Even as Demaskieros began speaking, Romanescu was darting forward, looking for first blood and a fatality with his radioactive stone blade his goal. Lash almost sighed in resignation as he smoothly stepped to the side to let the stab go by without striking him, then twisted to avoid the slash Romanescu made on the way by in the hopes of scratching him.
This battle was going to be an exercise in polar opposites. Because either a scratch or a mortal blow could kill. Even if the mortal blow was normally repairable, the radiation from the car'deith blade would kill. It was death by all measures. And the traitor was resolved to inflict that death on the Ventru high lord.
Quickly resetting from his lunge, Romanescu reset his feet as he brought his weapon up to a classic knife fighting stance. As he did, Lash turned to face him, dagger held chin high in one hand, his other held close to balance his stance. Ironically the traitor wasn't wrong; knife fighting certainly wasn't something the big vampire considered himself an expert in. The Nosferatu vampire across from him was, by a fair margin, better at it than he was, the Nosferatu clan supporting a knife-fighting subculture amongst its noble class.
With that said, Lash wasn't about to let this slaving piece of shit get the best of him, car'deith blades notwithstanding. There was a reckoning coming for Romanescu, and he was here to deliver it!
An eyeblink to set then Romanescu, his face a mask of determination, was lunging forward again, knife held out point first in an attempt to stab the bigger vampire. A quick twist and a slap across his body against Romanescu's wrist pushed the stab to the side. Then they were exchanging a flurry of cuts, stabs, slashes, and blocks.
A final attack and block sequence then they were stepping back from each other to reset for the next series of attacks and defending, both vampires breathing hard from their efforts. Lash grimaced as he could feel tingling burns along his forearms where Romanescu's blade had come close enough that its radiation impacted his nervous system. Thankfully not close enough to cut him; that would've overloaded his nervous system and started an ash out.
The slaver, on the other hand, was sporting several cuts on his chest and arms. As Lash noted them, he felt a tight twist in his gut when he watched them closing on their own.
It was about as much confirmation that Romanescu was infested with nanites as one could get, the microscopic robots working to repair the damage to his nervous system that Lash's car'deith was inflicting with every cut. So, instead of triggering an ash out cascade, he was just annoying the other vampire with what amounted to paper cuts for as much damage as they were inflicting.
Lash's eyes thoughtfully narrowed as he realized why Romanescu hadn't exerted more energy in getting out of the way of those nicks. The fact that the nanites could compensate for minor damage from the usually deadly weapons was making the slaver careless. He wasn't avoiding getting nicked because those nicks wouldn't hurt him. Where they would trigger an ash out cascade for Lash. If he could take advantage of that carelessness, he could inflict more substantial damage. Or, the Night Father willing, just kill the filth outright!
Romanescu must've noticed him watching the nicks closing thanks to the nanites inside him. Because, when Lash lifted his eyes back to the Nosferatu vampire's face, he flashed the bigger vampire a cocky smile.
"Game changer, no?" the slaver said, his smile becoming a smirk. He then looked down at one of the longer cuts that were just in the process of sealing itself on his arm.
"I was skeptical, at first, when Janner's medical scientist said they would enhance my healing factor among other things," he said in a conversational tone before looking back up at a now snarling Lash, his smirk deepening. "I never could've imagined the nanites would've allowed me to take a strike from a car'deith blade and not immediately begin to ash out."
"It's a coward's strike anyway," Lash growled between grit teeth. "A scratch and you die, regardless of your skill, honor, or deeds in battle." And found his teeth grinding even more when Romanescu mockingly laughed.
"You, of all people, should know, Lord Commander. You never engage in battle where you don't have an overwhelming advantage!" The smirk grew. "After all of the one-sided battles I've been in over my life, I'll take the one where I have the advantage every time!"
Lash pondered letting his rage pour out in a venomous storm. It would be justified, killing every enemy in this chamber for killing so many innocent Ventru in the name of their false purge. The blood of his clan cried out for vengeance and only the blood of his enemies spilt onto the floor to cool without honor could satisfy it.
But, to dash recklessly forward would also be playing into the traitor's hands. And there was little doubt Romanescu was couching his words in a way that were intended to bait him into doing just that: attacking recklessly. Where a single scratch would win the fight for the traitorous Nosferatu vampire.
No. Lash schooled his features to blankness even as he pushed the anger into the back of his mind, banking it and letting it smolder and wait for a better time to be deployed. No, he wasn't going to play Romanescu's game by letting himself be drawn into attacking foolishly.
He was going to play his own game!
Eyes narrowed, Lash regarded Romanescu for a long moment. Then, with a slight shrug, he stepped back. Where he, whistling tunelessly under his breath, lightly twirled the car'deith dagger in his hand as if he didn't care what was going on.
Which, as expected, immediately elicited a frown from the slaver.
"What ... are you doing?" Romanescu hesitantly asked, obviously confused by the sudden change in aspect and posture.
Lash ignored him, choosing to continue to whistle tunelessly as with flawless dexterity, he let the dagger dance through his fingers, the twirling bringing the radioactive blade close enough to his fingers to make them tingle in reaction. Ignoring that as well, he continued to twirl the dagger as a stunned Romanescu stared at him.
"Are you ... are you trying to cut yourself, Lash?" the Nosferatu traitor then asked, so genuinely uncertain about what was going on that he stood still and stared. And when Lash continued to ignore him and twirl the dagger without making an aggressive move, Romanescu's confusion only grew.
"I thought you wanted this over," the slaver finally said after a long moment of knife twirling. "Weeks of cutting your way through our forces on the continent to finally face the traitor on the council. And you stand there, twirling your knife like some sort of circus act, as if you don't care. Don't you want justice for your fallen, Lash? For the liliths that I've captured, enslaved, and sold to anybody that would buy them, including psionics??"
Instead of answering, or ignoring the confused slaver, Lash finally looked up and over at him and smiled. Then he returned to his knife twirling.
"This is insanity," Romanescu muttered under his breath as he shifted his feet with uncertainty. Obviously unwilling to make the first move with the knowledge that it'd make him vulnerable to counterattack, he could only watch helplessly as Lash, seemingly without a care in the face of finally dealing with one of his primary enemies during the pogrom and subsequent clan war that threatened Ventru's very existence.
Almost as if ...
A quick twitch away from Romanescu as if he meant to turn towards Demaskieros and continue his knife twirling, then Lash was lunging in with every bit of the speed and strength he possessed as a trained Qos Viran operator. And in doing so, caught Romanescu completely unprepared. The traitor didn't even flinch in an attempt to defend himself before Lash was burying his dagger to the hilt in the Nosferatu vampire's heart and stepping back to avoid a wild slash by Romanescu in response to the devastating attack.
Grunting as the dagger hammered home, Romanescu stared with shocked eyes at a suddenly grim Lash, his mouth working soundlessly. Then, with blood abruptly spurting from his mouth, he slowly folded over onto the ground, all the while staring at Lash. His own dagger rattling onto the floor after falling from nerveless fingers, the slaver twitched once, twice, then was still on the ground, his staring eyes now sightless as death finally took him.
"It is done," Tanis declared formally, quickly followed by Truk and Orimov. And finally Demaskieros himself.
"It ... is done," the Toreador councilor pronounced heavily. "My champion has been defeated."
The tall, slender vampire then looked at Lash for a long moment before, with a slight hesitation, he held out Romanescu's trigger. A look at Truk had the Ventru soldier turning and carefully taking the trigger from Demaskieros's hand. Then Lash looked at Tanis.
Nodding, the VCG commander took a step forward.
"Councilor Elan Demaskieros," he said formally. "As a High Lord of Nosferatu and not directly aligned with the aggrieved Ventru clan, I formally demand that you rescind the extermination order you made against Ventru in front of these witnesses."
Demaskieros's face tightened in resistance. Then, abruptly, he nodded.
"I, Elan Demaskieros, High Lord of House Demaskieros of Clan Toreador, and sitting member of the Council of the People of the Night as Clan Vorinov's proxy, as the councilor that was the order's sponsor, do formally rescind the extermination order against Clan Ventru," he intoned, his voice almost without emotion.
"I recognize the rescinding," Tanis replied before looking to either side. "Witnesses?"
"Ventru recognizes the rescinding," Truk said with a nod, followed by Orimov: "Vorinov recognizes the rescinding."
The grizzled Russian vampire then hesitated slightly before:
"And Vorinov formally accuses High Lord Elan Demaskieros of House Demaskieros, of Clan Toreador of assassinating, impersonating and supplanting the rightful Vorinov representative on the council."
Tanis nodded, halfway expecting the sergeant to make the accusation.
"Do you deny this accusation, Lord Demaskieros?" he asked, his tone still formal.
"I do not," Demaskieros quickly replied, now almost defiant in the face of his ultimate failure.
"You also stand accused of plotting to destroy the European Conclave of the Queens of the Night," Tanis pressed, his eyes narrowing. "Do you deny this accusation?"
Again the answer was quick and defiant:
"I do not."
"You are also accused of conspiring with Clan Nordstrom with the sole purpose of destroying House Lash. Do you deny it?"
"I do not."
"And, by his own words, you are accused of supporting Marius Romanescu both politically and logistically in his efforts to capture, enslave, and sell our Queens of the Night to our enemies. Do you deny this?"
"No." Demaskieros straightened up proudly as if he had done something incredibly honorable. "I do not. It was the best thing I could've done for the Children of the Night, breaking the liliths' hold on our necks!"
"Wrong," Lash hissed, turning to spit at Demaskieros's feet. "You only weakened an entire race with your actions, you narrow minded fool."
"An answer I would expect from the Conclave's lapdog," Demaskieros sneered in response, turning hard eyes onto Lash. "You would leave your fate in their hands, Ventru? You would let them lead you by the nose into their future, bound by their rules and their expectations?"
He made a dismissive wave.
"Don't bother answering, lackey. I already know what you would say. Which is why you needed to die, Lord Lash, first and foremost out of all of your lilith-loving Ventru clan."
"A clan that formally accuses High Lord Elan Demaskieros of falsely representing the reasons for promoting the extermination order against Ventru, and illegally deploying the Hand of the Council to enforce that extermination order and other illegal actions against Ventru vampires and their allies," Truk stepped in to say, his expression hard.
Demaskieros speared the Ventru officer with a hard look of his own.
"I fought to free us all," he snapped. "My actions would've been hailed as revolutionary and just, if I had succeeded."
"And yet, you did not," Tanis stepped back in to say. "Your coup, while momentarily successful, is now over. Your gerrymandering of council protocols to benefit you in a misguided effort to restore Toreador to their place on the council has come to an end."
The VCG commander paused to swing an accusing finger over the surviving council members that had sided with the Toreador usurper.
"Do you name these councilors as co-conspirators in your efforts to take control of the council?"
Demaskieros sniffed as he let his eyes range over the cowering council members.
"They served their purpose," he haughtily said.
Tanis nodded then looked at Lash. Who's expression tightened slightly. Then he was stepping to the first of the complicit councilors, the Nkosi councilor. The African vampire looked up at him with fear in his eyes. And, before he could speak, Lash grabbed him by the hair and slit his throat from ear to ear with the car'deith still in his hand.
As the Nkosi councilor gurgled and clutched at his throat, his skin already starting to flake in the beginnings of an ash out, Lash turned to the stunned councilor beside him and repeated the quick execution. Around the chamber he went, slitting the throats of the councils that had thrown their lot in with the traitorous Toreador. Until the last of them was jerking on the ground, their blood pouring black and already breaking down as they began to ash out despite the nanites in their bodies trying to keep them together.
Easing back from the final executed councilor, Lash sent the car'deith into the floor with a hard flick of the wrist. He then looked at the defiant Toreador councilor.
"Elan Demaskieros. You are under arrest for treason and sedition against the Children of the Night," he intoned in a voice as formal as the one Tanis had used. "You are also charged with murder, assault, grievous assault, interference with a lawful process, interference with lawful lilith protocols and operations, kidnapping, slavery, unlawful confinement, and collusion with a known enemy of the Children of the Night."
Lash paused slightly.
"You will be tried for these crimes, Lord Demaskieros," he said. "While I am within my rights as the highest ranking member of the aggrieved party affected by your actions to execute you for these crimes with my own hand, I promised the European Conclave of the Queens of the Night that I would bring you before them for trial. As the Council of the Night is currently dissolved thanks to the executions of your co-conspirators, the Conclave has the highest authority in this matter. You will be immediately carried to a location selected by the Conclave for that trial."
His face tightening with each word, Demaskieros was seething with rage by the time Lash finished speaking.
"You have no right ...!" he began to angrily declare before a tight gesture from Lash cut him off.
"I have every right, traitor!" he snapped. "The only person in this room that doesn't have any rights is you. Including the right to speak. If you open your mouth again, I will exercise my right to execute you with my own hands without hesitation."
Demaskieros sputtered but, showing a survivor's mentality, didn't speak in response. Lash stared at him for a moment, silently daring him to speak so he could rip out the traitor's throat right then and there. When he didn't, he turned to the Vorinov sergeant.
"Sergeant Orimov, as the recognized representative for Clan Vorinov, I acknowledge your clan's claim on this vampire for his actions against the Vorinov. However, the charges of treason and sedition against the council and the Conclave take precedence. As such, he will be tried for those crimes first."
The grizzled soldier quickly nodded.
"Understood, Lord Commander. However, in my clan's name, I would like to exercise our right to accompany the party taking the traitor to the Conclave for trial so we may have our own trial shortly afterward before justice is rightly served on Demaskieros."
Lash nodded.
"Granted. I will so advise the Conclave of your exercised right." Then, a little bit louder: "Guard Captain Chescu of the M'tada, make yourself known and take the traitor Elan Demaskieros into custody in preparation to transport him to the Conclave's chosen location for his trial."
There was a commotion behind him from another one of the columns facing the chamber. A heartbeat later Chescu and her House Ionescu nestari were stepping into view.
"Lord Commander," Chescu greeted him with a grave nod as the Nosferatu soldiers marched forward to take hold of the fuming Demaskieros.
"Guard Captain," Lash replied as he reached for his neuron armor, intending on putting it, and his uniform tunic back on. "Contact your command hub and advise your mistress of the situation. The Conclave will need to find a secure location for the trial, one guarded against possible traitors within the Silver Legion's ranks, as well as any remaining allies Demaskieros has that aren't being executed by the Dragons' Own as we speak."
As Chescu nodded and turned away to activate her comms, Lash reached up and tapped his own comms ear bud to reactivate it.
"Darktower, Lash," he said as the rest of Tanis's VCG operatives, the Vorinov soldiers, and the remaining Ventru soldiers that had been waiting in the walls, began issuing from the hidden entrances behind the columns to join them.
"Lash, Darktower. Go, my lord," the distant general replied.
"We have secured the remote detonator. Continue purging the city of any remaining enemy forces with extreme prejudice and have your Cereberus teams find and secure any remaining nucleonic ordnance immediately."
"Acknowledged, my lord. I estimate that the Dragon's Own will reach the Nocturnum in the next two hours," Darktower reported. "And the whole of the city will be swept clean in six."
"Very good. Carry on, general. Lash out."
"Darktower out," his general replied and the signal disconnected.
Before Lash could turn and speak to the rest of the force he had brought with him into the Nocturnum, which now included Chescu's House Ionescu's nestari, and the Vorinov nestari under Orimov's command, there was a loud thump against the main door leading into the council chamber. Turning towards it, Lash reached for his Shiva even as he finished buttoning up his uniform tunic and pulling his armored utility vest over top of it.
If that was White Flame reinforcements attempting to rescue Demaskieros, they were about to get a rude welcome. A thought that was shared by the rest of his company as he found himself bracketed on both sides by Ventru, Nosferatu, and Vorinov nestari, all standing with their weapons pointed at the door. Aiming his Shiva at the door himself, the big vampire prepared for a flood of the enhanced humans and their advanced weaponry to come pouring in as soon as the door was breached.
Once, then again the loud bang sounded, the result of something heavy being deployed on the armored doors from the other side. Then, with a bright flash of light, a loud explosion, and a surge of motion, the massive double doors were being blown open.
Instantly the resulting space was filled with dark forms in sophisticated armor holding equally sophisticated weapons. Weapons that looked an awful lot like Kali combat rifles.
"Nice of you to join us, Captain Kingsguard. What took you so long?" Lash asked, dropping his Shiva to his side.
One of the figures immediately held up a closed fist to pull the surging soldiers to a halt. Then they were flipping up their helmet's visor to reveal Naryan's grinning face.
"Well, well, if it isn't Lord Commander Ingamon Lash of the Qos Viran!" she broadly declared as she, and the rest of her Force Recon legionnaires lowered their weapons even as Lash's company did the same.
Naryan paused then to take a quick look at the bodies that liberally heaped all over the floor.
"Don't tell me I just missed something important!"
****