Grace flexed her fingers involuntarily. Pure, vampire-given strength coursed in her veins, taken from those fallen around her and repurposed towards her own needs. It felt… somewhat calming, she realized. Like she'd been refusing to take a cool glass of water in front of her for all this time, and now finally caving brought a wave of relaxation with it. This was what the world wanted her to be. A bloodsucking monster. She'd tried to pretend it was something she wasn't, and it had taken everything falling apart around her to realize that, unfortunately, that reality was something she could avoid but never fully escape.

So now, she'd get some good use out of it, and pit it against a monster worse than her. It was the best use she could think of.

Măcel hissed in her direction, dead black eyes locking directly onto her even through the rolling fog. Some primal connection passed between the two vampires unspoken, and just for a moment, the other two fighters slowly reaching for their weapons were completely forgotten. A challenge to the pecking order had come. The two of them would fight, and only one would come back alive. No interruptions.

"You really could not have picked a worse time to make yourself obvious," he fumed, taking a few measured steps towards where his sword lay abandoned on the ground. A skillful kick below the hilt, and it flew up into his waiting hand, ready to draw blood.

"I was gonna let you live, you know. It's something I go to great lengths to make sure happens, every time we fight like this. What can I say? Your style is the most entertaining one I've come across in recent memory. But that look in your eyes… you want to end it here and now, regardless of who wins?"

"I'm done hiding away or being toyed with," she replied. "If that means I don't make it out of here alive, fine. I can accept that. Would simplify things a lot, honestly."

Măcel paused, searching her expression for any hint that she might be bluffing. Those efforts came up empty, because brutal honesty didn't tend to leave doubts like that.

"Interesting…" he muttered, preparing to strike. "I'd thought that all that time crawling around in the sewers might've caused you to start going soft. I'm not usually this mistaken, but it's a pleasant surprise that I'm wrong for once."

The wings on his back unfurled, spreading wide and beating powerfully once, twice. By the third flap, he was hovering a good meter off the ground, sword placed firmly in his hand, readied at his side like a cavalry saber that weighed half its true amount.

"So, death wish it is. A shame you weren't willing to pick up a thing or two more, but… that's how it goes sometimes. Potential is only as good as what you want to make of it."

The silent signal dropped. Before even the Constable could react, the two of them rushed headlong at each other once more, locking figurative horns in the middle with only one thought between them.

Kill the other, by any means necessary. A crash of dispersed air signaled the start.

Măcel snarled, and Grace saw his sword come in high. She feinted low, then dodged high herself as the angle of the blade proved to be a feint as well. Her first evasion went off without a hitch, but she'd learned long ago that the first swing was almost never the deciding factor.

It's a test, the first check of where weak point lay so that the last strike finished the job properly. The last strike was always the one you wanted to have on your side. Shallow cuts that began crisscrossing her guard as it came closer, counting down one by one towards victory or death.

At least her own hits were just as numerous. Punches rained down on Măcel with the force of a sledgehammer behind each, either rattling the metal of the sword along its whole length or leaving bloody concave breaks in his body. All around, wounds healed quickly only to be replaced even faster by fresh ones. The same story as before... but on a different playing field. One more raw this time, more damaging... more messy.

Grand technical mastery was pitted against her own heightened instincts, fueled by the blood of countless dead vampires on either side. It was a heady amount of power, far higher than the level she was used to operating at. And it was all concentrated within the small space around them. The feeling of air being audibly displaced with each movement was intoxicating at a level that went beyond what she could explain with words. Attacks strong enough to make splinters rain off trees were the norm, thrown around casually with each jab and slash. Compared to herself at Măcel's first arrival, she was maybe two… no, three times more responsive in her movements, and certainly hitting harder now with less attrition from impact.

A less than virtuous cycle. The more you took, the less you lost. If you wanted to never lose anything again as a vampire, therefore, you had to take everything for yourself.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Măcel and Grace quickly fell into a back-and-forth rhythm, her leaping after the hovering vampire while he backpedaled towards the alleyways between buildings. The plan he had in mind was obvious - confined quarters meant he couldn't take full advantage of his wings, but the density of the fog more than made up for that sacrifice. She followed him in regardless, accepting the silent challenge. Shadowy haze filled their vision, blurring the lines between what was real and what was perceived. Total blindness enveloped her. The normally pale gray fog was almost pitch black, and thick enough that even her enhanced eyesight could not pierce through it.

Her opponent, on the other hand, clearly could. She heard the whistle of the approaching swing long before she ever saw it, and the sound of it scraping against the pavement after her sidestep reverberated in her ears. A lucky dodge. The next ones promised to be less forgiving.

It was to be expected. She only currently held the strength of maybe a dozen elite vampires, but Măcel had been eating those for breakfast long before today. If anybody had senses strong enough to pierce this, it was him. She heard the woosh of his sword swing at her torso, angled from high left to low right. The flat of her palm swatted it just barely out of the way, the slight stinging in her hand informing her that if things didn't change soon, she would only be ending up collapsed on the floor again.

"You've got some nerve, trying to face me on my level," Măcel taunted from the murky depths. His blade lashed out from deeper within the maze of corridors, but when Grace countered and pressed on in that direction, he was already gone. "That kind of spirit is rare to come by in vampires, you know. Our lot seems to be practically born cowards, for some reason."

His low, rumbling laugh echoed from somewhere on the left, but the greatsword he wielded came in from the right. She didn't fall for it. Her eyes were closed completely, her reactions controlled only by the sounds around her.

"I suppose it's not completely inexplicable," he continued. "We're pretty much built from the ground up to be… scavengers, of our own sort. It's all made so damn simple. Smaller guy? Kill him and take what he has. Bigger guy? Back off and feed on enough smaller guys to make him small. But the longer things carry on, the more big players establish themselves and start bullying around the rest. What's a vampire to do?"

Walls all around. Voices seemingly from nowhere. Attacks seemingly from everywhere. It seemed insurmountable at first glance, but the pieces were coming together one by one. A faint ringing in the air indicated a heavy overhead strike a split second before it bisected her, one which she only just caught between her palms moments before disaster struck.

"Simple. Beat everyone to the punch. Start early, and never let your foot off the brakes. Only a matter of time before the rest get the point that pushing you around is worthless, right? You just gotta push them around enough first."

Grace's muscles strained as the sharp edge crept closer and closer to her face. Her palms were slick with her own oily blood, the sword biting them too deep and too evenly for her own regeneration to undo the damage completely. She tried to slowly back away, but the concrete of an unseen wall pressed up against her before she'd even taken a half step.

"Seems like it takes a while for that to happen in practice, though," Măcel finished. "Because some people are just. Slow. Learners."

Air rushed in her eardrums as the wings of death beat closer and closer. Hold out, she kept telling herself. Just hold out a little bit longer…

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The brink drew near. Death or terrible maiming was almost a promise at this point. No doubt Măcel was taunting her silently in his head, calling her foolish for letting herself be goaded into the battlefield he chose. And in a way, he would be correct. She was foolish. Who wasn't, when they were trying to make monsters that acted like people again? But, he would be wrong about one thing...

She hadn't been tricked into following him. Nothing could be further from the truth, actually. As she drew closer to pinpointing his exact positioning in the mist, Grace executed the plan her first moves had laid out.

Their arrival in these alleys had been a force, a bit of reverse psychology she'd used to set the battle to her advantage. During her initial return to the fight, she'd purposefully took control of the middle of the road, using it as an anchor point to apply pressure from. She'd even kept up the illusion of threat by running a little hot during their first exchange, making Măcel think there was an advantage to strip away from her by repositioning.

Instead, his own actions only gave her more leverage in the long term. It not only significantly hampered his own air superiority, but it would soon give her some of her own.

The arch-vampire finally touched down again, wanting to gain just a little more leverage so that he could finish the job. Exactly the mistake she'd been listening out for. With the auditory image of his exact location complete, she twisted her entire body in a direction perpendicular to the blade, wrenching it far to the side as she delivered a roundhouse kick to where his head had to be. Heel connected with temple, and the weight of the blade bearing down on her immediately dropped away, leaving her holding up the point with just her palms.

She then immediately kicked off the ground hard, propelling herself vertically towards the high walls of the buildings around. Vision slowly returned to her eyes as she ascended, dragging the sword behind her like the trail on a comet. When she reached the apex of her leap, she kicked off the nearest wall, propelling herself even higher above, away from the murky abyss of the ground level. Up here, she could use the greatest tool she had to her advantage.

Though… maybe calling it three adequate tools working together would be more accurate. Those being Măcel's habit of pursuing relentlessly, gravity, and heaps upon heaps of blunt force.

Sure as the moon always hung in the sky overhead, a blurry grey streak darted from the fog below shortly after her departure. An inhuman shriek rang out into the night, buffeting her even higher into the air through some force that could not be seen, only felt. Her sensitive eardrums ruptured, deafening her momentarily before the regeneration kicked in.

Grace threw the sword like a javelin, feigning a headshot. Măcel tried to dodge, but she'd never been aiming for his head anyways. Instead, the thin membrane of his left wing tore like rice paper, bleeding profusely and halting his upward acceleration.

Not his upward motion, however. He was still on a collision course, just one where she had time to react at the cost of him being much more furious than he had been earlier. Măcel raged on, fangs bared for a killing blow, and she readied an axe kick in response.

She felt the bite clamp down around her calf just before she could land her own strike. As blood started rushing to the puncture, Grace made a split second decision, intentionally pulling the strengthening out of her wounded leg and following through with her counterattack.

There were many sounds that accompanied the pain. Cracks. Tears. A single, heavy thud from the impact of her kick. And the pain came with its own sensory variety, too. For the first time in a long time, she let out an inhuman shriek of her own as more than two thirds of her calf was ripped away from the bone in an instant, spewing her own blood in a single pressurized spray before she quickly willed the regeneration back around the degloved stump.

It didn't magically regrow her leg, but it at least meant that she'd have enough blood left over to survive the fall that awaited her. Which, on the upside, was going to be much softer than the one Măcel was in for.

Their fall angled away from the alley they'd left. It meant a shorter fall, at the cost of crashing through the ceiling of the old hostel they'd fought behind.

Impact. Pain. Make that two ceilings, actually. In the tumble, Măcel ran himself through with his own sword more completely, through both his already mangled wing and now into the point on his torso roughly where a human would have a kidney. The point hit the ground first, and for just a moment he hung suspended off the ground by a few centimeters, before slowly sliding down the length of the blade to rest his battered body on the ground beneath him.

Grace's own trajectory had her falling roughly along the same lines, just a few meters off from the spot he'd ended up. The pain from impact was literally beyond her ability to comprehend, though she had a few educated guesses like 'every vertebrae in her spine shattered on impact' and 'her sharp teeth managed to bite through her own tongue.'

She'd expected it, but she hadn't… expected it. Staying conscious afterwards was an absolute miracle. One that she seized with both compound-fractured hands and began dragging herself over to where Măcel was pinned. His breath was shallow, which meant he was still alive and probably conscious, given her own experience. But at the same time, he could barely lift a finger himself, simply because every muscle he could've used to move in the first place seemed torn to shreds.

He coughed weakly, head lolling in her general direction. "Damn, girl," he spluttered. "Where'd you learn to move like that? I certainly… never felt the need to…"

Grace couldn't respond back, even if she'd wanted to dignify him with a response. She'd accidentally swallowed her own tongue after she'd bit down on it, leaving her mute until what little regeneration she had left finished patching up the more critical injuries. If she still had anything left once the critical injuries were stabilized.

She kept crawling towards him, and Măcel guessed her intentions right away.

"Ah… you're… you're just finishing the job, aren't you? I can't do anything right now, but you can, and… taking what I can't use right away will kill two birds with one stone…"

He looked up back at the night sky, searching for stars but only seeing clouds. "Guess that makes you the better vampire, then. Attagirl… I knew you had it in ya…"

Handhold by handhold, she dragged herself closer. Măcel sighed. "I thought I would've been more pissed when I finally lost. Never really… expected to, honestly. All that killing, all those fights… and they sort of just… blended together into this mush. In my head, I mean, but… there were probably a few that looked the same way as that sounds after I was done with them, too…"

Grace's sharpened fingernails clenched tightly around his broken arm, using it to pull herself the final distance to his body. Part of her listened to what he had to say. Part of her wanted this section of her life done.

Her heart was with the latter. Fangs gleamed in the night, and she bit down into Măcel's pale, grey flesh.

She was a beast in the eyes of the world at large. That truth had hammered itself home more times than she wanted to admit. But, here and now? She had an opportunity to change that, to become a player in the field that had to be recognized for not just the monster, but the mind behind it. Who in their right mind would pass something like that up?

All that was required of her… was to take.

Grace drank deep. There was lifetimes worth of energy within, lying dormant from who knows how many killed. There just always seemed to be more, and more, and more… she had no idea how long she spent there, taking it all one drop at a time.

At first, it was used to directly fuel her flagging regeneration. The ragged stump of flesh around her leg buzzed with activity, and if she'd bothered to look away from her feeding frenzy she would have seen the limb slowly regrowing, one millimeter at a time.

Cuts and breaks stitched themselves together. Splinters and rubble that had gotten stuck in her abdomen pushed themselves free. Even her tongue started growing back, and yet there was still more to take. So take she did. More, and more, and more…

"That's it…" Măcel mumbled. "Take my place… you earned it, kid…"

By now, this much blood should have been impossible to fit into either of their bodies, at least along the lines of conventional physics. Once Grace realized that, she began to pay more attention to where it all went. Just along the edges of her… being? Soul? Some weird metaphysical definition of herself that she couldn't quite place. There was a faint outline of something like… a wellspring. The blood was a vessel for its contents, flowing down into the intangible hole and filling it, once her own body could accept no more.

She'd… never even gotten close to knowing of such a thing's existence before. But if she were to guess, this had something to do with how arch-vampires came to be. What's more, as time went on some previously buried instinct told her she was draining more than enough from Măcel to become one herself. A little effort - and a slight push - was all she needed.

The thought of which… made her stop, just before she removed the last dregs keeping him alive.

Grace opened her eyes. She didn't even remember closing them, but the sight before her made her forget that out of pure surprise. Măcel's once grey skin had reverted back to the usual pale white of common vampires, his wings beginning to atrophy and crumble away like old leather. Still a monster, but no longer the imposing figure he once was. When she pulled back, he stirred too, surprised that he was somehow still alive.

"What… what is this?!" His voice came clearer, much closer to a human than it ever had before. "What is this sentimental bullshit?! Don't tell me you're still trying to pretend-"

"-I'm not," she immediately interrupted, cutting him off before his thoughts could run wild. "Don't get the wrong idea, you're still barely alive. And you're going to stay that way for a long, long time."

"But why?!" he insisted. "Why not just be done with it all?!"

"Well, if you need a practical reason, I've got more than a few questions that I need to pull answers out of you yet. Why you bothered teaming up with your sworn enemies to begin with, what kept you working together for the most part, how to hurt them the most now that you're out of the picture… the Reformationists are going to have a field day in terms of quality intelligence once we're finished."

Măcel's eyes narrowed. "But that's not all of the reasons you have, is it…"

"No. As much as I hate to admit it, you're not wrong about what we are. But what I think you and every other arch-vampire seems to have missed is what we can be. Reasoning with them has always been off the table, of course, but now I have a new angle to approach them from."

Grace stood up, testing the weight on her healing leg and finding it able to support her now. "We can beat them at their own game now. Separate the murderers from the survivors who needed to kill. We won't have to needle them from the shadows, we won't have to tolerate those who refuse to be anything more than a monster. And you're going to help me with it, willing or not. I have to imagine you know a thing or two about the perks of being an arch-vampire that most don't."

He sneered up at her from the ground. "Fuckin' idealists, man. Who do you think you are?"

"You said it yourself earlier," she replied. "A better vampire than you."

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