The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 588: The Voice of Command (Part Two)

"RAAAA!" Savis roared as he exploded forward in a rush that became a blur of white fur to many of the people who lacked enhanced senses in the room. His right hand opened wide, stretching his claws for a powerful swipe that would end the duel in a single move as soon as he closed the gap between him and the young ’Lord General.’

"HOLD!" Thane snapped, his voice echoing with the power of a battlefield commander who would be heard by thousands of soldiers marching under his banner.

Two things happened at the same time as soon as Thane spoke. Beyond speaking the word, Thane took a short step forward, reaching out with blinding speed to capture Savis’s wrist in a grip that felt as tight as iron shackles.

All around Thane, the air seemed to darken, coalescing into a billowing cape of shadows that hung from his shoulders, flapping lightly in a wind that no one else in the room could feel. Everyone could, however, hear the faint sounds that emanated from Thane’s shadowy cloak as he held a paralyzed Savis in his iron grip.

The sounds of horses preparing for a charge echoed from a great distance away, as if they were preparing to charge out of the abyss itself. The faint clank of armor and the footfalls of thousands of soldiers echoed alongside the snorts of horses and beyond that, sounding almost too faint to make out, the shouted orders of sergeants and captains as they marshalled their legions of the damned, preparing to answer Thane’s orders to descend upon the man trapped in his grip and tear away his soul.

"KNEEL!" Thane commanded in a voice that carried a hint of the darkness of the void, pressing down on everyone who heard it with an intense sensation that bypassed their conscious mind and whispered into their innermost being that failure to obey would doom them to a swift and merciless death.

Ollie felt his knees touch the floor before he realized he’d left his chair, and Virve similarly knelt next to him. Lennart, Commander Bassinger, and Marshal Jakob all found themselves obeying as well, as years of habit to defer to Sir Thane left no room in their mind to defy the powerful vampire. Surprisingly, both Heila and the young Frost Walker lord, Hauke, managed to resist the pull of Thane’s powerful command. Both of them had far too much experience with forces from beyond the grave attempting to twist and control their fates to yield so easily to Thane’s command.

Savis, however, bore the full brunt of Thane’s powerful command, and something deep within his heart that he had once forgotten existed stirred to life again, shuddering and trembling as Thane’s dark power reminded him that even vampires as powerful as Savis still had a reason to remember fear.

For a moment, Savis managed to resist. His legs shook with the effort of remaining standing and his tail already drooped low as Thane seemed to grow even larger in his vision, towering over the frightened lupine vampire like he had come to drag him back to a kennel.

"I don’t want to make this ugly, Sir Savis," Thane said as his sandy blonde hair danced in the same wind as the one that caught at his cloak of shadows. "Submit now, and I can leave you with a shred of pride."

"I, will, not..." Savis began, only to be interrupted by Thane’s sharp, commanding voice.

"HEEL!" Thane commanded, pulling down on Savis’s wrist and taking a sharp step back, pulling the startled vampire off balance and breaking his resistance to Thane’s orders as the younger vampire treated him like a disobedient pup.

"Dancing leaves and whispered winds," Ashlynn said softly as soon as she felt the strength of Thane’s humiliating command descending on the people on her side of the table and the ones gathered behind them.

Power rippled across the room as Ashlynn’s simple spell created a curtain of drifting phantom leaves that rippled as if caught in a quiet breeze, shimmering between Thane and everyone watching. The spell blunted the strength of his voice enough that the demeaning command failed to take hold in the minds of the people who were most vulnerable to the Lord General’s Voice of Command.

Savis, however, had no such protection against Thane’s cutting command and he was left as vulnerable as a newborn pup before the intensity of the Lord General’s order. Deep within his soul, something ancient and primal shattered when Savis heard that word. In his centuries of existence, he had been many things. Savis was a celebrated warrior, and a champion of the Tangled Wood, even the commander of the Black Wolf Brigade, but not once in half a millennium had he been treated like a common beast to be tamed.

A hot flash of humiliation burned through him, more painful than any wound he’d suffered in battle. Again, it was happening to him again! First Lady Nyrielle had humbled and humiliated him, turning him into nothing more than her herald and treating him like a defeated dog, and now one of her progeny was dragging him even lower.

This wasn’t just defeat, it was degradation in front of witnesses who had once looked upon him with both fear and awe. But behind the growing panic that filled his ears with the sound of his heart’s rapid beat, a voice of reason whispered in his ear, reminding him that it didn’t have to be this way. Thane had told him that he didn’t want to make it ugly and when Savis had rejected that kindness, the Lord General responded with ruthless venom that pierced to the very core of Savis’s being.

That realization gnawed at him even as the word ’HEEL’ echoed in his mind, forcing his body to submit whether he was willing to accept the order or not. All of Savis’s desires, his determination to fight until the last, his pride... none of it mattered as his body acted on its own before the dreadful command that echoed from the depths of the void.

On the floor of the formal dining hall, Savis’s resistance completely crumbled as he quickly sank to all fours, lowering his head to the ground and looking fearfully up at the terrifying figure cloaked in shadows above him. For a moment, he almost thought he saw the shadows gathering to form a suit of armor around the vampire knight, but as soon as his chin touched the ground, the shadows began to fade, evaporating from around Thane as though they’d never been there to begin with.

"Never forget this lesson, Ollie," Ashlynn said as she helped the Cypress Witch back into his chair. "While Lady Nyrielle had several progeny before Thane, in many ways, he can be considered the one she spent the greatest effort to nurture from the moment she chose to bring humans into her household."

"Savis might be the greatest among High Lord Hamdi’s progeny," she explained. "But even Savis can only inherit a portion of what Bardas bestowed on Hamdi. Thane has received one of the greatest blessings that Mistress Nyrielle is capable of bestowing, and she is no weaker than the Jaws of Death who created Hamdi. The gap between Thane and Savis," she said with a faint twinkle in her eyes. "Is as wide as the gap between a kitchen boy and a knight."