Twice now, bone witch. Twice you have disrespected me.
First, your fleshless constructs infringe upon my garden!
Second, your flippant response to my command of atonement!
Hence, I make my way to your castle on the night of the New Moon.
I shall have my apology and your fealty, otherwise… your head.
You shall repay me, by my Blood with your own, in kind.
-Lord Synth Gehrman
“Wow… Vampires sure are dramatic.” Anemone sighed aloud to her coffee table as it scurried alongside her to receive her empty coffee mug. She was pacing around the entry hall of her estate, reading the letter and glowering at the bloody thumbprint that the vampire had left to punctuate his message which was… an interesting choice for him to make. It was just all so… extra. She figured he’d be upset about what happened, but this was just ridiculous.
It wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose – at least not the first infraction. She had simply sent out a squad of skeletal spearmen up river to go harvest some salmon. Twas the season after all and the bears didn’t tend to bother skeletons – what point would there be to gnaw particular on stabby bones? The problem was that she’d hangrily sent out the platoon to the bear’s hunting ground as the crow flew… and they happened to trample through the rose garden of one of the nearby vampire warlords.
But this ended up being an opportunity!
Lord Synth Gehrman had been fairly nettled by this occurrence and had his servants track the origin of the platoon to Anemone’s estate. He’d delivered his first letter by flying a bat directly into her bed chamber – which one of her golems swatted down handily. Unlike this most recent letter – hastily scrawled at best – the first one had been composed of elegant strokes and was almost cordial. However it had also demanded that she show up… at his estate… in person… to hand clean his garden! So had her response delivered in the form of a letter within a skull thrown by its own body at Synth’s front door. That had been on purpose, and it read:
Dear ‘Lord’ Synth,
lol FUCK no.
-Anemone
And he took exception to that.
Anemone felt she could not be blamed for her dismissiveness. Afterall, the dead were nothing but tools to be used. Things you controlled in order to better control your environment, surroundings, and better things for the living; namely Anemone herself. Her vast array of necromantic powers were nothing more than a vector of control for a vector of control. So how dare this undead – what a term – try to boss her around like it had any stake in the life she was living?
Utter blasphemy! Anemone thought to herself venomously.
She had three nights to prepare.
***
Anemone flinched – more out of annoyance than pain or surprise – as she felt a couple of dozen skeletons more or less explode into countless fragments near the front gate of her estate. She stood from the chaise lounge chair she’d had one of her golems carry down to the top of the stairs and clapped her hands on her cheeks as she moved to stand at the top of the steps, looking down on the main hall. Her blood spiders had crawled all over the chamber for the better part of the evening; placing candles and lighting them for proper ambience. Drama had to be answered with drama and Anemone certainly was not going to lose out in theatrics to some old, cocky, dead thing.
Showtime!
She nodded at the skeletal servants standing guard at either side of the door, who reached out mechanically to open up the door. As soon as the thick oak doors finished creaking open the cloaked ‘Lord’ Synth Gehrman passed through the threshold.
“Oh? An invitation then? And here I thought I was doomed to tear down this ostentatious domicile of yours plank by disrespectful plank.” The pale-skinned, red eyed invader dripped with self-assurance and self-importance in equal measure. “I suppose I should take this to mean you are preparing to throw yourself prostrate at my feet, then?”
Anemone scoffed at the suggestion. “Hardly. I just didn’t want my front doors to go the way of my front guards. I like those doors. They do a nice creeeeak sort of thing when they open. Didn’t you notice?”
The vampire grinned at her menacingly. “It appears you do not understand how much danger you are in, little witch. I would ask for your last words, but I think I will have you raised into a pet just like the ones you keep! If you apologize, I will even make sure you can have a voice to scream with!”
Anemone rewarded the threat with a condescendingly saccharine smile. “I had thought you were verbose from your letters, but wow you’re so much worse face to face.”
His grin collapsed into a sneer and he shot forward in a blur of velvet black and shining red and sharp toothed white, crossing the distance between the front door and the bottom stair in a fraction of a second. Suddenly there was a crackle of iridescent, red-black energy as Synth crashed face first into the blood wards she had drawn on the floor and covered with an old, tattered area rug. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end from the magical discharge and her body felt hot as her blood briefly formed billions of little writhing hands in her veins before collapsing back to normal.
Uncomfortable, but not unexpected.
“Coward! Hiding behind walls is all you Humans are good for! Do you really believe you are safe back there?! I will tear this-”
Anemone rolled her eyes. “Enough. Spider.”
“Wh- Spider?” He echoed in confusion as a Blood Spider dropped down on the hardwood behind the vampire. It crawled over to the rug as he turned around, lifted it slightly, crawled underneath, and then seemingly sank into the ground, as if turning into a puddle underneath. Anemone sighed in relief that her relatively simple plan had come to fruition. It had almost been too easy. Almost.
“You see. That’s the thing with you vampires: you think you’re any different from a skeleton. Such massive egos for a dead thing, you can just be yanked around by it like a fish with a hook through its lip.”
“Bite your fucking tongue, wench! I am a fucking vampire! King of all that is dead and undead and living and I will no longer entertain this farce! This wall crumbles n-”
“It’s not a wall, ‘Lord’ Synth Gehrman. It’s a circle. It’s a circle and you are trapped.” Anemone snapped her fingers and the rug burned away, revealing a large, singular blood ward surrounding the vampire. She stopped a mere three steps away from the bottom of the stairs where the befuddled undead stood and smiled.
“You see, dead things are tools that are meant to be wielded for the good and convenience of the living. You called me a mere bone witch in your letters to me. Was that because you only ever saw my skeletons? Did you assume that was all I could do? Adorable. I may be a Witch in practice and presentation, but at heart…” Her smile and eyes widened in amusement and her voice dropped to a husky growl. “I am a necromancer.”
A crimson mist gathered around the vampire’s hands, crackling with black lightning like storm clouds. “Foolish Witch. You would challenge a vampire to a contest of Blood Magic?! Then I-”
“No, you won’t.” Anemone drawled languidly as the circle flashed a bright red. Synth’s magic fizzled uselessly and he screamed as crystalized spikes of his own blood pierced his flesh from the inside of his body. He fell to his knees, gasping in pain as his ‘unlife’ blood pooled on the circle, further empowering it to contain him.
“H-how?!” Ah… there it is. There’s the fear. Anemone thought to herself smugly.
“As I was saying.” Anemone continued. “Skeletons and ghouls and ghosts and even golems of bone or clay merely need a dash of thanergy and a little bit of willpower to control. To puppet. It’s quite unsophisticated honestly and I barely have to think about it anymore. Blood spiders and golems and Flesh Portraits of course need blood, some marrow, and a bit of skin… but that’s not so bad. You need a lot less of all of the above than you’d think if you’re not concerned with aesthetics! Hell, it doesn’t even need to be your own! It’s just a bit more finesse, and nothing more.”
Anemone stepped off of the stairs and into the circle. Synth almost started to think this was a mistake on her part, but then he felt his blood begin to boil with her proximity and he skittered back away from her until his back was touching the invisible barrier created by the other side of the ward. She slowly continued her approach, the surrounding candle light casting myriad dancing shadows as the dim light passed through the structures of her minions that had yet to reveal themselves.
“For something like you, though. A vampire. A lich. Whatever you ‘high ranking’ undead call yourselves… You’re still just particularly sophisticated, unbelievably chatty tools to be used. You just need an even more sophisticated vector of control to deal with you. An insult to generate a time and place you can control… An ego you can prompt into taking the most predictable course of action…” Anemone reached into the pocket of her trousers and produced a letter that had a small chunk torn out of the bottom. “Blood from the vampire in question... Willingly given and gratefully accepted…” Synth Gehrman’s eyes widened in horrified understanding as Anemone stopped her approach right in front of him and she squatted down to his level.
“The most sophisticated method to control people is to make sure they are always over, or underestimating you. And if you are going to chronically underestimate me…” Anemone’s cheerful facade evaporated all at once and her face twisted in indignant rage. “If you – a misbegotten, particularly sophisticated, unbelievably chatty DEAD THING – are going to be that stupid. Then of course I am going to make a particularly sophisticated puppet out of you!” She let out a long breath to calm herself before continuing.
“This Blood Ward is made of your blood and my blood and woven with the magic you have just experienced should you try to disobey me in any way. You are going to agree to take this circle into yourself and start working for me… or I will have you sit in my front yard while the sun rises!”
“I- You-! You’re a monster!” Synth shouted, his hands already outstretched between them in supplication. Anemone’s face relaxed back into what could be mistaken as pleasant smile, however as the circle began to light up, it cast her countenance in a bright red light, revealing the mania hidden just under the facade.
“Yes. Yes I am. No second chances now, Synth. Do you accept?”
The circle began to shrink and crawl up Synth ‘No Longer a Lord’ Gehrman’s skin like a living tattoo.
“…Yes. I accept.”