by Emma Glass
“It’s beautiful,” I heard a guard murmur.
“Yes,” I noted dryly. “Yes, it is.”
When I was an impressionable young child, Lorelei told me bedtime stories of a great, ancient empire, spreading far from the peninsulas behind these peaks. In her tales, they were had ruled this entire hold for more than a thousand years; their glorious, bloodthirsty civilization was a powerful one that heralded steadfast fighters, remarkable military might, and the finest intellectuals in the entire world.
In the end, their then-unrecognizable society lay in shambles; it had slowly crumbled beneath their own unparalleled hubris and decadence. The world moved on without them, and they couldn’t hold together strong enough to become anything more than forgotten dust in the wind.
Tales and nothing more, I told myself.
Still, while recognizing the military empire of legend as nothing more than bedtime stories, that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn from the tale.
Their fate will never be ours, I insisted.
“My Lord,” one of the guards pointed.
My gaze averted to an approaching vampire in a mining transport vehicle, driving up the path lining our mountain. Upon closer inspection, the massive drill attached to the front told a slightly different story for its usual use.
It arrived quickly. Once it parked nearby, our guide climbed from the cockpit in rudimentary worker’s garb. He looked to be of middle age with thick, ginger hair. His face was youthful, but he turned to us with eyes that betrayed at least five or six hundred years to him. Likely long overdue for another equinox, I recognized. He’ll begin aging again any year now…
“Lord Craven!” He walked right up to us and gave a quick, perfunctory bow. With less than a year below my belt as the reigning vampire lord, these gestures still made me a tad uncomfortable. “Forgive me for not being ready in time, I didn’t realize you’d be here so soon! It’d be an honor to escort you to the village.”
My eyebrow arched. An honor, you say? Silas, that ancient windbag, has made me no stranger to exaggeration... I was well aware that my rule was nowhere near solidified in the eyes of the people, but there was nothing to gain by arguing him.
“We weren’t waiting for long,” I responded coolly. “But my time here is very limited. Pressing matters at the castle still require my attention. I’m eager to get this all over with.”
“Oh?” Such a welcoming expression at first, but it briefly clouded. The shadow disappeared as quickly as it’d come. “A shame then, that. Some of us had hoped to give you a tour of the beautiful scenery out here. As I’m to understand it, you’ve only once been to the Alpine Ridge.”
“They are quite pretty,” I spared a glance over his shoulder. “Perhaps another time.”
“Pretty much the only thing we’ve got to keep us all sane out here,” he chuckled. “Well, if you’re in a hurry, let’s get you down to the others. But it’s fair to warn you…” He gave me a cheerful but meaningful look. “You might be here longer than you think.”
My mood soured, but I remained silent.
Let us hope not…
While I joined him in the cockpit, the guards climbed into the back. He primed the engines and studied his dashboard readings; once done with the necessary checks, the drilling vehicle lurched into motion, and we were all on our way down to the nearest village.
Even with the size of the engine necessary to move a vehicle like this, it was yet quiet enough to hold conversation. The drill’s inactivity certainly played a large part in that. “You know who I am,” I noted, “but I don’t recall your name.”
“Pavric,” the vampire miner cheekily grinned, turning us down the steep path back towards the mine. “Pavric Le Varrise, stonemason and master miner to Gransome Village, at your service!”
“Pavric,” I repeated, feeling out the syllables. “I know the Le Varrise name… doesn’t that make you a distant descendent of Veric Le Varrise?”
“I’m impressed you recognize it, Lord Craven. Veric was my great grandfather. He’s a downright legend in these parts, since discovering the mines and settling the Alpine Ridge.”
“If memory serves, he was rather advanced in age when that happened.”
“That’s right. Veric was in his twilight years. Must’ve been well over eight hundred years old,” he proudly replied. “He broke first ground on the Dawning Mines, got his team in place, secured the family legacy, and dropped from an affliction of the toiling years not long after.”
“The toiling years?”
“Slang,” he smiled. “It’s what we call a case of growing too worn to keep the old ticker running.” He turned, tapping meaningfully on his temple. “Blasted thing just quits out of spite.”
Nodding, I diverted my attention towards the rising hills against the foot of the mountains. “It really is beautiful out here. I should come out to the mainland more often.”
“You ain’t kidding!” Pavric cheerily whistled, turning the wheel hard and navigating us around a sharp kink along the mountain’s side. “Certainly a sight for sore eyes, that’s for damn sure.”
I agreed silently, watching the cliff-side trail twist and turn down towards the open mines. The sun was setting in the distance; we would make it down to the village just in time to watch the light fade beyond the jagged peaks.
That meant there was no hope of returning to the castle today. My thoughts drifted back to the girl who had so curiously wandered into my life from another world, only to be ripped from me in a desperate move made in desperate times. I could only hope that the others were taking care of her in my stead.
Hold on for me, Clara.
4
Sabine
I glanced up from my spellbook, exhausted from a long foray into the ancient magic. Nothing of any real value had been found; these pages were filled with highly experimental spells from an era long gone. There was no guarantee any would work.
Just like the spell that the sage found for me…
The lord of the castle sent out summons for a magician. I’d traveled from far across Stonehold, seeing my chance to ingrate myself with the royal family. Lord Elliott was very early in his reign; as far as I was aware, he had no court magician.
It was a horrible oversight.
Chrysm certainly had its uses, but magic was the supernatural currency used across the world. The vampire lord really needs to keep a sorcerer of some sort in his employ. Why not me?
But then my plans took the backstage when I learned why he needed access to a powerful caster. The rumors had been true all along. There really was a human being on Earth…
I closed the tome with a weary sigh, glancing down at the unconscious girl. She looked young, like a vampire nearing her first equinox. Were the girl truly one of our kind, her aging would freeze for centuries; she would embody youthful beauty, at least until her aging eventually restarted until she reached the next stage of her life.
But then she’d be powerful.
Such was the case for all of us vampires. The three equinoxes gave us three eras in our life, in which we embodied a predominant trait.
First, we were beautiful.
Then, we were strong.
Finally, we were wise.
But the others watching over her had told me about her strange physiology. Human beings did not experience equinoxes. From conception, their strange biology marched them right to the grave, living such painfully short and meaningless lives. Whereas the healthiest and most cautious of us could reasonably expect to see a thousand years, the human could at best hope for a tenth of that.
How fascinating, I pondered as I watched her rest. Their lifetimes are such brief, trembling flickers in the dark. How can you even cope with that? How can you accomplish anything of importance when Death plucks you away during a vampire’s puberty?
“You’ve been buried in that book for days.”
I glanced up. One of the three guardians – the friendly, talkative one, at least before his charge dropped into a
coma – seemed to have snapped back out of his trance-like rest.
“It’s not as hard as you might think,” I smiled serenely. “It’s called a Focus. It’s a trick for steady, prolonged concentration. Especially useful when you need to bury yourself in literature for hours, days, or even longer…”
“You’ve barely moved an inch,” he noted with small admiration. “Not to eat, not to drink… is it really that simple?”
“Sure. Most of my biological functions crawl to a standstill,” I replied matter-of-factly. “At face value, it should be similar to that trance skill you possess, since you used to be a royal guard. The difference is that I must extensively recharge my body between uses. It takes a great deal of energy from me to maintain for longer periods of time.”
He smirked. “Yeah, ours is way different.”
“I’m curious. How does yours work?”
“By the looks of it, you use yours to study.” He briefly glanced at the closed tome in my hands. “Ours just shuts our brains off. We become about as useful as your standard statue… but a statue that can spring to life in an instant, ready to defy those who cross us.”
“In what way does that serve you?”
“Time’s a very boring thing,” he replied with a sardonic chuckle. “It wins every battle because it will outlast everything else…”
“Except you?”
“Except us,” he agreed. The guardian turned to the nurse on shift; the other was asleep nearby, resting until it was her turn. “Excuse me, but how long has our friend here been winning this little game of ‘freeze tag’?”
The nurse glanced over with an odd frown. “Clara has been asleep for two days.”
“Is that so?” He turned back. “Interesting. It feels more like two hours to me. Probably because I keep waking up to walk the perimeter.”
“Intriguing,” I observed with wonder. “Such a rather useful skill to have, that. It means that the passage of time means nothing to you. If you were ever trapped somewhere, you and time would be at a stalemate until you were rescued.”
“Interesting way of putting it, but yes.”
I nodded, stroking the book idly in my arms. There’s something peculiar about him. He feels more powerful than he really is, I quietly noticed. “I don’t believe I ever caught your name.”
“Wilhelm,” he replied. “You?”
“Sabine.”
“Well, Sabine, it’s been a fun little chat. I hope you can find way to save our girl in that charming book you’ve got there. As for me, well, I think it’s about time to do another perimeter check…”
“I’ll handle it if you’d like. My Focus is getting too hard to maintain, and I must think on things. I’m long overdue for a walk, anyway.”
“Do you know the path to take?”
I stood up wearily and walked over to his side. Splaying my fingers across his forehead, I felt out his muscle memory, learning his latest routine for patrolling the area. “I do now.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
I smirked. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Suit yourself, then,” Wilhelm shrugged.
With a quick nod to the nurse, I stretched my legs and walked towards the glass exit. As I gave the room a quick, parting look over my shoulder, I saw that Wilhelm was already back in his trance.
Usually, I expected a chaperone to shadow me as I moved around the castle. But these were unusual times. With arguably the most valuable person in the world suspended in a coma, and the master of this kingdom – the vampire lord – whisked away across to the mainland…
The only ruler of this castle right now is chaos.
I knew that Lord Elliott’s predecessor was in the castle somewhere, but I hadn’t heard even the slightest detail on where. That’s a shame; I wanted to meet the legendary Lorelei Craven sometime.
Or maybe not, on second thought. Word is that she’s retreated from the public eye for a reason…
Naturally, even without direct supervision, I felt restrictions on my movement. It wasn’t as if I had any true intentions to scrutinize the castle to begin with, not beyond wanton curiosity. But we had been locked away in the back of the fortress, in the Craven Keep tower. Servants scurried about in their daily tasks as I wandered the halls, faintly keeping an eye out for any who dared to sneak a look at the unconscious guest.
I had a few suspicions about that spell.
Well, more accurately about her...
At first, I thought her guardians had grown greatly sloppy in protecting her from the nurses. They barely seemed to pay the other vampires in the room any mind, which made no sense to me. Lord Elliott had made a great fuss over the detail in the old folklore about humans concerning their blood – apparently, just the scent alone was not only highly addictive but utterly intoxicating.
Yet, considering the integrity of their job, the guards didn’t show the slightest bit of bother at the other vampires tending to her.
That was my first clue about my suspicions.
Following Lord Elliott’s warnings before I’d ever first laid eyes on her, I decided to cast a spell on myself – one specifically designed to dampen hedonistic urges. I’d hoped that it would keep me sane around her blood, if the stories were right about its potency.
It did the trick. I found myself able to manage the way my mouth watered near her.
But my Focus had occupied my time since. Its very nature meant that all other things fell to the wayside, and I’d forgotten to re-energize the spell to keep myself from destroying her. In fact, what little was left of it had been burned up keeping the Focus running, while I studied whatever possibly went wrong in the first place.
Eventually, I drew the conclusion that Clara’s guardians must have figured out days ago…
The spell worked.
If my suspicions were true, she was safe now. The human could move within the castle without fearing for her life from even the kindest servants in Stonehold Castle. They’d no longer be driven to drain every last drop of blood from Clara’s body in an uncontrollable bloodlust.
“You’re a curious one.”
Snapped from my thoughts, I whirled around to scan the shadows for the sultry, female voice. I know I didn’t imagine that…
My eyes widened. There.
Casually perched on an outcropping above, a devious young vampire crunched into an apple. Platinum blond hair flowed over her shoulders as she watched me with the aloof interest of a cat.
“Who might you be?” I asked calmly.
The woman took another crisp bite out of her apple before slipping off from the ledge. With the skill of a gymnast, she effortlessly landed without a broken bone or a strand of hair out of place.
“Surely my brother has mentioned me…” She purred, rising to a stand. I could see now that the vampire concealed sleek leather armor beneath her cloak; she was dressed as if she spent a great deal of time outside the castle.
“Oh, but of course,” I realized with a widening smile. “Nikki Craven, younger sister to the sitting vampire lord. I’ve heard stories, but I had no idea you were in the castle.”
Nikki drew closer, a devilish glint in her eyes. The tales didn’t do her justice, I thought to myself. In those chaotic eyes, I saw a deranged insanity left foolishly unchecked. She is far more dangerous than I could have ever believed.
“Stories? Why, I wasn’t aware that anybody told stories of little old me…” She smiled hungrily. “What kinds of stories do the people tell?”
If there could ever be a predator in the shape of another vampire, it was this one. “Your sadism is legendary throughout the land,” I answered honestly. “You leave quite a lot of destruction in your wake when you really want to.”
“Oh?” Her eyes angrily flared. “Is that so?”
I swallowed. Not off on the right foot here…
But then she smiled sweetly. “You flatter me.”
“I only speak what I hear, my Lady.” I let out a breath o
f relief. She was truly as unpredictable as they said; in less than two minutes alone with her, I couldn’t tell if her mental state made her more likely to attack or compliment me.
This one is a wildcard, I decided. If I really had to, I know that I could destroy her. But I’d rather just slip away and stay in her good graces…
Nikki’s pleased grin evaporated in an instant. “I know why you are here, Sabine. And it’s not just because of the human, is it?”
I froze. “What?”
Lord Elliott’s sister grinned sadistically as she studied my expression. “You barely know me, my darling sorceress, but believe me… I have spent a long time out in the hold. I know its secrets.” She drew even closer now; her eyes widened darkly. “And I know yours…”
I quickly grasped my mistake in letting this one so close. Nikki clearly thinks she is talking to someone else; that’s the only explanation that makes any logical sense–
“You want to become a vassal.”
I blinked in surprise. “A what?”
“Don’t lie to me, Sabine.” Her voice took on an affectionate tone again. “If Elliott brings back the vassal system and makes you one, you’ll become a permanent member of this castle. That means no more hiding out in the abandoned graveyards of Sifter’s Hollow like a rat… ”
I was stunned. “I was the town sorceress! I–”
“You were no more an official magician than I a productive, mentally stable member of society,” she narrowed her eyes. Oh good, I groaned. So this one’s well aware that she’s madder than a hatter. “You did what you had to do to survive. I know the sacrifices you had to make, both in your best interests and in others… you singlehandedly kept the black revenants from rising and slaughtering Sifter’s Hollow, and they rewarded you with fear. They reviled you. So you hid along the edges of the town, doing what you had to in order to endure…”