Wandering through the darkness, a boy wearing a clanky knights’ armor could be seen making his way towards a spooky mansion. Adorned by a silver cloak that hung from his shoulders down to the ground and even trailed behind him a bit due to his short stature, the ashen haired boy looked rather regal. This was however solely due to the fact that the cloak he was supposed to wear matched incredibly well with the assembled knight armor he had salvaged from his most recent undertaking. Fighting the zombified variant of Charlemagne, the lord of the sword, the armor itself had been intended as a costume to wear to the Spirit Festival so that he might partake in the dress competition, as well as anything else the place had to offer someone such as himself. Truth be told, the boy had had a blast with the pumpkin carving and zombie hunting.

When nearing the end of the festivities, he had heard in passing that a strange building had appeared in the forsaken realm, one that seemed to forcefully evict anyone not wearing a costume that stepped onto the property. It was something people had compared to other places that had just appeared out of the blue, only for them to disappear not a whole lot later, albeit with a fair list of victims. New as he was to what went on within the Clover country, word like that had a tendency of spreading quickly amongst the locals, regardless of class and ethnicity. People talked, that was just human nature, plain and simple. And for people like Gawain who always kept an ear to the ground and his eyes to the skies, people talking amongst one another out in the open for everyone to hear was one of the best ways to get leads on any new jobs.

In a weird turn of events, Gawain found himself heading out this time as a member of one of the more esteemed magic knight squads, the Silver Eagles. Initially, the teen had only signed up as a sort of joke, to see whether or not he could get in, given his background as someone who wasn’t even considered a commoner. His parents were dead, he had been raised for half of his life across the ocean in the land of Skjaergard, then spent some time in a Cloverian orphanage, only to escape and be trained by a former Black Bull. All things considered, he still felt it odd that he even managed to get in, given their rather strict rules when it came to primarily only accepting blue bloods and other kinds of nobles. Perhaps it was because the Captain had seen the same thing Griswold had seen, his potential to become one of the most powerful knights in the country. He did possess a four-leaf Grimoire after all.

Approaching the mansion and crossing the threshold, Gawain noticed that he was not actively being repulsed or barred from getting any closer, meaning that whatever had set the strange boundary rules of needing to be in costume had accepted his attire as such. This meant that he was free to enter and do what it was that he did best, to fight against strange otherworldly beings and deadly combatants to see what his current limits were, break the ones that could be broken and take literally everything that wasn’t boarded down with him to sell at the black market. While the magic knight’s pay check was a fairly hefty one, he was still very low on the ladder, and he also needed to eat and pay for lodgings.



WC: 604

For what it was worth, mist, smoke and fog no matter how dark in nature barely did anything to scare the young man, not after the one he had witnessed as a child. When his father, as well as a lot of other relatives of his died, their killers had come in with an unnatural mist to obscure them from any that might have detected them through magical or visual means. It took years before Gawain had figured out that one of the men that had come along with the raiding party had been capable of conjuring up these unnatural fog banks, rather than it being a natural occurrence these people had made clever use of. Once he had seen it be used, part of the mysticism and fright that surrounded such eerie mist had faded away forever. It was the kind of thing that made one’s nightmares less scary. Though no amount of insight into the machinations of the Villtsung raiders would ever bring his parents back.

It went without saying that the approach of another mage had not gone unnoticed by him, considering how his guard was up about as far as it could get whenever he approached places such as these. And for good reason. So far, whenever he had ventured close to a location that had been marked by the populace as a ‘magic dungeon’, he had ended up fighting against all manner of strange and sometimes marvelous things. Intricate golems made out of household items, spider-women, assassins, knights, zombified knights, goblins, even eldritch beings conjured up by a vengeful piece of headgear locked away inside of a mansion not unlike this one. It made him wonder what people were thinking when constructing these kind of places, or why they allowed them to exist in the first place. Surely powerful mages would be able to seal them away or blow them to kingdom come.

At the end of the day, he was quite glad they existed though. Because aside from the civilian casualties and the like, they made for a good and fun way of challenging himself. Not to mention the fact that looting them was always worth his while.

“Greetings, I’m Gawain, and I would not mind that one bit. I’ve never really entered into one of these on my own, not really at least. Besides, this is my first time doing anything as a proper magic knight, so I could use some pointers.”

Not really beating around the bush when it came to being a rather fresh magic knight, the fact that he was also only fifteen years old and quite new to magic in and of itself made for a lot of firsts and seconds this day. Looking over this new individual, one of the things he noticed was the fact that they both possessed a rather similar hair color, which was not something he encountered all that much. Usually the people he met had dark brown, black, blond or even red hair, which made this yet another one of firsts this day. Feeling somewhat excited about this new place and getting to enter as a member of one of the more esteemed knight squads, Gawain bent through his knees a bit. Extending and crossing his right arm in front of him while making a fist with his left, he struck a rather strange pose as he hyped himself up to go in.

“Let’s Go!”

FLOOR 1 | ROOM 1

Rushing into the building through the nearest door, the boy entered into a room that seemed very much unlike what he had expected. He had imagined the place would be rather tidy, given this place was still very much a mansion similar to the estate of some nobles he had seen. Sure, it might have seen better days, but this room in particular was just in real bad shape. Judging by how quiet it was, it seemed quite likely that they were going to be jumped by something. It wouldn’t be the first time, as the massive walking tree golem had several rooms in which he had been attacked out of nowhere by golems that just came into being without any notable trigger he could think of. Not to mention the time when he believed himself to be done fighting, only to be attacked by assassins once he reached the door. Needless to say, that had made him a bit more careful.

Using his Ki to scope out the room for as far as he could reach, he could feel the presence of something along the roof, though he could not really make out what it was very well yet. The vague outline suggested that it was a cluster of something, though of what was anyone’s guess at this point. For now, it did not seem like these things were going to be attacking him, meaning it might be worth trying to just press on and make their way out. While the door remained open, what little light came in from the outside let him see most of what this room had to offer, as well as showing the door that would more than likely be taking them into the next one. For now, Gawain believed it would be best not to call out to Hania, as he would more than likely be able to figure out the situation they were in once he set foot inside of the place on his own.

Instead, he would just slowly begin to pace himself across the room, trying not to trigger whatever was on the ceiling to come down and begin attacking them, as it was very much a living thing. Or rather, multiple living things. And the thing with living beings was that when someone uninvited disturbed them within their ‘home’, they had a tendency of attacking in self defense, trying to remove the interlopers so they could return to their resting place. Truly, Gawain was very interested in seeing exactly the kind of things that had made a place such as this their home, and honestly, he was starting to get a good idea of what it might be. Judging by the overwhelming scent of shit, as well as the less than pleasant feeling he got whenever he moved his feet across the floor, the only thing he could imagine him walking through was just that: Shit.




WC: 1061
Room WC: 481
Total WC: 1665

Tracking through shit both fresh and old, the light that was being made by the other mage’s bracelet made it slightly easier to see what was going on in the room. Keeping the light dim enough not to disturb what were in fact sleeping bats, part of him wished he hadn’t been able to see the floor at all. There was something about just wading through shit and having to wade through shit he could actually see that made the whole affair that much more unattractive to him. Still, he would do what needed to be done to get out of this mess. The one good thing about the light was that he could now see the spots where he could actually put his feet without stepping in crap. From that point on, that was exactly what he was going to be doing so as to not have to slog through any more of the excrement. Listening to the mage’s assessment of the room, there wasn’t a whole lot of room for him to disagree.

It was also true that rushing straight into things was most likely not the best idea when it came to dealing with places as potentially dangerous as this one, though Gawain knew quite well what the limits of his own abilities were. Strangely enough, he had gotten quite adept at thrusting everything that got too close for comfort away a considerable distance, which also had a tendency of turning them into prime targets for his other more offensive spells. And while he was still getting used to his current level of spells, the boy had come to figure out that he had more than enough mana in him to lay down a sizeable barrage of lesser attacks. It was a tactic that he had first utilized in another dangerous location entirely, though the amount of damage he had been able to pull off just by laying down the hurt on a small area proved a solid tactic. But just because it had worked once did not mean it was always going to keep working, which was all the more reason for him to get stronger.

“Let’s just get out of here first. I want to get out of this suit, though I’d rather not have to go through the trouble of killing a bunch of dumb animals. It’s not their fault they chose such poor lodgings.”

Making it clear that he did not possess any intention to kill these animals, them being weak or strong hardly mattered to him. He had been taught to respect nature, or at the very least the animals that were part of nature, so that was something he would die right up until the moment they actually injured him. That was when they could expect a proper walloping. Though that much could be said for any who would try to injure or kill him. Making for the door without spending too much time as the noise they made just made wake the bats at some point, he slipped through without wasting any more time.

FLOOR 1 | ROOM 2

Once he shoved the door open and made his way through, the first thing he did was unclasp the buckles that were holding his armor together. Figuring there was indeed no longer any need for him to wear a costume now that he had been accepted inside and made his way through the initial room, he let the armored plates clatter down to the ground without so much as a care in the world. In so doing, he even took off his boots now that they had been stained in bat shit, believing he’d be better off not tracking that stuff all over the place and more importantly, having to smell it every step of the way. Dropping the whole mess along the ground, Gawain instantly felt a lot less restricted in his mobility, having let an actual weight fall off of his shoulders to be left here for anyone to find. With that much shit on it, no one was going to want to buy it anyway. Damn bats.

“That’s a lot better!”

Continuing on in the shirt, socks and slacks he wore under his armor, he looked a lot like he had just stepped out of bed and wandered in here by accident. Clearly this was not the case though, as he believed these kinds of clothes provided by far the most mobility when it came to fighting, not to mention that it was light and could be replaced easily if it got torn up. But as he took off his armor and took two more steps forward to get away from that smelly mess, he could feel a kind of cold that instantly reminded him of another dungeon he had been to not too long ago. It was the kind of cold that seeped into your very bones and made it difficult to move properly, meaning it was a good thing he got rid of the armor when he did. Believing the combination of the two might have made him move backwards instead of forward, he took a look around.

Right now, the room was really nothing more than dark, the low rate of visibility making it next to impossible for him to make out anything that they might encounter in here. So even though he could just feel like his mobility was strained, he added on the additional strain of his Ki, believing the risk was worth it when he could at least sense any additional threats coming. That gave him some time to come up with a strained counter, which was about the best thing he could hope for at this point. Turning towards Hania, the boy began to wonder what they might run into beyond this point. More importantly, since the mage had brought up the owner of this place being a potential hoarder, it made him wonder what kind of being it might be. It couldn’t possibly be another zombified knight, as he had just finished one of those off elsewhere.

“So what kind of owner do you think resides over this place? I bet it’s a vampire, they seem to enjoy the company of bats, though they seem incapable of making up their minds about their residency. So far, the ones I’ve met alternated between fancy mansions and damp caverns underneath ancient ruins. They went from being undead to being unalived though, so we can’t really ask them what their deal was.”

Sending a bright smile and two thumbs up towards the older mage as if showing off his pride in dealing with such a menace on his own, people often forgot that he was still but a fifteen year old boy that ran about the world without any real structure or oversight.




WC: 1141
Total WC: 2806
Current Room WC: 621

Finding it somewhat interesting that this Hania guy shared his point of view when it came to the owner of this place potentially being a vampire, he imagined that the man had met one or two throughout his life as well. Claiming they did not have a whole lot of vampires in the land of Clover, he was asked whether he had met this creature in the land of Spade. At this point in time, Spade, Heart and Diamond were among the places his eyes had never seen, his travels having been limited to the land of Clover and Skjaergard, the latter being very much against his will. Just as he was about to answer the question, the setting seemed to change as their direct surroundings grew more eerie. Strange candles were lit, dark in nature that did not illuminate the room in the slightest.

What did happen however was that various piles of bone rose up to form a variety of undead creatures. But before he could actually respond himself, Hania said a word or two about how the dead should remain that way before dispatching a good number of them. Telling Gawain to take out as many as he could on his way out of the room, part of him almost scoffed at the seeming lack of faith in his abilities. Sure, he had nothing in the form of a title to fall back on, nor did he have any real notable achievements under his belt that would signify his greatness at this point. What he did have however was a very large amount of mana, a four-leaf grimoire and a very rare type of magic at his beck and call. That at least had to count for something.

Moving forward to the band of skeletons, his approach seemed like a mad dash at best, one that hadn’t been thought through in the slightest. Though that was exactly the way he liked it, underestimation was what made him both shine and thrive. When the skeletons prepared to attack him, the boy stopped in his tracks, putting his hands together over his chest and releasing a pulse of pressurized air. The sudden burst pushed the impending attack back, sending the skeletons flying across the room and heaving them up against the walls with a hard thump that caused bones to crack left and right. But finish them off, it did not. More was required, though that was not entirely unsurprising. He had been inside of places similar to this one before, he knew that the beings that dwelled within these magically altered spaces were normally not the kind he could blow apart in one hit. Not yet.

Extending his arm and pointing the palm of his hand towards the skeletons, a blast of wind was shot forth. Enveloping the remaining skeletons with the initial shot or the resulting blow, their already battered bodies were brought low as shards of bone and sections of limbs were shot across the room as a result. Taking a deep breath as his foes had been returned to the grave once again, part of him wondered how long it would take before someone would reconstitute the bones and make them rise once more. It made it rather important for them to find the owner of this building, the entity they both believed to be a vampire, so they would be able to keep him from doing just that. Believing necromancy to be among the most vile forms of magic, putting another necromancer down wouldn’t exactly deprive the world of anything but filth. Keeping that thought between his ears, Gawain moved onwards.

FLOOR 2 | ROOM 1

Passing through the door and pushing his way into the next room, the boy was somewhat bothered by the fact that there was nothing in there. It was an empty room with a simple, straight forward stretch towards what was likely to be the way deeper inside, and closer to the vampire. When things appeared this easy however, especially in a place such as this one, it was usually some sort of trap or just a way of putting trespassers in a false sense of security. So while he was still quite the greenhorn when it came to being a magic knight or a mage, the young teenager already had many notches on his belt when it came to delving into dangerous territory and coming out alive, learning a bit here and there whenever he did so. It was the only way for one such as himself to remain alive and kicking, to constantly evolve and adapt to whatever life threw his way.

Taking the first steps into the room to see whether or not they’d end up getting jumped, a thick smoke began rising from the floor, falling from the ceiling and protruding from the walls. It was clear straight from the get-go that this was no regular kind of smoke or dense mist, it was magical in nature. Closing his eyes for a moment and letting his breathing sync with the pacing of his heartbeat for a couple of seconds, as everything inside of his mind became still, the boy opened his eyes again to allow an altogether fresh outlook on things. Through the use of his Ki, he became more capable to perceive the path through this place, as aside from the fog itself blurring his vision, the room itself hadn’t changed. The layout remained the same, and the door should still be in the exact same location. That was, unless the building had some magical means of changing its interior on such a scale as to move doors and entire rooms around without anyone noticing.

Continuing to press forward, part of him felt like he could see shapes within the dark mist, people he remembered from his past as well as faces he wished very much to forget. Gawain knew that if he focused on them, he would be able to make out their shapes and see them for what they were, though he wouldn’t allow himself to do that. Instead, he would keep his focus on the way forward, on making his way out of this place. The images he was seeing, the fog that had been called into being, all of it was nothing more than some kind of trick to keep him from venturing out and keeping him lingering within this room. But with someone like Hania being here as well, Gawain was not about to make himself look weak or feel like a liability. He had come here to become stronger and learn more about his magic, about where he would need to improve to grow as a combatant.

“The one I met was in Clover, actually. He’d been here for what seemed like a very long time, dwelling within a mostly buried elven ruin while taking on a prominent position within Kiten. The man had a house there, which he spent most of his time, though he’d disappear for years whenever he had been caught, resurfacing when an entire generation had passed and his face had been forgotten.”

Finally responding to Hania’s question as to whether he had seen this vampire in the land of Spade, Gawain decided that it was best to focus on these questions and this conversation rather than on the images that surrounded him, tempting him to get distracted and get caught up in it. Still remembering it all quite vividly, there was still a large amount of regret and shame clinging to that whole situation that he had honestly never expected to feel to this extent.

“I was lucky to find the man whom the mayor had framed as the vampire, or the local militia more than likely would’ve killed him. It wasn’t so much the mayor’s fault since the vampire tricked him, flashing some fancy jewelry and a made-up title. He was an idiot like that.”

Through it all, the mayor had constantly been hounding and threatening him, all while the man who turned out to be the vampire himself was whispering in his ear to take matters into his own hands. As it were, they had the vampire’s latest victim in their care, a woman who had been bitten and would turn into a vampire herself before long. Had it not been for the contradictory statements coming from another noble, one who had been quite well versed in alchemy and herbology, the woman would more than likely have been killed. But thanks to Gawain being paid handsomely to risk his own limbs and life by heading into the forest of witches to retrieve a bunch of herbs and flowers, the man was capable of creating a cure for her vampirism, allowing her to eventually wake up from her death-like coma. It was only after she woke up and the supposed vampire had been saved that the actual culprit turned tail and ran for the actual hills so as not to get cornered and killed within Kiten.

“With his help, we found the ruins the vampire had returned to, trying to head back into a state of hibernation so he could try again some twenty or fifty years from now. Turns out the sick bastard had several women there… as well as children younger than me, people he had taken from their homes over the years and turned into vampires themselves. It seemed to be his way of making or recreating a family of his own, all while the people of Kiten believed these people to have gone missing or killed.”

Remembering the sight they had encountered once they reached the lower levels of the ruins, the sheer amount of withered corpses that had been bled dry in order to sate his new family was staggering. But not as staggering as the way in which these feral children lashed out at them in defense of their sire, or the sounds they made when they and their brothers, sisters and mothers were put to death. Sounds like that, they seemed like the kinds of things one would never truly be able to forget. Back on Skjaergard, he himself had put a rusty blade to plenty of necks and guts, killed plenty of men including those twice his size. The main difference was that they had in some way deserved it, they were truly despicable people who deserved to have their blood spilt on the streets and their bodies tossed into the mire to be desecrated and consumed by corpse-eaters.

“In the end though, the entire coven was put down, and the elder vampire himself was thoroughly destroyed. It seemed like a mercy at the time, though the more time moves on, the more I regret killing those people. They had their choice taking from them when they were forced to change, and then they had their choice between freedom and death taken as well. To me, that doesn’t seem quite right.”

Perhaps it was the people he had killed on the archipelago that the black mist wanted him to see. Perhaps it was his mother that had ended up dying over there, or his father that had been killed by raiders. Perhaps it was the feral vampire women and children that it wanted to show them. It didn’t matter at this point. Because for how goofy and tone-deaf as he might at times be, Gawain was by no means an idiot or devoid of emotion. He felt everything incredibly well and took a good deal of things quite hard. However, as things would often have it for orphans, life had never pulled any punches when it came to him and the way he had to live out his life, so he never had the choice to remain soft or curl up and cry in a corner for days. No matter what he’d do or what he’d still need to do in the future, for him, there was no reprieve. He had to continue on to get stronger and build up his renown. If he quit now, all of the things he had done would have been utterly and completely pointless.

With the end of the room being in sight, Gawain reached for the door and placed his hand upon the doorknob. Hoping that if he opened the door now and pushed on through, the fog would remain in this room and keep from following them through, he waited for Hania to catch up so they could both make their way into a place that was hopefully filled with carnage and bloodshed. That would at the very least take his mind off of the images he saw within the smoke filled room, pulling it back towards his sole reason for getting here. Self-improvement.



WC: 2129
Current Room WC: 1516
Total WC: 4935

Still quite content with having been able to leave the darkness behind, the room they found themselves in next truly became a scene of carnage rather quickly. With the amount of peculiar beings popping in to greet them, some of them seemed familiar. Goblins. He had seen these greenskins once before outside of Kiten, just moments before he ventured into the tomb of the lord of blades. When he arrived, all of them had been cut down and were laying in a puddle of their own blood and excrement, though they seemed like a rather interesting species to say the least. They too appeared to be scavengers, raiders and opportunists, just like the majority of people living on Skjaergard. From the looks of it, they were just as brutal as well, if not physically weaker by many, many leagues.

Simply taking in the sights as he tried to get a handle on what he should do, as well as what he ‘could’ do, Hania being the first to dive into the fray made it seem like his presence here really wasn’t all that needed. In truth, that much was something he had realized from the start, as the boy hadn’t managed to live as long as he had by being a thick-skulled idiot that couldn’t take a hint. He was here mostly as a courtesy, to see how one of the real big shots handled a place such as this one, allowed to do a few things here and there as a means of carrying his own weight and sharing in some of the wealth and riches after all was said and done. He knew this because he had been on the other end of the spectrum several times, and would more than likely be on it plenty more times as well.

Before he became a magic knight, it was something that bothered him, as him being a regular old graverobber and adventurer meant that he had no jurisdiction or rights to call dibs on any delves or dungeons. Now that he was a knight though, he had such rights and perks over the common folk of the country as his title meant that his words and actions were backed by law in most cases. While obviously something he still needed to get used to as he was still prone to cussing those out that deserved it or showing his bare cheeks to people that annoyed him while calling them assbutt. But as it were, he was still very much just a teenage boy that hadn’t received his grimoire that long ago. So in a sense, it was a miracle that he was adjusting to being a magic knight in a land that still felt foreign to him so quickly.

Simply watching the fighting go down, the boy took mental notes by the dozens. It was a skill he picked up several years prior to this point, it being one of the reasons he had been called a prodigy. Whenever there was an example to be studied or learned from, that was exactly what he would do, believing the best thing one could do was to copy something successfully, rather than trying something on your own and failing. Obviously whatever was copied would need to be trained and picked apart before being added to ones own repertoire, but watching, learning and remembering it all stood at the forefront. With his Ki, it was less difficult for him to pick apart the movement choices Hania made, though still not easy. In time, he was confident that he would be able to do this kind of thing with greater ease, though the struggle made it more fun.

Having watched Griswold during their sparring sessions and other outings in which they were meant to do battle with others, Gawain had never truly managed to fully memorize and copy that style of fighting. Maybe it was because of how much faster Griswold had been at the time, the fact that he utilized a blade and heightened physical power and a level of Ki greater than that which the boy had been capable of, though the snippets and tidbits he had been able to remember and utilize properly were still very much a part of his own personalized style of fighting to this day. This however was more than likely not something someone else would be able to pick up on for a very single and previously brushed upon reason: Gawain did not wave around one or multiple swords at the same time.

When told to do the final push so he could deal with the rest of the pumpkin-headed monstrosities, Gawain just nodded, mostly because the idea of a ‘final push’ more or less already implanted the thought in his head to do just that. Not altogether worried about the goblins, especially the ones that had already been on the receiving end of a proper beating, he just walked over to them while keeping his eyes on Hania’s battle. Believing it would serve him more to learn from fights like those than it would to get overly enveloped by fighting a bunch of greenskins, he used his Ki to keep track of their movements should they try to leave his direct field of vision. So when the creatures began to gather their wits and rush the boy that seemed to just approach without giving them much thought or any attention for that matter, their spiteful nature showed as they would try to kill the one that seemed both weak and arrogant.

But wrong they were, for when a pulse of compressed air tore forth from the white haired boy, the whole brunt of them were flung across the room, crashing into various obstacles in their way as they got taken out in what felt like an instant. Foes like these were not exactly something the boy felt interested in fighting anymore, which just showed how much he had grown since but two weeks. Believing the blast would have killed those that had already taken a beating, those that hadn’t yet would more than likely just remain incapacitated and unconscious as the boy felt some level of pity for them. When Hania took out the remainder of the pumpkin horses, it was clear to him that there was nothing left for them to do but to move forward. Though through it all, there was still one thing that remained fresh on his mind with regards to some of the things Hania said relating to what he had done.

“When we killed the first of them, we couldn’t even see them. We were inside of an underground elven ruin out in the foothills of Kiten, following the tracks left by the master vampire Aronil. They stuck to the shadows, threatening us from all sides. All we heard were shrieks, the sound of soft steps and the clattering of teeth. When the first of the bodies started falling, we saw that the bodies belonged to women and children."

Strong in the belief that they would more than likely be fighting some kind of vampire sooner rather than later, it was made rather difficult to just outright forget and move on from the massacre within the elven ruins. Right now, thanks to the visions he had suffered within the dark shadows of the previous room, everything had come back to the forefront of his mind. It was as if it had just happened yesterday.

“I’m still not sure whether they turned feral because of how long they had been down there or because they were driven mad with grief, though they seemed more like animals than human beings. At that point, they left the people they were behind a long time ago, so I’m not sure if they… people.. they became truly felt like they were saved. I don’t think they had the capacity for such elaborate thought anymore.”

For as much as he would have liked the knowledge that the people he had murdered alongside the vampire hunter that sought vengeance for his wife would have felt some kind of release, Gawain knew they had long since lost the ability to do so. They were human in form, though most of their reasoning abilities had left them, turning them into true creatures of the night that were good for one thing and one thing only. To hunt and to feed. Killing them had been akin to putting down a dog, an animal that understood more than most people would give it credit for, but not nearly as much as some people believed they might. And all who had owned and lost a pet understood the pain it brought upon their owners, which was most likely why out of all of the things that had happened and out of all of the blood that had been shed, Aronil’s response to his flock’s death was the most vivid memory.

“Thing is, the monster that turned them all, he sought to rebuild a family he had lost, likely long before either of us were even conceived. He claimed he had ‘hand-picked’ all of these children to become his new daughters and sons, as well as a plethora of women he deemed suited to be his wives… He shed honest tears when they were killed, though not for them. It was like a child throwing a tantrum because their tower of blocks fell over. He wasn’t sad for them, he was sad for him.”

At first, Gawain had believed the tears shed by the monster had been because of how he had lost his family. But when it turned out that he was just sad that his project, his remade family had been taken from him like toys taken from an angry child, that was when something inside of him had snapped. With the vampire hunter Waylon shrouding the vampire in a continuous stream of flames, Gawain showering it with blades of pressurized air put the creature in a constant state of pain as its wounds kept trying to rapidly regenerate. Had the fire not constantly been burning and charring it, it very well might have outpaced the rate with which Gawain could hurt it. Luckily, neither Waylon nor Gawain got to figure out just how far Aronil could push his healing factor as his heart eventually gave out. Still, the anger the boy felt towards vampires as a result was also what brought his mind to a dark place right now.

“If it truly is a vampire that lords over this home, and he is anything like ‘Him’, don’t let him die a quick death. Make sure he feels the sensation of every bone in his body breaking, his skin flayed apart from his flesh before that too gets ripped from his bones. Make sure he regrets every months of every year he spent as an ‘immortal’”



WC: 1818
Total WC: 6753
Current Room WC: Completed

Looking forward as Hania made his way out and into the next room, Gawain just lingered for a bit, making sure that every single one of the creatures he had tossed around the place had been taken out properly. The way he saw it, as long as they were all out for the count, that was good enough for him. What he cared about most was making sure the supposed vampire that was sitting behind that door would suffer, though it was quite likely that the suffering would have already started before he could even do as much as lay a finger on him himself. Sighing deeply as he began moving towards the door that was still left open, the boy pushed on through to see that the archmage had more or less ignored dealing with the two creatures that were standing guard. But they were rather lousy at their job, as they just allowed the ice mage to pass.

When Gawain entered however, the two kept him from passing, more than likely imagining him to be an inferior opponent. In a way, they weren’t wrong, as he couldn’t begin to hold a candle to Hania, not yet at least. In time however, he was confident that he would be able to at the very least match him and get down to carrying his own weight in situations such as these. And the best thing he could do right now was to prove his mettle and determination by taking down both of these creatures by himself. Having memorized most of the fight between one of these things in the previous room, the boy had some idea as to what they were capable of in terms of speed. Aside from that however, he had seen very little of what they could do. So when the first of the two guards began approaching him, it didn’t do so with overwhelming physical speed.

Moving at a pace Gawain himself could keep up with rather easily, he evaded the stroke of an axe that went straight into the floor boards before erupting with fire and leaving cinders and scorch marks in its wake. Focusing on one of them, it wasn’t until he heard the galloping of the second guard that another axe could be evaded as it got lodged in the wooden door. Performing a quick barrel roll underneath the weapon, the ashen haired boy landed a blow underneath the horseman’s body, aimed directly at its exposed belly. But as the first of the two guards was preparing to somehow aid its fellow guard, it figured that it was not really able to do so with the boy remaining between the creature’s four legs. If the other guard were to be dumb enough to strike, he’d need to go through a set of legs just to land a blow on him, which it seemed to not be willing enough of.

But that was exactly how Gawain had planned it, being ever the exploitative trickster. With a wide grin on his face, he stuck out his tongue at the guardsman while sticking out his hand. Waving momentarily as he prepared a spell, he more or less considered himself to be a one trick pony at this point. But given the fact that these guards seemed to be half horse themselves, he could more or less appreciate the irony of the situation. Releasing a burst of compressed air from his own position that moved outwards, the guard that was standing over him was pushed up and crushed against the ceiling as the other was flung across the room and crashed into a wall. Immediately killing one of them, the other seemed to still be somewhat alive, if such a thing could be considered alive in the first place. As he reached down, he took the pumpkin with both hands and gave it a good hard tug.

Ripping it off of the torso it had been attached to, the flame within it seemed to keep burning, even though there was no real candle or wood inside of it. Wondering exactly what powered it, he considered it to be a fun little prop to be displayed during this time of year. At least, it would be until someone asked him where he got it. With the pumpkin head under his arm, the boy managed to see the end of the vampire, which was relatively quick, though it had been far from painless. He had missed the initial attack, though watching the creature pinned to his own musical instrument before having a shard of glass pushed into his heart was rather satisfying as far as kills went. Personally, he would have liked to see a bit more dismemberment, or maybe just a prolonged sense of torture by shoving multiple shards of ice deeper in before eventually going for the kill. Hell, placing some of the shards into his eyes would have been very intriguing, but it was not to be.

When he looked upon the corpse of the vampire, he just stared at it with empty eyes. Truthfully, it did not exactly fill him with pleasure to see the former human dead and pinned down, nor did it make him sad. In fact, he honestly felt nothing at this point. The sadness he experienced over the deaths he had caused had already been buried again, hidden behind layers upon layers of nonsense and posture. As it should be. The weakness he had shown in the previous room was something that would never see the light of day again. Because when it came down to it, nobody would ever truly be able to understand all of the things he went through in such a short amount of years as he had been alive for. This particular vampire wasn’t the one that had wronged him, it was just another vampire. And for as rare as they supposedly were, he had more or less seen enough of them, and had been around enough of their corpses for the next week or so.

“Even though it didn’t suffer for long, I wonder whether we did anyone a favor or not by killing him. Also, it makes you wonder, what was the point to having some sort of barrier in place that keeps those out that aren’t wearing a festive attire? Shenanigans upon shenanigans… Well, time to bring this bad boy to the barracks and turn some heads.”

With the pumpkin had lodged under his arm, Gawain had more or less seen enough of this place. It was high time they got out of here, and used another door to do so. He would be goddamned if he had to wade through bat crap a second time, he’d much sooner just leap through the window and make his way down across the roof.


WC: 1149
Room WC: Long since attained
Total WC: 7902

Jack O’Blaze: Dead
Vampire: Dead



End of ze Dungeon