In any other instance, the force of Noapte's strike should have been catastrophic.

Solid concrete would have had trouble withstanding such heavyhanded use of his own abilities. He'd proven to himself - on multiple occasions – that it was something he was more than capable of given enough effort. Simple wood should have been almost trivial to sunder in comparison.

And yet, the moment his fist crashed into the nearly invisible barrier that manifested along the skin of the fake werewolf, he realized almost instantly that today things would not be so clear-cut.

Pain had a way of slicing through that sort of nonsense. He was well past the point where any amount of it could paralyze him, but he could still heed its warnings well enough. It rolled up his arm in waves, black blood spewing everywhere as his fist collided, staining everything.

Ichor splashed, outlining the nearly intangible barrier as it flexed and rippled like a stone tossed in a pond. It wavered in the air like a heat shimmer, but ultimately did not disperse. The werewolf got away without so much as a blemish.

His own arm, in direct contrast, might as well have been a crumple zone in a car for how little it was able to withstand. His own strength was turned against him, taloned fingers cracking and bending against the unyielding wall, and all he could do about it was watch on in a moment of abject shock.

Pain turned to agony. The digits of his hand, naturally, stopped moving. This proved to be a much worse thing than one might think at first, because the rest of his hand did not. As physics dictates, two objects cannot occupy the same space, so the only place for his momentum to go was out, or – unfortunately – back the way it came.

Sinew gave way. Muscle split. Bony shrapnel shredded his forearm into a bloody stump, and at the end of it all he was left nursing a pulped, jagged mess. Arch-vampires aren't typically known to scream out in pain. He didn't now, but this was the closest he'd ever gotten to it since ascending.

The shockwave arrived only moments later. Noapte was flung through the air uncontrollably by the backlash, tumbling like a rag doll before his wings stabilized him. Meanwhile, Grimm was sent reeling in the opposite direction. Not damaged in any way, at least from what was immediately obvious, but still pushed back several meters by the sheer kinetic energy that had been delivered.

It was knocked fully upright from its quadrupedal stance, only saving itself from falling over by sheer inertia and a display of abdominal strength that would have rivaled the beast's own capabilities in life. It slid backwards, great furrows being dug into the packed soil by its hind legs.

There was a moment just after he stabilized, where he managed to get a good look into the pits of its eyes. It looked… furious. Almost rabid, even. To think that something constructed mere moments ago could be so lifelike, so… powerful…

It reminded him of those first days. When the bell towers first chimed in the night, when the fog first rolled in. Those days when he was just as powerless as anyone else, saved only by what others were so quick to attribute to fortune.

It was a lie he'd believed for far too long – that he was just lucky, destined to be simply another survivor among countless dead.

How foolish. How naive. Lightning only ever struck you twice if you stood on the pinnacle of fate.

Grimm fell back onto all fours, unwilling to take the insult to its strength lying down. Green, living wood creaked as the fibers in its forelimbs coiled. The wind in the air began to pick up up, a low, wailing note exhaling from the beast's throat as it passed.

The eddies and currents in the wind made it warble, almost like a crude imitation of a growl. For a brief moment, through the night haze and the dust kicked up by the opening strike, they circled each other, gauging offense against defense, wits against simplicity.

...Concerns began to form in Noapte's mind, the longer he examined those odds.

This construct was… unsettlingly lifelike. The eye sockets were hollow, sure, but they held a glint of intelligence behind them that forced him to be wary. He'd already observed countless of that pale Devil's other skeletal creations, and they had all been crude, shuffling things with more in common with puppets than people. On the other hand, Grimm, as this beast had been called, was practically autonomous by comparison and had already proven to harbor surprises of its own.

Wouldn't such a large creature like this behave more robotically, rather than less? Why was this feeling more and more like a living, breathing monster as time went on?

No answer was forthcoming, and the time for contemplation ran out. Grimm decided on a course of action in his stead.

One moment, the beast was preparing to pounce in retaliation…

The next, it was already upon him.

Noapte was fast, but Grimm proved to be – somehow – even faster. Clawlike wooden stakes flashed in the night, tearing into his shoulder before the arch-vampire could even blink. It began to rend him apart with wild abandon, the first blow already more than enough to force his regeneration into overdrive.

How shockingly effective!

He was like a leaf in a storm. Gritting his fangs against the pain, all he could do was admire the pure destructive prowess he was matched against. Sitting in that trancelike dissociation that kept the pain away from him, that singular place where he could truly feel safe from everything, he watched how it tore him to pieces even as he stitched those pieces back together. How it fell into the rhythm of frenzy.

He let the world wash over him, content to bide his time for the moment he could act again.

Enduring pain was his specialty. If there was anything he could do better than another living soul, it was that. Resilience was strength. Combined with patience and observation, it was the source of the golden thread of fate, the one that would provide an opening no matter what. So long as he waited for it, it would come. It must. There was never any other outcome to begin with.

The pain reached a crescendo, Grimm clamping down hard on his collarbone. Jaws stronger than any bear trap pinned him in place for one crucial moment, before the beast's hand ripped one of the wings free from his back. Like the flipping of a switch, the pain stopped, replaced instead by a dull ache and the itch of skin beginning to knit itself back together. Less tended to hurt when there was less of you to feel hurt.

The storm passed. By the end of it, he had been horribly disfigured, mauled in at least three places, and spat back to the ground like discarded refuse. Splinters of wood still stuck in his back from where the stakes had pierced his skin. He quivered, not quite dead but seemingly on the brink of it. And yet…

And yet, he still drew breath.

He wanted to laugh. Even as the deferred agony his body experienced thrashed at the borders of his mental fortress, all he wanted to do was laugh. Because once again, his faith in destiny was being proven right yet again.

He was seeing it. That golden thread of fate. The epiphany within the pain that made it all worthwhile.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Focus, he told himself, feigning death for as long as inhumanly possible. Besting this foe will require strength as much as it does subtlety.

Life slowly seeped back into his veins, drawn upon by the blood harvested from the numerous thralls within his camp. He prioritized internal injuries over external ones, not wanting to give away the ruse by healing in front of the construct's inscrutable gaze.

Bones slowly set, arteries slowly mended. Grimm circled slowly, searching vigilantly for a sign of life but yet to find one.

The monster was strong, yes, but not without weaknesses. All of its defense hinged on the limits of that invisible shield. After mentally reviewing what had happened during his beatdown, there was only one reasonable conclusion for what created it, too: an artifact must be responsible.

Noapte could admit that incorporating an artifact into the false werewolf's body was an inspired decision, but it was also one that could be easily exploited.

Artifacts had rules and limitations, unlike the intent-based fluidity of normal Domain casting. Without a mind to direct it, that shield would behave in the exact same way each time, without fail. He just needed to find the edges of what it could protect, and strike there.

Grimm began to lumber closer, apparently satisfied with the stillness he'd maintained.

A mistake.

This is the time!

Moments before the groaning wooden claws of the beast could try to finish him off, Noapte moved.

Blood coursed through every fiber of his being, finally using his full strength to land a decisive, finishing move. Rather than amplify the force of his strikes, he opted for speed, agility, and mental processing power. The world seemed to slow down around him, even as he was continued to speed up. With each second that passed in his flawed perception of time, he healed at rates the outside world would think impossible.

To Grimm's credit… it did manage to react. Just nowhere near fast enough. The arch-vampires limbs were still in good enough shape to propel him past its now almost clumsy swipes. His muscles just intact enough to push him forwards from confusing angles. He skittered around, under, then over – positioning himself so that he could clamber easily onto the beast's back, where werewolves arms traditionally had trouble reaching.

It reminded him of the time he'd hunted a lone wolfpup out of necessity. He'd been much weaker then – barely two weeks past the second Witching Hour, actually. Nobody had wept when he had finally managed to kill it after nearly a full day of starvation, but he had certainly rejoiced.

A shame there was nothing left to drink from this one… that runt had been almost enough to fuel his rise to arch-vampirehood in the first place.

As expected, the shield didn't take long to ripple awake once he had found purchase. A small patch of wavering air about the size of a napkin, placed directly between where his talons attempted to trace along the knots in the wood. Grimm thrashed about in simulated panic trying to buck him off, but he just poked and prodded at its edges, trying to find some sort of weakness he could exploit.

Ultimately, it was the simple solution that he ended up opting for. If it could only protect one spot at a time, he just needed to strike in two different spots simultaneously. With a strain of conscious effort, he willed his still mutilated hand to reform, at a noticeable but not exactly draining cost to his own reserves.

Grimm's efforts redoubled, but by now it was already too late. It could only realize what was happening in slow motion, compared to the flow of time Noapte was experiencing. His newly regrown hand plunged deep into the construct's shoulder, invoking a tearing sensation that reminded him of scissors gliding through paper.

Bark gave way as his talons sunk deep, scraping the edges of the ball joint that contained the bone of the shoulder. Power flowed freely into his regrown arm, pumping it full of unnatural strength so that it could dislocate the limb from the inside out. Wood snapped and scraped, severing the connecting reeds and roots that allowed the enlarged forelimb to articulate.

Just like that, a countermeasure had been proven. All he had to do was pull out as many of the weeds inside as he could, and this temporary setback would be no more.

He couldn't keep the crazed grin from his face as he gleefully tore the wolf's back open one-handed. He was already imagining what a shielding artifact as strong as the one inside could do for him-

The layer of wood he had been pulling on snapped. More than half of the body came away far faster than he anticipated.

What-?!

He blinked, eyes darting rapidly in search of the cause. The coverage was thin in places, he discovered. Cardboard thin. Where he had expected a small nook that held whatever item was defending Grimm's frame, there was instead a large, hollow cavity about where the spine met the neck. It led deeper into the bowels of the creature, dark enough that only his keen eyesight allowed him to see the full picture in the moment his surprise left him flat-footed.

There was… a girl inside. Dressed like some sort of medieval-era noble's child and clearly afraid, but waiting prepared for his eventual breach into her hidden sanctum. She clutched a short wooden spike close to her chest, and without a moment's hesitation she lunged out of the hole to stab him with it.

She yelled hoarsely, half-crazed, jamming the pointy end as far as she could into his arm. It pierced through cleanly, causing a pain that was certainly real, but compared to everything else he'd just overcome, this barely registered.

To him, it only stank of desperation.

"Interesting," he crooned, unbothered by the injury. "Were you acting as some sort of pilot to this, perhaps? I'd been wondering how it had seemed so alive before."

The girl didn't dignify him with a response. She just wrenched the stake free, readying herself for another strike. His blood stained her silky white evening gloves like ink, dribbling slowly onto his palm.

He didn't even bother trying to heal it faster than it would naturally. The wound was that inconsequential. And with a full-blooded human so close at hand, the enthrallment bile still sealed within his second stomach was practically begging to be let free.

Looking at her tear-streaked face desperately trying to find another angle to strike him, he saw no reason not to appease it now. Without her toy dog, this girl was practically as weak as a newborn babe, by his standards.

"Ohh… don't cry," Noapte faked a voice of concern. "Pretty soon, you won't have to worry about fighting for your life like this. Come quietly, and I promise there will be no reason to kill you." He outstretched his other palm, easing the muscle that kept the bile in place and allowing it to crawl up his throat.

"Don't cry," he repeated with a slight gurgle. "With time, you too can learn to endure like I have."

She looked at him. Abject terror in her eyes. He knew what her response to his generosity would be long before she followed through on it.

The stake came down swiftly, going right through his palm and pinning his hand to the lip of the cavity.

Such a waste, he thought to himself. But, evidently, the girl thought otherwise.

"NOW!!!" she cried at the top of her lungs.

Several things occurred at once. Red sparks of magic danced along her fingertips, just as he felt the heat of the Remnant's flame attacks begin to hit him from behind once more. A delaying tactic, designed to make him choose between taking considerably more damage than he should to enthrall her, or just killing her and being done with it. Frustrated, he bit down hard on his own tongue, slamming his mouth shut to keep the bile from escaping while he tried to get in closer and guard his mouth from the flames.

The sparks she created traveled along the length of the stake, increasing in number rapidly and needling their way into the still bleeding wound in his palm.

Fauna magic, he belatedly realized. Was she trying to… heal him to death? That was damn stupid of her. All it would accomplish was making it easier for him to recover from the flames-

A wave of dizziness washed over him, something that even his most crippling injuries had yet to cause.

Vision started to blur at the edges. Something was… off, it- it, it it wasn't right or…

Why was it so hard to think now?!

She was doing something to him. Of that, he was certain. He tried to pull from his reserves of blood to clear the mental fatigue that was rapidly settling in, but for some reason that only made the dizziness worsen into a full blown headache. The flames now covered the entire back of his body, licking at the edges of Grimm's corpse as the wood died and dried out from the heat.

It was getting harder and harder to keep the excited bile back.

Through it all, she kept pumping more and more mana into the open wound. One thought managed to crystallize. That he needed to stop this, to prevent whatever she was doing to him. To cut off the problem at the source.

He pressed forward, sharpened fingernails trembling ever closer to her exposed throat. So close…

But it wouldn't be so easy. The necklace she wore began to light up with magic, and that same force field from before got in the way once again.

At first, he thought he might be able to get around it. Then it expanded to cover her in a completely skintight barrier, and he realized that he would not be able to kill her in time to prevent whatever poison she was putting in his system.

The more drastic measures came out next. Wrenching his arm free of the stake was no herculean task, but even after he extricated himself from her reach the effects were still slowly getting worse. He could still see the sparks dancing around inside his palm. The wound must have been the source, he realized, so calling on more of his already sluggish reserves he strengthened his other arm and tore away the infection in a rather literal fashion.

…It was an infection, right? What else could it be if it… wasn't…?

Noapte was finding it hard to breathe. His normally shallow heartbeat was beating faster than it had in a long time, and he was starting to feel warm all over his body. Then swelteringly hot, and not just where the flames made contact. He staggered back a few steps, looking for some path to take but finding none.

If he… he just needed to wait it out. Fate would save him. Fate! It hadn't let him down before! It wouldn't stop now! It couldn't!

The girl crawled out of the hole, coughing loudly as the smoke around its edges stung her eyes. She kept that damnable barrier close at all times, not that Noapte was in any position to threaten it now.

"I'm not much of a mage yet," she admitted, in between clearing her throat of ash. "I only really know one trick, and there hasn't been a good chance to practice anything else. And even that one, I need to be really careful with. Blood clotting faster sounds nice when it's on the outside, but a lot of very bad stuff can happen if you let it happen close to… oh, I don't know… hearts… brains… any important organ, really. I usually need to concentrate a lot if I want to avoid messing those up."

Addled as Noapte was, he could still read between the lines of what she was implying. His eyes widened in shock and – for the first time in months – fear for his own life.

"You… YOU!!!"

"Uh… me?"

"FIX THIS!! FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY, OR I WILL KILL YOU HERE AND NOW!!"

Fear welled up in every fiber of Noapte's being. Pure, raw fear that he hadn't known since the wolves had killed everyone around him. No matter where he turned to, he couldn't escape it. The towering obelisk at the center of Kensington Palace offered him no refuge from the fear.

"Are… are you serious?" the girl retorted. "How? Literally, how are you going to kill me like that? Half of your face is drooping already. You aren't smelling toast, are you?"

"AAAARRRRRRGGGHHH!!!"

Noapte screamed, mouth wide open. Sensing a chance to escape, the bile in his mouth followed the primitive instincts coded into it and leapt away. The flames were still at his back, charring his wings to blackened stumps and reducing his skin to cinders, but – miraculously – they did not reach the black blob in time to detonate it.

He almost thought his destiny would grant him one last lucky break, because of that.

He was proven wrong. A secondary boom rang through the night, and his world became nothing but orange heat and light.

< -|- -|- >

Henry almost didn't make it in time.

If it hadn't been for some quick thinking and quicker reflexes on his part, Giselle would have been yet another unlucky victim of vampire puke. Fortunately, by now he'd had enough practice with guns to make an American jealous, and a shotgun was never really intended for use in precision situations, anyways. With the clear line of sight he managed to acquire, he was able to really see the sort of distance Fire crystal pellets could fly.

A single shot rang out. The glowing orange flecks of magic rock sailed through the air near instantly, catching the tennis-ball sized blob mid-flight and releasing the stored energy within back in the direction it came. A cone of fire erupted from the inky mass, catching Noapte in the face and launching superheated, tar-like bile straight back at him.

He screamed in pain. The flames… were hurting him. Was his regeneration drained already? But that can't be right, this vamp in particular had been able to tank an explosion to the head and-

...And he realized that right now, he was looking a gift horse in the mouth and it really wasn't all that important. What was, was making sure he could never hurt someone else again.

Gingerly, he removed the metal pipe from the back of his belt, careful not to upset it too much before the final strike.

Noapte groaned and rolled to face him, skin beginning to melt around the face and eyes. "W-wait," he begged, holding up a hand to shield himself. "Please, spare me… I… I can take you to your friend and release him! The Fire mage, the one from the warehouse, right? Please! It hurts-"

He swung down hard on the monster's head, smashing it to a bloody pulp in one strike. The arch-vampire didn't even have time to process his disbelief.

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