Unsleeping Patron - Blood on White Plaster

Screaming every three minutes, steam vents in Fel-City blew white plumes, a wet, metallic whistle that blew white plumes of vapor fifty feet into the night air.Silas hovered at five thousand meters, his ten-meter crimson wings held horizontal against the cold draft. Below him, the Fel-Coven capital spread across three stepped basalt terraces like a massive, bronze gear laid flat in the shale. Gaslamps flared along the lower ramparts, throwing yellow light over brass steam cannons and iron turret towers trained outward into the grey Miasma.They were built to stop a siege from the ground. They weren’t built to look up.Silas tilted his shoulder blades, folding the blood-membranes tight against his spine. He dropped straight down through the steam plumes, his canvas tunic snapping against his ribs, his bare feet cutting the air without a sound.A hundred feet above the highest terrace, he twitched his right wing.Space buckled. Silas vanished from the sky, slipping through a hairline crimson seam, and landed flat on the slate roof of the Governor’s Manor.The mansion was built of white limestone imported from the southern crags, its gables trimmed with heavy copper leaf and carved teak. Heat rose from the chimney flues, smelling of roasted fowl, sweet plum wine, and the sharp, sulfuric tang of high-grade coal burning in brass stoves.Silas didn’t pry open a window. He walked to the central glass skylight, looked down into the upper banquet hall, and unhooked the Blood-Lantern from his belt.Inside, six men sat around an oval oak table polished with wax.General Wei sat at the head, his heavy iron-mesh vest unbuttoned at the throat, revealing his thick, chestnut fur and the dark scar across his collarbone. He was holding a silver goblet in one clawed hand, his feline ears twitching as he gestured toward a large parchment map spread over the oak planks. Four senior officers in brass-trimmed uniforms leaned in, their long tails flicking in lazy, satisfied rhythms as they counted rows of tallies marked in black ink.To Wei’s left sat a junior aide, dipping a quill into a bottle of iron-gall ink, filing the daily casualty reports from the Brierhold perimeter.Silas opened the brass cowl of the Blood-Lantern.He didn’t shatter the glass. He blinked through the frame.A crimson flash ripped through the center of the hall. Space folded, and Silas materialized directly on top of the oval oak table, his bare boots crushing the parchment map into the wood, sending silver goblets and wine decanters flying across the floor.The junior aide opened his jaws to shout, his hand reaching for the brass whistle hanging from his neck.Silas swung his left hand.A three-foot blade of solid, golden Mind-Light erupted from his forearm, slicing through the aide’s throat before the whistle could touch his lips. The Fel-Cat’s head hit the polished floor with a dull, wet thud, his body slumping sideways into his carved chair.The remaining four officers scrambled back, their clawed hands clawing at the iron sabers strapped to their belts.General Wei was faster. He didn’t reach for a sword; he kicked his heavy oak chair backward, lunging toward an iron lever mounted on the wall that controlled the mansion’s steam alarm.”Lantern,” Silas rasped.He didn’t throw a spear. He lifted the Blood-Lantern in his right grip and released the cold red fire.The flame didn’t spread like wood fire. It erupted in a cold, silent ring of unquenchable red glare that swept across the banquet hall in a single, fluid wave. It didn’t scorch the velvet draperies or char the oak chairs. It hit the four officers square in the chest.The red fire consumed their blood instantly.The officers froze mid-stride. Their eyes turned milky white, their skin caving inward against their ribs as every drop of fluid in their veins was stripped away, converted into cold red oil that sucked straight back into the lantern’s chimney. Within three seconds, four senior commanders of the Fel-Coven legion dropped to the floor as grey, papery husks, their brass-trimmed uniforms draping loosely over empty bones.General Wei’s hand stopped three inches from the alarm lever.He turned his head slowly, his breath coming in short, rattling gasps. His long feline ears were pinned flat against his skull, his yellow pupils shrunk to tiny, terrified slits as he looked at the four dry husks on the floor, then up at the bald, canvas-clad human standing on his table.”You…” Wei choked out, his claws digging into the plaster wall. “The… the first Pioneer.”Silas stepped off the table. His boots hit the floorboards without a sound. He didn’t draw his mantis-scythe dagger. He stepped close to Wei, his amber-and-crimson eyes locking onto the General’s trembling jaw.”The Slate doesn’t belong to you, Wei,” Silas whispered, his voice carrying that metallic, resonant frequency that made the brass stoves in the room shudder. “And the men outside the fence aren’t your cattle.”Wei’s jaw worked, his clawed fingers trying to punch through the plaster to reach the iron lever behind his shoulder. “If you kill me… the elders will bring ten thousand pikes. They will burn your timber houses to ash “Silas reached out, his bare palm closing over Wei’s face.He didn’t squeeze. He drove the Blood-Lantern’s cold fire directly into the General’s nostrils.Wei’s body twitched once, violently. His tail stiffened, his claws gouging two deep furrows into the white limestone wall before his chest collapsed inward. The red fire drank his blood through his eyes and ears, leaving a dry, hairless husk that crumbled into a pile of grey ash inside his unbuttoned iron-mesh vest.Silence returned to the banquet hall, save for the steady, rhythmic hiss-click of the coal stove in the corner.Silas didn’t run. He stood over the pile of ash, dipped his middle finger into the thick, dark pool of crimson fluid left on the oak table from the junior aide’s severed neck, and walked over to the clean, gold-embellished wall beside the alarm lever.He pressed his wet finger against the white plaster.In bold, jagged, three-inch English letters, he wrote:CEASE THE SLAUGHTER OF HUMANITY, OR FACE ETERNAL UNREST.He wiped his finger on his canvas trousers, unhooked his crimson wings from his back with a sharp, wet tear, and launched himself upward through the glass skylight, vanishing into the cold, silent sky above the steam vents.