The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

The Night Market

With some of the largest caves in Austria located in the region of Salzburg, the Ventru soldiers weren't surprised to pass the final threshold to find themselves looking at a vast natural cave nearly big enough to have its own weather, fed fresh air through vents and home to no less than five natural, glacier-fed springs, and one hot mineral spring.

The space was liberally lit by giant infrared lamps, looking like miniature red stars from where they stood nearly two hundred meters above the ground, set at regular intervals throughout the entire space. And by that light, they could see within that space clusters of buildings in several different architectural styles stretching across the centuries, perched on a series of broad open spaced markets selling everything from vehicles and weapons to human familiars and creche special emissaries offering intermediary services for breeders.

Here Lash's father had been allowed to enter, going to the market where the emissaries could be bargained with to obtain higher or lower classes of breeders according to the ultimate need. Those markets were collectively known as the Blood Exchange.

And this place, this wondrous hidden city in a giant underground cave, was the Night Market.

From the stories he had heard about the place from his father, the Night Market would've been teeming with activity day or night, the vampires safe here from any sort of radiation beyond what they brought in with them. So to find it almost completely empty was disturbing. Empty, except for sporadic weapons fire from buildings close to the Blood Exchange.

Lash held out a hand and, instinctively knowing what the big vampire needed, Fordricht put his night vision binoculars into it. Nodding in thanks, the Qos Viran veteran brought them to his eyes and made a quick scan along the cave's back wall.

There, almost exactly where he expected it: the entry to the passageway that ran under the mountains to NachtFeuer. His eyes narrowed. From here, it still looked like it hadn't been breached. Likely because the m'tada caught in the Market when the White Flames breached the puzzle door, were putting up enough of a resistance, the enhanced humans hadn't yet had the opportunity to focus their efforts on the entryway. Not that he blamed them; he'd rather purge the Market of enemies at his back before making a concerted push up the passageway so they weren't at his back, pinning him up against the ramparted legionnaires on the other end.

A scan across the buildings yielded several squads of White Flames moving building to building urban warfare style, working an obvious purge mission while sections of their force continued to pin down the m'tada troopers in the Blood Exchange. He swept the rest of the cave as best he could after that before letting the binoculars drop, his impromptu recon done.

"Looks like the majority of the White Flame force is going house to house to flush out any stragglers," he said, turning to address the rest of his company while handing the binoculars back to Fordricht. "A fragment is concentrating on the Blood Market where they likely have the surviving m'tada pinned down."

"Why are there m'tada in the Market, Wolf?" one of the nestari asked. "Aren't all the liliths up at the castle?"

"You would think," Lash said. "Any in the Market should've been pulled back by the legionnaires garrisoning the Market to make sure they were safe." Another dark thought occurred to him as a troubling reason m'tada were still in the Blood Exchange.

"Unless there were breeders left behind and the Blood Guard were ordered to hold back and give them protection!"

"Pere de la Nuit!" Ballan hissed tautly. "Why would the Legion leave breeders behind?"

"Probably because they're not as rare, or as important as liliths," another one of the nestari grimly said. Lash pointed at her and nodded in confirmation.