The air inside Glasgow's Corner was a fugue of merriment, smelling of cheap wine, stale sweat, and roasting mutton. A large group of men—merchants and upper-middle-class types—roared out the chorus of a bawdy shanty, their tankards marking time on the scarred wooden tables. The men slammed their mugs down with gusto, celebrating in this profitable hive within the Vampire Kingdom, their blood-red eyes an unremarkable feature of the clientele.
The servers, two striking women with vibrant blue hair, moved fluidly through the crowd. They were Water Conjurers, currently clad in low-cut corsets that showcased their generous bosoms and short, flounced skirts. As one bent low over a table to deliver a tray of spirits, a merchant's hand shot out, delivering a loud, dismissive slap to her backside. She merely shifted her weight, a subtle, practiced move, rolling her eyes toward her colleague before continuing her rounds, her expression a mask of professional apathy.
In the corner, an enormous man with a pot belly and wildly blood-red eyes was already thoroughly, miserably drunk, slumping low in his chair. His chin rested heavily on his chest, his eyes barely tracking the chaos around him.
A loud, drunken argument had been brewing near the hearth. Now, threats turned to action. A man in a tailored frock coat pulled a thin rapier from its sheath. "You call me a thief?!" he bellowed, stepping forward, the rapier's tip pointed aggressively. Two others followed suit, producing wicked-looking daggers. They fanned out, their movements jerky with alcohol and rage.
It was the sudden, total absence of sound outside, followed by the appearance of the light.
It was a dense, brilliant green luminescence, thick and impossibly fast—a magical fog that surged through the door and the smallest window cracks. The singing died instantly, strangled; the boisterous sounds were replaced by a vacuum of silence.
The mist struck the group of fighters first. The merchant who held the rapier tried to stab at the unseen enemy. He lunged forward, blade outstretched. His blade passed through the light with no effect, but the mist consumed him. His tailored coat went slack. Before his scream could fully form, his flesh, organs, and blood—everything vital—was pulled inward and consumed, leaving behind a perfect, empty husk of his skin, still wearing the coat, which instantly dropped to the floor in a sickening whump, a wrinkled, empty column of fabric and skin. Inside, a small, shocking pile of polished white bones rattled onto the wood.
Panic erupted. Men—vampire and human alike—shrieked, scrambling for any direction but the mist. Several pulled their own weapons—swords and pistols—but the enemy was formless. They swung wildly and blindly, not at the mist, but at each other, fueled by blind, terrified adrenaline.
One of the blue-haired servers saw the horror and reacted with a desperate, self-preserving instinct. She threw herself toward two large, well-built men—vampires—who were attempting to fight the air with their axes. She grabbed the back of the nearest man's coat, burying her face into his spine, sobbing. "Save us. The king must save us."
The mist was upon the man she clutched. There was a horrifying, wet shhht sound, like pulling a sword from a scabbard of meat. The large, heavy bulk of the man was gone. His empty skin, no longer supported, became a heavy, warm weight. It slipped and crumpled under her grip, a shell that offered no resistance. She was pulled down with the collapsing, limp fabric and skin, shrieking as she fell to her knees beside the gruesome, rapidly cooling husk. The veridian light immediately washed over her, and her own blue-haired skin-husk followed suit, falling atop the man's clothing and bones with a soft thud.
Another man, mid-run, with his arms outstretched toward a locked window, was consumed while in a full sprint. His skin and clothes, defying gravity for a terrible moment, snapped and folded mid-air as they instantly lost all mass and structure. The final result was a horrific, life-sized rag doll, crumpled and creased as if tossed into a corner, with the clean bones pooled inside the torso.
The second Water Conjurer, hands shaking, managed to conjure a small orb of water. It hung uselessly in the air for a moment, shimmering, before the green light struck her. Her scream was cut short as her vitality was consumed, leaving her empty corset and skirts to drop to the floor, her skull and limbs cleanly defined beneath the delicate fabric of her empty skin.
Behind the counter, amid the deafening sounds of terror and the gruesome slump-and-rattle of dozens of bodies being decimated, the man with the pot belly finally tipped out of his chair. He landed on the floor with a thick, ale-dampened thud. His senses, blunted by drink, registered only a loud flash and the ringing silence of profound terror.
Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the dense green luminescence was gone.
Silence. The tavern was now a silent slaughterhouse, decorated with piles of fine clothing, polished bone, and the horrific, empty effigies of human skin.
The drunk man scrambled up, clutching the bar for balance, his blood-red eyes wide and uncomprehending. He shoved the swinging bar gate aside and staggered toward the door, bursting out onto the cobblestones of the Lower Town. He inhaled a sharp, rattling breath of cool night air.
The screams had not stopped. They were everywhere now, high, terrified, and piercing the night. He spun his head around, his eyes darting frantically. Up the street, toward the wealthier housing district, a terrifying flash of green light zipped, silent and impossibly fast, from one house window to the next, leaving only silence and a fresh wave of wails in its wake.
He instinctively looked upward, away from the carnage, his mouth dry, seeking a shred of divine comfort in the bruised, starless night. "Gods help us!" he whispered, the prayer a desperate, foolish plea.
It was then he saw the figure.
Hanging in the blackness directly above the rooftops, perfectly still against the violent light of the moonless sky, was a shape too large to be human, and too dark to be defined. It was a silhouette carved entirely from shadow, yet unmistakably a man, watching the destruction unfold below. Large, ragged black wings spread out on either side of the figure, flapping slowly, once, twice, with a heavy, deliberate indifference.
Death. The thought slammed into the drunk man's mind with sudden, terrifying clarity. Death itself had come to collect.
He stopped praying. He didn't scream. He simply turned, his pot belly jiggling, and began to run down the street, blindly fleeing the unholy silence of the tavern and the terrifying, black-winged witness in the sky.
Jasper, the entity of shadow and wings, hung in the frigid night air, a deliberate cipher against the turbulent currents. His gaze was fixed on the source of the terror—the impossibly fast Green Mist. When he first allowed this pin-sized green haze to escape his grasp, he had not anticipated this explosion of power. Now, the blight had grown exponentially, and within the shifting, vibrant light, it was beginning to take the distinct form of a woman, a terrifying effigy made entirely of the consuming green mist. This was a loose end he needed to tie up, and quickly. He shifted his vast, obsidian wings; the movement was silent, displacing the air with ancient, hidden power.
He consulted the clock he kept only in his mind. The Mist was not slowing; if anything, its hunger seemed an endless, insatiable thing, fueling an exponential increase in its power. Dawn was an hour away, and he needed to capture this devastation and return to Daniela before she woke up. He decided to wait until the very last sliver of darkness remained.
He reached into the void of his essence, his mind a silent, focused current of will. From the deepest shadow, he conjured the relic. It did not appear with a flash, but rather condensed from the surrounding darkness, manifesting just above the rooftops.
It was the decapitated head of a mammoth—a gruesome, massive skull, its ivory tusks still intact, stained with the soil of forgotten millennia. It was a powerful demon relic of unparalleled, terrifying suction. The eyes of the decaying dead beast, once empty sockets, began to glow with a malevolent, absolute blackness.
The Green Mist, an endless pit of devastation that would never be satisfied, snapped its attention to the powerful counter-force. It instantly sensed the creature—a creature whose immense power was radiating in the air, calling to its hunger. It stopped its movement, swirling like a disturbed, green cloud as it focused on the relic.
The mammoth head's jaw dropped open—a vast, silent, skeletal maw. A terrible, cold vacuum roared out, a soundless pressure wave that pulled at the surrounding air.
The Green Mist was caught.
It stretched, resisting for a split second, then snapped toward the powerful pull of the relic. The entire mass of brilliant, virulent green light was sucked inward, shrrriip, like a drawn breath, disappearing completely inside the mammoth skull. The black glow in the eyes pulsed once, satisfied, then dimmed.
The relic's work was done.
Jasper lowered his tall, dark form through the night air, landing lightly on the peak of a rooftop. He stood over the relic, his silhouette black against the impending dawn. He held out his hand, palm flat and facing downward.
From his open palm, he conjured Demon Fire. It was a sudden, violent surge of black flame, utterly devoid of warmth. It did not flicker or dance, but rose straight and true, an intense black pillar that hummed with cold, destructive energy. For Jasper, a being of the infernal plane, the flame felt like a blast of sub-zero ice.
The black fire immediately engulfed the ancient, mammoth head. The relic, having served its purpose, had no ability to fight the elemental black flame. It dissolved rapidly, cracking, sizzling, and vanishing entirely into the cold, consuming Demon Fire.
In a moment, both the relic and the black fire were gone. There was only Jasper, standing still on the rooftop, the faintest tinge of purple-gray appearing on the eastern horizon. The city below was silent, a vast, hollow graveyard, waiting for the sun to expose the horror he had just contained.
He unfurled his wings, preparing to ascend back into the sky.
Authors note:
So don't kill me. I forgot that I even wrote this chapter. It has just been sitting in my drafts ready to go.