The Study

The Betrayal Of Jerziah
By the player of Alessandro Grudgebringer, adapted from the original works of Alessio Cavatore

Plunging into the ground, ancient, spiralling stairs to the depths of the crypt were cheerless and dank, and shadows danced on the walls under the burning gaze of Penia's torch. He reached the foot of the staircase, and, hacking with a dagger, cut his way through the tangle of cob-webs obstructing the arched doorway. Penia stepped inside the chamber, and his feet told him that no longer was he standing on stone. The floor was of moist soil, the putrid mould of this accursed woodland. This was how the vampires recovered their supernatural energy, as they lay dormant in slumber, in the bowels of this evil place.

When he saw the coffin, he froze, breath caught in his throat. A moment later, he approached, slowly, inching his way forward. On reaching the coffin, he paused, and soundlessly laid down his torch and sword. From the sack across his back, he took a mallet, and a sharpened wooden stake, and, after placing these within easy reach on the ground, slowly pulled away the lid of the coffin. It scraped along, until it came free, and Penia looked inside ... empty! There was no trace of a body. He had been fooled.

In the darkest corner of the coffin, something stirred. Penia raised his torch, and illuminated a creature born only of nightmares. A rotten, near-skinless head, articulated on eight hairy legs like those of a great spider; doubtlessly an unsuccessful (or perhaps successful) experiment of the tower's dark maste, mused Penia. The creature hissed a disgusting "masssteerr!" and then leapt from the coffin, and scuttled off into the shadows. Following the horror's flight, Pena saw a great stone sarcophagus, carved in strange symbols and covered in dust. The engraved scripture reminded him of scrolls from the ancient kingdom of Khemri, which he had studied in the past. Then the lid of the sarcophagus fell aside, and thudded to the ground. A shadow, blacker than blackness itself, slipped out, and into the chamber. The air chilled around him, and Penia could only make out the vampire's eyes, two gleaming jewels of evil.

"So, miserable mortal, you thought you could catch Jerziah unprepared?" whispered a voice from the darkness, its terrible tone reaching Penia's innermost fears and momentarily overwhelming his senses with sheer horror.

Recovering quickly, Penia gave a shrieking cry of frustrated anger, immediately followed by a combination of arcane words of power. From his eyes erupted two beams of dark energy, which struck the vampire and engulfed him in crackling magics. The undead was surprised by the violence of the attack, barely managing to disperse the energies with a murmured counter-spell. Jerziah raised his arms, and chanted aloud in the language of long-lost homeland. From the shadows, pairs of eerie green dots glinted, and, seconds later, each were brought forth as the light in the otherwise empty eye-sockets of staggering skeletons, animated by Jerziah's black sorcery, and answering the vampire's call. They shambled on, towards Penia.

As the circle closed, the man smiled thinly. Penia assumed the same posture as Jerziah had, and uttered the same commanding words. The skeletons stopped their advance.

Jerziah felt the control over his newly-raised servants fading, his magic challenged by another powerful mind. He struggled to regain control, and the two wizards, the living and the undead, started a titanic battle of wills. The vampire could feel the vast flow of dark energies which his opponent channelled, and at the same time, the subtle level of control he was using, in an attempt to exploit any available gap in Jerziah's mental defences. How was this possible? Since when had his student reached such a height of mastery?

Finally, the skeletons turned, and slowly began an advance towards their previous master. Penia started to laugh aloud. "You are defeated, monster! You have lost all of your arrogance all of a sudden!"

The vampire moved back until he was pressed against the wall, and then made a last, desperate attempt to control the skeletons which now threatened to pull him down. Penia stepped forward, and kept the pressure high. He almost felt oity for the pathetic monster which had once been his teacher, and who was now cornered in his own crypt, betrayed by his favourite apprentice. The vampire abruptly ceased the struggle, and fell to his knees. Penia, surprised by this surrender, stared at his former master with suspicion. "So.. I am the master now." he said, though a little uncertainly.

Jerziah coughed, his head bowed low in apparent submission. "I see that.. your knowledge, of the black arts, has grown impressively, but you must consider that you are just a mortal man. Fragile, and while there are those human warriors who would be more than a match for me, you are not. And.. don't you think that you have come a bit too close?"

Then the vampire rose, and darted towards Penia, moving through the skeletons in an explosion of bone and skulls. Penia had the words of a spell on his lips, but stumbled over the words in terror, as Jerziah's gaze met his. Too late, the man began to mumble more coherently. When he was young, in Estalia, he had heard tales of the great vampires, the Lords of the Night. He had heard of their great strength, and their lightning speed, but had never seen either in his teacher, who resembled a rotting carcass. He had never imagined that Jerziah could move so fast, or burst through those skeletons as if they were of clay, and he had never imagined that those wizened, frail hands could break his neck so easily.

Jerziah threw aside Penia's broken body, as what were left of the skeletons crumbled to the ground. Then, the vampire staggered towards his sarcophagus. Rest, he need to rest. The human had wisely attacked in the middle of the day, when Jerziah's powers were weakest. The vampire could feel the sunshine even in this deep, underground cavern. After pulling the lid back into place, and moments before he drifted into sleep once more, Jerziah reflected on what had happened. How was it possible that a mere scholar, a creature which had been learning the Lore of Shyish for such a short time (how long had it been, anyway? Twenty, maybe thirty years?) could have become a match for his powers? The vampire had studied the blackest of arts for thousands of years, and had been taught by the great Nagash himself, who challenged Death and created the discipline of Undeath. How was it possible? Humans were weak! How could their feeble minds challenge the mastery of one of the line of Wsoran? Jerziah remembered the flame of Penia's life, extinguished by the force of his own grasp as the human died. Only then, did Jerziah understand. There was the answer! That was the reason why humans could progress in the necromantic arts faster than any vampire. Humans were obsessed with the fear of dying, of passing away from the world and disappearing forever. Their life span was so short, that they could not afford to search for a way to cheat death for longer than a few decades. The Blood Kiss brought immortality to vampires, but immortality also lost their most powerful driving force, that which had fuelled Nagash's own works - the fear of death.

At this revelation, Jerziah was at first dismayed, but then he started to think more of the problem as a challenge. He needed to find another apprentice, so that he could study him more closely, much more closely than he had studied Penia. Maybe there was something which could be gleaned from the humans upon which his kind preyed.

From that night on, Jerziah studied and conducted his experiments with a new, refreshed, academic's interest.

Back To The Study

^Top