XkarnationAlt
patreon
[Villain] Book 2 - Chapter 23: Child of Nightshade
🕑 Added 2025-05-29 03:36:07 +0000 UTC“Finally!” Damien yelled as the group entered a cavern filled with orange light.
Jake Ravenhall turned around with the most curious expression on his ugly mug. “Something catch your eye, Nobleman?”
“Salvation.” Damien walked forward with his arms out wide. “No longer shall I clap as you slay weak beasts! This farce ends now.”
Damien could hardly contain his excitement. He ran a hand through his hair and chuckled wildly to himself. “Scion of a baron family? Pathetic, C-grade mage, as common as the dirt on my shoe! You raved about prestige, how much you wanted to bed my queen, and how it would be an honor for her.”
Jake Ravenhall wearily took a few steps back and began conjuring a torrent of wind around his body as he almost fainted from the bloodlust. “W-who are you? STEP BACK!”
Damien slowed his steps, enjoying every second of Jake’s inevitable demise. The fear on his twisted face, the shaking in his voice, the eradication of his noble mask. Oh, how marvelous it all was.
“For an entire day, I have had to watch your clown show as you paraded around these endless caves like a drooling fool. But finally! Look around! We are alone.” Damien pulled down his cheeks and stared at the ceiling. “I thought I would go mad, I tell you! In all my life, I have never had to bow before someone so deplorable! Ah, I can’t deal with this. You must go.”
Damien moved forward with inhuman speed, gripped the teen’s skull with his fingers, and rammed his thumbs into his eye sockets. Ignoring Jake’s abrupt scream, Damien forcefully tilted Jake’s head back, and with an audible crunch, his neck snapped, and his body slumped down like a puppet cut from its strings.
Then a shrill scream was followed by a clunk of metal on stone.
Damien turned to see two metal slave collars on the ground and one of the women running down the tunnel.
“Kill her,” Damien commanded coldly.
Fay caught up to the fleeing woman with insane swiftness, a well-placed chop to the back of her neck, and the woman fell to the floor. Dead.
Damien let out a long sigh. Hours of frustration seemed to melt away, and he felt far better. Holding in such immense bloodlust for hours while putting his acting skills to the test was a truly mentally taxing endeavor.
I can’t believe how many patrols and delvers are down in this dungeon. If not for my plan requiring staying lowkey, I would have murdered them all on sight!
Damien turned to the remaining woman, who had stayed completely motionless and didn’t make a sound throughout the attack. He raised his brow in confusion at her utterly emotionless face. “Miss? Have you fainted?”
The woman’s soulless eyes met Damien’s, and she shrugged. Her voice was tired and bored. “Saw it coming from a mile away,” she said, sighing before continuing as if she were commenting on the weather. “So, how is this going to work? Do you kill me now?”
“What is your name?” Fay asked.
The woman looked to the floor. “My name? Does it matter? I have been a slave my entire life. My name has changed so many times that I can’t remember.”
Damien pondered on his plan. Originally, I planned to sneak around the dungeon and gather a legion of thralls, but that sounds like far too much work. A Noble Vampire’s job is to sit back and let their subordinates handle things, especially since I’m a prince.
He paused as he realized that Vanity would laugh at him if she found out he ran around the caves gathering the thralls himself.
“All right,” Damien said to the weird woman, “I plan to kill, enslave or corrupt everyone in this city by the end of the week. But I will present to you a unique opportunity. Become my first vampire subordinate and I'll let you live.”
“Okay,” she said with the most uninspired or excited expression. She had the definition of a deadpan expression on her average face.
Damien enjoyed how easygoing this woman was.
“I shall bestow you the name Olympia, as you shall become my champion.”
Olympia didn’t know why, but her body automatically knelt, and she tilted her head to the side. Her strawberry-blond hair fell over her face. She then felt pain and warm breath on her neck as the strange noble seemed to lean in for a kiss, but two fangs penetrated. Then the most horrifying thing occurred. Something she had never known was stripped away, leaving a void behind—her soul was fragmented and broken.
She felt within herself an ability she never had before. Within the darkness of herself was a ball of silver light that was fractured and drifting. Olympia watched in horror as Damien’s blood surged through the cracks of her soul, turning the beautiful silver ball a crimson shade.
She felt empty.
As if there was a hole in her chest that wind could blow through.
But as she tilted her head back and howled, primal rage and bloodlust surged forth.
“WHY AM I SO THIRSTY.”
She screamed and howled like a mongrel, but she did not care. This man, her master, had stolen her soul. She wished she picked death. Olympia concluded that this was worse than death. She couldn’t even hate her master, for she could feel his emotions. He was beside her. He was calming her.
Her body convulsed as her DNA was rewritten and shaped to her master’s will. Her withered body that was more bone than skin fattened out, and her eyes flashed a dangerous red as her hair fell out and grew anew.
Her muscles spasmed and strengthened, her nails dyed black like some cursed disease and elongated into claws. She had become a monster in human skin.
Her vision was dyed red, like a summer’s day sunset on a desert dune. SO THIRSTY. Olympia looked around with frantic movements, her head moving at impossible angles. She saw her master look at her with curiosity and amusement like one would observe an untrained puppy.
She then saw prey. A team of delvers had heard her scream and come to investigate. She could smell them from here. So delicious, so thirsty, so, so, so, so delectable.
She rushed onward and fell flat on her face. “Curses,” she hissed in pain, and Damien laughed.
“Silly thing, let me help you.”
Olympia was stunned and confused. Then, finally, her master’s claw clamped around her neck, bringing her to an unconscious delver. FOOD!
“Drink deep, and try to corrupt him.” Damien’s voice tickled her ear, and she complied.
Her jaw unhinged further than ever before, and she clamped down. Her fangs penetrated tender flesh. She couldn’t see or smell the man she was feasting from, but he tasted scrumptious.
She drank until she felt her master’s hand on her head—he was mad.
“Corrupt him. Don’t just drink, you fool.”
She complied.
As natural as breathing, she pumped a little of her blood back into the man’s neck.
***
Damien watched in wonder as the random delver’s neck turned black as if he had contracted the bubonic plague. The spots of decay rapidly accumulated until they covered every inch of the man’s skin. Then with a groan similar to a zombie, the diseased corpse rose onto two wobbly feet and stood dumbly, awaiting its mistress’s orders.
Without missing a beat, Damien shoved the mouth of his new vampire onto the next victim and repeated the process.
By the end, he had a drunk vampire surrounded by five fully armored thralls.
***
Olympia awoke in a cavern dyed in an orange hue. Sitting in a lotus position upon a rock outcrop in the center of the vast space was the master’s queen. Olympia could instinctively feel that woman’s relationship with her master.
“Oh, you have awoken my child.”
“Child?”
Damien nodded. “You have been reborn from my blood and shaped by my will. Therefore you are my spawn, my kin, my child. And you shan’t be the last but simply one of many. So come, young one—I have much to teach you.”
Olympia stood up and wobbled on her feet. She was taller, more muscular, yet also lighter than before. She was also naked—something she was used to as a slave, but she felt more embarrassed now than before. Olympia felt the tips of her curved ears go red as she meekly walked forward while trying to cover herself.
A humiliating training exercise ensued. She ran laps around the cavern, going faster each time. Finally, when she tired, Master offered her a drop of blood, and she felt reborn with boundless energy.
She ran and ran for hours, days, maybe even a week. Occasionally a group of delvers would wander close, and she would wait in hiding. Then, as per Master’s teachings, she would swoop down and thrust a claw through the most dangerous one’s throat, ripping it out like a trophy in a shower of blood. She gulped a mouthful from the open wound before leaping to the next target like some cursed frog.
Like a plague, numbers joined her army with every group she slew.
The master scared her, but the queen outright terrified her. Olympia had the privilege to learn the mistress’s name was Fay, and she wielded a power that no vampire should touch.
Flames.
Apart from eating and sleeping, the mistress spent all the time absorbing the raging fire from an orange stone. Even Master kept a wary distance as the raging circle of flames always surrounded the mistress.
Olympia felt better than ever. Her powers had grown; she could move faster than any mage and had the strength to match any warrior and the sustain to match even the greatest orcs.
“Olympia.”
She turned and gave a toothy grin to her master.
“Fay has absorbed the Fire elemental stone. It’s about time we conquered the surface with the army of thralls you helped me obtain, don’t you think?”
Olympia had never heard sweeter words.
Comments
Jonathan
That’s only for siring noble vampires. They can still create the lesser variant and thralls.
Temporay Neveruse
I thought vampires had no way to procreate other than reproduction in this setting. Isn't that why blood queens were a thing?
