Episode 39: Blood Offer

Written By Karl White

Conquest is about force and domination. Subjugation and acquisition. Hostile in nature, deliberate by design. You don’t build an army by accident. You don’t consolidate power overnight. 

Centuries ticked by. Anu and his Devil Riders became more than just a roaming scourge. They carved kingdoms out of map-lines, broad tracts under a single shadow. Their numbers swelled. Their name traveled ahead of them. But power breeds enemies.

“Devil Riders at the Burning Village”, attributed to Liang Guanshi (梁觀世), ca. 1248, ink-and-mineral pigments on aged silk - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Established states pushed back. The ruling classes saw no place for the Riders’ brutal methods. So the Devil’s spread wider across Greater Mongolia, holding passes, river crossings, grazing routes, trading speed for position, fear for tribute. The tactics worked, but they were rustic compared to the wars Anu once knew.

On his home world, conquest meant infiltration. The seeding of the blood, creating clones and toppling from within, while reinforcements closed the back lines. Here, he ruled from the saddle, and employed only iron, fire, and night as his weapons.

Anu ruled the Devil Riders like a storm contained in a man, centuries of aggression hammered into ritual. By 1171, in a felt-walled council on the Onon River, the human chieftains argued over the groups survival. Swollen empires pressed from the south, supplies thinned across the steppe, alliances promised numbers but compromised authority. Anu listened, bored and contemptuous. He hadn’t built a terror to beg for favors. He wanted expansion, not obligation, force over treaty, fear over offerings.

Anu on the throne - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

When talk turned to bargaining with rival tribes...Anu’s patience fractured. The Vampire reminded them, not with words so much as presence, their power had never come from parchment. Tables splintered beneath his hands, armor clattered, grown warriors found the floor. He’d led armies beyond their imagining and crushed worlds they could not picture. He would not watch this one soften into compromises.

In the back of the yurt stood a boy, the chieftain’s son, Temujin. He was quiet, taking the room’s measure. When the elders argued of treaties and accords, Anu asked the child, what he would do. The boy wanted to be resolute, to stand firm. To deliver fear and violence upon the regimes wanting to quell them. Anu recognized the look in Temujin’s eyes, determined. That’s what the Riders needed, an infusion of spirit. 

In the boy’s ruthless clarity he saw a tool, a mirror, perhaps even an heir to the kind of warfare he understood by instinct. The Devil Riders had found their sharpest blade in the smallest hand.

Temujin was tutored to lead, second only to Anu, commanding troops in the fray. He was a merciless understudy, heartless, unsympathetic to his fellow man. Anu would let him captain the hordes, and the Riders once again became a force to be reckoned with, repelling invasions by the Jin Dynasty, while strengthening numbers in their homeland. The young warrior was strong-willed, and a master motivator, not only of his own men, but of opposing tribes. Some would forgo fighting him, choosing alliance rather than annihilation.

For the first time Anu took a true liking to a human. In Temujin he saw his own beginnings, a warrior bred to command, thrust forward young, ruthless, destined. The respect ran both ways. Night after night the boy sought strategy from the feared one, learning the Vampire’s secrets of horror and intimidation. As Temujin conquered kingdom after kingdom and ascended to the rank of “The Great”, his bond with Anu grew.

Portrait of Temujin - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

The Vampire had no answer for the admiration he felt for this simple human, but Anu guarded Temujin closely. His conquests brought numerous assassination attempts, all of which were thwarted by the protective Anu.

But the front wrote its own toll, wounds, arrows, the slow grind of time. Watching the only thing he cared for bleed and harden, Anu finally set aside pride for devotion. He offered the one gift that would keep Temujin alive past his years.

ANU: You’re a true leader and a soldier. Kings and Emperors who never step on a battlefield are weak...But a good commander is careful with his life.

TEMUJIN: We rule this continent, by your word and my hand. We’re stronger than any rival. Even the heavens know it.

ANU: Thinking that way will be the end of you.

TEMUJIN: I've taken more arrows and blades than any man alive and I still stand. Perhaps you’re not the only undying one in this world.

ANU: I am not the only one of my kind. There were three of us. By now, each has sired Underlings. We will walk forever. You will not.

TEMUJIN: Every battle, every scar proves I’m more than just a soldier.

ANU: You’re a skilled warrior, yes...But I fear for your longevity.

TEMUJIN: I keep court with the devil and counsel with the gods. Nature’s laws does not bind me.

ANU: If immortality is what you want, I can make you like me. Strength beyond anything you’ve known, the cunning of the fiercest predator on this earth, and time without end. I have never judged a human worthy of my blood, but...

He hesitated. Anu was not a creature who bared his true heart, least of all to a human. He lifted his arm, talons ready to open his own flesh.

ANU: I offer to you my blood, so you may become my son.

But Temujin laughed.

TEMUJIN: I asked the heavens for a sign and I have it. I don’t need your blood to be powerful, something more divine moves in me. I'm a living god. I was put here to conquer all.

The corners of Anu’s mouth fell. Betrayal reddened his mind. 

ANU: A god? Has power made you so mad you believe it?

TEMUJIN: I've stared at death, and returned again and again. I cannot be destroyed.

Anu moved, swift as thought, his taloned hand clawed around Temujin’s throat.

Anu’s offer rebuked - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

ANU: There was promise in you. We could have ruled from the shadows until the end of time.

He drew his sharp nails across Temujin’s neck. Who’s eyes widened, at last, with fear.

ANU: All you had to do was say yes. Everything you craved would have been yours. Instead, you answered my trust with arrogance. You prove no human deserves my blood. You’re no god, only flesh and bone, and your light is going out.

Anu left the Devil Riders that night, and disappeared back into the shadows. With its two pillars gone, the faction crumbled. And Anu wore the darkness he’d gathered in his mind like a new mantle, vowing to lay it across mankind...His wrath would be felt far and wide.

TO BE CONTINUED…