THE VROL TRILOGY (38 page)

Still, Marnn was light-years ahead of Vladros
in thought and planning, and was determined to kill the vampire
king once he had finished with his own brother.

You shall not live as long as you believe, o
putrid one.

###

The invading vampire forces
neared the castle via the open northern plains, unaware that they
had been seen, while Draagh hurriedly contacted all of the sapient
werewolves via their magical battle armor (as well as the normals
who were provided with special medallions that facilitated
communications from the mage), and informed them of the approaching
forces. With their numbers so few, they would be required to use
some non-conventional methods of repelling the vampires
(conventional methods being swords and teeth), none of which were
ever shared with those that had non-sapient transformations, and
most certainly not with non-lycans, such as the traitorous
minor-mage, Siegfried, or even the conscripted normals who had the
privilege of spending one night per lunar cycle in Krynos' grand
castle.
However, this time all needed to
be informed.

Kangor made for the defensive machinery
- easily clocking in at 85 kph, and using his semi-dexterous paws
he enacted the complex set of gears and weighted pullies that would
lift massive wood and quadrinium machinery up and over the castle
walls. Years before, Draagh had assisted them in developing this
system of defense, which was created with the purpose of holding
off an invading vampire army until the sun peeked over the eastern
horizon, at which time all of the dungeon cell doors would have
already automatically opened and released the soldiers of the
Rhönen Dominion.

As Vladros' forces approached the
castle walls, they noticed the massive machinery that peered over
the edges, and split out to cover the four sectors of the castle,
breaking Marnn's cantus at the same time. It was at this moment
that Kangor enacted defense number one - a wide-spanning bath of
ultra-intense UV light that instantly burned roughly two-thirds of
the nearby frontal attacking forces to a crisp, annihilating a
substantial number of Vladros' lower-caste troops. The remaining
forces attempted to shoot crossbow grappling hooks up over the
castle walls in order to scale them, as the fresh-water great white
sharks would not sit idly by and allow them to push planks over and
break the walls down.

Draagh needed to make a
choice - either defend the castle, or go and personally protect Max
and Jennie, who were stuck in their cells like sitting… lycans. He
chose the former, as he was uncertain that his defenses would hold
against the marauding ghouls. Being there was only a handful of
sapient lycans available along with their human helpers - humans
who unfortunately did not possess near the strength of even a
lower-caste vampire - he did have the option of shocking a few
phase 3s and having them join the fight, but there was precious
little time,
and even then it was a risk, as a good
percentage of shocked phase 3s would not survive the
process
. He ran to Krynos and instructed
the lycan king to guard the children, being they were the most
vulnerable. In a worst-case scenario, they could trip a lever that
would instantly open the dungeon cages on a sector-by-sector basis,
where meat draggers would lure the savage beasts to the main level,
but Krynos would need to be above to make sure that the errant
phase 3 didn't make it to the cubbyholes that protected their
precious young, and it could also put the normals at incredible
risk.

###

Vladros screamed out orders from
behind, not willing to personally engage in battle, as he was a
coward, just like most upper-caste vampires. He looked around to
see smoking corpses where some of his troops had been only moments
before, and cursed Marnn, who had already departed up and over the
castle walls via a levitation cantus. Still, many of his troops
made it inside the castle, their protective amulets preserving
their lives.

###

Krynos bounded up the stairs, while
Donus took care of a few of the enemy that had managed to get up
the wall before being picked off like hors d'oeuvres by the
super-intelligent and very hungry sharks. In too much of a hurry to
push their grappling hooks off, he ran from location to location at
high speeds, slashing and biting anything that made it over the
walls, decapitating invading soldiers with his razor-sharp claws
and smashing others' heads into the gray stone from which the
structure was built. Looking out over the wall, he saw a lone
vampire hanging back, as if he were waiting.

"
Grrrrrr. Cowarrrrrd
," Donus
growled.

That very vampire, Ryder Johnson, was
not only a petty, evil man, he was also smart and had left
formation long before they had gotten anywhere near the castle,
preferring to wait until all of the cannon fodder had been
eliminated, and hopefully had taken out defensive forces before
expiring. As he rounded back to the south end of the structure, and
saw a couple of ropes hanging from still-stable grappling hooks, he
considered jumping to one, only to stop mere paces from the edge of
the moat as a six meter long great white breached and landed back
into the water with a mighty crash.

Maybe I'll just hang on
until Captain Crustyface gets inside
, he
thought to himself.

###

Kangor was busy moving the defensive
machinery around, and once he had it in place, enacted the second
level of defense, which consisted of various quadrinium nozzles
that sprayed out concentrated garlic water. Nine climbing vampires
let go of their ropes as they instinctively put their hands to
their burning faces; violently quick meals for the gargantuan fish
in the waters below.

Draagh ran up to Kangor and said, "Good
job, my boy. Now let some more come up and release the oil." The
werewolf nodded his lupine head and looked around, making sure that
nothing rotten smelling would get anywhere near the machinery in
which he was entrusted.

Krynos entered the children's cubbyhole
chambers and saw that all was well. The children knew what their
king looked like in his death form, so it did not alarm them. But
they were very aware that an invasion was happening, and numerous
young ones whimpered in their enclosures, trying not to make a
substantial amount of noise. Krynos paced from end to end, ready to
protect the future of the Rhönen Dominion with his life, if
necessary, but at the same time failed to notice that one of the
cubbyholes was empty.

Liliana, the former occupant of the
empty cubbyhole, crawled through a dirty, narrow access tunnel,
scared out of her wits, as she had heard even more of the commotion
outside than the children who remained locked up. She kept her wand
in front of her, and nearly fell down a hole that led to the lower
floors, but her light source cast a great shadow on the nearly
unseen abyss. Approaching it cautiously, she pointed her wand down
and spied a rickety ladder.

"Jennie, please be ok. I just want to
have breakfast with you and Max in the morning," she thought out
loud as she went to bravely reach out into the darkness.

She grasped the top rung of the ladder,
having it nearly disintegrate in her hand and almost causing her to
drop her wand, but she slipped to the next rung and it held fast.
Lowering herself, she went down a full floor and saw another access
tunnel. Jumping over to it, she climbed through quickly and came
upon a grate which gave her access to the living quarters of the
Dominion's top officers. Pushing the grate with as much force as
she possibly could, she found it wouldn't budge. So, thinking hard
and trying to remember everything Jennie taught her, she tried to
piece together a cantus that would remove the grate.

"
Undaincantatio aestus!
"

Nothing happened

"
Undaincantatio flamma!"

Again, nothing, save for a small flame
that had no effect on the iron grate.

Thinking carefully, she then
remembered.

"
Graveincantatio potentia!
"

The gravity push cantus
caused the iron grate to blow off the wall, and set the little girl
back a good meter, nearly making her fall back into the vertical
access tunnel. She sat for a moment, breathing heavily, terrified
that someone, or something, might have heard the ruckus
she had made
.

Moving cautiously forward,
she peeked her head out slowly and looked both directions down the
hall. Squinting her eyes toward the end of the corridor, and with
her superior night vision, she saw the ribbon she placed on
Jennie's door the day prior. Liliana put it there as a little gift
for her new friend. She thought it was pretty, and it was actually
the only ribbon she owned, and as Jennie had earlier told her that
her favorite color was pink (and to
NEVER
tell that to Max), the little
lycan wanted her new friend to have one of her only
possessions.

She bolted out of the access tunnel and
made a break for Jennie's room, quickly opening the door and
shutting herself inside, her heart racing a kilometer a
minute.

###

By this time, dozens of protected,
middle-tier vampire troops had breached the wall, and were running
around, causing all sorts of trouble for the defending werewolves.
Two even managed to kill Wilhelm, a phase 3 castle defender,
ripping his stomach open with a claw-shaped, rhodium-coated
scythe.

Draagh used multiple cantuses to blast
attackers over the wall and down into the moat, forever returned to
their places in the ecosystem via the teeth of the Dominion's
sharks. As he used his staff to split the skull of a particularly
large, higher-caste vampire commander, he nearly stopped frozen in
his tracks. Behind his deceased opponent stood someone he had not
seen in ages.

"Brother, I cannot say it is good to
see you," the Primulus dressed in black groaned sardonically,
"however, I can say that this is the last time we shall
meet."

###

The palladium-infused oil worked quite
well, and had sent another fifteen vampire invaders to a watery
demise. Kangor busied himself running around, dispatching various
vampires with teeth and claws, occasionally stopping to pee on a
vampire's head. He had already been shot with a palladium arrow,
but the salubots in his system effectively rejected the foreign
object, and after having pushed it out of the muscle in which it
was embedded, continued to slowly heal the painful wound. Two, then
three, then five vampires sent to ashen graves with his platinum
claw enhancers, he was definitely making progress, and he only
needed to keep it up for another hour. Thanks to the gift of a
particularly powerful cantus by Draagh, the cage doors would
automatically open for all of the imprisoned lycans once the
inhabitants had morphed out of their death form. When all doors
were open, the full, unfettered force of the Dominion would
eradicate what remained of the near-dead interlopers.

As he had already used all of the
defensive measures in the mass of machinery at the castle top, he
could only fight and defend. Running from one end of the castle to
the other, he grabbed a leg of lamb and munched it while he moved,
replenishing his reserves so that his meter wouldn't tank out. As
he rounded a corner he was saddened by seeing four normals, lying
together in a pile of drained death. One or more of Vladros'
soldiers had accosted them and replenished his or their own
reserves. As the law stated, the king was to personally console the
families of the fallen and present them with an honorarium of gold,
but it was something that the Krynos had not had to do for a very
long time.

Kangor stopped for a moment and checked
to make sure that all were deceased. However, he detected that one
was still alive and would eventually turn into a vampire, having
been infected with the half-dead subspecies' virus. The werewolf
nuzzled the man over and gazed into his eyes. There was fear in
them, as the normal knew the laws. He had the honor of standing by
his king in time of need, but that did not make him less afraid of
what was to come to pass.

I really do hate this
part,
he thought to himself.

Reaching up to the massive, sapient
phase 3, the man touched its face and choked out some final
words.

"Please… have our king care for my
family."

"Grrrrr… law. We carrrre," Kangor
growled, barely being able to form the words with his lupine
mouth.

"Very well then, my friend - release
me… please."

Kangor tore the man's throat out in a
flash, causing him to immediately lose consciousness and slip into
oblivion. The man felt no pain, nor regret.

###

Marnn wore neither sneer nor grin - his
face was completely deadpan and revealed that he was deadly serious
about the statement he had just made to his brother.

Before Draagh could even formulate a
response in his mind, he felt his body being lifted upwards and
back from the force of a mighty gravicantus. Then all went dark for
the ancient mage.