Eventually Vynera landed her airborne chariot. Ryance was surprised when he saw they were in front of a large, black castle. It looked as though it might have been beautiful once, long ago, but now it was a run down structure silhouetted darkly against the gibbous moon. A dense and gnarled forest surrounded the castle. Ryance had expected to see Vynera’s little shack.
“Where are we?” asked Ryance; this place was unfamiliar to him.
“It’s your new home, of course. I hope you didn’t think I was foolish enough to take you back to mine,” Vynera said, shaking her head. “That would be far too dangerous to me, and I’m not quite ready to die yet, especially by your hands.” Her lips curled slightly in a sneer. “I’ll give you one piece of advice though: don’t try anything strange. I’ve prepared this castle with many scry holes. I can see what you’re doing anytime I choose. Not that I think you’ll have much time to plot against me. Now that you’ve tasted blood, your hunger pains will be closer together, stronger, and more painful. Soon you’ll need to feed every night. My plan will go forward. First, I must lessen your dangers,” said Vynera. Then she muttered some strange words and moved her hands in an intricate patterns; at the end of this, she took a black glass bubble and smashed it against the ground. Slowly the sky filled with clouds that crept up over the moon and making it even darker.
“What have you done?” asked Ryance, wary.
“I’ve turned the sky eternally dark. Now you can’t ‘accidentally’ walk into the sunlight and get yourself killed. I put far too much effort into creating you, and securing you, to lose you to a moment of self-sacrifice,” said Vynera, her expression deadly serious for once. Ryance had the distinct impression she was telling the truth; he knew she wouldn’t be so kind as to let him have a way out of the existence she had given him. Vynera could guess what he was thinking and said, “There is no escape; you are a vampire and you’ll act like one.” Then she laughed at Ryance’s misery. Ryance grabbed her and pulled her throat dangerously close to his mouth. He could feel the symbol of protection burning through his clothing, but he didn’t care at this point. If he was going to be living in this hell, he would drag her down with him.
“Want to join me?” he asked, his voice low and menacing, lips hovering just shy of the vein pulsing in her neck. Vynera laughed even more, but there was a slight note of fear in her voice.
“That won’t do you any good; it would only increase my own powers,” said Vynera. Ryance saw that she was right; if she came back the same as him, it wouldn’t change anything in the long run. Angrily he pushed the laughing woman away from him. Vynera fell to the ground. She picked herself up and dusted herself off. Then she pulled something out of her pocket and waved it tauntingly in front of Ryance’s face. It was the silver medallion Cesorpha had given him. “Oh, I forgot to return this to you; consider it a parting gift,” said Vynera carelessly, tossing the medallion at Ryance’s feet. Ryance wanted to pick it up, but he knew he couldn’t.
“I will stand the pain; I must fight for what I once was,” said Ryance, looking at the medallion and thinking of Cesorpha, grasping for that last desperate hope to hold onto.
“If you think that your simple mortal fiance, and all your uptight friends, still care, think again. Behold the scrying cloud,” said Vynera. Ryance watched as Vynera traced a circle in the air with a finger. A misty cloud appeared there. Slowly a picture faded in. Ryance could see Cesorpha, Klarn, and Larxer. They were in Cesorpha’s living room. Cesorpha looked like she had been crying recently, but her expression was still. The two men looked very solemn, but there was a barely perceptible smile on Larxer’s face.
“You’re lying Larxer! Ryance would never help Vynera,” said Cesorpha, turning away from Larxer. Facing her brother, she asked, “It’s not true, is it?”
“I don’t know Cesorpha. I really don’t. He went with her, and he didn’t appear to protest or even jump off. It didn’t look good, but we can’t truly know what happened. Vynera’s magic is very powerful; we don’t know how much more she’s damaged him. It might not be there’s anything left inside.” It was easier to believe that Ryance was gone than had betrayed them all.
“Personally, I think that he was in league with her from the beginning. I’m sure he knew Vynera was coming when the trial was on. That’s probably why he didn’t defend himself better. I don’t think he cares for you, or anyone else, anymore. I’m sorry he did this to you,” said Larxer. He sounded sincere, but Ryance knew it was just an act. It seemed to convince Cesorpha though, and she began to cry again. “Please don’t waste your tears on him. He doesn’t care.”
“If he can’t care, then I won’t care either. But I must mourn for the mortal Ryance who left me months ago; I still believe in that version of him,” said Cesorpha. Then she buried her head in the arm of her sofa and paid no more attention to her visitors.
“Let’s leave her alone,” said Klarn. Larxer nodded and the two of them left. Then the cloud went dark and drifted away from sight. As Ryance watched the scene, all his determination crumbled and fell away, like so much dust. By the time the cloud had disappeared, he was crying blood tinted tears.
“Must you take everything from me? You’ve taken my life, my dignity, and now I don’t even have a good place in my friends’ memories. You’ve stripped me of anything left of value. Why don’t you just kill me now?” said Ryance forlornly.
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“Begging are we? Where’s your pride?”
“I already told you; you’ve taken everything from me,” Ryance growled. “Leave me alone, or I’ll kill you, even if your wards leave me in pain forever!” said Ryance with such unguarded misery that Vynera felt a flicker of pity. She left him quietly with no more taunts; she feared that he might very well break through anything she could throw at him in that moment of desperation-fueled rage. Once he was alone, Ryance crept into his castle to hide himself from the world. The medallion Cesorpha had given him remained in the dirt outside the castle.
For years Ryance sat alone in his dark, gloomy castle. Physically he remained unchanging, but inside he slowly wasted away in despair. He only left the castle walls when his hunger drove him to seek out a living body to ease his pains. In his mind he had nothing left to fight for, so he didn’t even try. But he didn’t have any malicious intent towards the world yet, just a strong aversion to being in it. No one knew where he was, and in his solitude, he only had his own thoughts for company. And, over time, those thoughts became darker, and more disconnected from reality. It became harder and harder to remember his earlier life, his training, his faith in the system.
Meanwhile, most people of Solumina had been willing to leave Ryance alone, but Larxer tried every method he knew to try to convince the remaining Knights to hunt out Ryance and destroy him. Even with Ryance gone, Cesorpha remained distant. Larxer had been certain that his words had severed her ties to Ryance, but it seemed a temporary thing, in the moment of her grief. So he was determined to have Ryance dealt with permanently. At first he got very few supporters. No one knew where Ryance was, and they had other matters to attend to. Vynera’s other creatures were still trickling out, rampaging if they weren’t stopped quickly enough. Fortunately the people of Solumina were well equipped, both in weaponry and in skill, to deal with such creatures.
More troubling was the darkness that seemed to hang over the world. It seemed to embolden a lot of the creatures, while at the same time, demoralizing the humans. People were used to the sun and its patterns, but now the ever-present gloom was slowly making the sun seem like a distant dream. Plant life struggled in particular, and crops would often offer up smaller yields. Animals often grew to smaller sizes and a lot more hunting had to be done to supplement everyone’s food supplies. The wizards often tried different spells to dispel the darkness, but the most they could do was create a brief respite now and then. Whatever Vynera had done, it was a potent spell indeed.
As time passed Ryance learned Vynera was right; for each time he fed, the time kept getting shorter that he could bear between feedings. And each life he took wore away his resolve, eroded his sense of self, until he was just a fragment of who he was. In time he could only last three days at a time without tasting blood, but by then it didn’t matter anymore. Ryance had become bitter and cruel, no longer held by the bonds of duty, or the comfort of love. He fed every night, even when he didn’t need to, just so he could feel something other than the self-loathing. He not only hated himself, he hated Vynera, but in many ways he hated Larxer the most. He had been the one to turn Cesorpha against him.
Ryance sat in his castle, biding his time until he could find a way get back at Larxer, then Vynera. He vented his anger and bitterness on his poor victims, leaving them all as vampires, just so he wasn’t the only one suffering in such a way. He attacked whoever was available with almost no distinction. He rarely came across any children, however, and tended to flee from them if he did see any. That tiny fragment he had left held him back from that much. In the safety of her own home, Vynera watched as her plan progressed speedily. It had been a slow start, with several delays and obstacles, but now it finally seemed to be taking off. The world was soon crawling with vampires, and other nightly creatures that Vynera had created.
Solumina naturally spent a lot of energy training people to fight Vynera’s creations. Larxer had finally got the support he wanted; things had gotten bad enough that the vampires were a real problem, and everyone could trace it back to Ryance. Larxer, among others, traveled the countryside, killing vampires as he went, hoping to find Ryance and personally put an end to him. But none of the vampires he discovered could give him any clue as to where their maker was. But as the vampires became more numerous, it was dangerous to travel on his own, and soon the hunters started roaming in packs, often with at least one person who could use healing spells.
Eventually Larxer was joined by Klarn and Cesorpha, who had agreed to hunt vampires. Klarn was a skilled fighter, and Ceorpha knew her way around a lot of healing magic. She claimed she had joined their band to get back at Vynera, but this wasn’t the whole truth. The real reason she was going was so she had a chance to see Ryance again. Even though people told her that Ryance was all evil, she never fully believed them. Even if it was true, she needed to see Ryance, just so she could force herself to let him go. But it was a truth she wouldn’t even tell her brother. The evening of his disappearance, she had told him that she didn’t care anymore, but she found it was a hard task to cut someone out of her heart.
As the humans started to group together to kill vampires, their numbers started to diminish. But still there was no sign of Ryance; he didn’t care for his vampire spawn at all, and each of them rose from their shallow graves with only the hunger inside of them, and no mentor to guide them through the nights. Most of them were wild and undisciplined, making them easy targets for the humans, who hunted them down without mercy. However, the people of Ivelcour were hit much harder. The more tightly packed cities, and the lower number of citizens trained in combat, meant that they were a riper population to pick from.
Occasionally a vampire would rise with enough presence of mind to seek out others of their kind, and they would band together, pooling resources and comparing notes. These vampires were craftier, and thus a much greater threat. Not wanting to be killed, they selected victims with more discretion. Slowly, these small bands gained the edge, and became more ambitious with their hunger. Sometimes entire small villages fell under the vampires’ bites. Already familiar with each other, these larger groups were a serious threat. Especially since they had no fear of the sunlight. Even at high noon, the light outside was dim and dreary. Vampires still needed to sleep, and preferred to be active at night, but the day was not a threat to them, as only the most powerful of wizards could part the clouds, even temporarily.