Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1616  One Boon

"As recompense for the burden lifted from my shoulders," the Archduke spoke at last, "and as small aid toward your quest, I shall grant you a single boon."

"State what you desire."

Quinlan's reply came without a heartbeat's pause.

"Be my ally who works toward my goals, shares with me all the knowledge I want to know, and kills my enemies-"

A sound escaped the vampire, dry and unhurried. His shoulders shook once. The fangs gleamed.

"The newer generations possess a boldness I had thought long extinct." The amusement remained, but the red gaze sharpened. "I told you already, Primordial. My days of conquest lie behind me. My services are not for hire."

Quinlan clicked his tongue.

"Worth a shot."

The refusal was expected. He'd known it from the moment he asked. But the image of rolling into a battlefield with an Archduke Vampire at his side had been too delicious to let pass without a try.

So he tried again.

"There's a nine-tailed foxkin lady sleeping in my garden-"

The air in the chamber collapsed.

Bloodlust erupted from the throne like a pressure wave, so vast and so sudden that the crimson banners on the walls snapped as if struck by a gale. The cobwebs on the candelabras tore loose. The black marble underfoot grew cold.

The Archduke's fangs were bared fully, long and ivory-white, and the red had gone from patient to murderous between one heartbeat and the next.

"You will stop this disrespect, Primordial."

The voice filled the chamber like a funeral hymn.

"Or I will end you."

Quinlan's opportunistic attempts died then and there.

"My apologies. I got carried away."

The pressure held for a long moment.

Then, slowly, the bloodlust receded. The banners settled. The marble warmed. The Archduke's fangs disappeared behind the shriveled line of his lips, and the red gaze cooled back into weariness.

"Understand me, Primordial." The dry cadence had returned. "That you would seek my alliance is no insult. I am Archduke Vasilen Sangomar of the Sangomar line, and the strength I possess has been the prize of a thousand ambitions. To covet me is the natural conclusion of any clever man who lays eyes upon what I am. That much, I forgive."

The withered hand settled on the armrest with the precision of a verdict.

"But do not, under any circumstance, attempt to replace my Mirethiel with another woman."

Quinlan nodded.

"Then if I may, there's a class I've been circling. Blood Mage. Two requirements stand in my way."

His attention settled on Quinlan with fresh weight.

"First, drink the blood of a level seventy or higher entity. That was accomplished during my battle with Nyxara. Second, fill a blood storage artifact with the blood of slain enemies, at least a thousand liters. I don't have the artifact, and as far as I'm aware, no one on the continent has heard of one."

The Archduke considered.

"A blood storage vessel of that capacity is no trifle even within my ancestral lands. Such an artifact is counted among the high treasures of my kin."

A long silence.

Then the shriveled hand lifted.

The Archduke drew a small ring from his finger, no larger than a knuckle's width, and tossed it.

The artifact crossed the dais in a slow arc and landed in Quinlan's open palm with a weight that had no business belonging to a thing of its size.

Quinlan's brow twitched.

The mass wasn't right. The ring sat in his hand like a compressed stone, and a density in the weight pulled at the edges of his perception. He closed his fingers around it and narrowed his focus, using his primordial eyes to read the artifact's details.

[Name: Crimson Reservoir of the Sangomar Line]

[Rarity: Legendary]

[An heirloom vessel of the Sangomar vampire kin. Stores blood drawn through contact with the wielder, synchronising with blood-based classes to serve as an extension of the user's sanguinary arts.]

'Legendary.'

'And it synergizes with blood-based classes.'

Quinlan's palm closed.

"Appreciated, gramps."

[Synchra] receded across Quinlan's hand. Plate flowed back into mesh, mesh thinned into nothing, and the gauntlet split open over his fingers in a slow wash of red veins until the bare skin of his hand emerged.

He pinched the ring between two fingers.

The band had been forged for the Archduke's withered hand. Against Quinlan's finger, the opening was a fraction of what it needed to be, too narrow to slide past the second knuckle, let alone settle at the base.

He pressed it against his finger anyway.

The black stone caught the chamber's silver light, and the ring widened. The metal rippled outward in a slow expansion until the band fit cleanly over his finger, then stilled. This was the basic property of all high-tier artifacts, fitting to their new user's dimensions.

Quinlan slid it down to the base, then [Synchra] flowed back across him, sealing over the ring as if it had always been there.

"And the question?" the vampire lord asked.

Quinlan flexed his fingers once, then his focus returned to the throne.

"This damned veil around Iskaris. The Suppression. I want it gone."

Vasilen did not answer immediately. His attention fixed on Quinlan and held there unmoving, and for several heartbeats the silence stretched long enough that Quinlan wondered if the question had been refused outright.

Then the desiccated mouth shifted.

A grin emerged, slow and wide.

"Do what feels natural to you, Primordial. Your predisposed urges should guide you to the answer."

The grin held for another heartbeat, then the fangs retreated behind the dry cadence once more.

Quinlan waited for elaboration. None came.

'This ancient bastard.'

"Could you elaborate?"

"I have spoken overmuch already." His hand returned to the armrest.

Quinlan stared at him flatly.

"Why are all you oldheads so intent on keeping secrets?"

The Archduke chuckled.

It was a real sound this time, warm and amused.

"If we handfeed the answers to the new generation, the new generation grows even more incapable than it already is."

'This damned boomer vampire...'

Ignoring Quinlan's internal thoughts, the Archduke lowered his shoulders.

This went deeper than the settling of relief he'd shown after Quinlan drank the tear. His withered hands slid from the armrests into his lap, and the ancient features eased.

"With that done…"

A long exhale left him.

"Finally..."

The dry cadence had thinned to almost nothing.

"...no longer bound."

Quinlan straightened.

"You sure about this, gramps?"

The red eyes, dimmed now to embers in the deep sockets, lifted toward him with fondness.

"I have been sure, Primordial..." A pause to gather what little remained. "...since she closed her eyelids for the final time."

The pressure began to move.

For epochs, the Archduke had held himself against the Suppression. Now he stopped. The veil that had thinned every supernatural strength on the continent found its grip at last and pressed in.

The robes settled first.

They sagged where the body beneath them began to lose its form, the rich black and crimson fabric folding inward as the substance it had draped for centuries gave up its shape. From the hem upward, ash bloomed. A fine dust drifting from the edges of the embroidery. Then the dust thickened.

The shriveled hands in his lap dissolved finger by finger, the bones flaking apart and turning to grey before they reached the air. The high collar deflated as the column of his throat went. A breeze that had no source stirred the air and carried the first ash upward in a quiet column toward the vaulted ceiling.

The face held the longest.

The desiccated features watched Quinlan as they came apart, the red gaze burning steady inside the dissolving skull. The fangs gleamed once. The mouth shaped a movement that might have been a final word, or might have been the memory of one.

Then the eyes closed.

The face crumbled, and ash poured from the throne in a long exhale of grey. The room filled with the soft drift of an Archduke being scattered to nothing.

Behind Quinlan, a small wet sound broke the silence. Then another. Isveth and the elders stood in a loose half-circle behind him, their hands folded inside their sleeves, their cheeks streaked with quiet tears. Even the staff-bearer who had once demanded his blood watched the throne with grief in her old eyes.

A legend was ending in front of them.

Quinlan stood still.