"Different how?" Rockbreaker demanded.
"They pulse with colors. Not warning reds, but... something else. Blues and purples that shift like water catching light." The guard's voice held wonder despite obvious concern. "And his brass... it moves, Warchief. Not like mechanical parts failing, but like water moving around rocks."
The sacred chamber lay at the lowest level, a hollow within theTree's largest root where pure magic had crystallized over centuries. Ancient restraints marked the stone floor, runes and binding circles designed specifically to contain vampires. Ochrehand knelt beside Sebastian's still form, placed at the center of these old workings. Her magic flowed in steady patterns that joined with powers older than any of them.
Dark circles shadowed her eyes, she hadn't rested since bringing him here earlier. Four elders assisted her, their hands weaving protective barriers as the chamber's magic worked on Sebastian's unconscious form.
"Ochrehand." Boarstaff's voice carried authority without shouting. "You defied direct orders."
She looked up, exhaustion evident in every line of her face, but determination still burned in her eyes. "I did what the vision demanded, Warchief. His heart was failing. The components were poisoning him faster than we could stabilize them." She gestured to Sebastian's convulsing form. "The healing house didn't have enough power. It was this or watch him die before the council finished talking."
Thornmaker pushed forward, his spear angled toward the center of the chamber. "You've brought vampire corruption to our most sacred space. Defied not just procedure, but the warchief's direct command."
"I brought what the vision showed me," Ochrehand countered, though weariness had replaced her earlier fire. "What should I have done? Left him to die when the vision clearly showed him standing with us against the coming darkness?"
Sebastian's body arched suddenly, pain contorting his features as another component failed. Dark fluid sprayed from his collar, splattering the chamber floor. The crystal formations pulsed in response, their light shifting between alarming reds and deeper blues that spoke of transformation rather than simple destruction.
"What's happening to him?" Boarstaff asked, moving closer despite Thornmaker's warning gesture.
"The Heart Tree's magic works differently than the healing house," Doechaser explained, her hands never pausing in their protective weaving. "It doesn't just strip away his synthetic components, it transforms them. Changes metal back toward what itwas before vampire artifice shaped it to their will."
Boarstaff knelt beside Sebastian, studying the places where brass met flesh at his collar, his spine, his temples. The metal had changed since he'd last seen it in the healing house. No longer cold, precise machinery, but something flowing, almost alive beneath the surface. It caught crystal light like water rather than polished metal.
"The ancient texts speak of this," Moonsinger said quietly, moving to join them. "When metal remembers its origins in mountain stone. When the artificial recalls its natural state."
"He needs blood," Ochrehand reported, urgency overcoming exhaustion. "His organic systems fail without it, no matter how successfully his brass transforms."
The statement hung in crystal lit air. Feeding a vampire violated taboos older than their settlement. Yet if Sebastian died in their most sacred space, if his father's armies found his body here...
"I'll do it," Boarstaff decided, drawing his ritual knife with practiced motion. The blade caught crystal light as he pressed it against his wrist. "As warchief, this responsibility is mine."
"Warchief!" Thornmaker stepped forward, his expression darkening. "Consider what this means, a warchief giving blood to a vampire noble! It weakens you when we most need your strength."
"I understand the risk," Boarstaff replied steadily. "And I accept it."
Before further objections could be raised, he made a precise cut across his wrist. Blood welled immediately, its scent filling the chamber with potent life. Sebastian's body responded even in unconsciousness, straining toward the source with predator's instinct.
"Four drops only," Doechaser instructed, her tone shifting to that of elder shaman guiding a ritual. "Let them fall on his lips, the ancient bindings will ensure they reach his core systems."
Boarstaff positioned his wrist over Sebastian, letting the first crimson drop fall. It landed on the vampire's parted lips where brass capped fangs had descended in unconscious response. The effect was instantaneous, Sebastian's body arched, not in pain but with relief that bordered on pleasure. The brass at his collar rippled like water catching sunlight.
The second drop followed, then the third. Each one sent visiblewaves of change through Sebastian's transformed components. The brass didn't just conduct the blood's power, it responded, awakened, became something neither fully metal nor fully organic.
As the fourth drop fell, Sebastian made a sound unlike any before, not agony but something between relief and desperate need. His unconscious form strained toward the source with predator's instinct that transcended artificial control.
"Enough," Doechaser warned sharply. "Any more risks waking him before the transformation completes. Before he can control what awakens."
Boarstaff withdrew his wrist, his expression thoughtful as he watched the blood work through Sebastian's systems. Color returned to grey tinged flesh. His breathing steadied into rhythm that held nothing of mechanical regulation, nothing of synthetic precision. Just pure, organic life finding its way back from centuries of imposed control.
"What have you done, Ochrehand?" Boarstaff asked quietly, though something in his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
"What the vision demanded." She took his wrist and quickly healed the cut before returning her focus to the vampire before them. "The rest is yet to be revealed."
He studied Sebastian's transformed face, watching brass flow with unfamiliar life beneath skin that grew more human with each passing moment. His hand moved unconsciously to his wrist, where the cut still stung with residual pain.
What was Sebastian becoming as the Heart Tree's magic stripped away centuries of artificial constraint? What existed beneath mechanical precision and careful regulation? What might vampire nobility have been if they hadn't chosen to process everything natural into something safe?
Questions without answers yet. But as brass stirred to dangerous life beneath Boarstaff's watchful gaze, possibilities emerged that neither orc nor vampire had dared imagine for generations. Possibilities that might change everything both their peoples had built their societies upon.
