Blood Shaper - Book 4: Chapter 37

Vivien Edrasco had gradually become less and less enthused with the campaign her father’s liege lord had dragged her along on, and she had started with zero enthusiasm. It had only been a few months since the momentous meeting that had finally given her husband the clue he needed to find his “missing” cousin Murunel, and Vivien was becoming as murderous as Azred had been before his motivation to be part of the campaign had skyrocketed.

Less than three months of planning marching routes, gathering new volunteers and their troops, having a few of those volunteers and troops forcibly peeled off by the government when a few eyebrows had been raised at certain nobles and mercenary bands joining, and then making their way to the meeting place at the southern tip of the Isermani Concord, just outside the Silverrun Pass, one of the only locations to cross into Isermani territory and the northwest of the continent by land, which also happened to be a large source of tax money for the Concord thanks to the tariffs on merchants. Less than five months later, Vivien was considering murdering several of her “comrades”. She was almost jealous of the people the government didn’t want gaining levels.

When anyone high ranking from the Itarian Crusade was in line of sight or earshot, every member of the campaign was best of friends, ready to fight side by side against the vampyr threat to save the world! And when the Crusade wasn’t able to learn about it, it was a massive swirling pit of scheming and backstabbing. There were a limited number of participants that had joined with the Crusade and the Shatterplate Order from completely pure motives. To be specific, Vivien had counted exactly two people she thought truly cared about the threat this “Kay” posed to the world, and they were Commander Vexler, the leader of the Shatterplate Order, and High Crusader Hearthbreaker, who had led recruiting for the campaign in the Concord and the march to this meeting point. Everyone else she’d met, including every other member of the Crusade she’d had a reason to speak to, had the threat a vampyr Class Line Progenitor and world leader representative as a tertiary concern at best. Some were interested in glory, some in a chance to level and advance, and too many were lusting after the loot and territory they were sure they were going to be able to capture as if this were an actual war of invasion and not an attempt to root out a monster before it grew too strong to deal with.

Vivien was significantly better at navigating the treacherous currents of politics than Azred, thanks to her upbringing as a noble, albeit a lower one, and he dedication to learning, although her husband was no slouch. While she was good at the shifty nature of backroom deals and saying one thing while meaning another, she despised it. She would much rather be in her well-worn saddle on her husband’s back, diving from the sky to wreak havoc and death upon worthy foes or, if lacking in a worthy foe or two, any bandits, murderers, or the rare gang of slavers that tried to operate in the west. The people she was infuriated with were better than that kind of scum, but it was a matter of degrees, and she didn’t get to kill any of them.

There were several that would fall to “accidental friendly fire” if they wandered too far off from the main group when the actual battle came. And if they kept to their plans to try to loot and steal from the defenders, they definitely would be just far enough from the rest of the army to make sure they were the only casualties.

Vivien fought to keep a disgusted sneer from her expression as she walked passed by one of those unfortunate casualties, who was staring at her ass and imagining the things he’d like to be doing with it. Psychic Skills and Classes were rare, and anyone known to have one was looked at with suspicion or distrust. Not to the level of people with mind control Classes or those that could puppet the bodies of others who were killed on sight, but it was best to hide so that you could peek into people’s thoughts and learn their secrets.

Vivien didn’t go around doing that and would find it difficult to attempt even if she decided to; her psychic Skills were almost entirely devoted to combat applications. But one of the passive Skills that allowed a large portion of the rest of her build to function allowed her to passively sense and “hear” other minds. And most people’s thoughts were so loud. She didn’t need to be actively trying to dive into the lecher who was “coincidentally” heading in the same direction as her, a few feet behind, of course, to know he was staring at her ass and fantasizing sexual acts with her. No woman needed psychic powers of any kind to figure that out, but hers gave her the exact details of what the pervert wanted because he was projecting his thoughts for anyone to hear without any effort at all.

Her husband saw her headed to him, where he was waiting outside the command tent that had been set up after Crusader General Eahn, the overall leader of the campaign, had arrived. He gave her a soft smile as she approached, and the mental and emotional bond that connected them, completely separate from Vivien’s abilities, shared his continuous love with her. She wordlessly replied in kind and delighted at the warmth and comfort in his eyes as they took a moment to just look at each other.

Then Azred saw the idiot following her. His pupils immediately shifted from the “normal human” shape he kept them in while shapeshifted to looking much like they did in his other form, with thin slit-like pupils and glowing red and orange corneas. Smoke began trailing from his nostrils as he bared his teeth, a rumbling growl echoing from his chest as he stared down the minor noble from where ever the fuck it was in somewhere land. Vivien had stopped paying attention to his self-aggrandizing internal monologue of how important and influential he was immediately.

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The lizard beastkin man jerked back, his lecherous thoughts about “being her dragon” derailed by a confrontation with her actual dragon. He stammered something unintelligible, then bolted when Azred snorted out through his nose, bursts of flame joining the constant flow of smoke.

Vivien smiled up at her husband. “Thank you, dear.”

He reached out to tuck her close to his side, and she leaned against him, enjoying the moment of contact. But they couldn’t stand there and cuddle forever, so she stepped away and nodded at the entrance to the tent. Time to have the real first meeting of this campaign.

They better have some real information on Murunel, He groused. They haven’t been able to give me a proper update since that first report about sighting her.

This is a multi-organization conglomerate army formed from and by groups with multiple different objectives, located on the other side of a continent from where we think she is. The fact that we got actual confirmation of her being there from this far away while working with these people was a lucky break. We’ll get better intel as we get closer, but you need to be cutting them a little slack.

He growled in frustration and stalked into the tent. Vivien refrained from sighing in frustration at her husband and mentally held back some of her feelings from him as she followed. She loved him with all her heart and truly looked forward to the centuries of life they would have together, but sometimes, his thinking was too focused on what his cultural expectations said the world should be like instead of the reality that was in front of him. Had his cousin Murunel stayed home “where she belonged,” she would have lived either a life she hated or a life that stifled her and made her into someone she didn’t want to be.

Tradition was often a good thing, but holding tightly onto it and forcing Murunel to either inherit her father’s position or her mother’s was a bad idea in more than one way, but Azred refused to see that and constantly tried to push Murunel into going home and apprenticing under her mother. He understood that she wouldn’t do well as her father’s heir, but he agreed with that because she’d be bad at it, not because it would be bad for her. It was a bit of a mess, honestly, and it would be many, many years before Vivien ever told her husband or her in-laws that she’d encouraged Murunel to leave their home and head over the ocean to this continent. She’d even sheltered Murunel in her parent’s home until she was ready to head out and find a life for herself.

Her husband even refused to see that he was forbidding his adult cousin from doing the very thing he’d done in throwing off the shackles of tradition and finding his own life to live. He hadn’t wanted to be a fisherman and had come here instead. They never would have met if he hadn’t, but somehow, it was forbidden for Murunel. Vivien secretly rolled her eyes before anyone could see, then straightened up into the proper young noblewoman everyone thought she was.

She and Azred stopped behind Duke Velonius’ chair and assumed a comfortable position. They weren’t soldiers, so they weren’t going to stand at attention, but she wasn’t going to let either of them look lazy and have to listen to the duke lecture them. She could feel the general air of these thoughts as he covertly looked them over before a faint wisp of pleasure that they were on time and looked proper drifted over. Duke Velonius, like many of the higher-ranking nobles, had a better hold on his thoughts and emotions, and they rarely leaked out in detail. General ideas and faint emotions were all she got, but that was enough to make her generally annoyed at the man.

The more someone thought about something and the stronger they felt about it, the easier it was for her to pick up on, even if it was someone with an iron will who resisted psychic intrusion. Velonius positively shone with how excited he was about the upcoming battle and the glory that it would bring him. He’d even gotten so excited that he’d let full thoughts slip out, overjoyed at how much this would help his standing and his duchy, by extension. That was what annoyed Vivien the most. He should be at home, dealing with the drought that was creeping along the northern portion of the Concord, where his duchy and Vivien’s family holdings were, or rooting out the bandits roaming about, driven in different directions by the drought, not going across the continent to fight in a battle that didn’t directly help with any problems his people faced. Vivien had never been in the running to inherit her family’s title, most importantly because she’d decided as early as she could remember that she didn’t want it, but she’d still learned leadership at her father’s knee, and the duke wasn’t very good in comparison.

There wasn’t anything she could do about that, though, so she set her irritation to the side to be brought out when there was a convenient monster or thug to crush into paste. There was a flurry of activity around the entrance of the tent, and the two High Crusaders marched in, each followed by an entourage of three lower-ranking crusaders. Directly behind them, a dwarven man with a short, well-cared-for beard entered, himself followed by six more crusaders. The lower-ranking crusaders spread out along the sides of the tent, and the dwarf marched to the front of the assembly. He stopped at the head of the table and removed his helmet, revealing ruddy cheeks, a rounded nose that had been broken more than once, and a pair of sharp blue eyes. His head was completely bald, which may have been related to the massive scar that split his scalp and looked like it trailed further down the back of his neck.

“Greetings to all of you. I am Crusader General Stonegnawer Eahn, and I am in command of this expedition and campaign.” He slowly dragged his gaze around the tent, taking the measure of everyone at the meeting. He paused for a moment while he looked at several people, including Vivien and Azred. “The purpose of this campaign is to locate and destroy the Outworlder, Class Line Progenitor, and vampyr known as Kay of Avalon, as well as any other vampyr that we can discover. To that purpose, I open this initial meeting for the planning of this campaign.”