Chapter 11: Chaos

[POV: Vlad Davis]

“Give me the report,” Jones Davis said.

Vlad Davis inspected the parchment in his hand for a few moments. “The total death count is 26,324. We have raided 5,000 gold beads worth of accessories and other utensils from the houses. We have yet to raid the castle treasury.  This will be a huge boost to our funds.” Vlad said those last words proudly as if he was the one who was spewing all that money.

Jones nodded absently as if all that money meant nothing to him.“ Did you find anyone else around the houses?”

“Yes 400 or so peasants.”

Jones arched an eyebrow at the comment. “And were there any children?”

“Children? Yes, most of them were children. Some of them grandpas and grandmas too old to get out of bed. Few adults.”

“And where are they?”

“The vampires sucked them dry.” Vlad puffed up his chest proud to have taken care of the nuisances. He waited for the complement he deserved.

Jones backhanded him sending him tumbling. The power behind the attack was so strong that when his head struck the ground it rebounded quite high. There was a split in his lower lip trickle of running down his chin.

Vlad somehow managed to heave himself up. He swayed for a second, the world spinning around him. Feeling something inside his mouth along with a taste of blood, he spat. I was his tooth.

Vlad stared at Jones dead in the eye.

The audacity ... Vlad clenched his fist so hard it began to bleed, nails digging into his palm. How dare he backhand me as if I am some kind of back-alley hussy.

“If you cross me again, your lost tooth will be the least of your worries. Next time your head will roll.”

Cross him? This stupid man always got angry with the stupidest of the reasons. Nothing was ever enough for ‘mister high and mighty Jones.’ What did I do this time to earn his ire?

As if the other man could read his mind, Jones began to answer him.

“Sucked them dry,” Jones scoffed. “I gave you one order and you couldn’t even follow it properly. I don’t care what you do with the others, but the children... I explicitly told you to give the children clean death. Quick and Painless.”

Vlad wanted to say something to defend himself but he knew it was not wise to speak right now. He did not want to add oil to the fire, so he wisely kept his mouth shut.

Jones pinched his nose and shook his head as if he was pained by the suffering of those children. He let out a sigh. “Bring those bodies back. We can’t let it go to waste.”

For a minute Vlad just stood there.

“What are you waiting for? Hop back to your job.”

Vlad stocked away to do as he was told. He did not like following his orders but what choice did he have. Jones was given more authority than him.

“Don’t forget to summon the mages,” mister high and mighty shouted behind him.

“Someday you will make a mistake Jones,” Vlad muttered under his breath. “And then it will be your head that will roll, and it will be by my hand.”

He shouted orders to his minions. One of them to summon the mazes, and others to bring the bodies back to the castle gate.

***

All the dead bodies were piled outside the castle gate making the shape of a disc. All five mages were already ready to work their magic. All of them were wearing a purple cloak, hiding their face under the mask of same colour. One of the mages walked over the pile of bodies without any hesitation and placed a transparent crystal ball in the centre.

Five mages stood tall in five different locations, right next to the bodies forming a perfect pentagon shape. All five of them stood there as if they were doing nothing. Two of them had hands on hips, they were obviously women. All five of them suddenly glowed with blue nimbus light, not too bright. It was a sign that they were pulling on their grace.

An arched milky blue line began to be drawn from under their foots. The line connected with each of the mages forming a circle. Then a straight line began to connect the mages forming a pentagon inside the circle. Finally, a star was drawn connecting the points of the pentagon.

A mage could only link up to four more mages, adding more power with each link. Only five mages could link together, it was the maximum number. No one knew why, but it was the unbreakable truth of magic.

However, a pentagram allowed you to form something called a pseudo-link with four more link, which increased the total number of link to 25 mages. That much power was more than enough to topple mountains with a flick of a wrist. And right now their mages had formed a link of 25.

Vlad knew that it was a bit of a overkill, but mister high and mighty wanted to finish the job as soon as possible. Extracting chaos from the dead bodies was long and tedious task.

For a few minutes nothing happened, but slowly the milky blue pentagram change into dark purple, and finally, into pitch black. Ribbons of darkness began to ooze out of the pentagram and latched onto the crystal ball placed at the centre of the corpses. The darkness was sucked into the crystal.

Even with the link of 25 the extraction process took more than four hour. When the extraction process was finally completed, the crystal ball had morphed into pitch black ball. It looked like a hole in the air,  everything around it seemed to warp.

The mages slumped flat on the ground with a sigh of relief wiping the sweat from their forehead. It was a simple extraction spell. However, it took them three times longer than expected to extract every single drop of Chaos. They continued to pant.

“Elementals release a phenomenal amount of Chaos when they die, it's ridiculous,” One of the mages said.

After a brief moment of rest, Jones ordered everyone to leave for the gate at once. Mister high and mighty pointed his hand towards the bodies, sending bursts if lightning at them. The bodies caught fire after a few seconds. The fire instantly grew bigger than the castle itself, pooping and crackling. The smell was unbearable to Vlad.

The army finally left the village. As the dazzling flames from the burning bodies continued to crackle.