The Vampire & Her Witch

When Ashlynn planted Ollie’s seed of witchcraft in his chest, she used five items as part of the ritual in order to bind the power of the elements to the newborn witch. The items were mostly symbolic, meant to invoke the essence of an element in a way that would help Ollie access its power. For fire, Ashlynn had used a candle made from cooking tallow collected in Georg’s kitchens. For water, she’d used water taken from the Briar, where many cypress trees grew.

But for Air, Nyrielle had contributed one of the slender, dark feathers of her own wings. Unlike the other items used in the ritual, the feather carried a trace of Nyrielle’s power with it, granting Ollie the unprecedented ability to summon winds that blew from the Void itself.

The moment Ollie finished speaking the name of his technique, a wind began to rise in the underground dining room, a wind that shouldn’t exist in the stillness of the formal dining room, and behaved in ways that no ordinary wind would.

The wind moved through the crystal chandeliers hanging from the vaulted ceiling, setting them swaying on their chains with a sound like distant bells tolling for the dead. The delicate crystals chimed against each other, creating an eerie music that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Perhaps if they had been outdoors, the sound would have been the rustling of wind through the trees, which would have felt more natural, but as the tinkling of the chandeliers grew louder, the warriors in the room like Virve and Liam began to feel like they could almost hear the sounds of steel ringing against steel, sword against shields the chaotic clamor of battle somewhere close, but just out of sight...

The wind itself remained invisible to the living. It did not stir the hair of the guests seated around the table, nor did it ruffle the fabric of their clothing or disturb the remnants of the meal laid out before them. The flatbreads remained still on their platters, the wine in the goblets sat perfectly undisturbed without so much as a ripple on the surfaces of the liquid within them, and not a single person felt so much as a whisper of wind against their skin.

The wind existed in some other space, some realm that overlapped with the world they lived in but did not quite touch it. Or at least, that didn’t normally touch it. But as the crimson drop of blood rolled down Ollie’s finger and the strength of the young man’s witchcraft grew, a chill air crept through the boundary between life and death, audible but intangible, present but impossible to grasp.

Sitting in her chair between Ashlynn and Ignatious, Heila shivered as the temperature of the room seemed to plummet. Her body felt cold enough that she expected to see a cloud of steam forming when she exhaled, the way it would on a cold winter morning, but just like the wind failed to disturb the linens on the table, the cold didn’t leave any physical trace in the room.

Still, she scooted over in her chair, pressing herself close against Ignatious and his warmth, seeking shelter from the chill that only he seemed able to provide.

As the wind grew stronger, the flames in the chandeliers began to flicker. At first, it was subtle, a gentle wavering of candlelight that might have been mistaken for a trick of the eye. But then the flames began to dance more violently, bending and twisting as though desperately trying to escape the touch of something that should not be able to reach them.

The warm golden glow that had filled the dining room grew dimmer with each passing heartbeat, shadows lengthening and deepening as the light struggled against the encroaching darkness.

And then, one by one, the flames began to die.

They didn’t gutter out like candles caught in an ordinary draft. Instead, they seemed to retreat into themselves, growing smaller and dimmer until they were nothing more than tiny pinpricks of defiant light, like stars shining in an infinite ocean of night. And then, as if some dark hand had reached out from the depths of the void to pinch them out one by one, they vanished entirely, plunging the underground dining room into absolute and complete darkness.

The formal dining room lay deep underground, in a place that had been carved out of the cliffs behind the ancient fortress of the Vale of Mist in order to provide a place of safety and refuge for vampires. The light of day could never reach this place, and when darkness fell, it was a deeper, darker black than even the darkest moonlit night. And in that darkness, worse than the absence of light, came the sounds...

It was just whispers at first. Sounds so faint they might have been imagined. The kind of sounds that could be mistaken for the rustling of fabric or the settling of old stone. But then they grew louder, more insistent, multiplying until they filled the dining room with a cacophony of voices that had no words and yet whispered directly into the hearts and minds of everyone huddled in the darkness around the table.

Mournful sounds of deep regret filled the air, as though countless souls were crying out for chances lost and choices they could never unmake. Last words that loved ones would never hear overlapped with deathbed confessions and the bitter curses of unclaimed vengeance as the dead gave voice to the things they couldn’t say in life.

Swirling around the room, plaintive wailing spoke of loneliness beyond measure, of spirits trapped in an endless Void with no hope of escape or comfort. The wails cried out for something, anything, that would give them solace or rest, and more than anything else, for someone who would tell them that they weren’t alone, as if the voices couldn’t hear each other, only the vast, echoing stillness of the Void.

Isabell thought herself a strong woman, but after the wailing came anguished cries that conveyed suffering so profound it transcended ordinary pain, like the victims of her siege engines during the war in the Emerald Kingdom, trapped in flames that consumed entire villages and towns. And beneath it all, threading through the more desperate sounds, came soft, innocent sobs, the quiet weeping of those who had died too young, who had never had the chance to live, as they mourned for futures that would never be.

They were the voices of the countless people she’d condemned to die for no crime other than allowing a usurper to hide his army behind their walls, believing they would be safe from the Emerald Prince’s armies if they used the common people as shields. They’d never imagined that their enemy would unleash a weapon like the Engineer of Destruction, or that her merciless bombardments would bring about such ruinous annihilation.

Now, Isabell heard the anguished cries of her victims once again, blown on a wind that blew across time from the battlefields of old, and each scream and sob tore open an old wound, reminding her that the dead would never forget... or forgive what she had done.