The Vampire & Her Witch

The impromptu celebration thrown in honor of Ollie’s transformation into the Cypress Witch lasted until the small hours of the morning when the earliest rays of dawn began to paint the mists of the vale in soft golden hues, and the frost that had collected on long grasses faded away as though it were a dream to delicate to survive the light of day.

While the villagers themselves seemed content to continue the festivities, Ashlynn insisted on bringing Ollie back to the ancient fortress, pointing out that even though he appeared to have been asleep for several days, the trial had actually been very exhausting for Ollie and what he needed most now was rest.

”How is the castle town so different already?” Ollie said, staring out the windows of the carriage as it rolled through the large gate in the wall that stood as the town’s final line of defense against Lothian aggression.

The current wall protecting the city hardly seemed like a wall for the tiny castle town, standing thousands of paces away from the nearest building, but the new wall had been built atop the remains of the original city wall, at a time when Vale City had been a much larger settlement.

Now, however, the space between the town and the wall seemed to have been packed full of wagons, carts, and hundreds upon hundreds of tents. That alone shouldn’t have been surprising given the size of the army that Nyrielle had brought back from across the mountains. What was surprising, however, at least to Ollie, was the amount of construction that was occurring, even in the chill and damp autumn of the Vale of Mists.

”This is Lady Ashlynn’s doing,” Heila said proudly, beaming from her seat beside the Mother of Trees. ”She’s trying to encourage people to settle here, and she hired more than a hundred architects and builders in High Fen City to spend a year here to expand the city.”

”But, it’s only been ten days since you returned to the city. This is a bit much, isn’t it?” The young knight said, pointing out the window at several long, wide trenches that were marked off by long lengths of twine. ”Are these supposed to be streets? Why are they digging such deep trenches?”

”For water and waste,” Ashlynn said with a faint smile. It wasn’t until she spent time among the Eldritch that she realized how cramped and foul human settlements like Lothian City or even her beloved Blackwell City had become with too many people creating too much waste in too small an area. ”This is the system they use in High Fen City to keep trash and waste from piling up in the streets between market days.”

”But the size of this all,” Ollie said, still shocked at how many of these strange, trench-lined roads had been cleared in between the hundreds of tents. After helping to build a village for the refugees, he had a much better frame of reference for the transformation that was taking place before his eyes, but he still struggled to imagine needing as many new streets as Ashlynn seemed to be laying out in the castle town.

”Ollie,” Ashlynn said, her mood turning slightly more serious. ”We’re about to fight the greatest war the Vale of Mists has seen since the days of the Second Crusade. It’s no exaggeration to say that if we lose, it will be the end of the Vale of Mists as we know it, and anyone lucky enough to survive will be forced to flee across the mountains again, and this time, they may never return.”

”But have you ever thought about what would happen if we won?” Ashlynn asked, raising an eyebrow at the young knight.

”If we win, then we win the right to keep our homes and our way of life,” Ollie said, unconsconsciously using ’our homes’ and ’our way of life’, including himself with the people of the vale rather than setting himself as an outsider. ”The Heartwood Clan can rebuild their dams, keep their burrows, and protect the spaces that contain all the memories and treasures of their ancestors. Everyone can have the space to raise their families in peace until the next war comes and we have to defend it again.”

”Not this time,” Ashlynn said, giving the young knight a bright smile. ”This time, everything changes, whether we win or lose. This time isn’t just about holding on to what we have, it’s about retaking territory that was lost, driving the border between the Kingdom and the Vale further to the east for the first time in over a century.”

”But we won’t be like the Kingdom and the Church,” Ashlynn promised. Her emerald eyes were firm and resolute as she gazed out the carriage windows, seeing a future for this place that was even grander than what it had been under High Lord Torbin’s rule.

”We won’t drive the humans from their lands when this ends,” Ashlynn said. ”It isn’t the fault of the farmer or the bondsman that he was born on land usurped from the Eldritch people more than two generations before he was even born. He has no other place to ’return to’ after we defeat his lords and masters. He has fields that he has tended his entire life, a business he built with his own two hands... He has a home and a life and a family here in these lands, and we cannot rip it away from him.”

”So the humans get to keep the spoils of their murder and plunder?” Virve growled. ”Just because they managed to hold on to it long enough to pass it down to a cub without blood on their claws, they get to keep what was stolen?”

”Yes,” Ashlynn said directly. ”It’s the only way to stop the cycle of fighting that consumes too many lives and creates too many tragedies every generation. But there is a difference between the bondsman and the lord,” she added.

”The lords are the ones who have fueled the endless wars,” she explained in a voice that was fierce and determined. ”They have commanded the slaughter of countless innocents, and steeped their families in blood for so long that the books of their family history are written entirely in blood. Those who gave the orders are the ones who will pay the price when the reckoning comes and we call all blood debts due,” she promised.

”But what does that have to do with all this work in the city?” Ollie said, returning to the original topic before Virve’s temper could flare up again. He didn’t know her well, but somehow, since she received the seed of the Ancient Oak, she seemed more volatile than she’d been before.

It wasn’t just her anger that seemed to simmer closer to the surface, she’d been far less restrained during the celebration in the village than he remembered the quiet guardsman being when they shared meals in the past. Even her fur had changed with the gray fur that had come from her advancing age shifting to shades of orange, deep crimson, and occasional flecks of bright gold, resembling flames flickering along her body.

Ashlynn seemed to be aware of the change in Virve as well, giving Ollie a brief nod of thanks before she picked up the topic they’d begun with, the changes sweeping across Vale City and the excessive amount of investment they seemed to be making in a city with such a meager population.

”It has everything to do with Vale City,” Ashlynn said with a warm smile. ”Not the Vale City of today, but the one we’ll need after the wars have ended...”