Read no further if you desire a romantic tale. What lies ahead is tragedy, a retelling of what was lost more than gained. This tome weaves a story about dragons, those ancient wyrms of which only legends remain—long after their bones have turned to dust.
Oh! But don’t go too far, it is also a tale of vampires.
Forget immediately what you know about both these creatures, because legends and myths are merely lies. I bring to you the truth, a story passed down by generations but retold much differently than I now relate it to you.
What is this? You ask who am I to regale such a heart-wrenching tale, and to change it nonetheless?
I am Argant the Old, the Storyteller, the wise, and long-lived. I am also called the Ancient One, not only by gods and men, but also puca, sith, vampires, and dragons.
But why even tell a tragedy in the first place? Why not entertain you with a tale of love and conquest? Is not that thing, which humankind desires most, merely romance?
Oh, but it most certainly is not, not if a mind truly knows the world.
While it is true that audiences crave falsehoods, those glorified narratives of victory and love, they also yearn to terrify or distress depending upon their mood. But as far as mankind’s interest in history goes, of which legends are but a splinter, these same audiences demand to be shielded from the truth. They seek joy even when their lives thrive on calamity. Humans merely use romance to fill their hearts with hope—knowing reality would terrify their souls.
Like sheep, the gullible cling to mummers’ fabrications of happiness, attending dramatization without satisfying the true hunger within—the basal desire to feed on excitement. Happy endings leave the audience empty, always needing more, whereas tragedies nourish the soul. One can only stand to consume so much, until finding it has overflowed.
Trust old Argant when I tell you, the best stories tell of vengeance and loss, but never in that order.
So proceed if you must, but not without heeding a warning. Just as audiences crave fantastic wonders, the lustful creatures recounted in these pages require satiation. They must be given what they crave, untenable and unquenchable feasting. If left to hunger, their true nature rips free just as easily as sanguis rushes from their victim’s veins.
All hereafter is a story about that feasting and how a single man satisfied his own lust for vengeance after involving himself in a war between dragons and vampires.
It begins, ironically, with a tale of romance…
Erwan meant nothing to the world before he met me. He was always a lamentable sham and a poorly born one at that! Those names I call him are titles earned from his earlier years, but he would become, after fate woefully changed his life, Erwan the Bold.
This version factually tells a more magnificent story than the man deserves. It is a saga befitting heroes of yore, great men and women who excelled in the face of adversity, who found greatness lurking within and discovered their lives were meant to soar the heavens!
Erwan’s life, his entire existence, began and ended with dirt.
Dirt resided upon his mother’s face and on the ground where the midwife knelt to catch and welcome his filthy entrance. His parents owned not even a bit of that dirt in and upon which they toiled. It clung, especially to that spot behind the ears and in crevices rarely washed, like Erwan, out of sight and mind.
That Erwan grew to work this same parcel as his parents had always been foretold. A son of a serf is nothing but another worker upon the nobleman’s land, one to replace the father’s eventual passing. He is tied to that land, bound to it, destined to die upon and be rested beneath it, just as his parents were once doomed to be entombed.
Fate had a plan involving the dirt Erwan worked, but he somehow defied that destiny.
Despite his poverty, Erwan enjoyed riches unobtainable by his Roman overseer, Dominus Titus the Abominable, the owner of the dirt which so entirely ruled Erwan’s life. The peasant had found love, a wonderful thing for a lowly man of pitiful station, in the form of sweet Adelia. She was clean, free of the soil to which her future husband had always been bound. Erwan believed her perfectly angelic, sent to him by the gods. In truth, no one knew from where she travelled.
They met along the road to Cardac, a crucial point to mention in this story. Their meeting, an incidental moment made possible by random timing, unraveled the tightly wound threads of Erwan’s fate.
Married in a quiet ceremony, the pair retreated to his allotted parcel of dirt and lived as man and wife. There she bore him two children, Rupert and Racinda, in the same fashion and poverty into which he himself was born. These children so loved their father and hurried each day to meet him along that road to Cardac. They greeted him each afternoon with hugs after his morning spent laboring for Dominus Titus.
Our story begins on the day they failed to meet him along the way.
- as recorded by Argant the Storyteller
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Warm sunlight danced over the treetops. On this spring afternoon, filled with hopeful promise, Erwan’s back ached. He had spent the entire day stooped or bent over, tending the fleshy seedlings reaching for blue skies above. This pain did not dampen his mood, not in the slightest. So much of life warmed his heart.
Erwan had tended the entire field in just a few days—backbreaking work with only his hoe and scythe to aid him. Thankful for the bounty it would bring the dominus, he prayed, not for a horse or a plow to make the work easier, but that this crop would turn out a good one, bountiful enough to pay both tax and tithe. His family would enjoy whatever grain was left over, and the bigger the yield the better it would serve them. He finished his prayer with a smile, thankful and hopeful in giving his words of praise.
So much in his world was exactly as it should be, and he would soon fill his belly with a meal prepared by Adelia. But first he would finish his walk, met along the way by Rupert and Racinda. On some days the twins would hop out of the woods and roar like bears, eager to send fright down their father’s spine. He would cry out and cower, then laugh out loud at their joke. On others they would simply bowl him over, coming down the path in a foot race, the winner enjoying the first-prize hug.
He passed a broken trunk, a tree felled by lighting several years before. It was here they usually met up.
It’s odd, he mused but did not worry. They would be along very soon.
With each step the father’s concern grew into worry. Perhaps they had been held up by chores or had been playing so hard they lost track of time. Neither of those calamities had ever prevented their arrival before. He pondered their tardiness, hopeful but with optimism quickly souring.
Something is wrong, he realized, or they would be here by now!
His mind wandered, imagining the worst. Perhaps a bear had ambled from the forest, or a wolf! No, neither had dared come near his hovel for many years. Though they resided a good twenty minutes outside of Cardac, the smell of human kept both predators at bay.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Unless it’s rabid, his mind taunted.
His pace quickened, a fast walk at first that grew into a full-fledged run. He must arrive home in time, no matter what problems waited. Nothing would harm his family as long as he…
He skidded to a halt, both feet kicking up dirt across the road.
Up ahead a carriage rested beside his hovel, a magnificent vehicle drawn by matching horses each as splendidly white as the other. The car itself had been painted a dark crimson that stood out against gilded edges reflecting golden sunlight. Even the wheels boasted of wealth, the likes of which Erwan had never imagined.
Who visits my home? he wondered, moving forward with trepidation, just as two swordsmen stepped out from behind the tiny building. Both men wore the colors and herald of Dominus Titus, the Roman overseer.
“You there, peasant!” one of the strangers commanded. “Drop your weapons and stay where you are!”
The sound of hoof beats stamped the dirt behind him, and Erwan found himself surrounded on all sides by Romans. “Who are you?” he demanded, eyeing the war destriers warily. They seemed more dangerous than the drawn blades in the footmen’s hands.
“Never mind who we are,” one of them said dismissively. “Lay down your weapons and return the way you came. Be gone from here!”
“But I…” Erwan stammered, perplexed by their commands. He had no weapons, only the tools of a farmer. “I live here!” he protested.
The two swordsmen exchanged a look. The shorter man shrugged to the other but said nothing. The taller man seemed to be in charge.
“Oh, the hell with him!” one of the mounted knights decided, his armored boot kicking forward and meeting Erwan’s temple. The world around the farmer swam with dark spots as he thudded to the ground in a heap. His scythe and hoe landed nearby, discarded and forgotten.
Just as soon as he had landed another man appeared from within the hovel, wiping his mouth on a silken handkerchief. It was darkly smeared and smudged, soiled and therefore undignified for such an aristocrat to carry. This newcomer was obviously a nobleman by the fancy cut and quality of his cloth. He tossed the bit of cloth away while stepping through the doorway. The highborn noble winced uncomfortably at the sun now hanging low over the trees.
As Erwan’s vision swam into focus he realized he had seen this man before, and that single moment had proven unforgettable. It was Dominus Titus the guest of the mayor whose feast had drawn the entire town the night before. This man bore blessings by the Roman Emperor himself.
The dominus held one hand over his eyes to hide the light. His bloodstained teeth showed clearly behind his scowl. “Deal with him,” Titus commanded his knights. “I no longer desire a taste for blood.” Without another word the nobleman stepped aboard his carriage, shutting himself away while the driver readied the horses.
Above Erwan, the world darkened as violent men blocked the sun. He cowered as the first blows landed, kicks, jabs, and punches, then plunged entirely into a world of blackness.
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Hours later, Erwan opened both eyes, matted and encased beneath a coating of dried blood. This hurt less than the agony in his ribs, but he winced all the same. Every inch of his body would bruise, left for dead and discarded in the woods.
He tried three times to regain his feet, to stand and find his bearings, but fell twice back to earth with agonizing thuds. He was more careful on the third attempt, moving slower so that the spinning in his head would catch up to the throbbing of his limbs. When he could finally look around to survey his surroundings, he realized night had fallen.
At first Erwan felt lost in familiar woods, among trees he had grown up playing, but soon he found his bearings.
This old pine with the crooked trunk points north, he told himself, and so home is this way. Each step sent shockwaves through the farmer’s ribs, but he never slowed until he reached the clearing around his hovel. What he saw made him break into a run.
Several creatures had gathered on his doorstep, each as gaunt as it was pale. Onward he ran despite pounding torment up his spine. Each step hurt worse than the last, but he ignored that pain, pushing it to the back of his mind. He had to reach his home.
One of the creatures turned, its bloodshot eyes surprised to see a man rushing forth. It rushed to meet him, moving faster than any human or animal the farmer had ever seen.
Erwan ducked as it came closer, just as he passed the place where Titus’ men had beaten him. His tools still lay discarded where he dropped them, and he scooped up his scythe, grabbing the simple wooden handle with a callused hand.
The ghastly specter bared fangs as it ran, grinning a wild expectation of feast. Beyond it, two more had joined their comrade, rushing faster toward him than any human could run.
The farmer stepped to the side as the first arrived, squaring off to face it in battle.
The creature stared at his tool, held ready like a sword. It was polished to a shine, reflecting moonlight as easily as it would the sun.
“Steel has no effect on us, human!” the thing spat, then lunged forward with a laugh.
Erwan swung his scythe in a wide arc, shifting his body as if reaping corn from a tall stalk. The creature was quick and tried to block, but the farmer had made this movement countless times in his life. To the ground rolled a wicked head, red eyes and sharp fangs smiling upward at the night sky, harvested cleanly at the base of its neck.
The others skidded to a halt.
Erwan now recognized these creatures as voltur. His grandfather had spoken of them, told tales of spindly specters with inhuman strength and speed. Each voltur had once been human before death. Now, if the myths were to be believed, they roamed the night as revenants, reanimated to quench an insatiable thirst for human blood.
But they had not been reanimated by chance, to become a voltur meant to have been killed and drained by a vampure.
“Iron,” one of them shrieked, and both backed away.
“I do not fear him,” the second growled despite recoiling. It sniffed the air. “He is only human.”
“He has seen us,” the first argued, its eyes locked on the blood dripping from the scythe, “and must not be allowed to interfere with Goro’s plans!”
Erwan’s ire was too much not to hold back. His mind remembered the bloody teeth of Dominus Titus, the casual wipe of his lips as if he had devoured a greasy meal, and fitfully raged.
His family must not rise as these monstrous forms.
His scythe moved like an extension of the farmer’s arm, hacking and slicing skin and sinew from cowering creatures. Moving again as if harvesting his field, Erwan gleaned bone and muscle, ripping them asunder and hacking their undead forms into pieces.
Rage filled him, a torrent of strength fueled by anger, until nothing remained to dismember.
Panting and out of breath, Erwan raced into his hovel.
The sight waiting for the husband and father, now drenched in his enemy’s blood, brought him at once to his knees. Rupert and Racinda lay still on the dirt floor. He scanned their bodies for injury, finding only the tiniest of puncture marks on the base of each neck. From there they had been drained, robbed of youthful innocence and any chance they once had for the happiness their father once found.
You must kill them with a dragon’s tooth, a distant memory whispered, his grandfather’s voice preparing a terrified child for this moment. Or sever their heads from their torsos with an iron blade.
Erwan held that iron in his hand, clutching and squeezing its blood-swelled, wooden handle. He raised that hand, prepared to do what must be done, but found he could not. These were his children, his beloved and most favored of all accomplishments. They were the best of him. How could he send them to the afterlife, even should they emerge as undead?
Staring at the bodies, sadness consumed the father. Inside, regret and anger dueled for control of his mind. He had to do the act. He had to remove their precious heads from their shoulders like his grandfather had taught. They were no longer human, neither Rupert nor Racinda any longer, but voltur who would devour their own father should they awaken—and they would, as revenants and shadows of their former selves.
Erwan wept uncontrollably. What if they could have been saved? he wondered. Then another thought struck him, forcing movement into his legs and ripping his eyes from the unfatherly act he almost committed. Adelia!
Where was his wife?
He rushed across the hovel, sprinting to the closed door leading to the bedroom. What unfathomable horror waited just beyond? What would he find of his wife and, if still alive, would she curse him forever for the deed he had considered?
A crimson hand, stained by the sin of failure as a protector, slowly lifted the latch and pushed open the portal. Erwan closed his eyes, breathed a deep breath, then let it out. He was ready to die and would give himself over to whatever waited on the other side. Stepping through, he looked upon the bed upon which he had first lain with his beautiful bride.
That bridal passion had been repeated, but not by him nor enjoyed by Adelia.
Quilts and furs lay discarded on the ground, unable to warm his wife’s lifeless form forever now like ice. She too had been drained of lifeforce.
Erwan, having failed as a husband as well as a father, raised his scythe but again refused to bring it down. Despite the warnings of his grandfather ringing mercilessly in his ears, he had lost everything, and would not allow himself to reap the last remnants of humanity. There had to be another way to prevent evil from rising in his family’s form.