Chapter 18

I had never heard of these Vampires. Though if they had been that big of a problem for humanity throughout time I figured there would be a lot of legends about it. Kalastrovax had mentioned that they went out of their way to cover up their existence so I shouldn’t be that surprised. Kalastrovax continued. “These vampires surround themselves with willing humans who wish to be turned. The turning will grant the humans the power of a vampire. Though there is a price. Forever after the vampire will need to feed on the blood of living humans to sustain their life blood. One other downside to being a vampire is that sunlight is a death sentence. The light of the sun is the bane of a vampire. You may be asking why would someone want that? The answer is so simple. It's all about power. The trade that is made is your human life for the powers that a vampire possesses. They can use magic natural to their kind as well as increased strength and stamina. Vampires are much stronger and faster than a normal human. Though these advantages can be overcome with training and magic of your own. They toss away their humanity and serve their vampire masters as thralls. They go out into the world and gather up humans to use as cattle. That is one thing that may bring you some comfort. Vampires don’t typically kill their victims right off. They like to keep them around for a long while until the human can’t produce blood any longer. So what you are looking for is a vampire den. They must be being helped by humans in the city to help the vampires sneak in and kidnap these people without leaving a trace. This also means that they can’t be too far from the city and they will be hiding in a cave or some underground place nearby to avoid the sun. Ask the townsfolk if they know of any places like that around the town. Another thing to keep in mind is that vampires are weak to fire and humans of the past have also used wooden spears that are quite effective at killing them if you can catch them while the sun is out. Even if they are underground or in a cave, daytime is the enemy of their kind.This is all of the information I have for you now. Sleep well for now there is much for you to accomplish. These vampires will be no easy foe so take care that you don’t lose your life. For both of our sake.”

With that I was left alone. I drifted off to sleep with thoughts of vampires going through my mind. I woke up the next morning and told Sora everything that I had learned. “That explains why we haven’t seen any signs of the people going missing. We also need to be more careful going forward. Any of the townspeople could be working for these vampires. We should go and talk to the few people we think we can trust and then head outside of the city to search for this vampire lair. We’ve made ourselves too well known as of late and we need to make ourselves scarce.” I replied. “I agree we need to get resupplied quickly and maybe ask a few questions around town then we need to leave. We don’t want to become the next victim.” We got all of our gear on and packed up the rest of our supplies. We headed into the dining room to have a quick breakfast before we would head out for an unknown amount of time in the wild. After we ate we headed to a nearby shop to get resupplied. The shopkeeper seemed a little too interested in where we were going and what we were up to. We didn’t say anything but it was very odd. We didn’t know if the strange man was working with the vampires but it was best to err on the side of caution. We went to the guard house so that we could talk to Frank. He had been the most trustworthy person out of everyone we had met in the town. Frank came out of the guard house to greet us. We asked him if we could talk to him for a bit and that we were heading out to look for the culprit. “Sure I can spare a few minutes. Not much going on in town since the mayor went missing.” We walked a little away from the guard house into a small garden close to the edge of the town wall. “So what is it you wanted to speak to me about?” I responded. “We think we have found out who or what has been taking the villagers. It is a type of monster that lives off of the blood of humans. We also think that there may be humans in town helping the monster get victims. Why you may ask would a human help a monster and I asked myself the same question. The answer is simple. In exchange for the help of the human the monster may grant them the power of a vampire. We believe that these vampires have been coming into the town whenever the time is right to take a villager without being seen and they accomplish this with human help. I wanted to let you know to be on the lookout for these people and to ask if you have any information that may be helpful. Another thing we know about these vampires is that they can’t be in the sunlight and they must live underground or in a cave.” Frank was stunned. I assumed he would take this information hard. His fellow townspeople may be helping a monster kidnap his fellow citizens. Including his own sister. “I don’t know anything about these vampires. I’ve never heard of them before but I do know of a few locations in the area around town that someone could use to hide. Bandits have used these places in the past to hide but were eventually found by the town guard. If you have a map I can mark the locations for you. Some of the locations are larger than others and may suit a large party better but I would inspect all of them just to be certain. If you find them and you think you need help to take them on, don't hesitate to come back to town and I can gather a few men to help.” “I thank you for that. I will hold you to that if things get a little too dicy.”

With that we walked away and headed for the gate. We had spent long enough in town and I didn’t want to waste anymore time walking around the town. I thought I could already feel the eyes of someone watching me from afar. That was confirmed when Sora said. “I can feel someone watching us. They are far away and I haven’t caught sight of them yet but I know they are out there.” That just made me even more eager to leave and we made our way out of the city. We traveled for a while until Sora could no longer feel the eyes watching us. I pulled out the map and we found our location on it. We looked at the map and found a spot that Frank had marked that should only be a few hours away. I figured that wherever they were hiding would be fairly close to town but we couldn’t rule out the possibility that they had a way to get to their hideout straight from town. We started towards the location closest to us and made our way through the forest. It was marked down as a small cave that had once been used for smuggling. It wasn’t very large so I didn’t hold out much hope that this was where the vampires were hiding. I figured they would be in one of the big cave systems. Though we preferred to be thorough. Even if we didn’t find them in these smaller caves there was a chance we could come across some other monster or bandits hiding out in these caves. It took us a few hours at a leisurely pace to make it to the cave. The whole time we walked we kept checking our trail to see if anyone was following us. We hadn’t felt any eyes on us since we left the city but that didn’t mean we were not being followed.

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Once we got close to the cave we walked even more slowly. If they were there we didn’t want to alert them to our presence. We crept forward slowly. The cave looked abandoned but we still chose to take our time moving in. We made it through the entrance and found ourselves in an open cavern. It looked like it would be a good place for a small group to hole up for a while. Though as far as we could see there was no one here and there hadn’t been in a long time. We did look around the whole area to make sure we hadn’t missed any secret spots in the wall but after an hour of searching we had found nothing. It was getting close to midday so we decided to sit down and have some lunch before we moved on to the next cave. We each had a sandwich and an apple before we got up and moved on. The next cave was a lot farther away and would take the rest of the day to get there. We walked silently through the forest until the sun was about to go down. We weren’t far from the next place we wanted to search but we needed to get a camp set up. We wanted to have a fire going tonight in case we were attacked by the vampires. We didn’t think they would attack us because they probably didn’t see us as much of a threat. The fire would at least give us a semblance of safety. We made supper and ate while we discussed what we would be doing over the next few days. With supper done there was no more reason for Sora to stay up so she climbed into the tent while I stood watch. We had to worry about whoever had been watching us and of course the vampire.

Fortunately my watch passed without incident. I woke up Sora and she took over the watch. I made my way into the tent and went to sleep. I felt like I had been asleep for only a few minutes when I heard shouting and the clashing of swords. I ran out of the tent with my sword in hand. Sora was locked in a struggle with a man I had seen in the town. Behind that man was the store clerk that had been so inquisitive and another woman I didn’t recognize. Sora looked like she had the one man handled so I went for the other too. “What are you people doing out here? Why are you attacking us?” They didn’t respond to me but that was enough of an answer. They weren’t particularly adept with their weapons. I sent a stab towards the man that he tried to dodge. I was quick enough that he couldn’t avoid me. Blood came pouring out of the wound. I had to quickly step back to dodge a blow from the woman. She seemed to be enraged by the death of the man I had just stabbed but I had no time to think about her feelings. She sent in a barrage of swings that I had a hard time dodging out of the way of. Madness had set into the woman's mind but since she wasn't thinking clearly I was able to deal with her quickly. After letting her wear herself out I was able to finish her off. Sora had long since dealt with the first man and had stood to the side while she waited for me to finish my fight. She looked at me and said. “I assume these people were sent by the vampires to get rid of us or perhaps even to take us to them. Too bad for them that we had thought this might be a problem. We knew from much earlier in the day that we were being followed and they should have tried harder to conceal themselves. We should search them to see if they have anything on them that could lead us back to the vampires.” With that being said we started the grim task of searching the corpses. It turns out the store clerk hadn’t died just yet so I made my way over to interrogate him. “Why have you come after us? Was it the vampires that sent you?” The man looked at me steely eyed and said.

“I will tell you nothing more than that more of us will come to deal with you. My masters will send many more of us to come for you and you will not stand a chance against them. You have no idea what you are up against.” With that the man succumbed to his injuries. “Well that wasn’t a lot to go off of but at least we know we should expect more of this. Though they will probably send more the next time. We need to be prepared for more fights as we search the area around town.” Sora nodded her agreement. We got back to searching the bodies but we only came up with a single piece of paper that said. “Kill the adventurers. Failure will not be tolerated. The one that manages to kill them will be rewarded with the Gift. Do not disappoint me. Anyone that returns empty handed will be dealt with accordingly.” It was signed Isabella Nightshade. This just confirmed what we already thought. These people were convinced that they would receive what was called the Gift in exchange for helping the vampires. I understood the pursuit of power but to sacrifice your fellow townspeople to these monsters was the worst sort of betrayal. We decided to just pack up and head for the next location. We were in for a long few days if this was anything to go off of. This was going to be a much more difficult task than we had anticipated. There was nothing more to be done for now. We had to find those missing people and put an end to the vampire scourge. With the plans made and a location picked we headed off. We didn’t know what we would find or if we would be attacked. We were just glad to be out adventuring and if we were lucky maybe we could even make a difference.