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The entire Tangled Tower trembled with the force of impact and magical energy unleashed by Nyrielle’s confrontation with Hamdi.

On the floor above, Zedya had just finished seeing the last of their luggage removed from the carriages and was preparing to bring it down to Nyrielle’s temporary quarters when she felt the surge of her lady’s dark energy from the floor below.

"Little Lenny," the amethyst-eyed vampire said as she took a seat on her coffin-like daybed. "Send four of your men to escort our drivers and the wagons to the stables and then bring everyone here as quickly as possible. I want all of our people where I can see them."

"At once, Madame Zedya," the bearish captain said, quickly giving orders to a few of his men. "Madame Zedya," he asked a moment later as he took a position behind her where he could guard her back should the need come. "What’s happening?"

"I don’t know," the vampire said. "Mistress Nyrielle can borrow my eyes whenever she wishes to see through them, but I can’t do the same with her unless she chooses to show me something. All I know is that our host has ascended from the deeper levels and..."

As the tower shook, a loud rumble and a rain of dust from the ceiling interrupted their conversation, prompting the two to share a concerned look.

The tower had been built from tens of thousands of tons of black granite, reinforced by iron-bound timber, and it had stood as an icon of the strength of the Tangled Wood for centuries.

Just what was happening below to make the entire tower tremble?

A floor below, the sitting room had transformed from a place of fading opulence into a scene of carnage and devastation.

The chair that Ignatious sat in had become a strange island of the room’s former stately appearance as Nyrielle fought to keep Hamdi from reaching him, but very few of the room’s other furnishings remained intact after several minutes of intense confrontation.

Bookshelves had fallen from the walls, their contents strewn across the floor.

Many of the oil lamps in the room had fallen to the floor, some shattering and spilling burning oil onto the loose pages of books that had been shredded by Nyrielle and Hamdi’s fight.

Dark smoke had begun to fill the room, lit from below by the flames reflecting off the broken crystal and crumpled silver serving ware.

At the moment, Nyrielle and Hamdi stood a few feet apart, both of them breathing heavily and covered in wounds.

Hamdi’s embroidered tunic had been torn from shoulder to the opposite hip and a deep, bloody gouge marred his powerful chest. The wound was by far the most dire and had he not abandoned his dignity to throw himself aside at the last instant, Nyrielle’s ax would have buried itself so deep in his chest that his heart would have been cleaved in two.

Dozens of smaller wounds covered his arms and legs and thick blood matted the dark fur of his head from a blow that had nearly severed one of his pointed ears. As is, one of his prized conquest rings had been torn free of his ear, now lost somewhere against the burning wreckage of the sitting room.

From his seat in the middle of the room, Ignatious watched with wide eyes as blood dripped from Hamdi’s body.

The wounds she’d inflicted were much less severe than anything he’d suffered from the Golden Eyed vampire but they were far greater than anything he’d seen inflicted on the vampire in all his years as a captive of the Tangled Tower.

Moreover, from the slight shudder when the High Lord drew breath to the wince as he raised his sword, Ignatious realized that Nyrielle wasn’t just injuring his tormentor, she had reawakened the ancient vampire’s ability to feel pain, almost as if she wanted to revisit on him a portion of the suffering he’d inflicted on her progeny.

Deep within Ignatious, cracks began to form in the prison of fear that kept him pinned in place.

Nyrielle was doing something he never could have, she was fighting back against his tormentor in a way that had real consequences for the High Lord.

More than that, she was proving that, with enough power, even Hamdi would bleed. ..

Of course, Nyrielle herself hadn’t escaped unscathed as she dueled with the ancient vampire.

She’d paid a price in blood for the wounds she inflicted on Hamdi’s body.

True to the methods of the Golden Eyed Clan, Hamdi’s first priority had been to cripple her movement.

His habits betrayed his intentions as he focused on her legs, tearing through Nyrielle’s flowing skirts to inflict deep wounds on her alabaster thighs and calves leaving them slick with crimson blood.

Only her deft use of her wings combined with sorcery that allowed her to flow through the darkness like mist allowed her to ignore the wounds and continue to press her assault on the older vampire.

The entire time they fought, no matter how hard Nyrielle pressed him, Hamdi never lost sight of the trembling vampire trapped in a prison of his own making in the center of the room.

He had no hatred of Ignatious, if anything he found the man to be contemptibly weak and unworthy of his time and attention.

And yet, because Nyrielle had chosen to defy his will, the man had to die. Once he made his decision, there was no changing it. In a few hours, the sun would rise, and by then, Ignatious would be dead. As far as Hamdi was concerned, both things were inevitable.

"Give it up, young pup," Hamdi said. Holding up his heavy-bladed sword, he licked Nyrielle’s blood from his blade, savoring the smooth, fresh taste of the younger woman’s blood.

The scent of it alone was intoxicating enough to momentarily distract him and the taste sent shivers of delight down his spine in a way he hadn’t felt in well over a century.

"Offer up the useless wretch’s head and I can forgive this," he said, gesturing at the devastation around them. "Otherwise, I won’t stop with just him. You brought your maid too, didn’t you?

" Hamdi said with a dark grin as he licked his lips.

"It took a decade for this worthless child of yours to completely break.

How much longer do you think she would last? "

"Is this all that’s left of you after all these years?

" Nyrielle asked. Shadowy energy swirled around her, dancing like dark flames drinking in the light of the fire and spreading the chill of the grave wherever they went.

"The mighty progeny of the Jaws of Death has become nothing but a force of malevolent cruelty poured into flesh and fur," she said derisively.

"Ignatious is already twice the man you currently are and he will rise to greater heights than you can imagine," Nyrielle said as she adjusted her grip on the headsman’s axe in her hands, pointing the oversized blade at Hamdi’s chest. "Who shakes in fear at your name, Hamdi?

What powerful nation have you cowed into restraint? "

"Or is this all you’re capable of," she said, glancing at her paralyzed progeny. "Preying on the young before they grow into their power to prop up your illusion of power and strength."

"Rich words from the failure of an Eldritch Lady who holds less than a quarter of what your predecessor would have entrusted to you," Hamdi said, his tone dripping with scorn.

"No nation has stood against my pack in the past three hundred years.

The Tangled Wood, the Black Hills, the Sage Fields, and even the Blood Sands have all come under my rule. "

"My rise is as inexorable as your fall," the older vampire said, looking down his long nose at the winged woman before him.

"In another century, the last remnants of your Vale of Mists will address me as Great Lord Hamdi, and you.

.. you they will curse for failing them when they needed you the most."

"No wonder His Eternity Shabnalu wants you returned to his side. He must be ashamed of the failure his student has become," Hamdi said as the silvery light enveloping his sword expanded to form long claws on his free hand.

"This is your last chance, pup," the older vampire said. "Offer up your progeny’s head and submit yourself to me and I promise to deliver you back to your teacher in one piece. I’m sure he’d pay handsomely to receive you delivered back into his care."

Hamdi’s words hit Nyrielle like a dagger to the chest. After seeing Hamdi’s antagonism, she’d all but concluded that he had been the one to order Tausau to withhold aid from the Vale of Mists.

He and his progeny were the closest vampire lords to her domain and she would have to spend at least a month traveling to reach another powerful vampire lord who might be able to provide aid.

Just his action of denying her would cost her tremendous amounts of time in rallying support for the Vale of Mists.

But, if the order had come from the Fangs of Death Shabnalu himself.

.. if her mentor was the one to make a move against her, then it was possible that she would find no help from any of the vampire lords.

After all, Hamdi wasn’t one of Shabnalu’s progeny, he was one of Bardas’.

For her mentor to effectively command Hamdi meant that at least two of the other three True vampires had taken a stand against her. ..

"So you’ve become a lapdog," Nyrielle said, as she gathered even more power to her hands. "You will bark for anyone who gives you a command, wagging your tail and hoping for scraps from the table of your betters. The instrument of your fall is already at hand, Hamdi," Nyrielle said.

"It’s just, that your master never taught you how to recognize when a single man had grown too powerful and too ambitious to be allowed to continue to exist," Nyrielle said. "Since you see fit to invoke my mentor’s name, then let me teach you what the Fangs of Death does to men like you."