The Oracle Paths

As soon as the Adamantium door closed completely, the cramped staircase they were walking down was plunged into darkness. Both Jake and Carmin switched to night vision and four luminous globes, including a pair of glittering galaxies and another of crimson stars, pierced the night.

With their hypersensitive eyes, the staircase before them looked as bright as day. Even without any secondary source of light, Jake could easily emit a brief light pulse, whose photons would be partially reflected by the surfaces illuminated by it.

It was similar to the echolocation method used by bats to find their way around. Of course, he could light up these dungeons for good, but turning the light back on suddenly would not help their so far furtive approach.

However, the Vampires were all nyctalopes and Jake had no intention of switching off his Stealth Spell until their cover was completely blown. Without being overly cautious, the duo continued to move forward at a slow, measured pace, taking the time to clearly identify their surroundings as they went.

Once they reached the bottom of the long staircase, they emerged into a dank underground complex resembling a catacomb. The place smelled musty while the walls, floor and ceiling were made exclusively of stone. The hall at the foot of the stairs was not very spacious. About four meters wide and six meters long.

At the end of the hall, two pale-skinned Vampires were playing dice around a shabby table. Behind them, an adamantium gate with bars as thick as a log blocked their way. Compared to the previous door, there was a prominent padlock system, and its keyhole matched one of the large, rustic keys hanging from one of the two Vampires' key sets.

"Who goes there?!"

These guards might have been playing dice while on duty, but they hadn't been placed there by accident. Their superior had just left the dungeon, but they had clearly heard the adamantium door at the top of the stairs open and close a second time.

By estimating the average walking speed since the door was activated they had instantly determined how long it would take this new visitor to reach them. Seeing no one, their vigilance was immediately aroused.

Jake's expression changed abruptly as he discovered how good these guards were. In a heartbeat the two Vampires got up from their chairs and threw them in front of the stairwell exit. The one closest to them then grabbed the large rectangular table and threw it at them with the same violence.

With seamless cooperation, the second Vampire slashed his right wrist with one of his claws and hundreds of strands of blood escaped, quickly forming a bloody net as tangible and elastic as a real fishing net.

Breaking this net was no problem for Jake and Carmin, but it put an end to their stealthy approach. To buy some time, though, Jake teleported to their backs with Carmine as the bloody net, table and two chairs smashed into the opposite wall and staircase.

With one swipe of the edge of their hand, Jake and Carmine knocked out their respective targets. Knocking out a Noble Vampire was obviously not like knocking out an ordinary human. A simple brain concussion would only stun them for a few tenths of a second at most.

Stunning a Vampire with one blow actually meant breaking their neck, and sealing off their carotid arteries or more generally cutting off blood flow to the brain. If that wasn't enough, it meant blowing out their skulls and a fair chunk of their brains. Fortunately in this case their enemies were not so tough. They fell with the first blow.

When Jake struck, he would vibrate his arm at a certain frequency, ensuring that the overlapping impact would generate enough of a shockwave in the victim's body to severely damage nearby organs. After that, even if the victim managed to wake up, he would be in such a bad shape that he would be unable to move or even communicate.

"What do we do with these three?" Carmin whispered contritely.

The third one was obviously the first Vampire Jake had neutralized to open the Adamantium door. Jake was somewhat hesitant. Perhaps the key ring from these guards would suffice, but how could he be sure there wouldn't be another optical security scanner or some other unknown protective measure after that gate?

"We're taking them with us. All three of them..." Not making a decision was also making a decision. Unable to make up his mind, he stopped thinking and threw the three Vampires into his Space Storage.

This place wasn't meant for the living, but these Vampires could survive here without any harm. It was both a blessing and a curse, their strength and their weakness. To kill a Vampire, a stake in the heart or decapitation was not necessarily fatal as in the myths. They were even less afraid of garlic and holy water.

Even drained of their blood, they could still survive in that hypersleep state that the Vampires of Quanoth rightly called Eternal Rest. Throughout their history, many had exploited their supposed immortality to inflict abuses worse than death on them.

Why was Jake remembering all this? Because it turned out that behind the gate guarded by these two Vampires was a veritable gallery of horrors.

An endless corridor as wide as the hall at the base of the stairs stretched into the darkness with numerous intersections. Every five or six meters there was a moldy wooden door with a rudimentary wooden plaque nailed to it. On it could be read the name of the prisoner locked up there and in what way.

The vast majority of these prisoners were Vampires who had once betrayed, conspired or simply held different opinions from the Dracul clan. Because Jake and Carmin were unfamiliar with the history of Quanoth, they wisely chose to stay out of it, but that didn't stop them from reading the contents of those wooden plaques.

[Prisoner #1: Dante Dracul: Betrayed his clan in the year 303 by leaking critical information to the enemy that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Dracul Vampires.

Sentence: Eternal drowning]

An example of a sentence that was known to punish a Vampire who committed unforgivable crimes was to drain him or her of their blood to deprive them of their strength, lock them in an almost indestructible metal coffin that would then be filled with water before being sealed shut permanently. A perpetual drowning would ensue. The Vampire would suffocate constantly, but his soul would outlive his body, allowing it to regularly come back to life to relive the same ordeal.

Behind this door, there was an old Vampire drowning every two three minutes for almost 700 years. If he hadn't already gone insane, his fortitude and enmity towards his clan would have reached an unimaginable level by now. Releasing him was a very bad idea, although there was a chance that he would become their ally.

[Prisoner #2: Bastien Rees: The Vampire Progenitor of the Rees clan who in the year 306 instigated a revolt against the Dracul clan that resulted in the deaths of several heirs to the throne.

Sentence: Chopped into a thousand pieces and eternal drowning].

Jake and Carmin shuddered as they pictured the horror that lay behind that door. According to the feedback from his Myrtharian Eyes, the prisoner was still alive.

The even more hardcore version of eternal drowning used against the first prisoner and reserved for the most dangerous criminals consisted of doing exactly the same thing, but cutting their bodies into pieces beforehand and locking them in different jars or crypts. Since they could endure the deprivation of oxygen and blood, as long as their brains were whole their heads would survive.

The rest of their visit to the dungeons continued to open their horizons, the degree of horror only getting worse. One had to admit that these Vampires knew how to punish their enemies. Anyone in their right mind who ended up in one of these cells would decisively choose suicide rather than continue this life of suffering with no future.

As she read all these plaques, Carmin became increasingly livid and silent. Jake remained stoic, but the frown on his face only deepened as they explored. If Wyatt was trapped here, they had to assume the worst.

Surprisingly, they didn't run into anyone on their way. It seemed that even the jailers didn't have the stomach to stay here much longer. It was a good thing for them and they could explore the dungeons at their leisure.

After checking thousands of cells, which shocked Jake and Carmin to the core about the number of enemies the Dracul clan had accumulated and imprisoned in its history, they stopped at another dingy door. On this one, it read,

[Prisoner #4325: Wyatt Griffiths: A Guilty who infiltrated the Dracul clan in the year 1000.

Sentence: Chopped into a hundred pieces and drowned forever.]

"Noooo!" Carmin couldn't hold back this time and she burst into tears. Mad with rage, she smashed the door with her fist and rushed inside.

"Wait!" Jake tried to hold her back but it was too late.

Running after her, he came upon a damp and dusty room, covered with cobwebs, in which was stored exactly one hundred jars of different sizes. It didn't take a genius to figure out who was inside.

But that wasn't why Jake had screamed. As soon as Carmin stepped inside the room, hundreds of metal spikes shot up from the floor emitting a strange sunlight, piercing her through and through. Incredulous and unable to understand why she hadn't anticipated the trap, he could only run after her, hoping to save her in time.