The Vampire & Her Witch

A buzz swept through the hall as several people sat up straighter in their chairs.

Many had begun to speculate about the group sitting at the central table and what it meant for their future. Others had pointed to the banners hanging in the hall, eager to hear what was signified by each of them and their positions relative to each other. Still, there were a few, like Tulori Leufroy and Serge Otker, who held their breath anxiously, waiting to learn their fates with little hope for their futures.

”To understand the road ahead,” Ashlynn said. ”We need to understand how we arrived here today. Not the specific feuds and grievances, but the way our worlds were shaped by the people who came long before us,” she explained.

”Some of you will hear these things for the first time tonight,” Ashlynn said. ”And some of you will hear a version of events that you’ve never heard before. I was raised in the Kingdom of Gaal, but I only came to understand the Eldritch world when I left the Kingdom’s borders.”

”There are some lessons that can only be learned by someone who has stood in both worlds,” Ashlynn added. ”And some secrets that are held by only the most powerful among our people. Tonight, I hope you’ll listen with open minds and kind hearts while we share what we have learned from each other,” Ashlynn said before she returned to her seat, nodding at Nyrielle to take over.

”I was born not far from here,” Nyrielle said as she rose, panning her cold, midnight gaze across the room. ”I was born more than two hundred years ago, when the First Crusade drove my parents from the lands their family had settled in what was once the Principality of Keating,” she said, eliciting several gasps from those who had grown up on stories of the ’Demon Lady of the Vale’ without ever knowing where she’d come from.

”My parents were human before they became vampires, but I... I never was,” Nyrielle said as her eyes grew darker. The midnight blue of her irises spilled into the whites of her eyes, transforming them into windows that beheld the night sky while her body transformed before everyone’s eyes.

Two great feathered wings emerged from her back, spreading wide behind her while her features grew sharper and her slender hands lengthened into wicked claws. The character of the air in the great hall changed along with her, feeling more like an ancient tomb than the site of a feast. When she spoke, her voice had grown both deeper and richer, filled with power that felt as ancient as the bones of the earth, echoing from a distance unimaginably far away.

”I am the Harbinger of Death,” Nyrielle said. ”I am a True Vampire, one of four who walk the land. I am more than two hundred years old, but I am young for my kind,” she said with a smile that couldn’t help but look predatory when it revealed the full length of her fangs. ”I was taught by Shubnalu, the Fangs of Death, who has walked this world for more than a thousand years, and even he was considered young when the things I speak of came to pass...”

At the table closest to the one where Nyrielle stood, Charlotte reached out and tightly held on to Adala, pulling her close enough to hold for comfort and warmth against the cold. Though whether she intended to comfort Adala or needed Adala’s warmth to protect her from the unearthly chill that emanated from Nyrielle, even she couldn’t say.

Adala, for her part, stared up at Nyrielle with wide eyes and her ears perked up, as if she was afraid to miss a single word of what the powerful vampire had to say.

”The Eldritch know this time as the Age of Ice,” Nyrielle explained. ”A time when the ice of the distant north and the highest peaks filled almost every field and valley. A time when giant beasts walked the land and people like Lord Hauke and Captain Ipiktok ruled over vast, frozen kingdoms that were all but barren. It was a time when only the most ruthless could survive.”

At the far end of the table, Hauke’s horn dimmed, and he ducked his head in second-hand shame. The age of ice hadn’t just belonged to the Frost Walkers; it had been caused by them. By men like Ansgar, the Lord of the Seven Peaks, whose remnant spirit had once possessed Hauke in an attempt to bring about a return of the Age of Ice.

His people had been mighty, lording over much of the continent, but it was hard to be proud of their legacy when he understood what their greatness had cost much of the world.

”Three people broke that world and created the one we live in today,” Nyrielle said. ”Acat, the Jaws of Death, the True Vampire who taught my teacher, along with the Mother of Forests and the Sovereign of Stars.”

”Few revere Acat for destroying that which caused the Age of Ice,” Nyrielle said as her voice turned slightly sad. ”It is the purview of vampires to walk the edge of a blade between life and death. Few realize how precariously the world is perched on that very same blade. We exist to destroy those who would shatter the balance and doom the world, and Acat was, perhaps, the greatest of our kind for destroying a powerful bloodline without causing the extinction of a people.”

”I would not be alive today if not for Acat’s mercy,” Hauke said. ”None of my people would. It shames me that we forgot his name,” he said as his horn turned a pale shade of violet. ”I will right this wrong, I swear it.”

”It is a difficult thing,” Nyrielle said. ”To revere the man who destroyed your empire for sparing your lives. See that his tale is told and let your people decide. I do not mention his name to say that he should be worshiped or praised... I mention him so that you understand; the old order was intolerable to almost all life, too few could thrive, and until that order was destroyed, nothing new could take its place...”

”An end comes before new beginnings,” Nyrielle said. ”Just as we now sit at the end of an era of Lothian rule in these lands, the Mother of Forests and the Sovereign of Stars sat at the end of the Age of Ice, charged with creating a new world where people and life could thrive...”