Bright lights swam in Vladan’s vision. They filled his field of view, shifting, swirling, moving around his mind, they pulled at his memory as if they meant to remind him of something. Something just out of reach within his soul. Something that prodded him at the back of his mind. The back of his head. The back of his head… his head… Skeletal fingers at the back of his head…
Reality screamed back into Vladan’s mind. The lights that swam about him pulled into focus, revealing a clear night sky that sparkled with a thousand pinpricks. His body was encased in skeletal hands, as they carried him aloft, the desert warmth pulled at his skin, and sand could be found in the air itself as it was lifted, he presumed, by the bony footprints below him.
Vladan screamed in rage, this was absolute absurdity. He had been defeated by mindless brutes, that was bad enough, but to add salt to the wound they couldn’t even kill him properly. Now he lay there, his body wracked in pain, unable to move, unable to seek revenge.
A looming, sneering face came into view, silhouetting the night sky. Mannfred. Mannfred bloody von Carstein. Vladan’s mind shocked itself, as Mannfred’s hand struck out grabbing his throat.
‘Shut your idiotic mouth,’ von Carstein snarled, ‘before I pull it from your face.’
Vladan had not seen the vampire for some time since. The stars had long since dissipated, the sky turning amethyst, slowly cobalt, then azure. Heat slowly rose, matching his temper. But it made no difference, Vladan could barely move, let alone walk by himself, try as he might, the best he could do was move a hand a bare inch. Then, just as the sky started back to purple, a single cloud above catching it’s light, the skeletal walk came to a halt. They had arrived.
The building von Cartein had brought him to stuck out of the sand, a monolith from the time of myth, it’s walls climbing up into the burning sky. Being held up by the skeletons, Vladan stared in awe, it was huge, and seemingly untouched. Vladan he had never seen anything like it, and something told him that the structure went significantly deeper into the sands, it’s power emanating out, it seemed to him he could feel it below him, stretching out below the surface. At the foot of an immense doorway stood a once circular structure, it’s various parts and sections now rotated about its center haphazardly, shifting back and forth and stuttering in a fashion Vladan suspected was not intended.
‘This… thing… appeared here not long ago,’ Mannfred stated, ‘it seems that that central structure had hidden the complex. I believe that wave of energy that passed through awhile ago unlocked it somehow.’ Mannfred sneered at the building and looked about him at the vast desert about them. ‘I have no idea why it’s here, or how I know what to do, but here we stand…’
He looked across at Vladan. ‘Well, here I stand at least..’ he jeered.
It did not take long at all for the bony column to make their way down to the central doorway. Mannfred stood a hundred paces off and then commanded the column to walk towards the door. As they grew closer, Vladan started to feel… a pull of some kind. His chest bulged as the Key of Night held hanging around his neck suddenly lurched towards the looming doorway, and just like that, a huge column of magical energy burst from the towering structure, piercing the gloomy sky with a light that turned the desert to day. Astonished, Vladan stared back at Mannfred.
The vampire smiled.