“Mind telling me what you’re doing here? I figured you’d wait in the carriage.” She asked, sweeping her gaze across the small grove around us. It stopped on the dead cultist before returning to me. She hadn’t noticed them, good.

“Got knocked outside, saw this guy by himself running away and figured I’d be safer chasing after a fight I could win,” I replied, giving her a half-truth in hopes it might obscure my lie.

“…naturally,” Zena said as her suspicious stare began to wane. “That one has burn marks, a fire?”

“No I-“

“Magic?” She interrupted, answering for me.

“Something like that,” I answered, trying to be as vague as possible. “Is the fight over?”

“It wasn’t really a fight, more like a last-ditch effort.” She answered, spitting on the ground in what I guessed was an expression of her disgust towards the fervent Night Guard that had attacked us. “The last of them are being rounded up, so I came to retrieve you.”

To retrieve me? For some reason, the way Zena phrased that left a bad taste in my mouth. It was almost as if she thought of me as some dog that might run off without a leash. The grove of silence ensued as I neglected to respond standing next to the ripple in space while staring at Zena, trying to decipher exactly what to do next. Occasionally my eyes started to lean towards where Ferian and his sister were but I caught myself before such a Zena could catch on.

Should I stall for time? I’d like to know that those kids are at least safe and leaving them alone could end horribly.

I struggled with what to do knowing that there wasn’t really an option that went completely my way. On one hand, I could just walk through the ripple in space, ditch the kids but presumably get away from Zena at least for a brief moment. I wasn’t sure if she could follow me or not but my gut and the waning Ichor around it made me doubt she could.

But then what of the kids. I couldn’t and wouldn’t leave them alone. In the best-case scenario where Zena didn’t find them, those two were still exposed to the dangers of the forest. Sure nature seemed to aid them but I wasn’t willing to test how far that went, or if animals behaved the same.

“Are you coming, Vannis?” Zena asked in an impatient manner, her eyes constantly flickering between me and the ripple in space. It was clear she didn’t trust me. “Or would you prefer I drag you back to the carriage?”

Oh.

Though I tried to suppress it my jaw naturally widened as I bared my teeth like a true beast. It was like an animalistic smirk that contradicted how her threat was taken. Without my rationality factoring in I knew I would’ve instantly lunged for the kill right there, then tried to escape.

I saw it play out in the front of my mind and rejected it.

“Relax, I’m just taking a quick look at their things and this weird thing they kept harping on about,” I said, shifting the bigger man’s dead boy and searching through it as I had originally meant to. Two birds and one stone. “Still confuses me why they would attack us, even if it was desperation.”

Although Zena seated herself on a rock I knew her piercing gaze hadn’t left my back nor would it anytime soon. The second I made a move for the ripple she would stop me. Even using my spell probably wouldn’t stop her. There was a natural hierarchy among vampires and for some reason she had ascended higher after the Blood Rite while I stayed the same.

No, it’s not that simple. I can feel my body aching for sleep, it’s on the verge of something important and it needs food and safety to do so.

“It’s to be expected. The Night Guard are scoundrels enough to attack us even if it’s suicidal. Their entire creed is based on bringing the most amount of destruction possible while furthering their ends.” She huffed. “On top of that, we undead don’t generally get along with those lunatics.”

“Why so?” I asked while my greedy hands got a hold of the dead man’s staff. I took his belt of dagger and cloak too; best to be prepared for what came next.

There was a brief silence as I felt the gaze drilling into my back scrutinize even further. Had I given something away? For a moment I froze paranoia laced with a desire to lash out first even though nothing had happened. It was new to me how my fear had adopted a new outlet, going from sheer horror to creeping paranoia. The original was still there, Zena just failed to scare me.

“Are you actually interested?” She asked, her voice carrying a far more reserved tone.

“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.” Anything that could give me more insight into the inner working of vampires was always appreciated. Like Lores Grimoire once said, “Ignorance is only sinful if you never strive for enlightenment.”. Though unlike her, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a sin.

“Well…”

To my sheer bewilderment, Zena started on a long-winded explanation of all the events both known and theorized that had led to the grudges between the undead and the Night Guard. Skipping the less important details she spoke about with an apparent and unavoidable bias, it essentially boiled down to an idea that Lady Lunar, the patron of the Night Guard was, in fact, the founder of undeath, not the Lord of Fall.

How true that was couldn’t really be discerned because it fell into the realm of divinity, but it created a clear fracture between two groups that had originally worked together quite well.

I always found it… odd, how faith could do that. Change a person and their views in such an astounding way. I believed in Sol, as did my father and the rest of my family no matter how far I was from him now, but my faith would be put above my own accretion of a situation. Sol’s judgment was one I valued, but it would never before mine. My faith was more virtue of myself, an alignment in the beliefs Sol's clergy offered and partially a pressure from my surroundings.

Am I just lacking faith? Or are others just over-enthusiastic?

It was a dilemma I didn’t have time to think over, so I left it in the back recesses of my mind like a note to get back to later. Zena often kept a calm and stern presence about her but like before during our little spar with Vale, that aura broke. Then, she had acted like a child scolded for the first time after being spoiled, now in the same vein, she spoke like a child that had finally found someone to share their favourite toy with. It didn’t bother me much, since I got to search the body more thoroughly and stalled for more time. Every now and then I'd look back to see her smiling ear to ear, playing with sticks on the ground for something to do while the other vampires cleaned up the demolished Night Guard.

Ferian his sister were part of this house Dethre and although I’d never heard of it, they were bound to have resources available to send out a search party of some kind.

Righ- ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH.

Splintering wind hit me so fast I didn’t have time to process it, making my ears ring until they popped, cold liquid beginning to leak out as I dropped to the ground in agony. My vision had gone dull and I could feel something seeping from my eyes which I guessed was blood. Had a banshee screamed? Something happened within a fraction of an instance hitting me with such force that all feelings had slowed.

Was it a spell?

Looking up I could shakenly make out the tree rustling violently to one side, some ripped out as the aftermath of whatever had happened still raged on. But the wind wasn’t the real danger, from my completely decimated ears I knew the real power of whatever had just happened resided in the sound. A deafening sound that silenced all rebellion.

Elves…

It was said during the old wars that raged between Pora and Gwendra that by the time you heard an Elven war drum, it was already a lost fight. So many soldiers had been recorded falling to the great magic of the Elves before they even knew what happened that it had earned their legions a moniker that I heard in fairy tales as a child.

The harbingers of silence.

I could see small figures moving in under the cover of foliage which brought me some relief in the never-ending silence. Trying to stand I found my feet wobble and skid before I was forced to my knees, the dizziness making it hard for me to keep my guts from churning out fresh blood. Both my hands scratched deep into the grass hoping to anchor myself down to the ground that kept spinning.

Zena stayed within my field of view though she appeared to have suffered even more than I, collapsed on the ground in a bleeding mess. Was it because her senses were more acute and thus vulnerable?

I reached out to say something only to realize just how hard it was to properly talk when you were deaf. Shockwaves from the ground below nearly threw me over as the battle started again. Switching towards the ripple I knew this was the best chance to escape… but then new figures emerged from the tree line.

They stood on branches large and high in finely crafted armour, a mix between plate and leather with bows that shine. The outer plate shined in a dullish white gold while the lining beneath was pure white that blended to violet at the edges. Finely whittled horns neatly came out of their helmets, crafted from wood that sparkled silver. All six of them look far too magnificent for battle and yet that made them all the more intimidating.

The blood within me ran cold seeing them mercilessly knock arrows in my direction, so mechanical and simultaneous in their movements down to the tiniest angle. Fear coursed through me but the reaction wasn’t to freeze. I had to move, had to fight…

…HAD TO SURVIVE.

But.

Just from a brief glance, I knew Zena was in no state to move much less avoid arrows that were about to be fired towards us. She was a sitting duck. My body wanted to leave her, my blood wanted to escape and flee, lick my wounds and sharpen my claws. But every time I moved to escape the visage of those Ferian and his sister melded with hers. It was strange and I didn’t like it one bit.

They were completely different and yet so similar, so helpless in the current moment. I had seen both their savagery and their innocence, albeit varied significantly. There was no glory to some heroic deed, no greater mission. Just a woman with a uniquely genuine smile despite her darker background rambling about her apparent love for history and culture. So bliss.

Maybe I moved to help her even as the arrows rained down in spite of my blood's insistence because… I wanted to protect that. No, it wasn’t that. But it wasn’t some mystical reason either nor heroism. It could’ve been that I was worried my ties to humanity, to the people I still truly cared for were slipping too. But again, I didn’t know, not for certain.

I just covered her limp body with my own while moving to the trees that might give us cover because I could and at that moment, I felt like I should. No more, no less. No white, no black, no grey. Just actions…

…and consequences.