“Where is the girl?”

“Please…I…. I don’t know.”

I heard the swish of the whip as it came down on me once again. I had lost count of how many times that whip of pure silver has striped the flesh off my back. It burned with an intensity a million times worse than the first time silver was used on me.

But I didn’t break, or rather I couldn’t break. I had nothing to give them because I had no idea where Cassie was, I made sure of it. Weaves are really wonderful things, and they can have really strange effects, especially when you weave a rune of forgetfulness.

I would have ready told them where Cassie was hours ago. Unlike what the stories say, there’s only so much torture a person could take before he losses his mind completely. Do I regret using the weave to make my self forget, very much so yes. But I would still try my best to protect Cassie regardless of how painful the pain gets from that point on.

There was a connection between me and the dark elf baby that I just could not explain. But my willpower was not as she ring as I envisioned it to be. The pain has taken the best of me, all of me. And nothing was left behind.

I heard the whip again, and I felt the sting and then burn, I could feel my body contort and flex as I tried to bear with pain. I could hear myself screaming but I could not feel my vocal chords moving.

“please tell me where the girl is, I don’t want to hurt you. You have to understand this pain you’re going through, it’s killing me inside.”

There was a reason why Adein the warden was known as the lover, he was a tortured, and he was damn good at it. But the whole punchline, or I should say the way his demented mind works has Adein always playing the role of a friend and most usually a lover who has no choice but to hurt his victims.

He would torture them to the edge of sanity, and then he would give them a lifeline, someone who felt their pain, who they could trust. He would play that role, and when he has been satisfied and full of whatever sick pleasure this kind of game brought him, he killed them. Apparently he loved the look in their eyes when they die knowing someone they trusted just sent them to the afterlife.

Sometimes he would have his victims so twisted that they would beg him to kill them and smile in joy as he slit their throat. I found the whole thing funny. Even with all the torture he has put me through in the past hour, every time he tried to play the role of a lover I end up laughing. Adein was not really about either as he has continuously tried to get to me using this fetish of his.

“You know, maybe your crappy acting skills will get you a role in a low budget b rated movie. But as far as all this is concern, I prefer the torture than watching you make a fool out of yourself. Adein the lover; hehe what a joke.”

My nonchalant and sudden shift in attitude only startled him for a minute. Just moments ago I was begging for retrieve, for freedom. Now I was making fun of him. So it did not surprise me as much when his head swelled in anger and he looked so red he could have been related to a tomato.

“do…you…think…this…a…joke? I am trying to help you!!!!”

Each word he spoke was punctuated by the perfect swish of his silver whip through the air and straight to my exposed back. The pain came back, and once again I lost control over my body as intense waves of pain and agony crashed over me. I vaguely felt tears role down my eyes, my almost tattered prison trousers wet with piss and sweat.

I was sure I presented a really pathetic image of my self. There was nothing of the dignified hero millions of dark elves and vampires worshiped. There was nothing of the ruthless man who would rip out the throat of a guard just to prove a point. Under the continuous assault of that whip I was nothing, and it was that way until I felt nothing.

**********************************************

When I came too, it was to the voices and clamors of a lot of people. I could hear hangings and screams. I smelt smoke, felt it bring tears to my eyes as the scent of burnt flesh and blood wanted in the air.

I felt weak, helpless, useless. I was awake but I couldn’t even muster the strength to open my eyelids. I felt like a sack of stones thrown into the deepest part of an ocean. My bones ached, my blood felt like fire and my back…..I couldn’t feel my back.

As I lay there I could hear the screams increase in Intensity, I could hear the sharp falls of hurried foot steps. I could hear bodies hitting the ground with a thud and that sweet sweet scent of human blood wrapped around the air like a blanket.

I could feel that tell tale buzz and vibrations in the air. Magic was being used, and a lot of it. I had no idea what was going on, but I could hazard a guess. This was a riot, it doesn’t take a genius to know who was responsible for this sudden uprising of prisoners. Usually I would have loved to gloat about how important I felt from their devotions. At the moment however I did not care.

But I wanted them to succeed, to get me away from this hell back to my tower. Back to Cassie. “shit” the forgetfulness rune was wearing out, should Adein come back here to resume his special brand of showing love, then there was no way I would able to keep her location safe. It would mean the end for everyone.

I tried to move, but nothing was responding to me. No matter what sort of effort I tried to exert my body just wouldn’t move. I was frustrated to the point of tears, I felt it seep out of the sides of my closed eyes. I was out of ideas, I couldn’t move but I so desperately wanted to get out of here, I need to keep Cassie safe. Of course I had sudden thoughts about how my sudden obsession with this baby came about. Even without the memories of my past, I was not someone who would be so easily enamored with anything much less a baby.

It was almost as if I was under a spell or something. But I didn’t care, or more like I chose to delegate that worry for later. If I don’t get out of here, then there was an 80% chance that I wouldn’t live past tomorrow. I heard the door to my cell open as rough hands picked me up from the ground.

White hot pain lanced through my body as I blacked out again from the agony. The person then proceeded to drag my body through the floor and past numerous others empty cells. At that moment the moment the way he held me could almost be comparable to the torture Adein himself had dished out to me for who knows how long.

In no time at all, our path forward was blocked. I could hear the scraps of pick axes as they let off sparks from their contact with the rock wall. I could hear their labored breathing and almost silent heart. I could smell the blood on their bodies and the blood lust in their eyes was so palpable that I could help but shudder.

The person carrying me gulped in fear, then he unceremoniously flung me towards them and made a run for it the other way. I wanted to curse that bastards with everything that I had, but I couldn’t even open my mouth at the moment so there was not much I could say. As I flew threw the air dreading the pain that the inevitable impact at the end of my flight, I felt a whoosh as an object flew past me.

In mere moments too, I heard a rather satisfying thud as that object sank into flesh. I guess the guy who wanted to run away had no idea vampires could throw that well. They caught me, it still hurt Luke a motherfucker, but at least it was not as bad as I expected. This time they carried me gently, the reverence in which they treated my bruised and battered body was weird almost to the point of being called fanatical. I wonder if I may have become the leader of a cult.

Within that darkness, with my sight blocked and complete loss of feeling from all over my body. The only thing that I had at that moment was my sense of smell and my rather wonderful ears. It was more than enough for me to know that the entire prisons were a part of this revolt. I had smelled blood and how intoxicating it felt. But never in a volume as thick as this or an aroma as rich. I could feel my fangs slid out of my mouth as they painfully throbbed and poked my lower lip in hunger. The vampires holding me tensed, and I could feel their breathing increase. The almost silent hearts of theirs began to beat faster as the hunger made its call for a delicacy many vampires found so very hard to resist.

I could hear the clamoring, screaming and shrieks if so many people. Around us, I could hear werewolves, howling, whining, just before their huge bodies impacted the ground that was rapidly being filled with the life giving liquid depended upon by every living thing in this prison.

It was a frenzy, and even more of a massacre than when I first took action against the werewolves. There was an energy of sorts in the air, I smelt death. But I also smelt sex, lust, desire. I heard the moans of multiple climaxes as members of both races succumbed to carnal desires in the midst of a battlefield.

This was one of the reasons vampires and dark elves were feared. Killing and pleasure went hand in hand for them. They were carnal and loved the pleasure of the flesh even much more than they loved blood or whatever it is that dark elves loved. It made them stronger, sex for them was an exchange of power and control between two people for member of both race. And apart from the other elf races, the beast people, werewolves, shifters and vampires. No other race has the ability to transfer strength to sex.

In he end such practices made both races look immoral and unclean in the eye of the council of light and their goody two shoes parade. But in the end, this was what the dark elves and vampires truly were. Not a race of people determined to bring about and age of darkness and suffering, or a people so immoral the light of the sun forsakes them and puts them in agony.

But a race of people who deep down I guided and moved by their desires. It might not be a good thing though, but I respected. They knew how to be true to themselves, and with that they could live a simple life or an extravagant life and be content with what they had without going after anything else. They were as a collective both races that had no greed and no malicious tendencies, but make no mistake, they were both a race that desired power. And would go great lengths to acquire it.

I felt my helpers lead me away from what was most probably an orgy and a buffet/massacre. To bad my current state would not allow me to participate. Then I felt the ground begin to shake around me, the very mountain vibrated with an intensity that shook me to my bones. It was feeling I had spent the last few months coming to recognize. It was the rebound attack everyone felt when they mined the mountain, it was not as intense but it was still it all the same. Rocks began to fall from the ceiling as screams began to rend the air, it seemed like an earthquake but a haunting thought crossed my mind. They could be collapsing the mine.

My thoughts had no time to be verified as a rock the size of a microwave smacked the back of my head and everything went black again. As I lost consciousness again!! I couldn’t help but ask myself.

“what the hell was a microwave?”

***********************************************

I woke up to a rock ceiling designed with lions, strange lions that had horns growing out of their manes and had strange armored plates covering the entirety of the backs, there was also a helmet, their mane flowed past it and the horns poked up from the top if it. It was a nice carving, but I had no idea what those lions were. I was laying down a bed,(well duh) though not as excessively huge as the one in Xaseah’s tower but it was still big. I raised my self up and took a look around, the room was quite sparse, there was a cage, a wardrobe and a crib.

Wait!, I rushed over so fast that my vision swam in my sights. I felt pain wrack through my lean frame as my dark skin glistened with sweat under the low illumination. I could move just fine, but I was still very much hurt. With hobbling steps I made my way to the crib, and she was there. She was awake and her blue eyes stared at me with such intensity that I thought she wanted to bore a hole through my head.

She looked bigger than when I last saw her, she looked more like a six month old child than a few hours old baby. She struggled to role over as she got on her knees and crawled to the edge of the crib. Her completely black skin seem to have little specks of silver that made her seem like she was wearing the night sky. Her silver hair had grown really long it was twice the length of her small body.

There have been dark elves with black skin before. But the only ones capable of having starlight are those from the original line of the first queen. Cassie had the blood of Dark elf royalty, not to mention she was also half vampire. Her blue eyes were a sign that she was an elder vampire. Two steps above the evolutionary ladder than me, and one step below the last and most powerful species of vampires; the imperial vampires.

This just means that my life just got a million times more complicated.

“If you’re done admiring your adopted daughter, can you get me the fuck out of this cage.”

The voice startled me, it was deep and rumbling, carrying with it an aura of power so thick it made my legs quiver. What truly freaked me out was the fact that those words were spoken directly into my mind. Almost as if I was talking to myself.

The cage was covered by a thick cloth, a very huge thick cloth considering the cave was four meters tall and four meters wide in each of its four corners. I grasped my fingers around the thick blanket and pulled slowly, I could feel Cassie's innocent gaze on my back as I exerted a little more effort than expected and pulled the whole cloth down from the cage.

My first reaction was to scream and make a run for it. But somewhere deep inside of me I felt something click, and a name came to me. Soren. He was big, but the way his ribs was exposed showed that he was malnourished and weak. His eyes were heterochromia, one side was red and the other was yellow. The feline pupils however were the same in both eyes. But what really made this crazy was the fact that he was the very personification of the lions I just saw on the ceiling. He had no armor on, but he was a huge as a horse, though he was thinner.

“surprise, surprise Kael, we meet again. Though I would have preferred if it was in better circumstances but this will do fine. Now get me out of this cage I’m terribly hungry.”

I was confused, a giant horned lion knew me. Of course the fact that I knew his name showed that somehow, I remembered something!! I tried to search my head to see if another memory will come up, but there was nothing but the name Soren.

“Don’t bother yourself searching, you have no memories of me, or our past together. The only reason you remembered my name is because our souls are bound. As brothers, as friends, as warriors, and as master and servant. Of course I am the master.”

“somehow I doubt that.” I retorted to him. How could I be his servant.

“you don’t remember anything, but I do. So if I say you were the servant, then you were the servant. End of discussion now get me out of here servant.”

“no”

“err.. What?”

“we will have to negotiate a new deal. If you agree I am the master I will let you out, if you still choose to be…..”

“oh great and wonderful master. I missed you so much, the days without you was torture, and that dude Adein he hurt me a lot. He said he would make sure I die alone and I will never see you again. Masterrrrr”

That was a very rapid change in attitude, but I felt connected to the cowardly lion in the same way I felt connected to Cassie. But at the mention of Adein, I could not help the shudder that went through me and the intense wave of fear. It was followed by an anger so fierce that I almost drowned it.

“easy Kael, we will make him pay for what he has done. I swear it to you.”

Soren could read my mind. I was not sure how I felt about that, but it was nice having someone who you could share your burdens with. By Adein wherever he is would probably be sleeping soundly after what he did to me. I will make him pay, even if it’s the last thing I do.

The lock sealing Soren’s cage shut was made of mythril and had runes on it. It was nothing complex with to begin with, and with more ease than I remember, I weaver the rune for unlock and it fell open with a clang.

As he stepped out of the cage on all fours, and stretched I was really awestruck at how majestic he looked. That is when you look past the fact that he was malnourished and skinny. Then he arched his back and let out a roar that was so earth shaking it left my bones vibrating and my hair standing on end in fright. I could hear Cassie squealing in delight behind me. Apparently she found it funny. I turned around to glare at the horned lion and he gave me his own version of an embarrassed look as he spoke apologetically.

“Sorry Kael couldn’t resist.”

But I did not pay any mind to his murmured apology. I could hear the whispers, the sound of people breathing. Thousands of them if not hundreds of thousands. I looked to the east of the room and saw the doorway to a balcony, it was then I noticed the size of the room. It was colossal. In fact it was the exact size if a tower, if not a little smaller.

I picked up Cassie and she squealed in delight, I felt her stretch and grab a stray lock of hair from head. I was surprised by the sudden growth of hair, but I couldn’t worry about that at the moment. With Soren right behind me and Cassie playing in my arms I made my way to the balcony. The sight before me was so grand that I took a sharp intake of breath in surprise.

As far as the eyes could see, in between the numerous pillars and towers that doted the landscape and deep into the deep blue gloom of my district. Vampires, dark elves and surprisingly enough gnomes.

They all looked at me, battered, bruised and in pain. Then they bowed, all of them. Men, women, children even their puppies. It was intimidating, and it was majestic. Looking at this people I felt a need to say something but I had no idea what. I turned to Soren and all he did was nudge me forward to the edge of the balcony.

I looked at this people, my people. At first I may have loved the hero worship, the praise and the attention my status brought me. But I never truly understood their pain until I had to go through it myself. So far everything has been rather convenient for me, but the past few hours though I think it has been longer than that. Has showed me the depths of despair they have been exposed to. I wanted somebody to pay, I wanted a lot of people to pay. But above all I wanted these people to be happy, I wanted to be happy. I did not give a damn about who I was in the past, but I wanted who I was now to make a difference. I did not want to be loved as the human who fought for vampires and dark elves, no; I wanted to be loved as the vampire who fought for his people. Who lived for them, and who died for them. Thus was a responsibility I wanted to embrace whole heartedly. But first a little confession.

“when I first woke up I didn’t know who I was. I had no name, no face to remember and no past to remember either. But from that moment I have had all of you. You accepted me, protected me and honored me for things I didn’t remember and for being a person who was very much a stranger to me. And for that I thank you.

But no more, I have seen hell in this place. Suffering the likes of which should not be exposed to people of any kind. Pain became you all, it was your bed, it was your food, it was your future. But within it, I saw innocence, your innocence as exposed by the eyes of your children. As exposed by your eyes when ever you spoke of hope. I am not Kael Cor the human activist and campaigner for both vampire and dark elf rights and equality.

I am a different person. I am Kael Cor the vampire. I have no glory to my name and no title. But if you will have me I will gladly be your lion of Shearath. And together we will go after our captors, we will force them to acknowledge us for the people that we are. We will force them to acknowledge our rights!!, we will force them to acknowledge our uniqueness!!!, we will force them to acknowledge our family!!!!, WE WILL FORCE THEM TO ACKNOWLEDGE OUR PRIDE!!!!!.

From this day forward, until Shearath goes to sleep. Until there is no more way and the path is lost. Until the sun never rises and the moon falls from the sky. Who’s with ME!!!!!”

And the answer they gave me was.

“ROOOAAAARRRR!!!!!!!!”