The Vampire & Her Witch

Standing before a stone slab blocking her path, Nyrielle hesitated, trying to sense what her teacher might be doing in the space beyond. The Blood Seeker had clearly found a trace of her former teacher, but at the same time, he had taken no action against the construct. Was he trying to lull her into a false sense of security, pretending that he hadn’t noticed? Had he revealed himself to deliberately guide her here?

Any of it was possible. Shubnalu’s moves were always carefully considered and planned well in advance to force his prey to stretch out their own necks. She was doing that right now, separating herself from her own forces and coming to meet with him alone. But the alternative, exposing her loved ones to the powers of the oldest among the True Vampires, was something she didn’t dare to contemplate.

”There’s no time for this,” she muttered as another recently reawakened feeling overtook her. Impatience. Though Ashlynn still felt confident, the bursts of pain weren’t only more intense, they were more frequent, and her lover’s mind seemed to be focused not on victory, but on escape... or even rescue.

Taking her shadowy ax in both hands, Nyrielle cloaked herself in darkness, summoning all of her physical strength until nothing could be seen of her but two midnight blue eyes, glowing in the darkness like dark oceans of power.

”Break. Crumble. Collapse,” she said, her dark voice reverberating through the stone chamber like a pronouncement from the abyss as her ax descended, splitting the stone slab cleanly from corner to corner. For a moment, the slab stood resolute as if it intended to defy death herself. Then, with a shuddering crash, the top half slid to the side, cracking and crumbling away as it fell to the icy stone floor of the cavern, leaving nothing behind but a pile of loose rubble.

”Teacher,” Nyrielle said as she strode forward. ”Your student has come to have a word.”

Inside the chamber, the air was still and stale, giving the impression that anything that nothing living had trod these stone halls in centuries. It was the contents of the chamber, however, that stilled Nyrielle’s heart when her flickering sapphire flames peeled back the darkness.

At the center of the chamber stood a massive stone altar, roughly carved from volcanic glass. Hooked glyphs that were among the oldest Nyrielle had ever seen covered the surface of the blood stained altar and deep grooves in it’s surface spoke of dark rituals used to guide the flow of blood from anything unfortunate enough to find itself atop the altar.

Chains and hooks hung from the ceiling, like the implements of a slaughterhouse, cast in bronze that had long ago lost its luster beneath a heavy greenish blue tarnish. Along one wall, rows of ceremonial knives, cleavers and saws for hewing bone were encased in blocks of ice that had endured for hundreds of years, perfectly preserving the deadly implements that awaited their next use.

The aura of blood in the chamber hung so thickly that Nyrielle was momentarily disoriented, as if she could feed simply by breathing the air in this dark, forsaken place. But despite the thick, heavy smell of blood that filled the place even after hundreds of years sealed behind the stone slab, she found no trace of her teacher. Instead, her Blood Seaker hovered patiently over a stone tablet, carefully placed on a pedestal to the side as if it refused to be the center of attention but demanded a place from which to watch.

”So you were like this, even then,” Nyrielle said as she approached the stone tablet. The top of the tablet bore an ancient version of the Eldritch glyph for ’vampire’ while the bottom of the tablet bore the symbol of a blade and fangs that had long represented the current Fangs of Death.

”Always standing in the shadows, watching as others executed your will.” Slicing the tip of her smallest finger with a sharpened nail, Nyrielle pressed her finger to the glyph at the top of the tablet and spoke in the older form of Eldritch her former teacher still used for sorcery. ”Blüd Scribë: Revæl.”

Slowly, stroke by stroke, as if Shubnalu himself were standing here writing on the tablet, characters written in blood appeared on the tablet but the more Nyrielle read, the clearer it became that this wasn’t a message he’d left for her, but something he’d written long before this place was sealed, leaving behind a message that only a fellow vampire could read.

”Successor,

Acat has broken the bloodline of the Frost Walkers, and with it, the curse of eternal winter and the age of ice has finally come to an end...”

”Acat?” Nyrielle paused, staring at the name of the long dead Jaws of Death in confusion. ”What business did Shubnalu’s teacher have with the Frost Walkers? Age of ice? Just how long ago did he lay this down?”

”... Nothing will remain suppressed forever. Those bearing an Iridescent Horn have begun to re-emerge among the seven bloodlines of the broken clan...”

”So this is why you turned those ancestors into Blood Golems,” Nyrielle said as she quickly read the remainder of Shubnalu’s message. ”You forced them to sacrifice themselves without leaving any descendants behind, trapping them forever in ice and sealing away the bloodline that could have returned them to glory.”

It finally made sense why the twisted ancestral spirits had seized so desperately on young Hauke when he and Ashlynn had stumbled on this place. Shubnalu had twisted the legacy of the Frost Walkers into one where any time the ancient bloodline of the iridescent horn reemerged, the ’eternal guardians’ of the clan forced them into a role of power and responsibility that would last far beyond their death.

”But this was all long ago,” she said, turning away from the tablet that held the only trace of her teacher’s presence in this forsaken place. There were still questions that this place held answers to but none of that mattered right now.

She’d been wrong, she realized, tightening her fist until the sharpened nails of her claws bit into the flesh of her palms as the wave of realization washed over her. Months of moving through the Eldritch nations, remaining constantly on guard against the other vampire lords or Shubnalu himself had left her jumping at shadows.

She’d had centuries to watch his long, carefully executed schemes trap his victims, often without ever seeing the man who had orchestrated their demise and as soon as Hamdi revealed that her former teacher intended to capture her, she’d begun to see his hand behind countless challenges and setbacks along her journey but she’d never once found a trace of him.

Perhaps, if not for her teacher’s involvement in this place centuries ago, she wouldn’t have suspected him of being behind the Frost Walker’s sudden betrayal. Seeing Hauke and Rtichel betray the understanding they’d forged during her last visit had almost been a relief. Finally, it seemed like Shubnalu had made his move in a place where he had long ago laid down the foundations to treat the Frost Walkers as his pawns.

Now that she’d seen this place, however, she realized she’d leaped to conclusions far too quickly and she’d left Ashlynn and the others alone to face the real threat while she chased after ghosts laid to rest long ago.

”I’m coming, my love,” she said as she plunged back into the icy water to leave the ancestral cave. She only hoped that by the time she returned to Ashlynn’s side, it wasn’t too late.