Oracion's POV
As the flame flickers, I can't help but watch the dark dancing around it. I fold my legs, sitting peacefully and watching it guide shadows, shifting and turning around the light. My heat beat seemingly syncs with it, with each flicker came a beat. Back and forth, back and forth they continue to create some sort of musical.
"What are you going to do next?" Aeron's frame appears from the shift in light, briefly illuminating a wall and making him visible.
I don't answer him.
"Do you think you truly tried your hardest there?" He laughs at me, stepping forward a bit.
I again, don't answer him.
"So that's it? You're just going to sit here, slowly losing your mind?" He asks, stepping forward again but I need him closer.
My mouth won't move until I know for sure.
"You could kill them, you know that right? You've gone your entire life stopping those who cause harm. Who could realistically stop you if you just gave yourself the chance." He stands over the flame.
I look up, feeling an uncontrollable smile write itself across my face as I confirm my thoughts. "My brother's eyes are green, but I feel like you knew that already." I look up at the shadowy figure wearing my brother's appearance, all except the eyes.
He doesn't look shocked or surprised, instead shaking his head as if to deny it. "You've...without a doubt, been talking to your brother until recently." He walks around the flame, crouching just beside my ear. "Or are you truly seeing things?" He asks.
"Aeron can't enter this place, that's all there is to it. He'd be killed." I answer honestly.
"Who pulled you out of the snow?" He asks in return.
I can't answer.
"Have you been truly losing your mind or is your brother not who he seems to be?" He questions as he steps in front of the flame, but crouching to directly face me this time. "Or am I the one who's lying?" He opens his eyes, showing the same emerald as Aeron's for the briefest second before returning to a dull brown.
I slightly push myself away, becoming more uncomfortable with each passing second. But even so, the figure steps forward, attempting to reach a hand out to me. "Do you remember the way he used to protect you as a child...?"
I begin to nod but he shakes his head in rejection. "No, I don't think you do. Why are you lying?" His hand strokes my face gently. "I didn't want to interfere like all that time before" His hand reaches around my throat, "But you just can't help but hold back, can you?" He tilts his head with a sigh of disappointment.
Before my mind can even process it, my body's lifted against the wall. Repulsive sounds of something gagging, choking to death even, gradually filling the room as the flame's light thrashes harder than before. My vision is lifted higher and higher as the realisation hits me. 'I'm dying, aren't I?' I think to myself, unable to even see the figure anymore.
I begin kicking repeatedly, aiming at absolutely anything my body can reach. 'I could just let him?' The thought crosses my mind but my body continues fighting.
'It would be so much easier, wouldn't you agree?' I ask myself.
My foot begins kicking the wall behind me, over and over. Powered by nothing more than a sad desperation. 'We can trust him." My mind wants agree but my body declines every offer other than saving itself. Kicking again, again, again...and again until the candle's flame is expelled from the sudden wind being released from the wall collapsing.
The orange flame light is instead replaced by a purple, runic symbols and lines etched into the floor that all lead towards something dead centre within the new space. I grasp my throat, still feeling the tension before but my breathing just as normal...like it never happened.
I walk around, unintentionally avoiding the lines out of pure instinct until eventually making my way towards a human with grey flesh, drained and dried out with intent behind it. His mouth gaped open like the Noisi as his limbs chained down with wooden spikes dug through him. Whoever this was...they've been here for a very long time.
I examine his body, leaning down and noticing something dusty within his hand. "-r-y" His mouth croaks without movement. I reach into his hand trying to pry his fingers from his tight grasp along whatever it is. I dust off the metallic object as best as I can, barely being able to make out the name. "Lilly".
Looking back at his face, I hold onto the amulet, noticing a speck of white within his eyeless sockets. Tracing and following my every movement as if he was still able to see to a certain extent. "-r-y" he croaks again, making me look away as it feels like the attention's being forced onto me.
My eyes catch something though, a spike that's fell from his body. I walk up towards it, remembering Eragon's words, 'Blood remembers.' I stare at the bloodied spike, then back at the dried man.
'As long as it's vampire related as it was with Mael...this should work even despite my humanity.' I think to myself before grabbing a piece of broken brick. Slicing down my hand and picking up the spike without hesitation.
-
Images upon images flood my head as it all tries to piece itself together until a singular room takes form, "IT'S OURS!" A woman screams, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT HE'S DONE TO IT!" She continues to beg with fear written across her face.
"It isn't." The man quickly denies, stepping forward as I gaze through his own eyes.
"Please..." She covers something within her arms, holding herself tightly within the corner. "This isn't you..." She begins to cry to herself.
"I've never been more of myself." The man answers dishonestly. I can feel it. The restraint with each step taken towards her, hesitation that only guilt could manifest as he bundles up his fingers into a fist. "I don't want a devil's child." He spits.
"Lee." She quietly whimpers, causing his body to quake at each breath. He's trying his best, his utmost best to resist whatever it is, but it isn't working.
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His once silent footsteps turn into audible bangs of steel as he approaches her.
𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨, 𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨, 𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨. He steps over her, preparing a swing that would without a doubt kill her...or whatever she was protecting.
-
"Oracion" A simple whisper brings me back. "Oracion." She calls again from the door to my room. "You're in there, right?" Clementine asks.
"I am." I hesitantly answer.
She audibly sighs of relief, "I'm going to open it okay?" She asks as if wanting permission. "Just don't...be scared, okay?" She asks again but it only adds to my confusion.
Even before I could ask something else, I hear the handle bend aggressively as it snaps off the door. Revealing a woman not much younger than myself with an unnatural hair colour being her first notable feature. "You sounded-"
"A lot younger?" She asks with that same small voice. "I've been raised with creatures who live with sensitive ears, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding." She approaches me, still smaller than me but most certainly not the infant I believed she was.
"I knew the moment he placed you here in this room...you were bound to disappear just as he did." She slides her hand along the broken wall. "So here you were...all this time." Her tone turned sad as she approaches the kneeling man.
"Is he...?" I go to ask, but instead my brain begins to ask other things. 'How truly old is she?"
"He attempted to kill me before I was even born, torturing my mother to the point where Eragon had to step in." She answers, continuing to look along his body. "But of course, Eragon got something out of it. A chance if you will."
"A chance for what?" Her words confuse me.
"Aluca, the perfect being of both human and vampire. He wants a way to recreate that, whether it be through the harmony of them...or the embodiment of it." She stands up, staring at me with determined eyes. "I was given his blood while still growing within the womb of my own mother, whereas Noah was the only human he's ever turned. Both opportunities he could take...failed and ultimately lead to his boredom of us."
Even despite her words, I can't help but feel like she's misunderstanding something. I pick up the same bloodied stake that I held, holding it up to her to try as well. "I'm sorry but the blood showed me the memories of what happened, I feel that you need to see it for yourself."
She shakes her head in denial, but what I didn't expect were her next words to send such direct chills down my spine. "I'm too human, I'm not able to see them as clear like the others can."
"Too...human?" I ask her even despite truly asking myself that.
"Clem?" Noah peers through the door. "Why are you here!?" He shouts abruptly, grabbing her hand and attempting to pull her away but she rips it away from him.
'Too human?' The words whisper through my head over their conversation.
"You've seen him Noah, he's becoming more and more unstable!" Clementine shouts at him.
"He isn't he's just uneased at the moment." Noah denies.
"And why do you think he is!?" She continues to shout.
"He's just worried for us." He explains.
"No, he's worried about Oracion. He said he has no interest in him but both of us know there's a level of fear he has of Oracion." She states firmly. "Come here." She drags my arm with an intense force as Noah's forced to follow us to a room not too far from this one.
She forces the door in like she did my own, revealing similar etched images of humans all prostrating to something in it's centre, something of human shape but bearing fangs and a lengthy pitch black hair. "Did you have anything like this back where you lived?" Aluca asks me, pointing at the stone tablet, similar to the one in the ruins as if she can't read it herself.
"An equality between the sun and moon, she who needed no gift nor provided any, a balance." I read out loud.
"That's what Eragon always described Aluca as, an equality that no other could reach. And yet that's the very thing he's trying to obtain." Clementine explains.
"He won't." Noah interrupts.
"Because Oracion can stop him." She answers.
"Even I could stop Oracion." He argues.
"But will you?" She asks, walking up to a wall, running her fingers along the writing. "He's old, he's slipping and even you know it. He almost killed you, Noah." She tries to reason with him but he lowers his head.
This small notion making me realise something though, "Noah...when did this happen?" I ask him.
"You were there, Oracion. When he killed Aidon, don't you remember?" He questions me with genuine worry.
I look at the doorway as Aeron's figure appears again, staring at me with glee in his face but Noah unintentionally steps in front of him, "You've been down here...a lot longer than you think, you know that right?" He tries to grab my hands but I don't let him.
"Fear the race that has choice, fear the race that comes next. He who's name would reside as the first of his kind, fear the one they call Adam." Clementine reads one scripture out loud with ease. "This is the line that made Mael stay behind." She states.
"But...all Eragon told me all he could see within his dying memories was someone else's name, almost as if Adam's was entirely erased with purpose." Noah adds.
They both look towards me as Clementine begins to speak. "I'm sorry, you really don't have a choice in this." She grabs my arm abruptly, beginning to drag me along my feet as I can barely keep up. "Eragon's killing his own people in order to create some sort of image in front of you, Eragon's breaking you more than I've seen anyone else and most importantly...you're the first person who's even touched him in a matter of centuries."
"Clementine relax!" Noah tries to free me from her but she glares daggers at him.
"You came here to figure out what's going on in your village, right? Well Eragon probably has something to do with it, we were there first right? He probably messed with the Veil or something as we left!" She tries to come up with some sort of reasoning or motivation for me.
"You're being used, again?" Aeron's figure pops up through the passing doors.
I pull away, stopping her from dragging me. "I refuse. You found your father, that's all I said I'd help with. Let me be."
"You said you wanted to kill him, I was in the room with you and Ira when you said that." She grabs my hand even harder than before.
"WITH WHAT!?" I take my hand from her, admitting the facts.
"Clementine...he's barely eaten, he's got nothing but skin trauma all over his body and he's been on death's door far more than just once since being here." Noah tries to sympathise.
"I...want...to be free." She grabs my hand, near enough breaking it with this final grasp. "Free of this old man, free of this castle...free of these vampires." She explains. "You're weak? You're human? You have nothing to fight with? I can fix that." She kicks down a set of golden doors leading to a room full of dust filled tools and treasures.
"I never got to experience that fragility of a human, that mortal life, I never asked for this. I've lived for too long and I can't fucking bear having this watchful gaze stain the back of my head anymore. Eragon's killed anyone I got too close with that wasn't Noah, he's locked me away for years the moment he even thought that he felt the blood fog shift from an open window."
She picks up a box, clicking something along the side of it and positioning it between her palms as spikes suddenly shoot out on either side, puncturing her flesh but not a single droplet falls to the floor. "The fucking irony in this is that I'm sure that deep down, even Eragon doesn't want to be here anymore." She rearranges the box's pieces.
"Because why else would this only be accessible by his own blood, something that only me and Noah could possibly open." She unlocks it, causing all the pieces to fall to the ground.
"Clementine..." Noah tries speaking to her.
But she ignores him, "Aluca's blood, something so potent it used to kill anyone who tried using it to turn." She holds it above my open hands, "This could kill you as it did the other humans Eragon tested it on or this could be our key. But at the very least, you wouldn't need to rely on your human strength for the period that it is flowing throughout you...just don't die."
A gentle knock begins to race my heart as we all look towards the golden doors, "Rats!?" The scar faced vampire enters through. "Wasn't aware we had two more of them." He proudly states, rubbing his head a bit in frustration.
"Tyron, why are you here?" Noah asks.
"You lot were banging up a storm down here, and honestly I thought something a little more...fun was happening here." He licks his lips, "Clementine and Noah...killed while attempting to defend the prisoner." Tyron talks to himself. "They fought with all they had, screaming their father's name in remembrance of how much of a disgrace they were as their last dying breath." He sighs. "That sound realistic enough?"
Clementine steps in front of me, handing me the vial of blood and forcing me to step back behind her and Noah. "Make the right choice, please." She briefly smiles, overfilling my body and mind with information as I still try to finalize something.
'Too human?'