Blood Shaper

“There’s no need to rush,” One of the figures huddled in a shadowed spot between tents whispered to their fellows. “Why are we being pushed to move this quickly?”

“It isn’t like there’s actually a threat to deal with,” Another agreed, “We’re going to stomp on some backwater little ‘king’ who thinks they’re big enough to demand terms from the Order after some little scuffle. Honestly, who do they think we are? A two-bit band of mercenaries that have killed a random vampyr or two? We’re the Shatterplate Order!”

“No, no,” A third jumped in with a falsely sweet tone, “We aren’t going to stomp on anything, we’re just showing the concerned king who had some little vampyr problem they couldn’t deal with on their own how powerful the Order actually is. There won’t be any violence just a show of why they should be grateful for the Order’s assistance instead of being pissy about things not going how their ruler wanted.”

The fourth figure standing in the shaded, out of the way area of one the Shatterplate Order’s many camps as they marched toward Avalon said nothing. The other three didn’t notice the silence, or if they did they didn’t care.

“You’re right though,” The third speaker continued, “Who do they think the Order is? Because they have to be completely out of the loop to think that we’d actually move the entire organization including our training centers into some little hodunk one city ‘kingdom’. The farther east you go the worse everything seems to get. They probably don’t even get that the Order is back by nations hundreds of times larger than theirs.”

“Do you know what actually happened? There’ve been all kinds of rumors floating around, but no one has given me a straight answer. I even bugged my team leader, and he just told me to ‘shut up and keep moving’! Can you believe that.”

“It’s been the same for me! Everyone’s been on edge this entire time, I wonder if they think we’re actually going to get in a fight when we get there?”

One of the three leaned in closer and whispered excitedly, “Well I heard it involves the Commander’s daughter.”

The other two scooted closer to hear the juicy gossip. “Really?”

“Really. The minor king or whatever they call themselves out there apparently had a vampyr causing problems, one the Commander’s daughter was tracking down with her hunting team, and the king fell in love with her, but she didn’t want to shack up with some petty little mid-tier calling themselves a ruler. The guy got so mad he caused a bunch of problems, got in a fight with her team and then had to run off to lick his wounds when the hunting team kicked his ass. Then he made some demands like there was a real fight and talked all this shit to the Order, that’s why we’re going to show him what’s up.”

“Are you actually fucking stupid?” The fourth figure asked.

All three of the rumormongers jumped back in shock.

“Who are-“

“Nope.” The fourth figure was suddenly in their face, staring at them with disdain. “I asked you a question, and I want an answer. Are you fucking stupid?”

“Ah… um… No, ma’am?” One of them answered.

She turned a hard stare on them.

“No… Hunter Ravenhome?”

“Close enough.” She swept her glare back on to the other two, who had thought her attention being leveled on their fellow for a second might actually give them a moment to escape. “If you’re not complete morons like I think you are. How can none of the three of you have any idea what the hell we’re doing out here or why we’re going to Avalon? I’ll allow some level of nonsense and rumors to taint your idea of things, but to literally have only the most basic of bullshit ideas of anything that went on? There was a mandatory gathering where the Commander told everyone what happened! Where you not there for some reason?”

The three young idiots, arrogant noble brats that had set out in the world to ‘make a name for themselves’ or some other such nonsense when they hadn’t inherited their families entire fortunes from the look of them, all did their best not to look sheepish. Alice suppressed a sigh and kept her best ‘you’ve done bad things and I’m an angry superior’ look on her face. It wasn’t hard, the tripe they’d been spouting was complete and utter bullshit of the highest order. Toning down what had gone on to make the Order look better? Fine, even some of the highest ranking hunters were trying to do that, not that they were getting away with it much with her and her father calling them on their bullshit. But saying that Kay propositioned her and she shot him down was the entire reason for the ‘scuffle’ that had happened at Avalon? That annoyed her. There were bigger things at stake here and these three were worried about banal and incorrect gossip!

“You three are to report to your camp’s quartermaster for punishment detail for the rest of the week. You’ll also be given a written record of the Commander’s speech about what happened in Avalon and when I come to check on you three in a week you better have it damn well memorized. You understand me?”

“Yes ma’am!” The three of them shouted before scampering off. Alice let it, and them go, even if it wasn’t the correct form of address.

“Really?” She muttered to herself as she stalked toward the camp quartermaster’s tent to make sure he knew not to let the idiots sneak around their punishment. “I turned Kay down and he started acting like a bully? Obviously he’s not that kind of person, which I can allow for them not knowing him, but really? Half the world was accusing him of being some terrifying vampyr king and between the three of you you didn’t have an inkling? Do all three of you get cotton in your ears while living under that rock? I mean, they aren’t wrong that I’d shoot Kay down if he asked me anything like that, but to make it an excuse for this?” She threw her arms out, gesturing at the camp, which was surround by even more of the same layout, all a product of the Shatterplate Order marching to do basically what Kay had demanded of them. “Idiots.” ȒἁɴỌВÊȿ

“Talking to yourself? That’s not a good sign.”

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Alice tensed, then slowly relaxed, forcing herself not to spin around with her weapon drawn. “Dad, I asked you not to do that.”

Edric Ravenhome, Commander and founder of the Shatterplate Order threw his arms over his daughter’s shoulder and started pulling her along. “And I believe I told you I was going to do what I wanted anyways.”

“What’re you doing here?” Alice asked, “I thought you were coordinating our march with the Crusader General?”

“I was, but he’s much more experienced with handling large bodies of people on the move, while my specialty is definitely small groups moving much more furtively, so he ended up doing most of the work. I’ve been learning a lot from him, and hopefully he’s learning a lot from me, so everything’s fine.”

“That’s great, but why are you here?”

“Oh, same reason you are I supposed.” Her dad’s face went hard for a moment. “Some of my subordinates who should know better decided they could get back to stirring the pot, as long as I wasn’t looking of course, and I came to instruct them in the error of their ways. You beat me to it, and I decided to grab you after you were done.”

He was right, that was why Alice was in that specific camp. “Did I do alright?”

“You did fine,” He reassured her, “Handled it professionally, gave him the exact same punishment I would have and for the same reasons, and you didn’t do it in front of his subordinates or drag it out for too long. Well handled all around.”

“Thanks!” Alice couldn’t help but perk up at the praise. It didn’t matter that she was a fully fledged adult, a trained hunter of vampyr, and had gone some really harrowing things including having her species forcibly changed, she still loved her parents and wanted to make them proud.

The group leader in question had really pissed her off though, in a completely different way than those three idiots that had needed their own scolding. The general body of the Order’s hunters were divided into three levels, ordinary hunters were part of hunting teams, led by team leaders. That’s what Alice had been doing when she’d first gone to Avalon. A group of ten hunting teams was a hunting group, led by a group leader and those were the majority of the Order’s combat officers. There were a handful of higher ranking figures that handled even larger gatherings of hunters, but those happened rarely. The Order handled hunting and tracking down individual vampyr or small groups of them, the Crusade were the ones who showed up when an army was needed to root out the monsters.

With group leaders being the main leadership position in the Order they were heavily vetted and had to be both skilled and trusted to reach that position. In turn they were given a lot of leeway within the most rigid guidelines that the Order had for all of it’s hunters. That trust however was being tested by more than one group leader, who definitely should all know better. The Order wasn’t a noble’s private army, or even a national army. They weren’t a mercenary group or an adventuring party, they were the Shatterplate Order. The Order had been founded and was still led by the same man who had built it from the ground up after the day her father had come home to find his home town destroyed by vampyr and the shatter plates Alice’s grandmother had prepared dinner on spread all about the family’s home.

Her father was in charge of the Order, there were no ifs ands or buts about it. What he said went when it came to his organization, and she completely agreed with the ultimatum he’d given the detractors among the Order’s leadership when he’d announced that they would be acceding to Kay’s demands. They could stay in the Order and do as he said, or they could leave. So the fact that some of those that had stayed, they’d only lost a handful which had actually been surprising to Alice, were now doing their best to sow dissent was incredibly aggravating. It’s not like they were the multi-headed hydra that was the Itarian Crusade, with different cults of personality headed by different Crusader Generals making up the leadership.

That was looking like it would end up being a long term problem. The old-school Crusader Generals that were now being led by Crusader General Stonegnawer seemed ready for a schism between the two main factions that the Crusade had clustered around. Stonegnawer’s faction was willing to accept Kay’s demands, with a few codicils, and were looking to use them as a means to break the power of the other faction, which was growing too reactionary for many of the Crusader Generals who had been with the organization for a long time. The other faction was led by younger officers, who were angrily refusing to have anything to do with anyone even remotely related to vampyr in any way, and many were still pushing for the entire Crusade to gather and burn Avalon to the ground. Which wasn’t going to happen for a multitude of reasons. Alice wasn’t going to be surprised if the Crusade broke into at least two different factions in short order, and one of those was going to be a threat to the safety of others.

That wasn’t her problem though. Her problems were many, but controlling someone else’s idiots wasn’t one of them. She had to deal with her new position as he dad’s protege, one she’d never actually planned to have, learn to function with her new species that had an interesting new dietary requirement, and figure out how to finally get the Vampyr Hunter Class she’d been busting her ass off to make come to fruition.

“So, you’d turn down King Kay if he propositioned you?” Her dad asked with fake casualness, “It’d be a good way to connect the Order to Avalon and make sure we can stay relevant in our new home.”

“Dad!” Alice protested. “That’s not funny, you know I wouldn’t do that.” She paused for dramatic effect, “If Eleniah asked though…”

Edric chuckled and shook his head. “Sadly for your romantic fantasies, we both know she and Kay are going to end up together in the end.”

“Sure, but they’re both being so obtuse about it, I might be able to slip some nice nights in there with her, you never know.”

“We’ll see. Good luck if you see and opportunity but I wouldn’t hold my breath.” He glanced over at her as they walked back to their shared tent. “How’re you doing at… ah…”

“Acquiring blood to drink?” She couldn’t blame him for his hesitation in dealing with the topic. They’d both dealt with too many damn vampyr to treat the idea of drinking blood casually. “It’s been fine. Kay and Lauren’s message to me that they included in the general ones to you and the Order gave me a bit more information than I’d figured out and I don’t think they know that animal blood is fine as long as we drink it in larger amounts than blood from people.” She stopped in place for a moment before forcing herself to keep walking. “I don’t think they know that we can go into blood lust if we don’t drink enough either.”

Edric stopped, turned to her, and dragged her into a hug. “You didn’t hurt anyone. You literally didn’t even touch anyone. You found out it was happening, kept yourself totally in control, and dealt with it by finding an animal to drink a bit from. You literally proved you aren’t a vampyr with that. Those monsters literally can’t control themselves when their blood lust hits.”

“I know. I’m just worried about it happening to them and it causing problems.”

They both scowled at the thought of giving the rage fueled or just damn stubborn idiots who wanted to keep insisting that Kay, and now Alice, were monsters to be eradicated more fuel for their pyres.

“Kay knows quite a bit about vampires from his world, remember? I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Alice let out a sigh, then squeezed her dad tight before letting go. “You’re right. And besides, with the Crusader General setting the pace, we’ll all get there in no time, both to support them with this new problem and I can tell them all the things I’ve figured out about being a vampire since I’ve seen them.”

“That’s a good attitude. Plus you’ll get to see Zeia again!”

“Dad, that isn’t funny.”

“What?” He asked with all the false innocence in the world, “She has to have been studying vampires and different things we can learn about the vampyr from them this whole time! I was being topical!”

“Right, that’s totally what you meant.”

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