The portal spat us out with the sharp lurch of space snapping closed behind us and the abrupt warmth of the sitting room replacing the cold reek of smoke and burning houses outside. The room smelled of candle wax and old wood, completely indifferent to the fact that a territory was on fire.
Benemune was already wide awake.
She sat at the writing desk with a book open across her knees, orange eyes tracking us over the rim of her glasses before we'd even fully cleared the portal's edge. She pushed the frames up the bridge of her nose with one finger, slow and deliberate, and gave us both a look that started at our faces, moved to the scorch mark on my sleeve, and finished somewhere on the closed space where the portal used to be.
"My my" she said pleasantly, in that light, unhurried tone she used when she was most irritated "The two of you look like you've been somewhere interesting" She tilted her head "Where, exactly, have you been? And.... " she glanced past us toward the window, where the distant orange glow pulsed against the glass "Don't tell me it's your doing that is happening to Carmilla Territory?"
I glanced outside the window.
Below, the grounds smoldered in long, ragged patches. Collapsed garden walls. Craters carved into what had been stone pathways. Smoke climbing in slow, greasy columns toward a sky still faintly webbed with the dissolving outline of that massive golden magic circle. The sounds of explosions had mostly stopped. That was the part that sat wrong not the destruction, but the silence that had replaced it, the kind that only settles after everything worth destroying has already happened.
"It seems the Tepes faction isn't moving solo" I said "The magicians from the Khaos Brigade have invaded the territory. They are the same ones I remember from the Peace Conference attack"
Benemune closed the book. Not quickly. With the deliberate patience of someone who needed a second to align their thoughts before they could trust their face.
"And Bene chan, there is also a boy with the wings" Lavinia said, as Benemune raised a brow "He seemed very strong!"
"If I am not wrong, they resembled Dragon wings" I said "Black. Wingspan that could shade a building. He stayed above the main force the whole time, he wasn't fighting, but kept watching like none of it was worth his attention"
The silence stretched for a few seconds. Benemune set the book down on the desk. Then she blinked twice that meant something had just clicked behind her eyes and she wasn't sure yet whether to say it aloud. One corner of her mouth pulled up not a smile exactly, something drier than that and she turned to look out the window herself to confirm if what she guessed was correct or not.
Her gaze sharpened the moment she found the dude in the sky.
"What?! What the hell is he doing here?" The words came out louder than I anticipated "Out of every other dragon out there, why did Crom Cruach join hands with them?! What sort of rewards are they offering to convince such war maniacs in their group?"
Lavinia had drifted to the fireplace. She turned now, blue eyes moving between us with that clear, unhurried attention she brought to things she hadn't decided how to feel about yet.
"Who is that boy, Bene-chan?"
Benemune sighed deeply. She removed her glasses, polished them with the edge of her sleeve and the gesture of someone buying a few seconds to digest ridiculous information and settled them back into place.
"He is an Evil Dragon" she revealed "The strongest one currently walking free. He carries the title of the Crescent Circle Dragon, and his power isn't a matter of faction or rank politics it simply is" She paused, then continued looking firmly "On a pure scale of strength, he rivals the Heavenly Dragons. Ddraig. Albion. It won't be wrong to say that he might have surpassed them in strength and I am not making this comparison carelessly"
Lavinia absorbed this the way she absorbed most alarming information — quietly, with her hands folded, without the kind of visible alarm that would have made the information feel smaller.
"If someone at that level has allied with the Tepes faction," Benemune continued, her gaze still fixed outside, "then whatever this faction had left after tonight won't be enough to matter." She said it simply, without drama "This is no longer a vampire civil war problem the moment that dragon set foot in this territory"
I turned from the window as I sat down on the bed "Then what do we do? We came here to negotiate. We don't have signed agreement yet, and we haven't told Azazel any of this. Walking into their war is—"
"Unnecessary trouble" Benemune agreed.
She didn't say anything else for a moment. I could see the shift in her expression from composed to calculating, her eyes going slightly unfocused as she turned something over internally. Crom Cruach and Khaos Brigade together, with Marius Tepes. The alignment didn't fit any pattern she had a file for. Why would the Crescent Circle Dragon, who answered to no faction and sought only the fights worth having, lend his presence to a vampire coup? Did that mean Tepes had already formalized something with Khaos Brigade before tonight? Was Rizevim pulling the strings further back than anyone had reported? Or—
"Bene-chan."
Lavinia's voice was soft. Her hand touched Benemune's arm.
Benemune blinked. She straightened, smoothed the front of her coat with both hands, and pulled the composure back into place like someone buttoning a jacket.
"Yes. You're right" She cleared her throat. "We are not in a position to make decisions" She looked at me with those sharp orange eyes. "We report to Azazel first"
Then before she could relay this information to him, a male voice stopped her in tracks.
"Regine. Surrender while there are still enough of your people left standing to make the offer meaningful"
The three of us moved to the window without needing to discuss it.
---
Below, the courtyard was painted in the dying glow of the fires and the last faint shimmer of that vast golden magic circle, still fading from the sky above the territory.
The Khaos Brigade magicians had pulled back into loose formation, dark robes making them look like scattered ink stains on the pale stone ground. To the left of the center, wings half-folded and one hand shoved in his pocket, stood the Evil dragon. He was staring at nothing in particular with the expression of someone enduring patience that they found moderately tedious.
And beside him stood was a vampire that looked like someone straight out of Emo vamp novels.
He was young-looking in the way, the youth preserved too perfectly, too symmetrically, like a face that had been edited a lot of times. His long white hair swept back. A long black coat, dark with gold trim at the cuffs and collar, sat across his shoulders with the ease of someone who'd worn it long enough to stop feeling its weight. His eyes caught the firelight at an angle that turned them way redder than it already is.
He looked up at Carmilla's castle and smiled like a man admiring a building he'd already decided to demolish to build his own.
"Regine!" He said out loud "My faction holds a Longinus. Our alliance with the Khaos Brigade with the one they name the Dragon of Infinity is not just a rumor as you thought it to be. You have seen tonight what a fraction of that alliance could do"
He opened his arms that represented the craters and collapsed walls along the smoldering grounds, as though presenting a gift he was proud of "Surrender now, Regine. Or I will not stop until there is nothing left of your faction worth surrendering!"
He savored the silence he'd just caused in between the roaring flames within Carmilla territory.
Then he turned around, not bothering to waste his words anymore.
The dragon beside him yawned. He rolled one shoulder, cracked his neck like someone waking from a nap, and followed Marius without urgency with the walk of a creature that had agreed to be here for reasons of its own and was now satisfied that nothing interesting was going to happen anymore. His black wings caught the air in one lazy flap before folding back against his shoulders.
The Khaos Brigade magicians moved behind them with no exchange of words. They simply turned as one toward the golden magic circle pulsing back to life above the territory with symbol-lines burning bright before they broadened and swallowed the assembled forces whole. The male Vampire. The magicians. The dragon's silhouette, last, unhurried, stepping through without looking back.
The circle closed with leaving the courtyard empty.
What remained was the quiet that comes after not peace, but the absence of opposition. Carmilla territory lay open to it with walls cracked and scorched black, pathways torn to rubble, the garden beyond the east gate a field of upturned earth and broken stones.
The castle itself had held, but the grounds around it looked like they'd been thoroughly disagreed with. Through the dissipating smoke, survivors moved in ones and twos, some helping each other to their feet, some standing perfectly still with the blank expression of people who hadn't processed yet that the choice in front of them had narrowed to two options.
Stay and face what was left of a losing faction or switch to the side that had just demonstrated, very clearly, what it was capable of.
---
( The Throne Room )
The candles on either side of the high-backed throne cast shadows outlining Queen Carmilla's silhouette without illuminating her face. She sat with one hand resting in her lap. Her gaze rested on a point in front of her that had nothing to do with her current desire.
Marius Tepes's words were still circling in her mind. Beside her, Elmenhilde Karnstein had not moved in the slightest.
She kept her eyes forward with different sets of thoughts in her head.
'Shall I Go to the guests' The thought surfaced again, the way it had been surfacing every few minutes 'They have power and resources to assist in our predicament. All I have to do is ask about their cooperation'
Her back stiffened against it before the thought finished forming.
The Karnstein name never requests other than queen and fellow Pure blooded vampires. The Carmilla faction did not lower itself to pleading with outsiders for assistance, not while her queen still sat her throne and the faction still had walls standing and—
Her thoughts were interrupted when she noticed the familiar presence of individuals she was thinking of.
Elmenhilde turned, as she stepped into her role.
"How dare you" The words came out sharp and cold "You enter the Queen's throne room without summons. Without so much as an announcement"
'I'm relieved they came' The thought arrived beneath the outrage, quiet and self-incriminating.
She crushed it.
Isaiah met her eyes, stared at her just long enough to register what she said. Then one shoulder lifted in a faint shrug.
"Sorry about that" he said "We will leave"
Elmenhilde's mouth opened in disbelief as Queen spoke before she could muster courage to halt them.
"Wait"
Queen Carmilla's voice filled the room without her rising up. She hadn't moved from the throne. Her head turned toward them with deliberateness as she looked at Isaiah the way someone looks at anamoly that hasn't resolved yet.
"Why are you here?" Her voice was measured. She let the question settle before she continued "You've reconsidered about the peace negotiations?" A pause. The faintest shift in her smile, the kind that happens when someone is building something they're not sure will hold any longer "You've come to tell us your decision has changed?"
Isaiah thought 'We haven't told you a single thing yet. You're writing the conversation yourself and waiting for us to confirm it'
"We'll protect your territory."
The silence that followed had surprised everyone.
Elmenhilde's grip tightened on the hilt she hadn't drawn. Lavinia turned to look at him with an expression that was between genuine surprise and something that had suspected this was coming. Carmilla stared, and for just a moment the carefully assembled composure forgot to hold, she was in utter disbelief wondering if the boy was sane.
Benemune closed her eyes for one second. The sigh that she let out was barely audible. When she opened them again, the look on her face was the specific expression of someone who has seen this exact situation before and brought no paperwork for it.
"Isaiah-kun." Her voice was barely audible but he and Lavinia heard him pretty clearly "We have no authorization. We haven't reported to Azazel yet. We do not have a say in this matter between the vampire factio-"
She stopped herself, when she looked at him as he nodded at her with a firm gaze.
Because she knew. She had known from the moment he had turned back from the window with that particular set to his expression, and if she was honest with herself she had known earlier than that.
So that's why he requested to see Queen Carmilla before she thought, with the tired affection of someone who had long since accepted a fundamental truth Lavinia was right. He is someone who would sacrifice himself for a stranger
"It's only a matter of time before they attack this territory again," He said, turning to take in the cracked window at the far end of the throne room, the fading orange light still bleeding through the glass. "They pulled back tonight because they chose to. When they return, they won't be merciful" He looked at Elmenhilde "Every survivor still outside this castle must be inside it before that happens"
Elmenhilde stared at him
Then without waiting for a word from her queen. Without a glance to ask permission she collapsed into a dark cloud of bats that swept through the nearest cracked window and scattered into the night sky like a thrown handful of shadow.
He faced Queen Carmilla who matched his gaze with her ever present cold eyes.
She was watched him with eyes that were doing something more complicated than evaluating him, something that sat closer to the specific expression of a person who has spent a very long time being the most intelligent person in the room and has just met a situation that isn't cooperating with that fact.
"As I said, we help you protect your territory" He said raising two fingers in front of him "But not without these conditions"
She looked past him, then back at him. The expression on her face settled into something that was the closest a queen who had survived eight centuries of vampire politics was capable of, coming to genuine attention.
The rest of that conversation was not meant to be overheard by any of her people, not even Elmenhilde who always seemed to be next to her.
---
( Isaiah's PoV )
My back hit the mattress and I thanked every God out there for Marius Tepes postponing the raid on this village...I mean territory.
Sigh, It's only been a week since I fought Vali and now this Evil Dragon? The strongest one in existence? Where is Kyoto trip and me getting a big hug from Yasaka and then we live happily after. Sigh, I don't even want to think about how much of the plot has been wrecked by me just killing Vali like that.
"Go with the plot and you survive well enough but go against the plot, it will stir not only the plot but the fate of most individuals. Well, I have no choice but to live with the choice that I made"
The blue screen appeared before me with the familiar soft glow in the pitch darkness of the room. The text assembled itself in lines as I read through them.
*⟨ QUEST RECEIVED ⟩*
*Protect the Carmilla Faction*
*Reward: 2 Character Cards*
"But is saving a vampire faction really worth all the hassle?"
The question arrived with the particular timing of thoughts that wait politely at the back of your mind until you're finally realised you can't avoid it.
I don't have authorization over it anymore. Benemune is going to have words with Azazel that will involve a very long silence on his end followed by something that sounds like laughter. Crom Cruach is involved. The Khaos Brigade is involved. And I jumped straight into it without a second thought.
I dismissed the screen.
And?
The answer was simple. Unavoidable, the way facts that have been sitting in your vision for long enough, eventually become. Sooner or later, I was going to be standing across from every one of those people. Marius. The magicians. The dragon I hadn't named out loud because naming something you shouldn't know yet is its own kind of problem. The only real question had been whether I'd be standing there after the damage was done, or before.
I'd made a lot of choices and luckily I hadn't regretted a single one.
The presence at my door arrived as I didn't need to move, to know who was on the other end.
"Lavinia-san. Come in" I said.
The door opened.
She stepped in without hurry unlike the way she did most things. Closed it behind her with both hands, turning the handle so the latch settled without sound. Crossed the room in the dark and sat at the edge of the mattress, not close, but at enough distance of someone who had something to say and hadn't decided yet exactly how to say it.
She looked at me the way she looked at things she'd been thinking about for longer than the current conversation. The kind of look that meant the question had been sitting with her since before the portal, maybe since before the explosions.
I sat up from the pillow. Whatever she was carrying deserved to be received while we sat next to each other.
For a moment she just held my gaze. She'd set down the gentle-older-sister demeanour she wore by default, the warmth that made people relax around her, the soft competence that made her seem less dangerous than she was. What was left underneath it was something more direct.
Her eyes didn't move from mine, as she looked at me with those innocent eyes that had always seen the truth all their life.
"Did you kill Va-kun?"
. . .
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