I somehow managed to wake Sylvia up from her Slime-controlled dream. I’m not sure what I did, but I think my mana may have disrupted the creature somehow. The monster detached itself from her, and I killed it, but Sylvia didn’t immediately regain consciousness as I did. Once the initial adrenaline of waking up from that dream had worn off and with trying to help Sylvia, I immediately realized how bad of shape I was in.

If I had to guess the Slime that was attempting to take my body over was keeping the poison from the Drone stinger at bay. But once I broke free of my captor and killed it, the poison was able to start spreading through my body. I was also lucky that the stinger barely grazed me, but it was still enough to put my life in jeopardy.

Once Sylvia woke up, she ended up healing me just enough to keep me alive. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time resting and recovering since Sylvia was dangerously low on blood from healing herself while the slime was trying to take her over. So she had to treat me as she was able to take more of my blood.

This was the worst shape either of us have been in since I nearly died from the Wyrm. Our total recovery time must have totaled up to a couple of weeks.

Neither of us talked about what we saw in our dream worlds. But, judging by the pained look that Sylvia has been wearing since then, she must have seen her family, if I had to guess.

I can’t imagine my face looking much happier. Seeing my old squad again was too much even for me. And what I had to do to them in order to wake up didn’t make things any easier on the ol’ mental state. The monster kept fighting to the bitter end and made me kill all of them until it finally released me. It was the only way.

Just more fuel for the nightmares, I suppose. Maybe one day I’ll see a therapist… if those even exist in this world.

“We are here. And it is as well,” Sylvia said.

“So… this is it then?”

Sylvia nodded and dropped to the ground with a thud. “I didn’t get very close, but I’m confident it’s the Wyrm. It was guarding two massive doors, but that’s all I could make out from a distance.”

“You did well not alerting it. If the Wyrm is here that must mean we are finally at the end of this hell hole. Just when my water was about to be tapped out too.”

I was rationing so much as well. Guess we have been trapped down here for months.

The two of us sat in silence around the fire. Now that we are here, the burning question has finally needed to be answered, lest we die regardless of our supplies. I could tell Sylvia was thinking the same thing as me, so I let her stew for a while before I asked.

“How are we going to kill it? My magic… I might be able to kill it if I get lucky, maybe a direct hit to the head or down its throat. But that thing is still bigger, faster, and stronger than I will ever be. It took Ilme and her barriers along with a desperate retreat to slow it down even a fraction of a second and I still nearly died. So if I take a direct hit, it’s over,” I said.

“I can kill it,” she said seriously.

“No offense but you aren’t fast enough or strong enough to even scratch it.”

“No, what I’m going to do has nothing to do with strength or speed. I just need time and blood.”

“Time and blood?” I asked.

Sylvia dipped her head into her hands and rubbed her forehead. “I need you to protect me for… forty seconds… no probably closer to a minute. And we are going to have to spend more time resting so I can accumulate more blood.”

One minute…

“Thank you for trusting me, Sylvia, really. But I barely lasted ten seconds against that thing. Even if I doubled or tripled that time, it wouldn’t be enough to do it while protecting you. And do you mind me asking why you are so confident you can even do this?”

“It’s a ritual my mother taught me, one of the few Blood Sorcery rituals I know. She told me to only use it in the most dire of situations. Normally it would take at least two others to perform, but I can do it if you just give me some time.”

“What does this ritual entail?” I asked.

“I need a lot of blood. Like I’m talking about three or four vampires worth of blood.”

“Can you even hold that much blood inside of you?”

“No, I’ll have to store it elsewhere. I have some things that will help.”

“Okay… so I’m guessing it’s all going to be my blood…great. Do you have any secret rituals that increase my blood recovery even more?” I grumbled.

“Yes, actually there is—”

Sylvia was staring up into the air in thought when she stopped herself short. She slowly looked over to me and her face turned almost as red as her eyes. “NO! Nevermind! There isn’t!”

“What? You just said—”

Sylvia jumped up from the ground with enhanced speed and began shouting, “Shut up! SHUT UP! We can’t! I can’t! Not happening! Noooo way! Stop asking, got it!?”

“I uh… okay?” I squeaked.

Apparently, that was not the right question to ask. Has Cerila ever acted like this before? Did I say something I wasn’t supposed to? I don’t think I did… cultural, or maybe the difference in time? I could only speculate.

Sylvia stormed away and did a few laps around the camp before finally settling down. She sat back down with her legs and arms crossed and refused to make eye contact with me.

I had to clear my throat from the last voice crack to continue talking seriously. “Well, that’s fine… I might as well start eating full meals anyways, considering this is it. If we fail here, I’ll die from the lack of water.”

Sylvia just shrugged her shoulders and sighed. Now really wasn’t the time for this. Anyways I had a more pressing question.

“Sylvia… the reason you never told me about this ritual isn’t because of the expensive upfront cost, is it? What happens when you perform the ritual?” I asked.

Upon hearing my question, Sylvia seemed to sink into herself as she brought her knees to her chest and sat her crossed arms on top of them. “At best? I kill the Wyrm, and I become completely incapacitated for a time. I might pass out completely, but I’ll likely just be completely drained and unable to move.”

“And at worst?”

“I’ll kill the Wyrm and die along with it,” she said quietly.

“That’s completely reckless. You don’t have to—”

“Shut up. Don’t talk to me about being reckless. You are the one that has been slinging dangerous spells around, nearly killing yourself in the process,” Sylvia said in frustration. “And besides, you saved me from that Slime, so I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me—”

Syliva interrupted again and looked me dead in the eyes with a serious glare. “I do owe you. I would have never woken up from that dream if it wasn’t for you. It was you? Wasn’t it? The thing I saw…” she whispered.

“The thing? What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.

“I saw something in my dream. While I was enjoying my time with my dead family, I heard a voice. At first, the voice wasn’t yours or any voice I had ever heard before. It was deep and emotionless, almost like it wasn’t even alive. It called out to me, telling me to wake up… but I ignored it, thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me. But then… that voice took shape,” Sylvia shut her eyes tightly. “Something was wearing jet black armor with a scarlet visor, unlike anything I have ever seen before. It was tall…taller than the biggest Dragonkin. Its aura was oppressive, and it gripped my heart in icy cold fear as it slaughtered the guards in my dream, turning them into black smoke. Then it came for me… It was so fast… I barely managed to turn around when I heard a voice… your voice…”

Impossible.

“I… I…I….”

I couldn’t do it. I broke eye contact and rubbed my face.

There is no way… how? She described Kronos…. she described me… but how? And what do I even say? Make up some lie to cover my tracks?

…

…

No… that’s not what I want… Sylvia might be the last person I talk to… but I’m still not ready. It would only complicate things…

“It’s complicated,” I said stiffly. I cringed from the way I said it, and I looked back over at Sylvia, who was looking at me with soft eyes. “If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to talk about it. Sorry…”

“That’s fine,” she said quickly. “I’m withholding plenty of things from you, too.”

We stopped talking for some time. The silence seemed to drag on between the two of us. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and our breathing. My head was spinning. I tried to think of some way to salvage this, but I kept drawing blanks.

I felt like I got flanked by a rocket launcher on a wide-open street.

“How about we make a promise?” Sylvia suggested, breaking the awkward silence.

“Huh?”

“I mean, if we make it out of here? Something to look forward to, I guess?” Sylvia said with a slight shrug.

“I’m not following…”

Sylvia sighed and just looked at me. “Like… there are plenty of things I don’t know about you. I know you are from Syn’nari and that you have a mother and father. You became a slave somehow in Sandervile. You are twelve— uh, thirteen? Happy birthday?” she squeaked with an awkward smile.

“Yeah, guess I am now. Thanks…”

Another small bout of awkward silence gripped the conversation once more. Finally, Sylvia clapped her hands loudly and said, “Anyways! There is a lot I don’t know about you. You were pretty vague on the details during our last conversation. Not that I blame you or anything… soooo?”

“So what?”

Sylvia smacked herself on the forehead, then grumbled, “You know I like you a lot better when you aren’t like this…” Sylvia sighed deeply and made weird waving gestures with her hand. “What I’m trying to say is we can have something to look forward to after this by telling each other about our past. There are some things I wouldn’t mind telling you now that I trust you, I guess. But uh! We don’t have to talk about whatever the thing with my dream was about or… whatever…” she said the last part defensively while waving both her hands in front of her face.

…

I guess I do have some questions I wouldn’t mind having answered…

“Okay,” I said calmly. “But wouldn’t you want to know these types of things before we went into a life or death battle?”

“Nope. Gives us something to do when we get out of here, you know?”

“Yeah, sure… I can do that,” I agreed.

Sylvia beamed a half-hearted smile at me, and I just nodded. Was this her attempt to make me feel better? Am I being that obvious that I was bothered by her question? It usually isn’t a problem… I just didn’t expect that to come out of her mouth.

But thanks, Sylvia. I do feel better now.

Sylvia shot up from her seat once more but this time wearing a different kind of smile. “Alright, now comes the fun part. How are you feeling, Voker?”

“Better. My body is a little achy, but nothing I’m not used to,” I said while shaking my arms and legs out.

Even after being healed a few times my body still felt a little sluggish and oddly enough still a little in pain. Sylvia guaranteed that there was nothing wrong with me unless it was something that not even she could detect. The pain wasn’t really pain either, at least not pain I was familiar with… guess it doesn’t matter. It’s not slowing me down.

Sylvia was just watching me with her arms crossed, giving me an expectant look. I erected a set of chairs for the both of us and made mine a little bigger so she would have a place to sit behind me.

This has become standard in nearly all of our camps to the point I can discern what her individual glares are starting to mean. But much to my surprise, Sylvia sat down in her chair first and shut her eyes tightly in concentration.

Sylvia slipped one of her pale, slender arms out of her black leather shirt. She winced slightly but shook her head side to side and seemingly came to a decision. From her outstretched hand, something materialized from thin air. My eyes went wide as Sylvia was about to poke her arm with something that I hadn’t seen in years.

“Sylvia?! What— What is that?” I said, my voice cracking.

“Huh? Oh, this? It’s a needle,” she said matter of factly. “Are these not common anymore?”

“No… they aren’t. Can I see it? If you don’t mind?”

Sylvia shrugged and gently handed me the syringe. I rolled it around in my hands and was surprised at its craftsmanship. I observed the tip and sure enough, it was a hypodermic needle.

It’s not that a hypodermic needle couldn't exist in this day and age. It's just unlikely considering the existence of magic. Why inject somebody with a needle when you can just heal them with magic.

There is no need to inject poison either when you can just coat an arrowhead or blade or even put it in some food. The demand for something like this should be incredibly small. No, it was the fact that Sylvia had one. This technology existed over two thousand years ago.

Has this technology been lost to time?

Not to mention… the glass. The glass on the syringe is nearly perfect, even to my standards. Unfortunately, most of the glass I have seen so far has had a lot of impurities in it, and even the glass at the Sandervile’s mansion wouldn’t hold up to this single syringe.

So vampires… could their technology have been centuries ahead of the world? Is that why they were nearly annihilated? Where did all of this technology go? Was it destroyed or diluted?

“Are you done staring at that thing? I get that you have never seen one before, but it’s not all that special. Just injects things into you and pulls things out of you…” Sylvia huffed.

“Just never seen one before,” I lied while handing her syringe back.

Sylvia grumbled but gently took back the syringe while getting herself into position once more. After her initial psyching up she promptly began drawing blood from her arm. Unfortunately, she ended up filling a lot more than that one syringe worth of her blood.

Sylvia sat back in her stone chair and let out a sigh of contempt. Her complexion had changed a bit and she was even paler than she normally was. While sliding her arm back into her shirt, she stared at me with tired eyes.

Oh… guess it’s my turn now.

“So, how long do you think this is going to take?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It depends on how long it takes for your blood to recover,” Sylvia said with a sleepy yawn.

“So, a few days?”

“Mmmmm, maybe?” Sylvia said while quickly sinking her fangs into my neck.

It was a lot longer than a few days…

—

Sylvia got her fill of my blood and had stored a lot of it. Thankfully she wasn’t draining a person's worth of blood, but it was still a ridiculous amount. In this few weeks’ time, I think more blood has left my body than fifteen years worth of war.

I was practicing my gravity magic while Sylvia was watching me eat in silence what could possibly be my final meal. Lifting random food items and sometimes myself was an excellent way to get some quality practice in. I can’t say I’ve knocked down the mana cost all that much, but I’ve got better control over it now than I did at first.

But as far as final meals go, this was absolutely depressing.

Dried meat. Dried fruit. Water. This is what the contents of my stomach would hold if archeologists ever find my body. Or what flavor I would have for the Wyrm…

“Voker, I’ve been meaning to tell you, but you need to relax when you eat.”

Syliva was just watching me with a complicated look. Was she… sad? No, is that pity? Looking down on me because I have to eat food?

I swallowed the dried apple and took a sip of water. “What are you on about?” I said, slightly annoyed.

Maybe I am moody.

Sylvia averted her crimson eyes. “You don’t have to eat so fast. Nobody is going to steal your food… ”

Huh? Do I eat fast? I… might? Did I always eat this fast? No… no, I didn’t.

“Bad habits are hard to break. Eating fast was ingrained into me out of necessity. I had to eat my slop before the guy next to me, or I was going to have to fight for the rest of mine instead of his,” I said solemnly.

“Better to start now than never, right?” Sylvia suggested kindly.

“Yeah… I guess.”

I made a conscious effort to eat slower and found that it was difficult. I hadn’t realized how bad I was. Have I been like this for six years?

Six years. I’ve almost been away as long as I was with them. My heart hurts just thinking about it.

—

I dipped my consciousness into my spatial ring and pulled out an old item. It’s been a while since I used this, but I would need every edge I could get. I took out the red viral, popped the top, and gave it a whiff just in case it had gone bad.

Can’t tell. It still smells like dirt and probably tastes like it too. Well, just don’t think about it.

“Hey? What was that?” Sylvia asked from beside me.

“A mixture of Berserker Cap and Magic Lily pollen.”

“What is that stuff? What does it do?”

“To put it simply, it will make me faster and stronger. It removes my ability to feel pain completely. My magic abilities will be hindered a bit but that’s fine considering my mana enhancement will be better. I need to be able to move fast, not cast high-level spells anyways.”

“Oh, okay. What’s wrong with your face and neck?” she asked me while looking me over.

“My face?” I said, my voice sounding strained.

“Yeah, all your veins look like they are about to pop. Are you angry or something?”

“Not really. Side effect, maybe?” I said.

I didn’t get a chance to see myself last time I used this stuff. My skin does feel taut, and when I run my hand across my face under my eyes, I can feel the veins pulsing.

It is what it is.

“Are you ready?” I asked Sylvia.

Sylvia looked anxious. I didn’t blame her. We are about to go toe to toe with a monster that is only a few levels below a dragon. The odds are not in our favor. To make matters worse? Sylvia is going to be standing completely still and she is going to do something that might get her killed regardless if she succeeds or fails.

But it’s up to me to make sure she lives through this. If she is forced to cut the ritual short, the odds of her dying go up drastically. And I wasn’t going to let this bloodsucker die down here.

Sylvia held a shaky hand to her chest and took a deep breath.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”