Sigurd Erikson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Sigurd Erikson stood over a dead man and cursed his own bloodline. He wanted a beast that could tear his brother's champions apart. He was second son of the Nordic Clan, keeper of Dracula's monsters, and every night-beast he bred came out weak. His brother would stay clan heir. Sigurd would stay a shadow. Unless the corpse at his feet rose stronger than anything his brother owned. The corpse had been a soldier. Now it was a strigoi mort, a monstrous undead thing meant to hunt in the dark. Sigurd had stitched and starved and bled it for weeks. It still lay flat on the stone floor of the Hall of Monsters. He kicked its cold leg. Nothing. "You can't build a champion when you don't know what one is," said a voice behind him. He turned. The Mother stood in the doorway, her white veil trailing far down the corridor. Ioana Tepes ruled the witches. She had resurrected Dracula himself. She spoke once and expected obedience. Sigurd owed her house a debt already. Her daughter had bled herself unconscious to raise his last two wolves. Beside the Mother stood that daughter. The Crimson Prințesă wore all red, her ruby crown catching the orange light. Maria Tepes was the first blood bender, the most dangerous witch alive. She looked at the dead soldier the way a smith looks at raw iron. "Fury is not strength," Maria said. "A champion needs both. You gave this one meat and rot. You never gave it will." Sigurd bristled. "Then teach me. I don't grovel, but I'll listen." The Mother nodded once. "Blood carries the mind. Muscle without a mind is a puppet. You must fold both together." Maria knelt beside the corpse. She pressed one sharp nail to its chest and drew a thin red line. Sigurd watched her draw power not from her own life but from the moonlight stored in her crown. The rubies dimmed as she worked. Blood lifted from the wound and coiled in the air like a living rope. "Watch what makes it a champion," she said. "Not the flesh. The rage you weave inside it." She drove the blood back into the corpse. The strigoi mort convulsed. Its eyes snapped open, black and hungry. It lunged. Sigurd caught its throat and felt real force fight him back. For the first time, his creation shoved him across the floor. He laughed, wild and loud. He finally understood. A champion night-beast was flesh married to fury by blood magic. He could breed them now. Then the Mother spoke her last words, quiet and flat. "The girl's crown is nearly spent. Blood-bending needs stored moonlight, or it eats the caster alive. You know the method. You do not have the power." Sigurd's grin died. The knowledge was his. The fuel was not. To breed a whole bloodline, he would need moonlight of his own, and he had none.