Page 132 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

The Pythora King kept his guards at arm’s length, yes. But… no one?

It was too easy. So easy it felt dangerous.

We made our way up the winding steps of the cliff, to the castle at its peak.

“Castle,”actually, was a generous word for it. It was a relatively small building, albeit beautiful, carved from a single piece of stone. Every face of it was covered in intricate carvings, each telling stories of the gods of the White Pantheon.

As we ventured further up the steps, the columns on either side of the pathway held these stories, too. The outstretched hands of Vitarus, the god of abundance and famine, one coaxing forth crops and the other distributing plague. Ix, the goddess of sex and fertility, placing a rosebud in the womb of a weeping woman—granting her a child. Each column was a tribute to another god, their importance in the hierarchy of the White Pantheon rising as we traveled higher. I couldn’t help but pause at Acaeja’s column, halfway up the steps—she stoodupright, blindfolded, a web of threads tangling from her outstretched hands, faceless silhouettes caught within it like flies in a spider’s net. All of us at the mercy of fate—the mercy of the unknown.

I touched my blindfold, swallowed back an uncomfortable pang of guilt, and kept walking.

There was no column for Nyaxia, of course. There would be none for a goddess shunned and exiled by the White Pantheon. Atrius barely glanced at the carvings. Maybe by now he was used to the way humans worshipped our gods. Maybe, after all he’d been through, gods now meant nothing to him at all.

We didn’t speak until we neared the top of the stairs—the empty stairs—and Atrius leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Anything?”

The threads were so silent, so devoid of life, that it was almost uncomfortable. It felt... unnatural, like the threads were being manipulated in some way, not unlike how I felt on Veratas. Except, while the soul of the island had been so overwhelming I had been effectively blinded, this was the opposite—a blanket of silence that choked out everything.

Still, somewhere deep inside the walls of the castle, I could sense... something. I wasn’t sure what. The Pythora King? A single soul alone, far within a house of stone, might feel that way. From this distance, it was hard to tell.

“He’s in there,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.

“No one else?”

Atrius did not hide his apprehension. Rightfully. All of this seemed wrong.

I shook my head. Neither of us were comforted by that answer.

We reached the top. The two columns that guarded the entrance honored the leader of the White Pantheon—Atroxus, the god of the sun. Ironic, for a place so steeped in fog it likely never saw any.

It seemed far too simple to just open the front door and walk through. Simpler still for that door to be unlocked. When Atrius put his hands on either side of the double doors and pushed, I was legitimately shocked when they ground open.

Before us, a streak of cool misty light spilled into a vast, grand room, our silhouettes stretched across the tile floor. Torches andlanterns lined the walls, as if this place had been occupied moments ago but had suddenly emptied. Like at any second, a slew of wealthy lords and ladies could come spilling out of all these darkened doorways, lounging on the various velvet couches with their expensive wines perched in their hands.

Before us, at the end of the long carpet, across the massive room, was a large, arched doorway, and steps beyond it that led up.

There were few records of the layout of the Pythora King’s palace. The building was ancient, among the oldest in all of Glaea. When the king took control twenty years ago, he had been careful to destroy as many descriptions of the place as he could. He was, after all, very paranoid, and the less anyone knew about the layout of his home, the better.

But no one could wipe all mentions of a thousand-year-old monument away, and no one was better at collecting information than the Arachessen archivists. I’d pored over every scrap of paper I could find, every mundane letter from the courts of previous kings, to piece together what I would face when, one day, I would be able to slay the Pythora King.

I knew what lay up those steps.

“The throne room,” I whispered. The words stuck in my throat. My pulse raced, my hands sweaty around my blade.

Atrius’s eyes burned into the side of my face as his steps matched mine.

We crossed the room, leaving behind the cold darkness of the misty plains for the warm darkness of the castle, which smelled strongly of Pythora blossoms and faintly of mold. That intangible presence I had sensed outside grew stronger, albeit still... strange in a way I couldn’t pinpoint.

We passed beneath the archway, ascending the stairs. Step by step, the throne room unfolded before us—first the elegant arched ceiling, painted with chipped frescos of the gods’ wrath, then the gold molding and the arms built into it to hold stained-glass lanterns.

We reached the top of the stairs. The throne room was just as grand as ancient visitors had said it was centuries ago. Probably even grander, to those viewing it with eyes, but its beauty was so aggressive, so ornate, that I still felt it through the threads.

At theend of the long, long room stood a single throne, high upon the dais.

And slumped in that chair, lounging to one side, was the Pythora King.

For a moment, Atrius and I both tensed—waiting for a shout, a command, an acknowledgment.

None came.

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