"I turned down their offer and only pretended to accept their communication amulet. I knew that they could use it to track me just like I knew that the so-called Master wasn't any better than Paquut." Theseus said. "Please, don't tell me that…" Dolgus lacked the strength to finish the sentence. "I'm sorry." Theseus shrugged. "I threw the amulet away and then forgot about it. I didn't have fits of blood madness back then. I was finally free from my hunger and happy to have a second chance at life. "With my power and knowledge, I assumed that living a normal life among humans or beasts would have been easy. I didn't want a Master nor 'siblings', just to be left alone." "Yet once I fell prey to the blood madness, everyone started hunting me down. The humans want to capture and study me while the Awakened want to kill me for the crimes of my original. "My only hope is to join the Organization and escape Verendi. If only I still had that damn amulet, things would be much easier." "Then how do you know where and when we can meet your allies?" The Griffon asked. "Well, Abomination hybrids have a way to communicate between them even without amulets. Do you remember the black pillar?" Theseus said. "You mean that huge ass flash of light that gave out our position and got three armies and the Hand of Fate on our tail? Kind of hard to forget." Dolgus shuddered at the memory. "That's how. We just need to keep moving toward the border, find an area isolated enough, and then I can use the black pillar to signal my position." The Bastet said. "You mean give our dimensional coordinates, right?" The Griffon's smile twitched in nervousness. "No, we are too far for that. From this distance, I could only convey to them that I was in danger and I needed help. That along with my general direction. They know that I'm in Verendi, but that's it." Theseus took some food out of his pocket dimension and the two wolfed it down. "That's it?" Dolgus ate and spoke in outrage at the same time spitting part of his meal everywhere. "You blotted the moon out of the sky, eclipsed the stars for kilometers, and almost got us killed just to say 'help, I'm in Verendi'?" "Correct." Theseus nodded with a smile. "And we need to do that again and again until your rescuers find us by chance?" "Not by chance. The closer we get to my 'siblings', the more information I can exchange. At some point, we will be able to establish a telepathic link and send them our dimensional coordinates." The Eldritch replied. "Sounds more like a last-ditch effort sprinkled with wishful thinking to me." The Griffon grunted. "Also, why are you smiling?" "Because you are funny and I had forgotten how it feels to have a true friend. The situation is indeed desperate, but at least I'm not alone anymore." *** Griffon Kingdom, City of Othre, Main Branch of the Night Court. Even after days from his fight with Jirni, Orpal Verhen was still gloating about his newfound bloodline ability. He used Frozen Soul even to cool down his drinks, experimenting with it at every occasion he got. He would often harshly punish his subjects just to show off his power. 'My crown already consists of three flames and I'm sure that all of them represent one of my bloodline abilities. I must devote myself to master them all before I make my next move.' He thought. The Dead King had gone into secluded training for a while when he received an urgent summoning from his Inner Court. Outraged at the interruption, he swore that unless a catastrophe had happened, someone would have joined him in his training as a combat dummy. "What's so important to call for an emergency meeting?" He walked inside the richly furnished meeting hall, where his golden throne waited for him. Before his coronation, the undead would sit at a round table surrounded by identical chairs to symbolize how they were equals. After Orpal had proclaimed himself the Dead King, however, things had changed. "I'm very sorry to bother you, my liege, but the numbers of our latest reports are a reason to worry for the Court and they need your immediate attention." Tethre the Vampire said. Usually she looked like a gorgeous woman in her mid-twenties but she had learned to shapeshift into an old hag to avoid Orpal's unwanted attentions. Only after sitting on his throne and wearing his crown did the Dead King bother to look at the papers. The golden crown that he had commissioned to one of the best goldsmiths of Garlen after becoming a Vurdalak had seven gemstones of different colors. One for each element that he was certain that one day would be under his rule. "Have you lost your mind, woman?" Orpal's eyes flared with a blue light and his anger increased the more he read. "Our profits are increasing, our area of influence is expanding, and the number of thralls is at an all-time high. "Where is this terrible news that scared you so much that you had to bother me?" "Read until the last page, my King." Tethre's lips curled up in a grimace of disgust at that word and the gazes of the rest of the members of the Court steeled. Yet centuries of practice kept her voice sweet and Orpal never bothered looking at his slaves. "Do you mean this?" He jumped up, shoving the final page of the report right into her face, smudging it with her makeup. "There are the casualty numbers of my raids. How dare you criticize my methods when they've brought us so many benefits?" "Your methods only brought us trouble, mourning, and bled our resources almost dry!" Tethre slapped his hand off her face, baring her fangs. "Our profits come from the alliance with the True Queen. "She is sharing with us her gains, giving our elders position of power in the regions she rules, and helping us find suitable Thrall candidates among the less fortunate. Siding with Thrud was the only good thing you ever did." "The True Queen?" Orpal's voice rose of an octave hearing his subjects referring to Thrud the same way her loyal retainers did. "Are you sick of undeath, woman? Because if it's a hint of treason what I just heard, your long life is about to come to an end!" "Is it not enough that you killed so many of our elders and of our most promising youths for your mad schemes?" Tethre didn't back down. "What point there is in being eternally young if all of your Chosen die quicker than a butterfly? "You sacrifice the lives of those much older and wiser than you without a second thought, throwing them away like garbage. How can you expect us to offer our lives to a tantrummish child who treats them like toys and has no qualms breaking them?" Being called a child pushed all of Orpal's wrong buttons at once. What he wanted was to be feared and respected, yet even his own mother had treated him with nothing but scorn and revulsion.