Tristan
The houses here were small and crammed together, as though they were about to crumble on top of each other at any moment.
He never really realized it, regardless of all the hours he spent staring out at the campfire or recruitment stand, but Tristan never really looked at anything else. Now, he was looking at nothing but the houses they passed, similar to his own in design with their wooden walls and brick roofs- but they were smaller.
Tristan felt like an idiot for only now realizing it. His own cottage, even with their lack of wealth despite their mother working each and every day, was surprisingly a tad larger than these ones, although that was more attributed to how they seemed to almost topple over one another. He supposed that everyone in Danethal was of humble means, or else they wouldn’t be in Danethal.
Extra hands to work only meant extra mouths to feed. Yet his mother made sure his was, and no matter how many times he begged her to let him work even nearby in the village, she refused.
That was why, as he let himself hang limp in Mari’s hand, Tristan could do nothing but stare at the houses.
She would’ve been furious, but he would be making a steady salary and given a small place in Azeris depending on how high he climbed the ranks. And he would climb. To see the world and free both himself and his family, he would climb.
The houses suddenly began to glow with red, and Tristan turned his head to spot the campfire ahead of them. He’d barely given it a glance on his way here, but it looked massive before him now, tendrils of smoke rising before vanishing amidst the air. A thick and sharp looking metal railing was constructed around the perimeter, lest any curious children injured themselves.
“Nearly every village has one,” Mari said, having paused in her step to admire the fire with him. “Legends say they keep night monsters away, and fire is the only weapon humans have against them. If the flames goes out, it’s a bad omen- a plague will wreak havoc on the village as they did in ancient times.”
“Is that what you read in your book?”
“Yes,” she murmured, looking down at her wrist. “But I don’t need a book to know how dangerous a plague can be.”
Tristan looked at her, feeling his own blood thrumming beneath his skin. “Let’s run away.”
“What?”
He pulled away from her grasp, standing to face his sister fully. “We can go to Azeris ourselves and join the army together! We’ll say our parents are dead, they have to take us.”
If possible, Mari’s face turned even whiter beneath shadows casted by the fire. “You can’t be serious.”
“This is the most serious I’ve ever been in my entire life.”
She gave him a dubious look.
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“I know being a soldier sounds scary, but think of all the things we’ll get to see! The villages beyond Roshire, the forts of Azeris, the beaches of Rhovandy- the castles and manors!”
Something in Mari’s eyes shifted at his last thought, as though she began to consider it. He didn’t know his sister had in interest in Rhovandyn Architecture.
“I could be a scholar,” she whispered.
That made more sense.
“Yes, forget about the army! You can use that big head- er, I mean brain of yours, to study all the places we’ll go to!”
Mari sighed. “It’s nice to dream about, but that’s all it is: a dream. Think of how mom would feel. Even when you turn nineteen, how are you going to run around Lysar without shedding any blood?”
“I will be shedding blood, it just won’t be my own.”
“You and what muscles?” She snorted. “No one ever became a good soldier without losing a few fights- without losing some blood.”
“She’s right, you know.”
They whipped their heads towards the voice to find the same soldier from earlier standing behind them.
How the hell did they not hear him approach?
“About losing blood,” he clarified to their stunned silence. “Even my most lethal superiors once started out as a bunch of runts like you.”
Tristan’s heart leaped in his chest, although he didn’t know who this solder thought he was, talking to him like he wasn’t only a few years older. “Do you think I could do it then, even become a general?”
“Of course. But right now you should get home- you two really aren’t from around here, are you? I would’ve recognized your faces.”
He pointed to his house in the distance. “We live on that hill over there.”
“Ah, I must be remembering wrong, then,” the soldier said, nervously looking around the square as he fidgeted with his ring. "Why don’t I walk you two home? If you’re found outside by a soldier who isn’t as kind as me, you’ll be in all sorts of trouble. Hell, even I might get into trouble. Besides, who knows what monsters roam the village at this time.”
Tristan stopped himself from rolling his eyes at a soldier, of all people, being scared of silly monsters.
“We’ll be ok, it’s just a quick walk. Thank you, sir,” Mari said.
“As a soldier for the royal family of Lysar, I insist that I accompany the two of you,” the soldier demanded, moving forwards so that Tristan was forced to step back. “I won’t have it any other way, and if something were to happen to you, I’d never forgive myself.”
“Really, sir, it’s fine-“
She was interrupted by Tristan’s howling gasp, who'd felt a great surge of pain shoot out of his hand.
He looked down to see that he had scraped and cut almost his entire palm against the metal railing he was about to back into.
And there, between smidges of dirt and the glow of the fire, rushing out of his open wound, was a bright stream of blood.
Blood of gold.
For a few moments, nobody moved or spoke.
Tristan wasn’t sure if it was the pain or the sight of his own blood that made the moments feel like eons, but he suddenly felt as though something was very wrong.
He regarded that as a pretty fitting feeling, considering.
He looked up at his sister and the soldier, both their faces just as shocked and colorless as he felt his to be. Both were staring at his palm. At least he wasn’t going insane.
Technically he’d never seen blood before, but he knew enough about basic anatomy to know that it wasn’t supposed to be yellow.
He said the first thing in his head. “Am I dying?”
Mari looked to the soldier, apparently never having read about gold colored blood in one of her books. A shame.
“I, uh, I don’t know,” the soldier uttered in a daze, realizing what he’d said a second later to look up at Tristan. “No, surely not.”
“We have to get him to a doctor!” Mari yelled, kneeling beside him. “Just breathe, Tristan. Everything will be alright.”
“No,” the soldier barked, holding up his hand. His ring glinted beneath the moonlight. “He’s not going anywhere.”
A sudden wave of stillness rolled over Tristan. He couldn’t put a name to the feeling, he’d never felt it before. But it was an agonizing panic, as though everything in his body was screaming to run- a deep, primal instinct woven through centuries of evolution.
With one motion, the soldier pulled off his ring and his eyes began to shine with such a vibrant blue that Tristan felt as though he were going blind, the skin of his ears morphing into pointy tips.
And as the soldier bared his razor-sharp fangs to him, Tristan found himself not looking at a soldier at all- but a vampire.