Vlad, the Impaler's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Vlad, the Impaler had chewed through half the swamp and still felt weak. Ogres told stories of a beast whose flesh gave any ogre who ate it strength beyond measure. Vlad wanted that strength. But wanting was easy. Nobody could tell him where the beast slept. He had only whispers, and whispers cannot be tracked. So he hunted the ones who did the whispering. He found an old tusk-trader who dealt in monster parts. Vlad grabbed him by the ankle and held him upside down over a pit. "The beast," Vlad said. "Where." The trader wept. "Nobody knows! But there is something. A claw. It shed a claw in a fight years ago. Whoever holds it can follow its scent home." Vlad dropped him and asked who held the claw. The trader pointed north, to a cave the ogres called cursed. The cave mouth swallowed light. Jagged stone teeth hung from the ceiling. Crystals glowed along the walls, blue and green and cold. A dark pool sat in the floor like an open eye. The air smelled of old blood. Vlad felt watched, but hunger pushed him inside. He found the claw resting on a slab. It was huge, cracked down the middle, black and rust-colored, scarred from some ancient fight. Even broken, it looked like it could split a tree. Vlad reached for it. The floor shook. From the shadows came a shape too large for the room. Four white tusks curved out of the dark. Spikes bristled down a massive gray back. The elephant filled the chamber, and it did not want Vlad near the claw. It charged. Vlad rolled behind a stone pillar. A tusk struck the rock and shattered it. Dust choked the air. Vlad grabbed the broken claw off the slab and swung it like an axe. The edge bit deep into the elephant's shoulder. It screamed and threw its head. A tusk caught Vlad and hurled him against the wall. Crystals cracked under his back. Vlad spat blood and grinned with his sharp teeth. He liked this. He climbed a fallen pillar, jumped, and drove the claw down between the beast's spikes into its neck. The elephant staggered three steps and dropped. The whole cave shuddered when it fell. Vlad stood over the body, breathing hard, the claw wet in his fist. He did not eat this beast. Its flesh was only meat. But now he held the thing that mattered. He lifted the broken claw to his nose. Under the fresh blood he caught it, an older scent, wild and strange, buried deep in the cracked bone. The claw pulled at him like a hook. It knew the way home. Vlad walked out of the cursed cave following a smell. He no longer chased whispers. He had a trail. The legendary beast waited somewhere at the end of it, and Vlad meant to reach the lair before the scent went cold.