Page 11 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

I took a moment to right myself against the rocks. I dragged my fingers through my hair, pushing it away from my face. I rose on shaky legs and tried to take stock of my senses.

It was hard, because there wereso many of them.

Crowds could be difficult for those of the Arachessen. With eyes, one could only take in so much information at once. Without them, we had no such limitation. We felt everything at the same time. And here, it was overwhelming.

The Sightmother’s instruction had been remarkably accurate. I had arrived not far from their encampment. I was several miles north of their last target, Vaprus. Since much of Glaea’s land was harsh and the Pythora King’s warlords were more than happy to hoard resources for themselves, civilization tended to cluster in city-states with long stretches of empty wastelands between them. In the south, that land consisted of rocky, barren plains.

I followed the sensation of the crowd. I crept to the edge of the rocks, where cliffs began to give way to flat earth.

Just beyond the rugged stone, the conqueror’s encampment spread out before me.

There were so many of them that for a moment, the sudden existence of so many auras overwhelmed me. How many—hundreds, thousands?Thousands, I settled on. Every one of them vampires. Theyfeltdifferent than humans, like a chord struck at a different tone, a minor note against a major, every shade of color just a little off.

Immediately, I knew the encampment was extensive. I reached through the threads to examine it and found tents that were elaborate and firmly rooted to the ground, meal carts that had been spread out, soldiers that appeared to be quite content to stay where theywere. Their exhaustion was obvious, even from this distance, as they continued to erect tents at the edges of the camp.

They’d only just gotten here. And it seemed like they intended to stay, at least for a few days. Why they would do so here instead of remaining in whatever city they had last taken over was beyond me, but I was grateful for the time. I needed to find this seer, remove them, and insert myself.

I crept down closer to the encampment, remaining in the rocks for cover. Vampires had fantastic eyesight and even better senses of smell, so I was careful to stay far enough to avoid either my movements or my scent giving me away. Still, I managed to get close enough to map out the boundaries of the camp.

While all individual presences were unique, in such a large group the warriors’ all blended together, more similar to each other than they were different. I sensed the same emotions across them all—determination, exhaustion. All familiar feelings. I’d been around a lot of soldiers over the years. It was actually a little strange that these ones felt so similar to their human counterparts. Then again, maybe war was universal, no matter whether our blood ran black or red.

Halfway around the camp, I froze.

I recognized him immediately. In a sea of grey, his soul was dark, bruise-bitten red. None of his men’s mundane weariness. No, his was steady, intense—angry. The kind of anger that knocked the breath out of my lungs.

His tent was one of the largest, near the southern edge of the encampment. He stepped out of it and straightened, looking out over his men.

And then he turned right to me.

I stopped breathing, falling back into the shadows of the rocks. One silent step backwards. Two. Three. Surely I was too far for him to see or scent, even with his superior senses. And yet…

For a long moment, he stared into the darkness. Right at me.

Then he turned around and went backinto his tent.

It tooktwo days of watching and waiting to find the seer.

It was overwhelmingly likely their seer would be human—someone who drew from a god of the White Pantheon. So I kept up my watch most carefully in the daylight hours, when the vampires retreated into their thickly-shrouded tents and the encampment went quiet.

On the second day, she made an appearance.

She emerged when the sun was high in the sky. She had a tent near the edge of camp, not far from the conqueror’s. She was indeed, as I’d suspected, a human. Older—perhaps in her mid-sixties. Her presence was firm and aged as worn-down stone. I couldn’t tell which gods she worshipped. Then again, it didn’t really matter.

She carried a little bag with her. Flowers peeked out from it. I could sense the weight of wax candles in the sack, too. She was leaving to pray.

I followed her, far behind when she was closer to the camp, then venturing steadily closer, very slowly, as she grew further and further away from it.

Soon, we were half a mile from the camp, at the edge of a rocky lake, and I was mere strides away from her.

And then, as she started to kneel down to place her tokens, I made my move.

I envisioned an invisible thread drawn taut between us, a single thread connecting our souls, and stepped through it. The world withered around me and reformed. In half a breath, I was right behind her, my dagger halfway to her back.

Before I could strike, she turned around. It was such an abrupt movement that it made me stagger a little, repositioning in anticipation of a strike. But she didn’t move for me. She just stared. Up close, I could sense the wrinkles in her face. The wisdom of her eyes.

“I see you,” she said.

“Does it matter?” I replied.

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