#edenborn

Phantom of the Opera - Hamburg 2013

Mathias Edenborn as the Phantom of the Opera in Hamburg, 2013.

"Silence. Silence..." Axel sighed, crushing the slab of meat and bone fragment and licked it as the vampire gurgled and grabbed at his throat. It was almost a bliss he haven't felt in a while before his bloody hand popped like grinding stone in its knuckles. Then he slammed those hands and throat, over and over again while Caspian, Acelot, and a couple of the Dumahim's pack-mates watched in shock as the restraint blacksmith crushed the offender's face deeper and deeper in.

All of his frustrations, more than this insolent bandit's constant rambling and peacocking, fueled every musclebound punch. Vampiric ichor splashed on his tabard. His neck. His face. No one stopped him. No one dared to stop the mastiff, his eyes glowing under his tinted goggles.

Even when those hands and head was nothing but gore on the ground, another slam sent a web of cracks around. Flesh withered and body becoming ash.

Slowly grinding his fist at the cratered floor, Axel stood up and rubbed his face. Another sigh and whimper,

Lucien's ears twitched and suddenly, the Razielim moved in a spur of motion that appeared to a rift of umbra to the human eye. Even with his shield and spear in hand, clad in etched armour and mud-scarlet gambeson, he moved with such inhuman ease. His keen jasmines seeing the explosions of magics striking where he was, tracing up to see the magi on the ridge.

Landing on the balls of his feet, sabotons clicking before he raced forward. The muscle-torn abominations of shackled Eden Mutants shrieking and moving in his way, their vague human faces split with loose jaws rowed of tail and lapping tongue. Eyes eternal of agony inconceivable, they moved just enough to combat the vampire with massive fists and bone-jagged claws. His shield catching one hammer's strike of a punch but Lucien didn't use his own strength. They had a edge on that in the condensed corruption that the Dark Triad has fouled in Nosgoth's north into the living hell that it is. His ancestors born from that very same were the lucky ones.

Twisting himself up and riding the swing's muscles, Lucien thrusted his spear straight into the mutant's eye and through its skull. The thing wretched and howled a skull-splitting scream. The paladin's vision shook but he didn't relent. His boots' spurred heels slammed into its scalp, arching the mutant out with its massive throat exposed for a crushing jab of kite shield's pointed bottom. The loud crunch of thrice-forged bones. Once. Twice!

The Razielim twisted his spear to stir the presuming brains in the monster's skull, trying to kill it but the mutant was something not natural. Even as it screamed and tried to pry himself, it still lived somehow.

Then there was the other.

Lucien looked over, but too late to dodge as he was swatted off its kindred with his spear splintering. Crashing onto the ground, bouncing off his shoulder and rolled into the momentum. Lungs huffing and filling, there was a taste of blood in his mouth and back tightening. Bones reknitting from the slight fragmentation caused -even with his own armour.

Glancing up, the paladin lifted his shield - both to pop his shoulder back into its socket and protected himself from a new barrage of fire washing over him. The little nature on the dark ground was scorched and the craters being pockmarks of glowing glass under the blanket of hot debris.

From the blinding smokescreen, the mutants' shapes barely conceived. A breath and Lucien catapulted with his patriarch's dark gift, spiraling like a makeshift javelin. His form zipping past the foremost magi, flipping and by the time he landed, two was tumbling headless. The Razielim paladin flourishing his longsword glistening crimson now glowing of hemomancy.

Acelot watched the ritual through his guise, these deviant cultists continuing to chant in praise after so brutally eviscerating their own; a name or some foul language. Either way, they kept the same words. "Ash'ha'kul. Ash'ha'kul. Ash'ha'kul." His face twisted. The words offended to the deepest of his soul, almost instinctual.

He stepped out from the outer circle, only to be grabbed one of his fellow cultists. "No, Brother. The ritual is n-" The gruff voice warned before it pierced into a horrific scream as the unseemly of their number suddenly twisted his arm back like a twig. Blood spurting from jagged bone fragments and meat.

The others of the circle looked behind their supple-checked masks, some recoiling but the rest were disturbingly resolute.

"Enough of this." The Zephonim said, his projecting power waning and to the onlookers; they see how this fellow draped of robes and mask was shifting and stretching with the horrific creaking and groan of bones under skin. His body growing taller, arms bloodily shedding their flesh to growing fur pushing through like bristling quills. The mask melting around the man's face, pushing out into a snout twisted in arrogant disdain. Eyes glowing baleful grey. Two. Four...opening with fangs unfolding behind curling jawls.

His robes turning from rot-green silks to hardened brown leathers, wrapping around this monster with armour clasping around like an insect's carapace on unnatural limbs.

Horrific. Beautiful.

"Get inside, Blood." The Forgemaster ordered, his thralls moved as quick as the word was given to avoid being any closer to the Dumahim that stepped onto his piece of territory. Axel walked down from his patio, using his tabard's inner cloth to wipe the soot from his goggles. Each step a thump of the true weight to his already imposing appearance.

The centuries of the Empire's great age and now this constant civil war, waxing and waning throughout, has seen the greatest and weakest of their vampiric time. Like his patriarch and kin, Axel have gotten larger and stronger. His muscles sculpted and curved like the perfect strongman without being overburdened by the sheer raw power and anatomical limit.

"What do you want on my land, Dumahim?" He questioned with a warning tone. His eyes stared in their direction, but their sight have been waning. To him, the seven were shaped blurs in several lunges' distance between him and the courtyard. However what his sight lacked, his other senses were more than able to compromise.

"We hear you harbored a Razielim in your property." The leader accused. That brought a soft firepoke's stab under his indomitable hide. "No. She is gone, long time ago. Like the others." Axel answered grimly. "Our eyes say otherwise, there was sight of something flying in this direction. We will ask you again, under the command of our Lord...do you still have her?"

"She isn't a pet. Only the edicts of my Sire and our Grandsire is law here, Dumahim. I have answered your question; she is gone."

"Gone but not dead." Another of them noticed. They were spreading out a little, the air smelled of coming violence. Axel's irises glowed like the coils of his forge, slowly slipping on his goggles. "Your implications is dangerous, especially while we are still having our little spats." He warned.

"The rightful rest of our Emperor's throne is just a little spat, Edenborn. You will do right to know your place, dog." A female sneered.

Axel's ear flicked one side. "You are so right."

The sudden heartbeat after, the Dumahimess was suddenly folded in two and in terrifyingly swift flight back into one of Axel's walls by a explosion of spontaneous gust. To them, it was instantaneous. For the Turelim, it was a condensed and focused bastila bolt of mental power that pulverized everything from ribs to spine. Her bosom nothing but a flattened mess - a mercifully swift end.

The other Dumahim were shocked by the sudden power without so much of a gesture from the Edenborn himself. Even with the deep dark tint of his goggles, those irises still glowed through.

Finally getting over the momentary pause, the opposing vampires moved with the disturbing speed of their own clan's dark gifts. The Reavers a shimmering movement of trailing umbra and shapes. All moving into a pincer clasp at his front, sides and flanks.

The reverberation of his telekinesis finally yanked back to their focus. Out of a window, his black warhammer whirled, crushing in the backs of two before its heft was caught perfectly in its master's talons before one savage two-handed swing. The beautiful explosive crunch of cuirasses and ribs, the Dumahim too dedicated in their brutality and charge to readjust until only the furthest of the swing used Axel's hammer as a jumping assist to vault over his head.

However, the Turelim kept in his swing until his hammer smacked its rest loudly on his shoulder. Arrogance. Dismissal. He've already won.

Time seemed so slow for vampires. How a millennium was a utopia of blood and glory, their time finally at hand and all made sense. Now, it was a dark time of rivalries finally exploding into this. The Turelim and Dumahim, two sides of the same coin; warriors, one of cold stone and the other of passionate fire. Both vying to be Kain's greatest legions, to be his iron fist while the Razielim were preening to his favorite.

And the rivalry was still ablazed. It was powerful and most importantly, it was distracting. The Reaver twisted himself like a cat, wanting to reach and tear Axel's head from his shoulders. Only to feel silk-like material wrap around his wrists, neck and waist. Iron-clasped before a savage force yanked him wholebodied through a window and onto a hot-ended spear. Heart impaled and a soft musical voice whispering into his ear while his body was withering away into dying ash,

"Rest easy, proud child."

Axel looked down at his courtyard, looking at the defeated. Some were still alive but grievously wounded. Their ribs splayed out and trying to close themselves like ivory spider legs with meat slowly knitting themselves together. Hearts and organs exposed to the falling dirt. At any moment, his cousins could rise again.

"Take them. The Emperor would love some new information." Axel ordered, turning his back as he walked back up to his humble home in his unassuming fortress. From other doors in the great crescent wind of ground-level homes, armored guards stepped out with particular spears and mancatchers. Among them, a youthful lioness of a Edenborn bearing horns and quilled scorpion's tail under her artisan-decored platemail and green cloak, stung each survivor. Their veins blackening and bodies spasming into a painful lock, only a dab of venom.

The mastiff sighed heavily as he walked, one of his raptors landing on his shoulders as if aware of his heavy thoughts. "I guess I have to leave better signs, do you think?" He asks in a mild attention to jest but the crested bird only cocked its head.

A century after the Great Triumph

At the northern guard-tower of the Razielim Fort-City, a fresh troop of proud clan guards was marching up by the lead of a decorated leonine officer. His avian-shaped helmet crested by muddy crimson plume and the flow of his half-cape matching to clan color, the Edenborn came in time as the stationed vampires to allow the great gate leading northwest for the Melchahim territories. “Hail, Captain.” The human-based guard greeted by respected salute. The Captain returned with a beat to his armoured chest. “Hail, Watchman. How goes the night?” He questioned with a deep, bass-rumbling voice.  

“All is seemingly well, Captain. The last patrol said to have seen some slaves by the old mines, perhaps Lord Melchiah is having some find for any leftover minerals he might have missed.” The guard reported. The Captain curled his black lips into a fanged grin of mild amusement. “Melchiah missing something? I doubt it...but I will keep a look out. Might save the fools their skin.”

On that, the two laughed brassy while the troop remained stoic and disciplined to their leader’s presence. Marching across the fallen drawbridge for the Melchahim Path that led towards the western mountain spine where the Sixth Clan had a fair enough control to have stripes of mining operations and the presence of a respected Necropolis for the fallen. Both vampires embraced to their Final Death and worthy humans that died in the name of their Lords were buried there, Melchiah at least had that great recognition among others.

The summer was pleasant enough to not blight the land with the ashen rains, only warm nights and the clans could traverse without suffering.

Behind the Captain was his two ranks of guards, numbering five each other. More than enough vampires to handle patrols and cover ground, especially of the Razielim with their known agility and jumping height.  All of Edenborn, a pack recently arisen from the recruiting Crypts. At his commanding figure’s flank, Sargeant Lucien kept a wary eye around even before they passed the outer guard watched over by bow-equipped sentinels.