Kalit gave a last glance to the three beheaded guards behind the bushes as he cleaned his hands on his trousers: they were not perfectly hidden, but hopefully it would do for the time he needed to enter the manor. Kalit heard hurried, hollow footsteps approaching the corner and dropped in a comically cautious stance; the fourth and last guard saw him, and the woman’s suspicion turned into a mask of depraved bloodlust.

“How cute, a wanna-be hunter! C’mere, lemme give you a hug!” Judging by her arrogant tone and relaxed pose, they really couldn’t smell the corpses of their kind. Stupid evil suckers.

The woman leaped forward with inhuman speed. Kalit offered his left forearm to her bite; her sharp teeth pierced sleeve and skin with ease, sucking his blood reflexively. After a split second the vampire jumped backwards, coughing and clawing at her own throat.

It was starting to get old. Instead of waiting to see her choke to death on his cursed blood, Kalit unsheathed his sword and beheaded her; he shuddered as new strength bloomed from the death, a wave of power that made his heart boom in his ears. He picked up the fourth corpse with his free hand and casually dragged it to the pile, kicking the head under a bush as he did. They all deserved to be exterminated.

A new, unexpected series of footsteps caught Kalit’s attention; he closed his eyes and focused on that noise. A single individual, light in build and equipment, coming toward the manor. No one had left the property during the night. A visitor? Some dumb vampire hunter?

Kalit observed the visitor from behind one of the many tacky statues of the garden. The apparently human man knocked casually at the main doors, and was allowed in after a brief conversation. Was he another vampire? Kalit was too far to hear distinct words, let alone heartbeats. He could be a witless prey, or a trap. A trap for who? The head of the clan? For Kalit himself? After a moment’s thought, Kalit discarded the last hypothesis. The time he had spent on this plane was too short and uneventful for someone to target him. Worst case, there was another corpse to add to the pile. No need to delay. He returned to the window he had selected and retrieved his housebreaking tools.

Kalit finally approached the library’s closed door and lowered his hood; his clothes were full of holes and cuts, but his skin was unmarred and black mana sang with his every heartbeat. He closed his eyes and listened carefully to his last two targets; a vampire didn’t remain at the head of his clan by being stupid, and if the rumors about Velak’s age were true he needed all the advantage he could get.

“-tales are you offering? I have to admit I mostly regard books as mnemonic crutches rather than diversions,” said a sultry, measured and feminine voice. Velak’s, without doubt: the source of the voice was still, no heartbeat in its chest.

“I could name many intriguing stories off the top of my head, but if you are more interested in something… applicable there are a number of legends and tales, all of them based on history, featuring vampires that achieved very noteworthy goals, such as turning golems into vampires or defeating their weakness to sunlight. I believe the detailed versions of some of these stories may be appealing to you.” The other voice came from a living body, motionless but echoing with a regular heartbeat; both the tone of the voice and the beat expressed an inexplicable tranquility, as the man was talking about the weather. In contrast with his words, the man’s tone was completely devoid of malice. Kalit couldn’t decide if Velak’s guest was an expert manipulator or simply naïve, but it was clear he had no regard for life except his own.

Kalit gripped the sword tighter, driving the needle in the handle through glove and skin; his blood was sucked by the sword’s tiny internal canals and brought all over the blade. He waited for its point to be covered in blood, then shattered the door with a kick and slashed toward the voices, sending a spray of venomous blood in their direction. The vampire now was leaning languidly against a bookshelf, more than six paces from where Kalit had heard her voice. For a moment he thought his ears had failed him, then he heard a chair fall. Velak was fast.

The splinters of the door had landed on an expensive-looking carpet. The walls were lined with bookshelves; the only furniture in the room was a mahogany desk on his left and two visible chairs, one of which was occupied by the human. A single source of light, a table lamp on a corner of the desk; undoubtedly a courtesy to Velak’s guest, since vampires saw perfectly in complete darkness. Velak smoothed her snug leather dress, while her guest kept looking at the vampire like nothing had happened. Weird.

“You must certainly know my name; may I ask yours? Admittedly I shouldn’t presume on your manners, interrupting our conversation like this, but you know what they say about hope dying late,” Velak asked; she seemed relaxed, but her calculating stare was anything but. Kalit entered the room with his guard high, sword leveled at the vampire’s throat. The vampire snapped her fingers, and Kalit had a brief unpleasant feeling, as if an invisible hand had tried to shake his heart. Blood magic wouldn’t do much against him. The man was now watching Kalit with a vague smile and an interested gaze. A moment later, Velak turned into a blur.

Velak charged him; Kalit jumped right, keeping the sword between him and the vampire. Velak slid away before entering Kalit’s reach, stopping on the library’s threshold. Now Kalit’s only exits were third-floor windows. Meanwhile, the smiling man didn’t seem to have moved.

“What kind of disgusting sludge courses your veins? You smell and look terrible, you dirty rat,” the vampire commented wrinkling her nose. Kalit glared at the vampire; his hood might have hindered his sight and hearing, but knowing that she would be dead in minutes didn’t make showing his tainted greenish skin any easier.

“I apologize, my dear, I’ll be with you in a moment,” she added, glancing at her guest. Kalit didn’t react to the taunt; Velak was clearly on a different level than her guards. She produced two daggers from her sleeves and Kalit took a few steps back, readying for her assault.

Velak charged him. Kalit easily swatted away both vampire’s blades with his own. Velak’s eyes showed the smallest sign of surprise: she wasn’t used to fighting someone stronger than her, apparently. Kalit slashed for her neck. Velak dove under Kalit’s blade and aimed at his sword arm, but he deflected with the guard of his weapon. Kalit drove Velak away with another forceful slash.

They clashed their weapons again and again, under the placid gaze of the smiling man that had remained completely motionless and silent. Velak used her left dagger almost exclusively for defense, and was cautious in her attacks, but paid little attention to his unarmed hand. She was fast, faster than him, but he was bigger and stronger. He started to leave his left side slightly open, baiting Velak to overextend.

The stabbing lunge stopped his breath – damn, not a punctured lung - but Kalit was expecting it: he grabbed Velak’s forearm and pulled, burying the dagger deeper in the process – hells, that was a pierced lung, no doubt - and upsetting the vampire’s balance. Kalit swept her legs and fell backwards, dragging Velak to the ground with him. This should be the time for that smiling bastard to pick a side.

The vampire had lost the grip on the daggers, but her free hand had pinned Kalit’s sword arm to the ground. He wrapped his legs around hers. Velak headbutted him, breaking his nose. Kalit snarled, and Velak grinned ferociously, her gracious façade lost in the heat of battle. Velak brought her head down again; Kalit turned his face away and bit the inside of his mouth hard, sucking from the wound.

“Are you thinking you can outlast a vampire, you braindead hunter? I’m hitting you just because it’s more fun than doing nothing and watching you bl-” Velak averted her face in time to protect her eyes, but Kalit’s bloodied spit still hit her on the cheek; her contemptuous scowl turned into a grimace of pain as his blood started corrupting her skin. Velak instinctively brought her left hand to her face and her torso arched back; Kalit punched her head with the spiked guard of his sword and rolled on his side, inverting their positions. Now he was on his knees, straddling her waist.

Velak reached for his eyes with her right hand; Kalit caught a finger with his teeth and punched her again with the spiked guard. He yanked Velak’s dagger from his chest and plunged it in her right eye to the hilt; the vampire’s movements became slow and clumsy. Kalit noticed a wooden splinter on the carpet with the corner of his eye. When he drove it through Velak’s heart her unlife finally ended, and Kalit rolled on the ground. Another tyrant executed.

Kalit took a few ragged breaths, the pain in his chest negligible in the ecstasy of victory; he felt death’s energy slowly close his wounds. His nose felt as good as new, except he couldn’t smell anything but his own blood. The smiling man was standing behind the desk now, unwilling to help. After a minute of pained breathing, Kalit sat up and glared at him.

“Well, that was unfortunate for everyone,” said the thrice-damned imbecile; at least he had the decency of looking uncomfortable. “You could have won with fewer wounds, I could have had someone who could help me navigate the library, and Velak… well…”

“Thanks for the help,” hissed Kalit as he got up on his feet again. He kept glaring at the smiling idiot, weighing his sword meaningfully in his hand.

“Help? …ah, are you being sarcastic, perhaps? I am sorry, but I had no reason to help either of you,” replied the man. Kalit pointed at Velak’s corpse with both hand and sword. “Yes, she was a vampire, but even vampires make enemies more violent and less friendly than them,” the smiling man replied to the unspoken objection. “I had no reason to believe you would not want to attack me as soon as you won.”

“You shady bastard,” whispered Kalit; he had to admit the man was being kind of reasonable, but it was hard to agree when reasonable got you a knife in the lung.

“…I get the feeling we started with the wrong foot,” said the man, smiling apologetically. The understatement of the year. “Let us start again. My name is Elphimas, pleased to meet you.”

“Kalit,” he hissed. The man repeated Kalit’s name, his smile slightly wider. Still obnoxiously weird. The smiling man – Elphimas – was devoid of any normal reaction. He didn’t questioned Kalit’s voice, his motives, his appearance; he didn’t seem surprised nor scared by a ghastly green-grey human wrapped in dark clothing storming into the room and starting a fight to the death with his interlocutor.

“Are you even real?” The silence that followed Kalit’s whisper was almost solid.

“For some given values of reality,” Elphimas replied thoughtfully. “While the human form I am talking through is illusory I, Elphimas, am as real as about any other individual, finer philosophical points aside.” The bastard had been flawless. Kalit was sure that if he touched the smiling man, he would have heard his bowels move. “And I am in this very room. But I assure you I have no desire of harming or hindering you in any way. Please do not search for me, or I will be forced to leave.” That was the most stupid threat Kalit ever heard. “But I can show you my real appearance, if you want.” The smiling man closed his eyes and was replaced by a frail four-armed vedalken with the same height and the same weird smile.

“What do you want?”

“I would be glad to talk a bit with you, maybe leave you a gift, then I would like to explore this library for half an hour, give or take ten minutes,” replied serenely the vedalken, his eyes closed. Kalit wondered if Elphimas was blind.

“What gift?” That was not a word you trusted easily in a vampire’s house. The vedalken pointed to a sapphire ring and a thin silver chain that had just appeared on the desk.

“If you focus your attention on this ring, its twin will glow.” The vedalken showed an identical ring on the ring finger of his lower right hand. “Then it will work as a beacon for me as I come to you. But the ring is not the gift. The material gift is the silver chain: if you find no use for it, you are free to get rid of it however you see fit. The personal gift is a favor: if you accept the ring, you can call on me for a favor in the future. There are a few things I am not willing to do, but other than that I will help you at the best of my abilities.”

“Why should I trust you?”

The vedalken actually took time to think about it. “I can think of no incontrovertible reason for you to trust me, unfortunately,” Elphimas said eventually, “but if it helps, I am trusting you with a not negligible weight in silver and a well cut enchanted sapphire with no guarantee they will not both be sold at the nearest pawn shop.” Kalit grunted a non-committal noise, then fetched a cursecatcher fuse and touched both items with it. The fuse didn’t ignite. He picked up the ring with a gloved hand.

“Will it track me everywhere?” It surely seemed valuable.

“It will work on almost every plane I can think about, bar very specific magical or planar conditions.” Icy silence fell again in the room.

“Planes?” Kalit’s grip on his sword tightened.

“Oh, you are a planeswalker like me, am I right?” Insisted the vedalken, with a hopeful tone.

“What’s a ‘planeswalker’?” Kalit enjoyed the sight of the cracks in Elphimas’ blissful demeanor.

“Someone who can, as the name suggests, walk the space among the planes,” explained the vedalken, his smile almost gone. Kalit thought he saw something glow beneath Elphimas’ closed eyelids. “Someone with clothes unusual for the place they’re in, sometimes. People that use fuses never invented in many planes, maybe. A human with poisonous blood in a plane where vampires are the only wielders of blood magic, for example. Are you not one of those?” Now his smile could almost pass for a challenge.

“Yes. I just wanted to watch you squirm,” admitted Kalit.

“I hope you are satisfied with what you saw,” Elphimas replied. And finally Kalit saw a genuinely fake smile, a mask to hide the pain inside. Now he was satisfied. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, I have to do something useful now,” whispered Kalit, refraining from being more cruel than necessary. Elphimas had ruined the perfect moments after Kalit’s victory, after all. He pocketed ring and chain, and was about to turn his back on the vedalken when he saw the illusion disappear, and heard pages turning. Kalit stepped on his own shadow, and he was in the Eternities.