Cost of Attrition

Written by Voidarchivist

"Lord Patium."
The vampire lord did not lift his sight from his chronicling immediately, quill scribing in elegant flow of calligraphy flowing of its inked tip. Around his assembled table, serfs were standing in perfect attendance; a number returning from overseeing sections to their lord's answer to the Human crusading assembly, passing their accounts to his record. Others were at the beck and call after cleaning his weapons, making sure his chalice was filled with the fresh blood drained, and anything else. All was silent by the scribbling quill.
Iulius Patium was a stately individual with the control of a lion's composure, face just as stoic. Age was a concept that his body long abandoned yet the glamour magicks that weaved his appearance was skin-deep into the appearance of a tall, angular man seeming in his coming forties. However, those eyes were anything but. Maned of gilt-ringed braids and framed in his coarse beard, his ring-adorned fingers ended of blackened claws that flexed in the constant hunger gnawing. Even in his intertwine of dark overrobes and scarlet under-tunics with the rest of ebony armour to his limbs, the only sense of urgencies he seemed to care for was his work. The battle outside was a mere side product; the protection of Deadhaus' border and punishment of clever invaders.
"Yes, my knight?" The Clan Lord questioned. Whilst he is a Marquis to a march of Deadhaus' dark grasp towards the northern mountainous spine, the vampire was a humble sort who had elevated from a thrall's rank and more famely preferred that of a vampiric scholar. Arrogance was a deadly poison, his former master found most bitterly. Iulius dipped his quill into the inkpot while gazing gilt sights to the yawning entrance of his tent. Just beyond was the distant dip from his positioned hill's wide view to the outstretch of crater-acned battleground leading for the jagged primordial mountains under the eternal gloom.
A vantage blocked by his stalwart pledged house-knights, a rising fledgling from a smaller house born from his third child-of-blood. Cyneric, a former legionnaire of the Sixth Dawn, a force of imperial paladins tattered in their attempted venture through the Dead Dreamer's more treacherous paths. Even now, in the boy's undeath, Iulius could see the sapling of madness in those pale eyes gleaming in that grim visor.
"The humans are making their violent retort back to their main fortifications. Our ghouls can not breach with the river of fires and spells concocted for the crossing." The knight said, stepping forward into a careful bow in his armour. Sword's sheath pointed out from his thigh in submission to the border-count's wishes. "What has your father commented to the strategies?"
"He's adamant in breaking their gates, milord." Cyneric answered. Iulius rested his groomed chin on a knuckle to this. "Of course-' He note with amusement, Eardwulf was often the violent sort. Such is the irony of a zealous man. "We will keep the pressure but why waste more of our fledglings if the Humans are so intent to hide. Inform Eardwulf to hold anymore presses to the bulwark, secure any chance of escape and gather the slain and dying." Iulius ordered as he leaned back into his chair. A hand out for his chalice, a quiet command immediately fulfilled with the dark palm-wide cup stubbed of moonstone-eyed bats on either side with their wings serving as the lips' rim. The coopery aroma of blood swaying so close.
"Palla'sul..." He summoned with a power-backed reverberance and like a curse, the Lich appeared from the darkest corner of the war-tent. A tall shadow moved soundlessly, iron-crowned and cradling a head-sized black pearl in the fold of its shrouded arm. Bounded to the Lord with the oath of necromancy's finest uses and agreement of dark secrets for the mere exchange of resources and homestead-blessed privacy, the Lich came to his left shoulder. A voice whispered through a rancid grin of dry black teeth, "Yes, milord?"
"Souls are to be collected and bodies given a new purpose, my friend. Can you provide my vassals a taste of your power this night?"
"Yes, milord."
Tonight, these brave mortals will see their own dead rise like a pallid tide and erode their fortitude by claw, teeth, and terror. The ageless scholar smiled, he almost hate to miss it. Alas, the Grim Council's demands were foremost to entertainment.