“They are still following us,” Mia whispered, her eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as she resisted the urge to glare towards an unassuming bush half a street down.
Three heartbeats, suppressed but clearly audibly breathing and amateurish shuffling were just three of the most obvious sounds coming from behind it.
Clearly, Zeigler’s men hadn’t been trained for stealth.
“Let them be,” Carmilla shrugged, the redhead having gone through the entire ordeal with the same phlegmatic attitude she wore now. “They can’t harm us and they won’t do anything else beyond shadowing us.”
Mia worried that the girl’s vampiric arrogance was getting the better of her, if such a thing was a possibility.
Alternatively, it could be that it was Mia who was overly paranoid.
Stifling a sigh, Mia shrugged as well. She heard no metal clattering, no cloth shifting on the holster of handguns. The three sounded to be unarmed, but then again, so was Mia.
Minus the dagger, but that’s my least lethal weapon. Mia thought, idly running her fingers over the firm plastic sheath of the combat dagger on her right thigh.
When, how or why it happened, she didn’t know, but feeling its belts constricting her right leg had become a calming feeling over the days.
It let her know that even if by some godforsaken misfortune she lost her magic and everything else the System gave her, she wouldn’t go back to being the same defenceless girl she’d been in The Before.
“Why are you so certain?” Mia decided to ask, not bothering to mask the anxiety she felt. It gave the vampiress pause, making the redhead finally take Mia’s words seriously. “What if they aren’t ‘just shadowing us’. What if they are scouts, looking for where we are weakest, for the best way to ambush us, how to storm the house when we are sleeping? What if we don’t wake up tomorrow because Zeigler felt we were more trouble than we were worth and blew the WHOLE FUCKING HOUSE UP TO ORBIT WITH US IN IT?!”
Mia was breathing heavily by the end, her voice continually rising in strength with each word she spoke, belaying her slowly blooming anger. Her fear.
Carmilla just stood there for a moment, mouth falling open in apparent shock as Mia glared at her, daring her to say something.
The vampire looked around in a slight panic, her ruby gaze jumping between the surrounding houses cloaked in the evening twilight. Mia’s ears twitched, her hearing picking up on hurried movements in those houses as people came to the windows to check why some deranged pink haired pixie was shouting like this out in the middle of the street.
Mia felt a tingle run down her arms, making her fingers quiver as she knew dozens of gazes would soon land on her. She refused to care at the moment, tilting her head up at Carmilla as if to say ‘what do you have to say for yourself’.
Mia had followed along with the girl, saying nothing throughout the previous hours and let the vampire take the lead. She came out of the woods when asked, only frightening the soldiers lying in ambush a little as she strolled out from the woods right next to them.
She let Carmilla handle Lars, Kelvin and even the following conversation with Zeigler. She felt the girl had things under control, that she was being prudent.
The moment that came into doubt just now, her fuse blew, setting off a raging wildfire of anger and fear mixing into one and fanning the flames of the other.
Would she be able to sleep in peace ever again without having to fear an assassin from the military slitting her throat or a firing squad shooting up her home while she wasn’t there?
‘Trust me’ wasn’t cutting it when so much was at risk. Mia wanted, needed something tangible she could convince herself with that Carmilla wasn’t just sky high on power.
“Don’t do this here, please.” Carmilla was still looking around, looking pleadingly at the furious Mia. “We-“
“Why?” Mia repeated petulantly. “It’s a simple question, Carmilla. I want to know why!”
Mia bit her lips so hard they bled, the coppery taste of her own blood stinging her tongue a moment later. Carmilla’s eyes dilated for a moment, her pupils expanding.
“Because I listened,” Carmilla said, twirling away to massage the bridge of her nose with her eyes closed. “I could hear them, talking, chatting and all that and while you slept at home I went out at night. I stalked them, listened in on every conversation I could and studied them. While Zeigler is in charge, we will not be ambushed, attacked, executed or kidnapped as leverage. For whatever inexplicable reason, the man both has surprisingly good morals and likes us. So. We. Are. Safe. For. Now.”
Carmilla turned back around, her ruby eyes hiding a flicker of hurt that made a torrent of guilt surge through Mia and snuff out the fires of her rage. With the fuel gone, even her fear abated.
Her doubt had hurt Carmilla. Her anger lit anew, but now aimed right at herself for being a cowardly idiot again and fed on the guilt she now felt, festering like a cancer in the forefront of her mind.
She looked down, eyes tearing up as she stared at her feet.
“Sorry,” Mia murmured lamely. “Sorry for doubting you, I just-“
She cut herself off. Making excuses would only make it worse. The fact was, she doubted the girl who worked night after night to keep her safe, apparently.
“Look,” Carmilla said, her voice tinged with hurry and that by-now familiar awkwardness when the girl couldn’t find the right words or actions to convey her meaning. “I- I mean I forgive you, but I- ugh, how do I even-, I’m sorry. I should have been more open with you and why I did … stuff.”
Mia looked up, meeting the similarly guilty expression of the vampiress, though those ruby eyes weren’t glistening with tears like hers were.
Neither was Carmilla sniffing, trying not to break down into an ugly bawl with snot running down her face like Mia was. It was a losing battle too.
“Look,” Carmilla continued, looking like she’d just been handed a bawling toddler and hadn’t the faintest idea how to handle it. Though by the look on her face, her plan was quickly swinging toward putting it down and running away. “I- we really should go back. This is-“
“Yeah,” Mia said, her voice cracking a little.
Damn it! All this post apocalyptic stress was making her more emotional than a hormone-addled teen. Mia felt pathetic, still she grabbed the vampire by the hand like a little kid and dragged her in a direction.
She grew up on these streets, she knew them like the back of her hand and she knew that just beyond a bend, down through a line of trees next to a little stream was an old playground.
Mia led Carmilla there, slowly gaining ground and fighting her urge to cry back down. The vampire remained silent, her soft hand in Mia’s grasp the only thing reminding the girl of her presence.
They reached the edge of it, a large pit as long as two football fields and as wide as one, with a rather modern playground inside it. Perhaps it had been a gulley once, with the nearby stream having run through here instead of a few hundred metres east.
Now though, under the cover of dusk’s fading light it looked a bit eerie. Mia didn’t care, she’d long grown used to the sight.
The edges of the pit were gentle slopes, covered in well-kept grass fit for children deciding to roll down to the bottom.
Mia sat, tugging Carmilla along to sit next to her in the grass and then flopped back. The slope was around 50% steep perhaps, maybe a bit more, just perfect for laying down and staring up at the stars.
Which is exactly what Mia proceeded to do, never letting go of Carmilla’s surprisingly delicate hand.
“What’s this place?” Carmilla asked, sounding uncertain. She was probably working up the courage to ask that question for the last ten minutes Mia spent staring at the beautiful night sky.
The total lack of light pollution really did wonders to the sight.
“A playground,” Mia said absently, her gaze searching for familiar constellations she once knew by heart. “We used to play here with my brother, then sneaking out once night fell, lying right where we are right now. Stare at the stars, tell spooky stories.”
“You have a brother?” Carmilla asked, sending a spike of icy pain right into Mia’s heart.
“Had,” Mia corrected, grimacing as she tried not to sound too hurt as she’d heard no malice in the vampire’s question, only curiosity. Instead of having to deal with the inevitable apology, Mia forged on instead and cut off Carmilla’s response. “He was really good at those horror stories. We had the cops called on us once for ‘disturbing the peace’.”
Mia said, a wistful smile playing on her lips as she fished the term for the name of that crime out of the depths of her memory.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“An unoiled swing started creaking, that damned one right there.” Mia pointed at an innocent swing hiding behind a line of waist-height bushes. “I freaked out, started shrieking like a banshee and some nosy old grandma somewhere was offended by that.”
The smile slipped on her face, remembering the panicked look Gabriel had on his face as he tried to calm her to no avail.
“What did the cops do?” Carmilla asked, maybe having watched one too many movies with evil cops.
“They searched for us.” Mia smirked. “We ran into the woods, hid in there for hours inside an old bush we knew of. It was a thick elderberry bush with a child-sized entrance and an empty fox burrow under it. We crawled inside and waited until the sun rose.”
The silence that followed lingered for a bit, but it didn’t sound as oppressive as before. It was almost comfortable.
Well, on average that is. Mia felt plenty comfortable, old memories playing out in her head as she held onto Carmilla’s hand. The vampiress probably wasn’t that relaxed just yet, but even her stiff posture relaxed marginally.
“I … think there is something wrong with the stars,” Mia murmured, a confused frown overcoming her features as she stared up at the sky. “Are those new stars? … why are a bunch of them pink?”
How she hadn’t noticed before, she couldn’t fathom, but the longer Mia started the brighter they seemingly became. They were overshadowing even the North Star, and were close enough to form a constellation.
“The Archon,” Carmilla said. “One of the seven Constellations. If it’s a group of pink stars you’re seeing, that’s probably it- or he is- or … something.”
“What?” Mia asked, bewildered as she tore her gaze away from the glimmering pink stars to turn and face Carmilla. “Details please.”
“It’s a System thing, or rather, magic,” Carmilla said, looking to be deep in focus to dig up some long buried memory. If that memory was one of her bloodline memories, it might really have been buried under centuries of junk, too. “Each of the seven essential elements has a Constellation. The Archon is Arcane’s. Then there is the Seraph for Light, the Phoenix for Fire, the Zephyr for Air, the Leviathan for Water, the Titan for Earth and finally the Umbra for Darkness.”
Mia looked back up at the strange clump of stars, squinting. A gasp escaped her as almost imperceptibly thin lines of pink light drew themselves across the night sky, connecting the disparate pink stars.
A moment later, an image of a humanoid figure with its arms spread to the sides and a great ring around it was glowing in the darkness of the night. It was just line art, a contour and it didn’t even have a face, but Mia almost felt its attention on her like a physical weight.
Then it was gone, the lines and the strange presence. Even the stars dimmed back down to only being marginally brighter than the North Star.
“Mia?” Carmilla’s worried voice brought her down to earth. Blinking, she found a pair of anxious ruby orbs peering down at her from ohmygodthat’sclose.
“Y-yeah,” Mia answered, suddenly very aware of Carmilla’s warm body pressing up against hers as the girl leaned over Mia with a palm on either side of Mia’s head. Kiss me. Do it. Please.
“You spaced out for a moment?” Carmilla asked, and Mia spent that moment staring at her pretty crimson lips.
“Yeah?” Mia answered absently. “Saw a … thing, in the thing. Lines, between the … things.”
“Oh!” Carmilla exclaimed, rolling away and onto her back again — much to Mia’s immense disappointment — with a soft sigh of relief. “You told me you had Superior Affinity too, I’m just-“
The girl shook her head instead of finishing.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Mia asked, not quite managing to keep a pout out of her voice.
“Constellations usually ‘witness’ people who have great natural affinity for their elements,” Carmilla said. “I don’t know what the exact repercussions of it are since Blood doesn’t have a Constellation so my ancestors didn’t care about it too much. What I do know though, is that it should have helped with your Attunement quite a bit.”
“Attunement?” Mia murmured. That was a System tab she hadn’t bothered with yet, thinking it’d take ages to even push her progress up by a single percent.
Perhaps she was wrong.
***
[Attunement]
[Element: Arcane (Superior)]
Progress: 21%
Perks:
* 20% Unlocked: [Arcane Influence] Ability
* 40% Locked: [Wisp Form] Trait
* 60% Locked: [Arcane Surge] Secondary Skill
* 80% Locked: [Arcane Mana Manipulation] Skill Grade Upgrade
* 90% Locked: HIDDEN!
* 95% Locked: HIDDEN!
* 100% Locked: Affinity Grade Upgrade
***
“Damn,” Mia said, eyes wide as she read through the window and then looked back up at her progress bar.
Just as a little extra atop everything else, because of her Class Trait the potency of all of her Arcane spells had gone up by 11% with that progress jumping from 10% all the way up to 21%.
“What’s an ability?” Mia wondered, never having caught that term before in any books.
“It’s something that the System can’t quantify, or just won’t,” Carmilla said. “Stuff like my bite are abilities, those are stuff that become inherent parts of us. A capability of your body, mind or spirit as natural to you as walking, breathing and eating is. … Can I ask what you got?”
“Arcane Influence,” Mia read, then focused on the name of it to get the description.
***
[Arcane Influence]: You gain influence over creatures and objects connected to your element. You may influence these creatures and objects, gaining a measure of control over them.
***
“That’s vague as hell,” Mia grumbled, then proceeded to read the thing out loud so maybe Carmilla could help her make some sense of it. “Any ideas?”
“Well, the only creatures connected to the Arcane I know of are Arcane Spirits and Elementals,” Carmilla mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully as her gaze roamed the starry sky. “Objects though? Aren’t practically all enchanted items using arcane mana connected to the element? Maybe you could disable enchantments and artefacts with a wave of your hand.”
“Huh,” Mia thought, imagining herself disabling hairdryers and then turning them back on with a snap. She could become a magician with a trick like that. “Cool. I guess. We’ll see how useful it is later on … but what about other elements? You said Blood doesn’t have a Constellation?”
Mi turned the conversation back around to what she felt was most important, the lingering gaze of that unfathomable being still at the forefront of her mind. This Arcane Influence ability felt like a curious gimmick at best for the moment, and her Attunement was far from unlocking the next ‘Perk’. So she decided to leave that for future-Mia to think about.
“Yes, only the seven essential elements have Constellations,” Carmilla confirmed, squinting up at the sky too, and raised a hand as if to grasp the stars flickering up there. “As far as I know, they are the strongest beings in existence, though most say they are merely the subconscious will of their elements and not really sentient, and most certainly not sapient beings. To many, they are The Gods. To others, those are the Primarchs.”
“Primarchs?” Mia held back a snort, the image of a specific mini-figure atop Mark’s shelf clad in blue armour and wielding a flaming sword springing into her mind.
“Primarchs,” Carmilla confirmed, sounding confused at Mia’s clear mirth, but continued. “Unlike Constellations, Primarchs are fuelled by the faith of billions and don't just exist as all-powerful beings in some higher dimension. Primarchs that have sizable Churches control some of the more powerful Elements. Like Fate, Brilliance or Destruction.”
“So those are the generic fantasy-book gods that would fade away if everyone forgot about them?” Mia asked, her gut tightening in worry at the implications.
She’d read history books. If, say, the God people believed during the dark ages came to life and was formed by what people believed he’d be like, the world would have quickly gone to shit.
And Christianity was one of the tamer religions when compared to some of the batshit insane deities people believed in throughout time. Imagine Zeus being real, turning into a platypus to seduce women and turning them to frogs when they didn’t want to fuck a platypus.
Mia shuddered, really, really hoping that these Primarchs were all far too busy in some inter-pantheon war to bother with little mortals like her.
“Wait, who the fuck worships a god of Destruction?” Mia asked, the specific elements Carmilla mentioned only now getting around to being digested by her mind.
“The Dragons,” Carmilla said with a slight smirk. “Nidhogg, the World Ender, is what they call that specific Primarch and it quite lives up to its name if my inherited memories are to be believed. My progenitor almost perished once while fleeing a Minor Plane Nidhogg decided had spent enough time existing.”
“Dragons,” Mia repeated, waiting for Carmilla to laugh and tell her it’s a joke. She didn’t. Meaning, dragons were real, and they apparently worshipped a dragon by the same name as the one in Norse mythology. The one that represented all the world’s repressed chaos and evil. “Great.”
“The rest of the elements have Paragons,” Carmilla continued her little lecture when Mia didn’t ask any more questions. “They are generally the weakest of the three, though Primarchs with little following can be even weaker. Anyways, Paragons are all ascended mortals who either made a new, unique element for themselves to rule over or deposed the already existing Paragon of their Primary Element.”
“You can make new elements?” Mia asked, latching onto the most interesting piece of information again.
“You can,” Carmilla shrugged. “Though it’s really complicated and even more challenging. Plus, the System and the Mystic Realm has existed for almost a thousand System Cycles by now so it’s pretty hard to come up with an element that doesn’t exist already.”
“Huh.” Mia thought, then shrugged. That made sense, and it wasn’t like she thought she could succeed where hundreds of generations failed. Still, it was curious … “Do you know any of the new elements someone made? What does it do? How did they make it?”
“I do,” Carmilla said. “Lifeflame, it is a simple fire infused with the pure concept of healing and life. The man who first found it, Sylvaneth the Everflaming, has been the Paragon of the element ever since and is supposedly one of the most powerful healers in the Mystic Realm. If my information is accurate, I’m about … three thousand years out of date.”
“It’s so strange to think that a vampire really lived back on earth,” Mia mused. “Do you know what the first ancestor of yours who got stranded here did? Did he become someone famous?”
Carmilla stayed silent for a few moments, as if Mia’s question surprised her for some reason. “Nothing particularly interesting … for that time. He arrived in Rome, back when it was still a small Kingdom. He lived as a king for a bit, then got staked and left to burn in the sun.”
“That’s … I hope you didn’t have to live through that memory.”
“The memories are detached enough for me not to care,” Carmilla said. “I’ve had worse cramps than the lingering pain in those memories. No need to worry about me. Instead, why don’t- uhm, you tell me about- uhhhhhhh.”
Seeing as Carmilla sort of broke down mid-sentence, Mia propped herself up on an elbow and turned to face the girl with an amused look.
“About?” Mia asked, taking pity on the squirming vampiress who couldn’t restart her line of thought.
“You?” Carmilla said lamely, waving an annoyed hand at the playground and up at the sky in way of conveying her question. Mia vaguely go the idea, but only nodded in understanding after she caught a slight embarrassed flush colouring Carmilla’s cheeks in the dim moonlight.
“Sure,” Mia said, smiling as she pulled up another tale from her childhood and got to storytelling.
She had hundreds of stories of her escapades with Gabe, the two of them having had to entertain themselves more often than not with Helene having been forced to work two jobs.
She had enough stories to last till dawn.