The Vampire & Her Witch

For Sybyll to suffer enough that Nyrielle could feel her pain from more than a hundred leagues away meant that something extraordinary had happened. Sybyll’s armor wasn’t just incredibly heavy and impossibly strong; it was the work of artificers who were nearly as skilled as Erkembalt. More than that, it represented the pinnacle of the Vale of Mists’ efforts to defend against the holy weapons of the Church.

If even Sybyll’s armor was insufficient to protect against the effects of a Holy Light blade, then there was very little hope that a lesser armor would be sufficient to protect vampires like Thane, Lennart or any of the others who would take to the field in battle against the mightiest forces of the Church when the Holy War finally reached them, much less the forces of a Crusade.

”She’ll be all right, won’t she?” Ollie asked, leaning close enough to Thane to whisper to the vampire who had trained both him and Dame Sybyll. ”Even if it’s one of the Church’s weapons...”

”Have faith in your senior,” Thane said lightly, reaching out to ruffle Ollie’s flame-red hair. ”Pain won’t stop her from claiming her vengeance, and she’s not so proud that she won’t fall back and seek help from Heila and Hauke if she has need to. Remember, she’s stronger than I am and...”

”She’s touched the Void,” Nyrielle said with a predatory grin. ”It seems that she has no patience for entertaining Sir Tommin or the Inquisitor.”

When Nyrielle spoke, all eyes shifted to Ashlynn, wondering if she had been able to sense anything through her connection to Heila, but the Mother of Trees said nothing.

”If Heila suffers,” Virve said as she passed a fresh tankard of cider to Lennart. ”It likely means the worst has happened. She should be focused on healing the wounded instead of fighting at the front lines. But if even the healers are overrun...”

”I’m not so certain that she’ll hold herself back,” Zedya said as she snuggled into her husband’s soft embrace, gently stroking his fur and taking comfort in his closeness. ”Ever since Lady Ashlynn named Heila as her lady-in-waiting, she’s been pushing herself. I think she’s still ashamed of being helpless on the frozen lake when the Tuscans attacked you in the High Pass,” she told Virve.

”She takes after her teachers,” Lennart said, softly stroking Zedya’s hair. ”That includes you. You’ve never been shy about donning your gloves to fight at the front lines when it was needed, so why should she?”

”I should have gone with her,” Virve growled, flexing her claws and allowing a trace of her greenish-gold energy to spill from her hand as she made a tight fist. ”Ollie and I both could have gone. We weren’t wounded that badly at the Summer Villa,” she grumbled.

Ashlynn had been clear with both Virve and Ollie that she didn’t intend to push any of them into back-to-back battles if she could prevent it. She wanted to preserve their strength for the battles to come, especially Ollie’s.

The attack on the Summer Villa and the injury that Ollie sustained in that battle with the Lothian archers made it clear that the young knight still had much to learn about the battlefield, and even though Ashlynn acknowledged that Virve could have made the trip to the battle of Hanrahan along with Ipiktok and his men, she’d called her home instead.

”I need you to help Ollie learn from this battle and prepare for the next one,” Ashlynn told Virve at the time, and the captain of her guard had accepted it as a reasonable answer at the time. But now, when she thought of the diminutive Willow Witch wading into a battle that was fierce enough to make even Dame Sybyll suffer, Virve found herself wishing that she’d argued more with the leader of her coven.

Time passed with agonizing slowness as everyone watched the Harbinger of Death and the Mother of Trees, hoping one of them would sense something that would mean all had gone according to plan. That news finally came more than an hour later when Nyrielle finally opened her eyes.

”Sybyll’s suffering has eased,” she said with a faint smile. ”Your witches are truly remarkable, my darling Ashlynn,” she said, looking deeply into her lover’s emerald eyes as they opened. ”I was worried that Sybyll would carry her wounds for the rest of her days...”

”I’m glad that Heila was able to help,” Ashlynn said with a sigh of relief. She hadn’t felt anything that resembled intense pain from her connection to Heila, though there had been a few moments of intense fear, followed by even more intense anger that worried her. In the end, however, it seemed like the diminutive Willow Witch had escaped relatively unscathed.

”Does that mean they’ve won?” Ollie asked, looking up from the late-night snack he’d been preparing in order to distract himself from the anxiety that gnawed at his stomach. He didn’t think he could eat right now if he wanted to, but he found that having a familiar task to do helped, even if few people had the stomach to eat much while they waited for news.

”They’ve won or they’ve lost and retreated safely,” Ashlynn speculated. ”Dame Sybyll is... Relentless,” she said, thinking of the intensity with which the Crimson Knight fought in their practice sessions leading up to this battle. Ashlynn hadn’t been in the best state of mind at the time and she’d been more than a little... excessive in her use of power as she fought back against the powerful vampire, but Sybyll had never given ground easily.

”We’ll know whether they’ve gained victory or suffered defeat close to dawn,” Nyrielle reminded everyone. ”Until then, I’m afraid that there’s nothing we can know from here.”

”I believe in them,” Ashlynn said as she wrapped her arms around Nyrielle, holding her tight and drawing comfort from her cool touch. ”Even if they’ve failed to seize Hanrahan Town, so long as they’ve survived to retreat, it’s still our victory,” she said, though she sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than anyone else at the gathering.

Ashlynn didn’t know what could have happened to make Heila so angry during the battle that she could feel echoes of her fury from more than a hundred leagues away, but she selfishly hoped that, if anyone had died, it hadn’t been someone close to them.

If something had happened to Hauke, she was certain that there would have been an even more intense storm of emotions coloring their bond, but with no way of knowing for certain, she couldn’t give Hauke’s father the comforting reassurance she so desperately wanted to.