The carriage ride was a mostly boring affair. A four day long voyage in uncomfortable seats aboard a small enclosed vehicle. It was a pretty standard medieval affair, with four large wooden wheels, drawn by animals, and most importantly, no damn shocks. Every bump in the road sent us jostling as the whole carriage moved with it. The only upside to this was that the seats were cushioned somewhat, so at least we weren’t sitting on wooden benches. Small miracles.

The animals were the most interesting thing about the carriage really. Stolks, as Ophelia had called them, were almost, but not quite, entirely unlike horses. The not-horses were four legged creatures with fur and long necks that were primarily work animals, which is where the similarities both started and ended.

For one, Stolks had different teeth, omnivorous teeth used for both tearing meat and chewing fiber. They were huge, easily 8 feet tall at the shoulder, and their eyes were placed at the front of their head, facing forwards. Their muzzle was smaller proportionally to their body, and seemed perfect for both grabbing leaves off trees or pushing through soft dirt to find things hidden under the surface. They had fur instead of hair, and it was thick and bushy, perfect for keeping them warm in the cold winters this part of the world experienced. Their tail was long and bony, whipping about their bodies in a prehensile manner that just looked wrong, especially considering that the tail had the least amount of fur of any part of their body and you could sometimes see the bones through the skin when it moved a certain way.

I did NOT like Stolks. But these people loved them, ensuring they were well cared for and happy, brushing their fur at the end of every day, and feeding them a mixture of raw meat and something like oats. I had asked about their diet, and while they could live off a vegetarian diet, Stolks turned out to be scavengers who followed predatory animals around, feeding off the remnants of their kills. They could eat almost anything, so undesirable meat or recently found animals were often extra additions to their meals to help keep them happy.

“Those things are freaky as hell.” I said as we began the last day of our travels.

“Again with this?” Ophelia asked, rolling her crimson eyes at me. She let out a little sigh and turned to look out the window. Which had glass. Was it weird that they had glass? It felt weird that they had glass. I knew glass had been around for a very long time, but these windows appeared almost modern, being somewhat large and perfectly clear without a flaw in the making. Almost like something out of a factory back in my old world.

“I mean, come on! That makes for two different farm animals that eat meat. Where do you get enough meat to feed them? And that tail!”

Ophelia just ignored me this time. We had had some variation of this conversation every day of the trip now, and at this point I was just rehashing it again because I was bored.

The morning turned to noon, and we stopped near a river that still had ice chunks flowing down it. As we traveled north towards the mountains where Nightfrost sat, the weather had grown colder, the wind stronger, and the vegetation sparser and sparser. The majority of what was around were windblown pine trees, missing half their needles from their northern facing side. Apparently, this section of earth was called the windswept wastes, but most of the locals just said ‘the wastes’ for shorthand. It covered most of the land between Maugdlin and Nightfrost, and was large enough to spread out for hundreds of miles to the east and west as well.

We were brought food to our carriage, the last one in the caravan convoy, and we ate in peace with the sound of the wind howling against the wooden construction as our only company.

“Niles. We are going to be in the city tonight, and I need to tell you a few things.” Ophelia said after our garbage had been collected.

“Oh boy, this can’t be good.”

She gave a small sound of amusement and shook her head. “Nothing terrible, but you agreed to come to my family home, and we will be there pretty soon, so I figure I should explain a bit more about everything to you, before we arrive.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Go ahead, please.” She was being serious, but not overly so. I figured I should at least give her my full attention before I went off on another mental tangent.

“My family is a branch of one of the five houses that rule over nightfrost. My family, Eilif, is one of seven branches of that house. I told you back at the trial grounds that every two years my house has a competition to be head of the house, right?”

I nodded. It was a little out there, but I suppose it made sense. Seemed a bit overly-complex to me, but I was with her. “Yeah, I remember, mostly.”

“My family couldn’t put up a contender for the competition this most recent year, which means that we lost most of our political power. Each family in the house is accorded status to their ranking in the competition. We lost most of what we had, and it was made worse by the lack of a matriarch. My family is small, just my father, my younger sister, and me. Many of our family members were lost to a vampire purge a decade ago, and my aunt died in the competition before last.”

I really, really wished I had a pen and paper to write this all down on. It was a hell of an info dump from the elf, who didn’t often say much about her family, but I think I understood.

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“So, once you came of age, you went to try and find a powerful focus core to try and save your family?” I asked, tilting my head to the side as I considered just… all of that.

She nodded. “Yes. We need to grow our family again, and we can’t afford to place last in the upcoming competition, or our family will be purged, and a new one formed. That happens any time a family places last twice in a row.”

“What kind of competition is it?” I asked, starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was definitely going to be fighting. It almost had to be, with the direction this conversation was going.

“A city brawl. We take to the city during the winter solstice, when the sun won’t shine on the city for three days, and fight. The last one standing takes the council seat and the spot as head of house in the coming new year.”

“Oh boy.” I scratched at the back of my head. I got it, mostly. But I still didn’t understand what that had to do with me. So I asked. “Okay, I get why you did what you did, and I imagine you’ll spend until the next winter solstice accumulating power, but what does that have to do with me?”

Ophelia bit her bottom lip, a nervous gesture I had started to notice more and more. I think she might have been copying me? Or perhaps it was something she had always done as well. I wasn’t sure. I knew I had done it once or twice, but I was trying to quit the habit as it was an obvious tell.

“Niles. Every member of the house has a personal attendant. We all find one when we get our core. I would like you to be mine. Personal attendants… are allowed to fight alongside their mistress during the competition.” She blushed a bit, and I remembered that for elves, her age of 25 was still a fresh adult, likely comparable to a human of 17 or 18. From what I had gleaned from our conversations before, this trip was her first real adventure outside her father’s protection.

Which made it hard to decide. My first impulse was just to say yes. Sure, I could help her out, work with her and such. We already made a decent team, even if I had no training or combat experience. But… “What does it mean? Being your personal attendant?” I asked, feeling like she had left something out.

She bit her lip a little harder, and I could actually see her slightly elongated canine digging into her bottom lip. “You know what my family is. We are elves with a vampiric bloodline. Our personal attendants are people outside the family that we take in who protect us and help take care of our other needs. Because they are privy to the family secret, they stay with us forever.”

“Ah. So I would be your permanent blood bank.” There it was. And, following the train of thought… “I suppose personal attendants are kept forever because they aren’t allowed to leave?” I asked, assuming that they probably killed servants who tried to leave their masters.

“Well, yes. But in practicality, few ever wish to leave. The bite is apparently quite intoxicating, and often personal servants are eventually brought into the fold through marriage.” She was as red as her hair, and I had to hold in a laugh, even in this tense conversation.

I wanted to break the tension, just a little though. The feeling in the carriage was far too heavy. “So, Ophelia, are you asking me to marry you?” I gave her a friendly wink and let out a laugh.

She went wide-eyed, and started to object before she caught my wink. I could almost hear the air leave her as she realized I was just teasing her. “No, no. Not quite. I think that you could help me place highly, perhaps even win. Barrier power sets are rare, especially mage or hybrid ones. If you are lucky enough to find any barrier powers, you see them on front line warriors who use them to bolster their defenses and block attacks for their team. But you can use them from a distance. I want you to help me save my family, and I’ll do anything in my power to make that happen. Even give up having a true personal attendant for just the facade of one.”

I could hear the truth in her words. It sounded like these personal attendants were her family's closest confidants, trusted allies, and more. The fact that most ended up married to their employer only exemplified how close that bond was, though if the bite was addictive, it might not be entirely by choice. I needed one last bit of information. I just wanted to know if her family, or rather, her house, actually enslaved their servants, or just offered them a very good deal.

“Your family's personal attendants, how are they normally chosen, and how… addictive is the bite?” I asked flat out. No point beating around the bush.

“Some of the families in the house do it differently, but Eilif has always found companions during our quest to get our focus core. We do as I am doing now, and tell the person we wish to take home as much as we can. If they agree, we bring them to the family estate. As for the bite? Dad said that being bitten was pleasant, but that it never changed how he saw Mom.”

Okay. That I could live with. But… was this the right course of action? Tying myself even tighter to the first person I had met here, and really the only one I had spent any time with?

If it had been a video game instead of my life, I would have said yes immediately. It was almost an instinct, to chase the obvious path and to grow the first relationship with someone I had found in the world. I wanted to cling to the familiar so badly.

But… What did that say about me as a person? Was I just going to continue to let this world drag me by the nose? Be a reactive character in a story and never make a difference of my own accord? Simply adjust my heading to whatever direction the wind sent me?

On the other hand, I could chase this path and be the force that sent Ophelia up to the head of her family. I could empower her, and through her myself. Or at least, spend some time understanding this world more.

“I don’t want to stay in this one city forever. I want to explore, learn more about this world. If I help you here, can you promise me that?”

“Whatever happens, once it's over, I won’t keep you here. I’ll tell the house that you are off on my orders, and you can do as you please.” She looked hopeful, and I made my decision.

I stuck out my hand, and she hers. We shook, sealing the promise. But I had a feeling of resignation to the situation. I wasn’t unhappy about it, but I wish another path had presented itself to me. Perhaps it would have, if I had stayed in that village, or simply found a few other people to talk to.

“I’ll do my best for you. Mistress.” I said, grinning as she turned as red as a tomato at the word. Okay, so maybe this would be a little bit of fun at least.