The Naga wore an enchanted suit of armor that covered his upper body and six different enchanted weapons ready at hand, two on his back, four where the h.i.p.s were supposed to be.
"Thanks for your offer. I would be glad to enjoy your hospitality." Lith lied through his teeth.
'I bet that he wants to suck up on me hoping to gain some advantage from Leegaain.' He thought. 'Ever since he and Grandma greeted me in front of the Council, everyone wants a piece of me but no one has given me gifts, dammit.'
Scarlett had a hard time not mocking the Naga for his pandering and Warped them away after locking on the farthest coordinates that her pince-nez, the Eyes of Menadion, could reach.
Winter had already reached the Empire, covering the land with a thick layer of immaculate snow that reminded Lith of a postcard.
"Damn, it's cold even for Awakened." He said while activating the heating system of the Scalewalker armor.
"Well, yes. We're further north than the Kingdom and the climate is harsher here." Scarlett covered herself and Kalla in thick coats of fur. The problem of having a big body was that each armor required a lot of materials, making fur more convenient.
The Scorpicore carried Nyka in a body bag over her back, to protect her from sunlight while they Warped toward their destination. The three Awakened took turns in opening dimensional doors to save their strength in the case something went wrong.
It took them a few minutes and one full use of Invigoration each to reach a dense woods halfway through the Tremen region, deep in the Empire's territory. The temperature was several degrees below zero and there was no sign of life for kilometers.
"Undead?" Lith asked while pointing around.
"No, winter." Kalla replied. "Only starving animals would come out of their den with this wind and cold. We need to wait for sundown before asking for a ride."
"I thought we had to walk." Lith said.
"We did. Sort of. You can't expect an undead on the run to reach an underground city by foot. They have their own means of transportation." The Wight replied.
They conjured a small underground cave, covering it with snow to make it invisible from above. They used that time to rest and plan ahead. Lith even prepared a bit of his blood for Nyka, to have the time to recover and give her an edge in case of danger.
When the sun came down, she stirred in her body bag and accepted the meal with gratitude.
"Now stay calm and-" A low rumble cut Kalla short and forced everyone out of the cave.
On the outside, everything looked the same, except for the presence of two strangers. One of them was Parmegianno Haug and the other was clearly a vampire. He wore light clothes despite the cold and his breath didn't steam.
He looked like a handsome man in his early thirties about 1.87 meters (6'2") tall, with short black hair and icy blue eyes that looked at the group as if they were the scouts of an invading army.
The Vampire had the bearing of someone used to give orders and to see them promptly executed, but his build was that of a soldier. He gave off the aura of someone who had earned his stripes in battle, not by pushing papers and l.i.c.k.i.n.g boots.
"Thanks for coming, everyone." Haug said while shaking hands, yet his companion refused to move a muscle. "Lith has already told you about me and vice versa so introductions are unnecessary except that for our host.
"Allow me to introduce to you Vladion Dragonborn, Vampire Firstborn, Elder of the Council, and Lord of Lightkeep. Lord Vladion, these are Lith Verhen, Scarlett the Scorpicore, Kalla the Wight, and Nyka the Vamp-"
"Uncle Vladdie!" Nyka threw her arms around the Firstborn, cutting Haug short and making everyone choke in surprise.
"My little robin! I'm glad to see you've grown out of your growling phase and have started to behave like a fine young lady." He replied.
"I was just one week old back then!" Nyka blushed in embarrassment.
"Nice to see you again, V-man. How are you doing?" Kalla raised one of her forelegs, exchanging a greeting similar to a fist bump.
"I'm doing fine, thanks. You, instead, have continued with your crazy experiments about Lichhood. How can you do that to your children?" Vladion sensed several alterations in her life force that would ease the process of splitting her core in half.
"They are old enough to live on their own." Kalla snorted. "No cub is meant to stay with their mother forever."
"I came here to smooth things over and you guys already know each other?" Haug said after noticing that everyone else was as surprised as he was.
"Of course. Back when I gave birth to Nyka, I knew nothing about raising a Vampire. She would do nothing but snarl, bite, and cry like a cub, breaking my heart. Just like when I need a Forgemaster or a Healer, I go to the best professional I know…"
"…when I needed help with my daughter, I asked the First Vampire of Mogar for help. Vladion taught Nyka how to hunt, how to access her abilities, and how to deal with her hunger. All things that I couldn't do."
'Dammit, I'm a much better Healer than the runt, but being away for five years made Kalla reliant on him.' Scarlett was unaware that it had been Solus to teach Kalla all she knew about Body Sculpting and to help her fix the damage her experiments caused on the Wight's body.
'Scarlett as her aunt, Kalla for mother, and the frigging Vampire Firstborn as her uncle? Nyka's family is damn overpowered.' Lith and Solus thought, wishing he had someone to guide him like that back when he was a kid.
"This is great. Let's get back to Lightkeep so we can bring them up to speed." Haug said.
"Not so fast." Vladion shook his head. "Kalla and my little robin can come, but I don't trust the other two, especially Verhen. He is a butcher who has killed so many of my kind that I can still smell their ashes on him."
"I-" Lith was about to give Vladion a piece of his mind, reminding the Firstborn that he had killed mostly in self-defense, when Nyka chimed in, cutting him short.
"Lith has every right to follow me to Lightkeep, Uncle. He's part of my herd."
Vladion opened his mouth to object, but he smelled Lith's fresh blood from her mouth. The scent of the nectar from a quasi-violet cored Awakened whose life force's strength was between that of a human and an Emperor Beast was intoxicating.
Suspecting a ruse, Vladion used his breathing technique, Bloodborne, on her and discovered that Nyka's blood core was too powerful for a Vampire of her age. On top of that, Lith's mana and life force comprised a huge chunk of it.
"What about the Scorpicore?" He asked.
"Aunt Scarlett is Mom's teacher and her boss for the next 95 years. She can stop Mom from becoming a Lich, if she wants to." Nyka replied.
