Exodus from that silken embrace and the warmth beneath Colhern’s body was an agony of its own. He could have remained there the whole day if they both did not have work to do. Colhern needed to run a few errands, asked if Xala wanted to come along, but he politely declined and said he would conduct some exploration.

  They went down to the lobby together, Colhern kissed him on the cheek when they parted ways outside, and Xala was left to his own devices.

  Halifax Durnstrum. Is he ready?

  “Yup, you see him through me?” Vulcan, across the city, leaned against a wall as he shadowed Xala’s target. He was in the dark recesses of a pleasure house, where men and women of all shapes and sizes danced on small platforms to loud music and colorful lights. Halifax, a Slopeman dwarf, sat before a woman whose whiles sent his cash in all directions around her. His hair was snow white but his face held an age only into his third decade. Hair burst from his clothes everywhere it could as his stout yet lean body hinted at his physical prowess.

  A Slopeman, interesting. Is he proficient in Cryomancy?

  “Aye, saw him blast a guy’s head smooth off with a frozen disc. He’s not a dedicated wizard, but he can handle his own.”

  Xala took a deep breath, found an alley to dip into near Colhern’s building, and cast a teleportation spell. His connection to Vulcan provided an everpresent knowledge of Vulcan’s place in space-time. With that knowledge, akin to knowing a set of coordinates that was unique across multiple dimensions and realms, he could formulate a spell to take him directly to his thrall.

  Blacklight runes lit up above and around him, encircled him, rotated and shifted around his body, and bloomed into rifts that connected and shifted together. Xala was enveloped in a vibrant deep violet-blue bubble of opaque, swirling energies that condensed around his body, whisked him across the gap between him and Vulcan, and released him from its grasp beside Vulcan. His arrival came with no flare or color or spectacle, merely a blink’s appearance from thin air.

  “Woah, didn’t know you could do that.” Vulcan grunted as he stood up straight next to his Master. “Alright, how do you want to grab him?”

  Xala pursed his lips and studied the establishment. Even in the morning, the prior night’s rager carried on. People came and went from the multiple hidden doors to the establishment, sunlight never trickled its way inside, loud music vibrated the atmosphere, crowds of people separated him from Halifax, and security surrounded the whole establishment. Suppression charms, seemingly standard practice if Rebekah’s Teahouse was any indicator of a pattern, littered the place. Orcish and tauran guards also provided the muscle to toss people out, but Xala would not do anything to disturb them.

  He took a slow, deep breath and smiled softly. “You choose. Shall I seduce him or kill him out in the open?”

  Vulcan chuckled, crossed his arms, and said, “How would you do either?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Vulcan made his choice, Xala transformed his flesh, and walked toward Halifax.

  Barenziah Draskil was a divinely attractive Dawn-Kin elf. Her skin was kissed by sunsets and her hair flowed like rivers of melted gold. Her ears bore small, humble glamoured crystals while her clothes, once a black motley, revealed plenty in a green flow of fabric that still left much to the iamgination. Her body was supple and curved, the picture of a man’s desires. When Xala killed her, she was the wife of the Master’s favored torturer. At that time, he killed her for revenge without the hormones or empathy to understand why she was so attractive to her elven kinsmen. He further dismissed her beauty and capacity for seduction in Crimsire among the caste-driven Drakul.

  Her femininity became Xala’s as Barenziah cut through the crowds like a diamond speartip to flesh. In her form she retained the reflexes taught unto her by her mother, practiced under the cruel, hungry gaze of men, and instilled into her basest psyche over her long life. Xala had access to all such things; he had access to her entire soul.

  Barenziah stepped between the Dawn-Kin dancer and Halifax. He had a type. She placed her hands on her shoulders, curved her spine, accentuated her body in the pose, and looked down at Halifax in a gaze that begged for feminine mysticism to sprawl across his mind. The woman behind her complained, but was shut up by a single finger. Barenziah bent over, placed her hands on the armrests of Halifax’s chair, her scent a mix of honey, plum blossoms, and aloeswood, and whispered sweetly, “Enchanted to meet you, handsome. May I sit with you?”

  Halifax, a man whose wrinkles spoke of his propensity for expressive anger, could not help but smile broadly up at her. He leaned back and said in a gruff, whiskey-flooded heave, “Of course, little lady!” He reached forward and grasped out with his grubby hands, pulled her by her dress, and tugged her into his lap. She went willingly, would have sat awkwardly in his far smaller lap, but spread herself in the chair so as to straddle him.

  Barenziah bent her head down, held his face in her hands, and whispered, “What is a fine man like yourself doing here, love? Surely, a man such as yourself has a lovely young woman waiting for him. Perhaps a dozen?”

  He released a full-belly laugh, shook his head, caressed her sides and hips, and said, “Nah, I’m a free bird.” His hands were ice cold. “I like keeping my options, and nights, wide open.”

  “Oh?” Barenziah chuckled to herself and traced a finger down the side of his face. “How chivalrous. Not many men would be so considerate, so aware, to not let a wife worry over them,” she bent down and gently kissed his neck.

  Halifax jumped a little, and exclaimed, “Whew! Teeth? Hehe, I like you, little lady.” He slapped his hand on her backside and grunted out, “How about we go somewhere more private?”

  “I would love to.”

  Halifax led Barenziah further into the establishment, toward an area off-limits to the casual attendee. In the hallway lined with doors, she heard the sounds of incomprehensible love-making. The noises she heard were, for lack of a better word, absurd. She had never heard a woman, or man, moan like that. Those noises were for show.

  Halifax used a special key-card to open up the door at the end of the hallway to a large room. It was cast in crimson light and bore black furniture. It was a dungeon of depravity, its walls full of eroticism both textual and picturesque in nature. Barenziah walked around, observed the curious objects strewn about, and smirked to herself. He was a sex-pest.

  “You look delicious,” Halifax surged forward, his head reaching her stomach, and grabbed at her as if he were a man three times his size. His confident desperation made her smile, something she turned seductive, as she put her hands behind her back and let him marvel up at her through her bosom. “I know exactly what we should do first!”

  “Oh, please, tell me.”

  “Bend over the bed, drop your panties, and we’ll get started.” He squeezed at her as he eyed the stool near the foot of the bed. Barenziah smiled. Xala had no ill will toward his stature. In fact, he found it endearing, and even found Halifax’s appearance a tad attractive. But, his whole essence, his whole vibe, as Colhern would put it, made Xala want to slaughter.

  And thus, the door to the room locked shut.

  No windows or other forms of escape existed in the room. Only the vents near the ceiling offered an escape to the outside world.

  Barenziah caressed Halifax’s head.

  Her soft, gentle hand turned black.

  Her nails elongated and became pitch black in the red light as they clicked together.

  Halifax, who could not see her hand, only chortled to himself as he started to push her toward the bed.

  He buried his face into Barenziah’s stomach, sucked in the smell of her, but paused when he caught a whiff of something different. Instead of her honey, plum blossom, and aloeswood blend, he sniffed and caught hints of olive oil and a slightly citrusy, tangerine smell. He grunted, his nostrils irritated by the citrus smell, and grunted out, “What the,” he looked up and his face fell.

  Xala’s Moorish visage watched him with cold, brutal indifference.

  Halifax jumped away, tears welled in his eyes, his heartbeat hastened to the pace of a rabbit’s sprint, his mouth fell open in a silent scream, and his whole body started to shiver. Xala watched with a growing smile as his claws clicked together. His revealing clothes transformed into a black robe that cascaded over his body, inscriptions, and scars. He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head as he watched Halifax scramble with the reality of his predicament.

  “M-m-moor,” his voice trembled with the weight of a horror told to him since his first breath.

  Xala chuckled as he raised his hand and conjured grotesque, bloody runes above his fingers. They warbled and bled into one another as they orbited his digits. “What’s wrong? You were so willing to bend me over not too long ago.”

  Halifax wetted himself. Just like Frederick. Unlike Vulcan. But, unlike Frederick, his stream was not followed by whimpering pleas for mercy. His eyes became angry, his truest, most familiar expression of rage revealed itself, and his hands balled together to form ice crystals along his forearms and palms. “No, no you can’t be real. Some fuckin’ trick. Some fuckin’,”

  Xala opened his mouth, unfurled his black, barbed, forked tongue, unsheathed his fangs, and hissed a death-rattle whistle toward Halifax. His lower jaw unhinged, split apart down the middle, and widened his mouth like a snake. His golden eyes flared with crimson lights as his magic manifested around his fingers. His maw was anathema to creation. Anathema to life. His hiss became laughter as he closed his mouth and paced closer to Halifax.

  “Little lady. Little man. Little mortal.”

  Halifax gritted his teeth until his gums wanted to push them out of his face to save themselves the stress, sweat beaded all over his body, his nostrils flared, and his eyes were reddened as tears flowed down them.

  “Suspended between the urge to fight and flight. What a painful sensation. Feel it. Nourish it. Thrive within it. I want your blood to taste exquisitely terrified and hopeless.”

  Halifax seethed through his teeth and shouted, “No! You won’t have me, filthy monster!” He threw out his hand, formed a series of glyphs around his forearms, and sent a spear of ice through the small space between them.

  Xala was faster. His hand raised, the one surrounded by crimson rites, and took control of Halifax’s spell via his blood. The ice spear halted in place a hairsbreadth away from Xala’s face. It vibrated painfully as Xala forced Halifax’s mind to hover in place. Halifax resisted Xala’s blood magic, spit through his teeth as he struggled, and fought with every part of his being. Every part of Halifax’s mind wanted that spear to penetrate Xala’s skull and impale him against the farside wall.

  With a flick of Xala’s pinky, the spear changed course, hurled across the room, and shattered against the wall in a loud keen. “Try again.”

  Halifax panted as his blood became his again, balled his fists, roared as he stepped forward, both of his hands raised, and summoned ten sheets of ice discs to form between his fingers. All of them fired at different times toward Xala as Halifax began to move, kicked against the door, and shouted, “Someone help! Help! Anyone, please, help me!”

  Xala waved his free hand, white runes formed into a series of counterpsells, and every sheet of ice melted in mid-air. Xala stepped forward, his eyes still and effortlessly pleased. “This is the farthest room, meant for the most carnal of delights. Aren’t those words standard within this,” he gestured around the black and red room, “Pleasure palace?”

  Halifax weeped but did not give in as he summoned a shield and sword of ice. He held up the shield, placed the sword over the dip in its top, and jabbed the sword forward to send Xala back. Xala smiled as he stepped away each time, entertained by Halifax’s feeble attempts, “Fuck you! Fuck you! You’re sick! You’re fuckin’ sick, leech! Bone-herder!” He stepped forward, tried to part from the door, and kept his back to the wall as he encircled Xala. “I won’t die like this, I fuckin’ swear it!”

  “Aw, pitiful insults. Tell me, did those work on my ancestors? Did they make my ancestors feel small? Did they make them feel,” he flicked his hand. The blood in Halifax’s body beckoned unto Xala. Halifax choked as he felt his blood pool around his throat and constricted it before his body tossed itself across the room. His shield and sword shattered into shards of snow and glass-like ice around him as his body pinned himself to the floor. “Guilty?”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Halifax keened and whimpered as he struggled against the blood magic. His whole body convulsed and twitched in defiance and he seethed out through compressed lungs, “Y-yoke!”

  “Yoke? Oh, now that’s a clever one.” He released his grasp on Halifax’s body. The crimson symbols around his hand rotated and radiated with power. The spell itself craved to control and manipulate the blood in Halifax’s body. It developed a taste for him.

  Halifax sucked in as much air as he could to inflate his lungs, clutched his chest, and growled as he thrashed his head side to side, looked over at Xala, and snarled, “It’s,” he sucked in some more air, let it out, got some more in, and shouted, “It’s what you are! You’re a beast! A fuckin’ beast! Curse you! Curse your bloodline! Curse your fuckin’ soul, or whatever’s left of it you bastard!”

  Xala laughed giddily, “Tell me, Halifax, have you heard those words before?”

  His face twisted into confusion.

  “Oh, please. Save me your petty performance. I know of your crimes, dear. I know of your aches. The things you feel and act on.” Xala walked toward him. His footsteps were slow and methodical. “Lucky me, that I offered myself so willingly. I wonder, if I had simply walked by, paid you no mind, would you have thrown me against a wall? Demanded my attention? Demanded my body?”

  His expression darkened and trembled as he stared up not at his killer, but his judge.

  “Ah, there it is. Recognition. Imagine their faces, dear. Imagine their faces as you tracked them down, stole them from their lives, and suckled what you could from their souls.” He stopped a pace away from Halifax’s weak, trembling body. “Tell me, dim little sorcerer, who are you to throw stones?” He knelt down, reached forward, and grabbed the necklace around Halifax’s throat. He held it up and inspected the medallion. “The symbol of the Triunity. The Sphinx of Lilith, the Hammer of Quan, and the Bichuwa of Oluhm’Ma. Each one a god of war, mercy, and love in their own ways. And yet, you, my dear, wear them all in the midst of hedonistic ecstasy, don’t you?”

  “You mock my faith before my death? Bastard,” he choked out the last word on the end of a sob.

  “No, I mock you. I would never dispute your faith. It is tried and true. It liberated the world from my people. It removed your kind’s shackles. I love your faith. I love your gods. I am glad that they killed my people.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” he caressed the side of Halifax’s face with the dull ends of his claws. “I’ve heard the same horror stories you were raised on. I heard them when they were fresher, more tangible to the people of my time. Why would I want to live in a world with them?” He tisked twice, snatched Halifax by his neck, held him upright, and loomed over him as he said, “Pray to your gods one last time. Let them hear your voice in this place. Let us see if they save you. If they find you worthy of smiting me down. Call unto them. Beg for them.”

  A tear dribbled down the side of Halifax’s face as he said, “Lilith calls us, she calls out, say, ‘o my soldiers who have transgressed against themselves with sin, do not despair. Those who have walked in darkness, cleanse thyselves. Wash thyselves clean, and We shall forgive you. We forgive all sinners who repent, and exact justice in kind. Indeed, it is We who are the Forgiving and the Judging, the Merciful and the Penal.”

  “Hmm, I always liked that verse. It is benevolent and fair to forgive and punish.”

  Halifax closed his eyes.

  His body twisted, bent, and stood tall. Xala’s spell forced him into a paralysis as he keened breathy whines. Xala got on his knees, held the back of Halifax’s head, and bit into his throat.

  His body did not take long to drain.

  When he was dead and bloodless, Xala let his body drop to the ground. “Vulcan, you may come in.” The door unlocked.

  Vulcan, who stood guard outside, opened the door, slipped inside, and shut the door behind him. He watched the latch shut on its own, turned to see the bloodless scene, and asked, “What’ll you do with him?”

  Xala sat on his heels as he rolled his shoulders back and angled his face toward the ceiling. Halifax tasted like alcohol, dates, and fear. A heady combination that swam around Xala’s mouth and slurried around his organs. Halifax was born in the tundras of Northern Alegwa, the North-Eastern province of Trymora, North-West of Feltkan. There he lived among his own kind, thrived among the wintry mountainsides, inhabited vast ravines between the glaciers, and learned magic from his tribal shamans. He was banished from his tribe for the crime of adultery. He fled to Feltkan, found safety among the Feathered Serpents, became stable, and thrived within the underground. Xala saw the men and women he trafficked. He saw their faces flicker beneath his eyelids in a rolodex of forgotten names and voices. When it was over, when Halifax’s wretched life ended between Xala’s fangs, he opened his eyes and looked toward Vulcan.

  “He will be raised.”

  “Isn’t he a bit small?”

  “Why would that matter? He’s perfectly adequate.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Vulcan rolled his eyes, got closer, stood over Xala and Halifax, and huffed a sigh. “You think he’ll be useful to you, huh?”

  “He’ll be a part of a system. A chain of events. A pawn in a grand game.”

  “His men will come looking for him any minute. You got enough time?”

  Xala raised his hands over Halifax’s body, pulled Halifax’s soul energies from within himself, alongside parts of his consciousness, and manifested the sickly green and black energy Vulcan once witnessed. “Plenty.”

  “So, you kill him because he’s a bad person, and then reanimate him to keep doing what he was doing?”

  “No. He’ll cease his carnal and flesh market operations.”

  “That’s gonna lose him a lot of revenue.”

  “Money means nothing to a Necromancer. Currency is naught but smoke and mirrors for civilization to cling to. He will find other sources of income. That, I am sure of.”

  “Wait, you’re,” Vulcan’s face fell.

  Halifax’s eyes opened. He did not try to breathe, unlike Vulcan’s first reanimation. His drained body was refilled with necromantic energies. His nervous system was replaced by Xala’s will as he seeped into his bones, muscles, and blood. Xala dominated every single part of Halifax’s mind, body, and soul.

  Halifax blinked twice, looked over at Xala, then Vulcan, and his mouth fell open slightly.

  “I thought you said you didn’t bring people back. That you didn’t use their souls.”

  Xala smirked. “Random corpses, yes. People whose souls I have not consumed. People whose bodies were not killed by me. But,” he tapped Halifax’s nose, “birds such as these? Why waste complexity on them?”

  Halifax slowly sat up, flexed his fingers, swiveled his head around, and gave Xala a grim look. His gruff voice muttered out, “I don’t feel whole.”

  “Parts of yourself have been removed. You’ll discover which ones in time.” He reached forward and caressed Halifax’s face, “You are mine, dear. My thrall. I shall not release you. Not for a thousand years. That is your punishment, as ordained by your Triune.”

  Halifax did not gasp. He did not cry. He did not rage. He simply stared with a death-like blankness. “You are evil.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. Why debate such things with you?” Xala rose to his feet, beckoned Halifax to do the same, and turned toward Vulcan. “His men will be at my disposal as well. Alongside his assets. Halifax,” the dwarf turned his head up obediently, “I’ve given you my orders. Go and fulfill them.”

  He nodded dutifully, brushed off some dust from his clothes, and assumed a performance of his former self. His face contorted into satisfied bemusement, his body swaggered, and he strutted out of the room and back into the hallway toward the club.

  Vulcan crossed his arms, “He’s right, y’know. You gave me a choice. Why not give him one? What makes him different? What makes me deserving?”

  Xala transformed his flesh back into his male elven body as he said, “You are a murderer. He is a flesh dealer. I view one as more deserving of punishment than the other.”

  “Is that right? Killing someone is better than,” he glanced around the room, “this sort of thing?”

  “Ponder our existence. Ponder an ageless individual. Now, consider that an individual, such as yourself, has been violated. Violated and left to rot by his assailant. Worse yet, imagine yourself used by that assailant and then claimed by them. Claimed and thus owned. Even when that assailant faces justice for their brutality against you, you must live with their sin. They’ve done the deed, left you to rot, and now you must rot with it. A feeling that never goes away. When you touch someone you wish to love, you remember theirs. When you dream, you dream of their face. When you hate, you feel their breath against the back of your neck. Connect that to the immortal. He who shall remember that feeling until the end of time. Now, tell me, who has performed the greater sin? The murderer or the molester? Can the murderer be considered merciful in such a case?”

  Vulcan frowned, furrowed his brows, and said, “You come to this from experience?”

  Xala said nothing.

  “Do you wish you’d been killed?”

  Xala said nothing.

  “I think you’re wrong. You can heal. You can recover. You can forget. When you die, that’s it. No do-overs, no more sun, no more fresh air, no more anything. Sure, you’ve got an afterlife, maybe, maybe not, but that’s a gamble. I saw my gamble. I’m still not sure if I made the right choice, but I know I like being alive. I appreciate it more. If you die, then whoever killed you just erases all that potential for who you could have been. What you could have done. It’s cruel. Not only do you get robbed, but so do the people who know you. People who could have known you better. People who loved you in secret. People who wanted to be friends but never got close enough. Never had the permission to. Death is worse than life for everyone who's alive.”

  “You’ve been busy since I last saw you.”

  “My mind’s clear. Clearer than ever. I’m not hungry, so I don’t need to scrounge. I’m not angry, so I don’t need to release. I’m not itching to kill, so I don’t need an outlet. All I am are thoughts and memories. I can’t even sleep. You turned me into a machine. I don’t even feel bad about that. I just am.”

  “I still do not submit to your argument, but I wonder, do you seek the scales to be tipped toward your idea of fairness? Should I do something to make yourself, in your eyes, properly punished as Halifax was?”

  “Nah, I’m not that stupid. I know I’ve got it good if that’s my alternative. I won’t thank ya’, but I don’t want to change your mind.”

  “Good. I do not intend to.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Xala could feel the swarm of their thoughts rage in the air between them. Xala did not pry into Vulcan’s mind to see the specific patterns, but he could imagine them within his own. He sighed and said, “I do not wish I’d been killed. I never did, not at any point in my life. There are a few times, looking back, where I perhaps should have. Alas, such was not my nature.”

  Vulcan frowned, “I believe ya’. But, lemme ask you,” he crossed his arms and tilted his head. “You said to the midget that you remembered when Moor stories were fresher. How long ago would that have been?”

  “A little over four-hundred years.”

  Vulcan paused. His eyes widened. His face fell. His fingers picked under their nails. He said, “You don’t seem that old.”

  Xala chuckled, placed his hands behind his back, and said, “Really?”

  “Your magic does, but you don’t. Given all that time, how come you haven’t forgotten? Fuck, I’ve felt your magic. It’s insanely precise. Why not make yourself forget?”

  “You overstep.”

  “Nah, I want to understand. Four-hundred years of living, and you act like a pup.”

  Xala pursed his lips and studied Vulcan. He clicked his talons together. He could make Vulcan silence himself. He could make him bend over backwards, snap his pelvis, and limp about until he felt like mending it. He could make Vulcan twist his own head off, reattach it, and reanimate him.

  Xala sighed. All such punishments for insolence would be meaningless. Thus, he said, “I was imprisoned. I was locked away with nothing but my thoughts, memories, and victims’ souls. I could not even look into their memories, as I could outside of my prison. I could only speak to them. They hated me. They despised me. So, I got bored of them and their incessent chatter. I spent my time studying my skills, honing my theoretics, and imagining all the different ways a spell worked. I could not cast. I could not move. I could only imagine my body, dream of it, and exist as a formless consciousness. I was young when I was trapped, so I did not have many memories that were my own to reflect on.”

  Vulcan was silent. He allowed the moment to linger as he absorbed and imagined what Xala spoke of. He frowned and said, “You didn’t want to die, even then?”

  Xala immediately chuckled and said, “Of course not. I knew I was in a prison. I knew I had a jailor. If I saw them, I would feast on them. And when I was free, I had many, many dreams I wanted to accomplish. They sustained me.”

  “You livin’ the dream now?”

  Xala frowned. He glanced around the room. He meandered over to a shelf, wrinkled his nose at the phallic objects on display, and said, “My dreams were designed for the world I thought I would wake up in.” He looked back at Vulcan. “I knew it was a prison because I had seen ones like it before. A state of stasis that suspended one’s mind for a sentence that lasted as long as the jailor wanted, but would only last a few hours in reality. Mine, however, was in real time. Thus, I woke up here. In an age of wonder. An age of technology. Currently, I am learning. Absorbing. My dreams, now, are still being invented.”

  “I would’ve lost my mind.”

  Xala watched Vulcan cautiously, laughed a little, and said, “Chin up. I’m not the sentimental type. I live in the here and now. Feeling sorry does nothing but fester despair. We have work to do.”

  “Hah, I doubt that first part.”

  “Believe in it for me. Hopefully I’ll catch up.”

  Vulcan smirked, nodded, straightened his shoulders, and said, “I’ve got an update on that guy you wanted me to find. Aldoron doesn't exist. I checked the databases the Feathers have and they’ve got nothing on him. No record of employment, no date of birth, nothing. Anybody as old as him would’ve been accounted for back in the Third Era no problem. But, he’s completely off the network. If he’s out there, he must be really well hidden. I mean, I can’t even find any complaints submitted to us with his description about noise or yelling in the streets. We get a lot of those from newcomers.”

  Xala tapped a knuckle to his chin, sighed through his nose, and said, “And you have no lists of cult members from their own archives?”

  “Nah, they don’t volunteer that stuff to us. The stuff we’ve raided or stolen from them is all gibberish and code. They’re secretive, even if they are welcoming.”

  Xala sucked on his teeth, sighed, and said, “Then we must go find him ourselves.”