The Vampire & Her Witch

Hauke had completely lost track of time in the days since the spirits of the ancestors used his body like a puppet and trapped him in a frozen prison within his own mind.

At first, every hour had been precious as he fought against the curse that bound him, struggling to escape from its icy grip before Artificer Erkembalt, the madman with a bone saw, could hack off his horn in an attempt to ’cure’ him. That desperate struggle alone had kept him tethered and fighting until the night that he spoke during the trial, which ultimately sealed the fate of the ancient ancestors and dramatically changed the destiny of the High Pass.

Since then, the world outside his eyes turned into an ever-changing series of small plays, each one unfolding on the stage of the world without action or reaction from the cursed Frost Walker. Hauke was left with no choice but to listen and observe as his mother clung to his body and wept bitter tears when she told him that she had been commanded to remain in the High Pass while Hauke and his father were taken to the Vale of Mists to receive healing from the witches.

He was as motionless as a frozen sculpture when they loaded him into a carriage next to his wounded father, unable to offer the slightest comfort to the man who had given him everything he could have asked for in this life and more. Now, when he would have given almost anything to give his father a few words of reassurance and a youthful promise that things would get better soon, his lips wouldn’t move, and his jaw remained firmly shut, trapping any words he would have said within his chest.

Worst of all, however, had been the news that the artificer and his sorcerer companion would be placed in charge of determining a method of freeing him from the curse. The man with the broken beak from the Dark Feather Clan wasn’t the worst part. He at least tried to offer reassurance, from time to time making statements like ”The world isn’t done with you yet, young hero,” and ”the darkness of a world without you in it is too great for my shoulders to bear.”

The feathered sorcerer always spoke as if Hauke had some great purpose but he never once mentioned what that purpose might be, and the more often he repeated the same cryptic reassurances, the more Hauke began to wonder if the man might be going mad.

Compared to Artificer Erkembalt, however, the sorcerer was a model of sanity and rational thought. No matter what Aspakos said or did, he seemed to have Hauke’s best interest at heart, and restoring him was the sorcerer’s highest priority.

Erkembalt seemed more interested in using Hauke and the curse that bound him as a research subject, and some of his experiments turned out to be entirely irrelevant to the task of removing Hauke’s curse! He just wanted to better understand Frost Walkers and the unique magic of their horns.

Finally, after an unknown number of days had passed by under the agonizing questioning, poking and prodding by his ’physicians’, Ashlynn wandered into his dark and muddled world like a ray of sunshine peeking through endless clouds of blowing snow, instantly rekindling his hopes that he would soon be free of the magic that kept him prisoner.

”Rest well, my friend,” she’d said as she wrapped him in an aura that felt like a soft, snowy blanket lying atop the branches of evergreen trees. ”When you wake, we’ll have a proper conversation, so sleep now and we’ll talk soon...”

For the first time since this nightmare began, Hauke allowed himself to truly rest. What little sleep he’d had was fitful and shallow, plagued by nightmares about the aftermath of what the ancestors had done, but under the effects of Ashlynn’s magic, no dreams lurked in the shadows of his mind to torment him. Only calm, restful sleep.

Several hours later, Hauke’s eyes slowly fluttered open as he found himself in a familiar room that was lit only by a small oil lamp sitting on the table and the dim glow of a hearth that had been allowed to burn down, leaving the room cooler than it had been since Hauke arrived and far more comfortable.

The room was quiet without the bickering of Artificer Erkembalt and his companion Aspakos, and the slate boards, books, pages of notes and strange equipment had all been cleared away, leaving the room feeling oddly empty after so many days of their active bustling while they studied his curse.

One person, however, remained in the room, sitting at the central table with stacks of paper to one side while the pen in her hand moved in slow, steady strokes over whatever the page currently in front of her. A thin blanket around her shoulders hung slightly askew, and it was impossible for Hauke to say how long she’d been there, but the pile of dishes sitting beside her suggested that it had been at least long enough to take one meal.

”Ashlynn?” Hauke asked. His voice sounded weak and hoarse even to his ears, but it was his voice, and when he lifted his head to get a better look at her, his head and body moved as he willed! It felt like a very small accomplishment, saying one word and moving his head and shoulders to sit up in bed, but to Hauke, it was enough to bring tears to his eyes.

”Hauke!” Ashlynn said, immediately setting down her pen and rushing across the room to help the young Frost Walker lord sit up. She’d never really thought about how heavy a man who stood nearly nine feet tall must be until she slipped an arm behind his shoulders and helped lift him into a sitting posture, but the moment she did, she was immensely grateful to Nyrielle for the gift of strength that allowed her to help her friend.

”How, how is my h-horn?” Hauke asked anxiously. He wanted to check for himself but when he tried to raise an arm it felt so weak that he was barely able to lift it off the bed, much less reaching his own horn.

”Your horn is fine,” Ashlynn said with a gentle smile. ”I’m sure you heard everything we said before I helped you rest, but the curse-breaking went more or less as expected. I’ve just been sitting here waiting for you to wake.”

She made it sound easy, but what had sounded like a simple task of cutting the thread of magic that Aspakos pointed to was much, much more difficult than Ashlynn had expected. At times, she needed to make cuts that were so precise that a needle would have been a better tool than her Severing Knife, and moving more than the thickness of a fingernail to either side would have resulted in cutting the wrong thread.

Ashlynn’s shoulders ached from the tension of wielding the Severing Knife for several hours, and her eyes had only recently begun to focus on small details without difficulty again after the strain of staring so intensely at such subtle distinctions in magic between the seven chains that bound Hauke. But despite the difficulties, she would have done it several times over if that’s what it took to free her friend from the prison that trapped him within his own mind.

”I have food and drink for you,” Ashlynn said, wiping joyful tears from her eyes as she stood to retrieve a tray that Georg had delivered to Hauke’s room hours ago. ”I’m certain you’re hungry, but I want to keep your meal small while your body finishes waking up,” she said, sitting next to him and fetching a bowl from the tray that had been resting in a larger bowl filled with ice.

”What, what is it?” Hauke asked, his nose twitching as he inhaled the strangely complex aroma that accompanied the chilled dish in Ashlynn’s hands.

”It’s the same thing we’ve been feeding your father,” Ashlynn said, taking a spoonful of the bright red dish and offering it to Hauke. ”The fish in the river aren’t suitable to enjoy raw, but this is a raw dish made with the meat of cows,” she explained. ”It’s called ’tartare’ and there are spices, herbs, a raw hen’s egg, and a few pickles mixed in there to enhance the flavor of the raw beef,” she said. ”It’s considered a luxury in High Fen City, but for Frost Walkers, Georg thinks it can function like soups and porridge for helping the body recover its strength after a long period of inactivity...”

Ashlynn’s voice trailed off when she realized that Hauke wasn’t paying attention to her description of the dish. His eyes shook, and tears flowed down the soft fur covering his cheeks as he fought to summon the strength to ask the most important question that consumed his mind in the days since the battle in the High Pass.

”Father,” he whispered hoarsely. ”How... how is he?” The last Hauke had seen his father, his body had been covered by terrible wounds inflicted by the Thistle Witch, and whether or not he could ever be healed was something no one knew. Even Ashlynn had only promised that they would ’try.’

”And, can I, can I see him? Before he, he...” Hauke’s voice trailed off, as if the words at the end of the sentence were too painful to speak into existence, but his shining, watery eyes made it clear how worried he was. If his father was going to die from his wounds, then he wanted, no, needed to see him at least one more time before... before there was nothing left of his father but a horn in an ancestral cave.

Assuming that the Frost Walker elders even allowed the former Lord of the High Pass to have his horn placed in an ancestral cave. After presiding over the fall of the High Pass, his father might find himself unwelcome among his people, even in death...