the methods.

“Mankind is threatened on all sides,” Lord Bethor replied. “Some of the foes you shall face in the future surpass you in power and cunning. A few may even match my strength. If you cannot survive these tests, you will not stand a chance against them… and death at my hands will be kinder fate than what awaits you should the forces behind the wererat prevail.”

Marianne winced as she remembered Bertrand’s mutation into a monster.

“Time is a luxury you cannot afford,” the Dark Lord said before adding another difficulty. “I shall release a creature in this maze soon. It could be in ten minutes or an hour. It will hunt you down like a dog, and if it catches you… you will not die, but there will be pain.”

Charming. Unlike Hagith, Lord Bethor was clearly fonder of the stick than the carrot.

“What must I do then?” Marianne asked as she walked into the tunnel, using a hand to stand against the wall. Maybe if she focused on her hearing, she could find her way. That was how bats locate objects in dark caverns, from what she understood. “Escape before it catches me?”

“You must find the exit using the spell I shall teach you. The creature only adds an additional motivation to learn more quickly.” Lord Bethor marked a short pause. “If you listen well and prove as talented as my old master believes, you will escape unharmed. However, I must warn you that even my best soldiers get caught at least three times.”

Marianne forced herself to smile defiantly.

“I will break this record,” she said. “I am ready.”