186. Ah'Drezakh

The first thing that stood out about the capital of their planetary system was its size.

Praetei’s ship deccelerated as they approached, exiting the compressed space tunnel created by the Dao of Space. Ah’Drezakh first appeared as a tiny dot in the distance, growing larger with every minute.

The planet looked like a dark gray sphere with black and white clouds swirling on the surface. An aura of death similar to Marzhan’s putrefaction crept around the ship’s exterior once they got within a few hundred thousand miles.

Alistair had heard of the worlds of the Imperial Heartlands that were home to trillions of people. Ah’Drezakh was not nearly as impressive, but it was still the largest planet he had ever seen, at least five times the size of Earth.

The Grand Imperator’s ship was obviously impervious to the aura of a system capital, the black gases parting as its body cut through the deathly aura. From his understanding of higher quality planets, Ah’Drezakh, as an Expert quality world, had surpassed the point at which the death-attuned nature of its core affected those not on the path of death.

It would be a haven and a cultivation boon to the undead and necromancers like Oliver, but poisonous to others. That was why as soon as they landed, Praetei gathered Alistair and his sister and relinquished a parting gift, a bracelet that filtered the death affinity Mana.

Alistair had looked outside of the observation deck, but the fog was too thick. His [Reality Sense] could not penetrate the golden metal of the ship, and he had a strong feeling that also applied to the deathly gases.

He and his sister were teleported to the front of the ship, where the main retinue of the Grand Imperator had their quarters. Before they could act, an opaque golden bubble surrounded them.

Alistair grinned a little as his sister let out a shriek from the sudden displacement. The bubble was small, only a little taller than himself, made of a living metal that hardened to the touch.

“Jeez,” Evangeline said. “They could have warned us.”

With a sudden lurch, the bubble started to move. A window formed near their heads. Alistair peaked out, allowing his [Reality Sense] to observe the planet.

It was as he expected. They were flying over an enormous metropolis, but it didn’t look anything like the cities of Earth. On the horizon, he spotted thousand-mile-tall rib bones that encased a seemingly endless field of jagged spires.

Some spires were far higher than any skyscraper, formed in physics-defying patterns that shouldn’t have remained standing. They were black and filled with death affinity Mana—the entire city was death itself.

Millions of citizens roamed the streets, some flying through the same space and air tunnels he had in his own capital, except expanded hundredfold.

All manner of strange beings called Ah’Drezakh home. Alistair spotted walking skeletons, vampires, zombies, werewolves, and even some of those spider-like blobs with a red tentacle mass inside a blue gelatin.

Some citizens looked up and stared as their golden shuttle rocketed through the city, but most just kept about their business. It reminded him of how city folk tended to be inoculated against strange sights.

Like any city Alistair had ever seen, the capital of Ah’Drezakh was economically stratified. As they got closer to the center, the spires started getting taller and thicker. All of them were black, made of a matte material that seemed to suck in light. Even the “rich” parts of town had nothing else but the spires.

The streets were covered in a thick black gas that appeared to conglomerate at the street level and then once again in the sky, similar to normal clouds. In between the two strata, gray gases of different hues suffused the air, giving the city a smoggy look.

The black smog also made it difficult to see the ground outside of the closest region of their golden pod. It got worse as they ascended, rising over a gargantuan hill to the largest spire in the city.

Alistair, despite everything he had seen, felt a bit of shock in front of the grandiose structure. It wasn’t the largest thing he had ever seen, but this was up close and in person, unlike astronomical objects from afar.

The black, lightning bolt-shaped tower had to be at least twenty miles high, and two miles thick, though its irregular and gravity-defying shape made that an inconstant dimension.

They didn’t stop at the base, where there was an impossibly black void that thousands of undead traversed in and out of every second, the vast majority being vampires and blobs.

After slowing down as they approached the tower, they soon started accelerating, this time upward. The ground became a distant memory as they shot to the top of the twenty mile tall building in less than thirty seconds.

Eventually, their ship slowed down, and an opening in the jagged spire revealed an enormous throne room that was far larger on the inside.

The pod perfectly fit through the ovular hole, touching down on an ornate white carpet filled with patterns of skulls and death-related imagery. The ceiling and walls of the hall were covered in a flickering black flame that seemed to dodge one’s eyes. This was only part of the immense death aura inside, as on solid bone walls hung hundreds of skulls of every variety of beast under the sun.

The amount of death affinity Mana was palpable; however, even as Alistair and Evangeline stepped out of the pod, nothing harmed them. The throne room was a cultivation chamber for its inhabitant, but everywhere they stepped, the Mana retreated instantly and without flaw.

The room extended thousands of feet in every direction. Dozens of glass pedestals with prized jewels, scrolls, and other oddities were spaced in a seemingly random pattern. There were taxiderimed specimens of enormous size, such as a five-hundred foot long dinosaur-esque creature with three frontal heads and one head for a tail.

Praetei appeared through a void portal as if nothing had happened. The space in between them and the throne compressed to that of ten steps.

What Alistair had thought was a throne from far away turned out to be more like an office chair.

That made sense. As a Baron, Zilvesky wasn’t exactly the top of the food chain. His sleek metallic chair swiveled and floated under his control, spinning away from a vast array of holographic screens to greet his guests.

Baron Zilvesky Aportamus was a tall and skinny man. He had silver hair and red eyes—Alistair wasn’t sure there was a vampire that could be more stereotypical. His pale skin was eerily white, and glistened unnaturally. His fangs were noticeable the moment he opened his mouth to speak.

Zilvesky kowtowed before the Grand Imperator, almost touching his forehead against the ground. “It is an honor to be graced with the presence of a Grand Imperator. Please, be welcome.”

“Your decorum is appreciated,” Praetei said. “Perhaps you’ll join my level in a few hundred years. Peak Adept in less than two hundred years is mightily impressive, especially without a sponsor.”

“You flatter me so,” Zilvesky said, his voice soft and enchanting. “I am stuck at a bottleneck, and I fear many decades of cultivation will be required to breakthrough to Profound.”

“Which would still put you ahead of the curve by few a hundred years, even for the Heartlands,” Praetei pointed out.

Zilvesky smiled. “I suppose so. If I may, my lady, who are our guests?”

Praetei motioned to Alistair and his sister. “Alistair and Evangeline Tan, siblings from FX-14752, that new world you must have heard about by now. They are being sponsored by the Clear Water Sect.”

Zilvesky’s expression slightly darkened at hearing that name.

“I’ll be sure to give them a proper welcome,” Zilvesky assured the Grand Imperator. “How close are they to Peak Foundation?”

“30 odd levels,” Praetei informed him. “Given six months time, they should make it, as long as you can find them a sufficient meat grinder of a world or instance.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Zilvesky said. “Ah, where are my manners? You’ve been traveling for some time. Would you care to join us for supper, Grand Imperator?”

“That will not be necessary. Please take good care of these two.”

With that, Praetei shifted through the void between worlds and disappeared in a fraction of a second, leaving them alone with the vampiric baron.

Now that Alistair was considering it, he felt a certain resonance between himself and Baron Aportamus. It has to be my blood dragon bloodline, Alistair thought. It’s not exactly vampiric, but both rely on blood for their abilities.

The baron gave them a warm smile. “We can’t expect a Grand Imperator to pay too much attention to us folk in the lower realms. You must have interacted quite a bit with her, but I assure you that is a rarity, even if you shine as a talented recruit.”

“Wise words, my lord,” Alistair said. “Your level is impressive, especially without a sponsor. We Foundation realms should learn from the masters.”

Zilvesky snorted. “I’ve clawed my way to where I am now without any sponsor, that is correct. But I don’t look down on your path at all. How could a cultivator ever deny the resources of a sect?”

A grave feeling swelled in Alistair’s heart as Zilvesky spoke his next words. “However, listen closely. Your interests are not that of the sect, no matter how much they tell you they are, no matter what they claim otherwise. This is the key to surviving with your freedom and your dignity. Heed this senior’s words regarding this matter, or you will be sorry.”

“We will keep that in mind,” Evangeline said.

“Good. While it shan’t be as grand without the Grand Imperator, I still invite you two to dinner.”

Alistair and Evangeline obviously accepted.

Alistair was expecting supper with thousands of nobility, bureaucrats, and merchants—it turned out Zilvesky really meant his words about not being as grand.

With a wave of his hand, a part of his throne room changed into a small table with three seats. Alistair felt that there was no way an Adept was capable of such substantial reality manipulation innately, and that there was some expensive item involved. The vampire was a baron after all, despite his relative youth.

A skeleton butler arrived with a juicy steak for the humans, and a tankard of pristine blood for the baron.

Alistair felt an immediate pulsating longing for the blood, which Zilvesky picked up on.

“I could tell from a glance,” he said. “It’s not a Shaded One lineage, but it’s also not weak by any means. I won’t pry, however.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Alistair responded. “I wouldn’t want to pry either, but it is public that you are a Shaded One yourself. What I’m not understanding is how that’s possible. I read in the archives that your parents are lesser vampires.”

The steak split apart, settling on their plates as they dug in. Zilvesky didn’t even have to pick up a glass to eat; blood streamed out of the tankard and settled on his skin, where it absorbed directly into his body.

For some reason, Alistair felt that made it even more disturbing than if he had used his fangs to suck out blood.

“I assume you know that vampire is a broad category,” the baron stated. “It really refers to any undead creature that cultivates blood, of which there are many causes. Some even refer to non-undead as vampires, though that isn’t technically proper. Of course, the original vampires are the Shaded Ones.”

Zilvesky looked up, as if reminiscing on a satisfying memory. “My parents were ordinary vampires, of the basic stock, as you might call it. A diluted lineage split off from some pure Shaded One hundreds of millions of years ago. I was the only exception. An atavism.”

“Atavism?” Alistair asked. He knew the word, but not the context.

“An exceedingly rare phenomenon,” Zilvesky said. “There shouldn’t be more than a handful in this universe. I only know of one other. It occurs when there is a return to one’s ancestral roots. A lineage that has been long lost, buried deep within the spiritual DNA and cellular matrix, returns to the surface. I would be the lowest of the low of Shaded Ones, but that makes me greater by birth than those around these parts.”

“I see,” Alistair said, realizing that his own blood dragon bloodline was possibly more rare than he realized. There was an obvious distinction—the Aportamus baron was a legitimate Shaded One, having that as his species, rather than a bloodline or ancestry. However, blood dragons and Shaded Ones were likely in similar rarefied air as Immemorial Races.

It was Evangeline’s turn to ask a question. “Does that give you authority over the other undead?”

Zilvesky laughed. “I’m more of a shiny object, to be displayed and used at the great powers’ leisure. The countess is a good-natured woman, though, I might add. You’ll meet her eventually.”

Alistair and Evangeline, despite the wonderful meals they had on the Grand Imperator’s spaceship, feasted like there was no tomorrow. He couldn’t say the food was the same quality as Praetei’s personal chef could cook up, but it was of such a different style he didn’t mind. It wasn’t as if he could eat rich like a Visionary for foreseeable future, anyway.

Ah’drezakh’s human cuisine was meat-focused, with an emphasis on richness and umami. It fatty as could be, drizzled with cheeses, carmelized onions, and something similar to aioli, though more tangy.

The baron went all out in his hospitality, serving a five course meal. It took several hours for them to eat, buoyed because their cultivation meant they could digest far more food than any normal person.

Most of the time was spent eating and not chatting, though near the end as they were served dessert, the baron had a question for them instead of the other way around.

“So you are going to the Clear Water Sect?” Zilvesky asked.

Alistair nodded. “Are you familiar with them?”

“They tried to recruit me many years ago. I said no. They weren’t so happy.”

Alistair tried to square that with his perception of the Perfect and Elder Mo, but found it difficult. He couldn’t imagine them throwing a tantrum over not getting a recruit.

“I shouldn’t hold it against all of them. It was only one man. Yet, it’s difficult considering that man was promoted to elder recently.”

Alistair raised an eyebrow. “An elder? I thought that they were supposed to be more chivalrous than the other sects.”

Zilvesky put up his hands. “That is their reputation, but even if I were to take it at face value, it’s impossible to catch all the bad apples, no? And that already rests on a conditional of questionable certainty. If you ever come across a werewolf named Shan Mok, be wary.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for the wisdom, my lord.”

The rest of the meal continued with some small talk about their trip on Praetei’s personal spaceship, Earth’s initiation, and Alistair’s new duties as planetary lord.

The baron seemed especially interested about the journey. It was clear that he had a great interest in the Grand Imperator. That made sense to Alistair, who equated the status of Grand Imperator to a celebrity politician. A celebrity that could squash my planet in a heartbeat.

He was dealing with dangerous and powerful people, and he needed to be cautious. Friendly faces were plenty, yet true comrades were rare. The power imbalance was so extreme, it was hard not to gravitate in their orbit, yet he had to stay his course no matter what.

When they finished eating, the skeleton butler showed the siblings to their rooms. Alistair received a spacious onyx suite overlooking the city. Everything in his room was black and glossy, except the electronic parts which glowed bright with color, creating an eerie atmosphere.

Stuffed from his meal, Alistair let his eyes close as he fell asleep. The sweet embrace of the small death came faster than he expected.