After resting for a couple of hours in the town, we soon left in the darkness of the night. The Elven towns didn’t use much magic light to keep things well-lit in their lands. So, there weren’t many people coming and going at night.
In any case, I was worried about Glacien before, but when I found her, she seemed to be enjoying herself resting on the floor of the house. She seemed to enjoy lazing around now and then. She didn’t seem that bothered when we left again since we left her a lot of food before.
“What is the plan for tonight?”
“We are heading to the border in order to destroy some of the dwarven war towers. They have been pushing them in our territory lately, so destroying them will give us some credit and make them hesitate in their efforts to prepare for a possible war.”
“I am not going to kill anyone for you.”
“You don’t have to. You will just damage their tools of war.”
“... Did you guys at least try to talk with them?”
“It is impossible. Both sides just curse each other when we meet.”
I don’t remember hearing much about the relations of elves and dwarves before, but I didn’t think that it would be this bad. Something seemed off, though… that was why I didn’t want to do more than the necessary to lure out those involved in the incident three years ago.
This also would be a good experience to learn how others operated… I had been a bit too cautious letting others attack first after a few warnings. I had decided to change that part of my nature, but it was still hard to do a complete 180.
“To be honest, Regulus… I heard a few things about you recently. I had doubted them since they sounded crazy, but it looks like they were true given that you have Glacien with you.”
“Should we really be talking while dressing apart like this?”
“Who cares about that? This is more important… We received information about a white-haired archer killing a human commander with a single shot and then vanishing. Although the rumors said that you didn’t participate in the war after that, it is clear that you changed the flow of it.”
“Did I? As far as I know, the orcs, goblins and ogres were forced to flee from their lands. By the way, you guys even have insiders in the empire, huh? Being long-lived has its perks if you can buy people from the empire with that ease.”
“The empire almost lost that battle because of you. They were forced to retreat the port towns, until they decided to use drugs to boost their troops.”
“Drugs?”
“The kind that makes you go crazy in exchange for power. You probably don’t want to know what your brothers did under the effects of those drugs… Although they probably don’t remember much of it.”
“We were never that close, so I don’t care. Regardless, I thought that they would be more prideful than that… I guess returning home as losers would have been worse.”
“The last thing I had heard about them, I was informed that Rayner Dawnshield and his twin daughters had arrived in the Skarnash Tribelands.”
As expected, he had really come for me… that made me feel quite troubled, since it made me realize that if I make a mistake, he will cross half of the world to look for me.
Given the type of person Rayner was, I knew he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. If he managed to find me once more, he wouldn’t risk letting me slip through his fingers. Rayner wasn’t the kind of man to take chances, not when it came to matters of this magnitude. Even as my father, he wouldn’t hesitate to lock me away, not out of cruelty, but because he’d believe it was the only way to protect me from the empire’s reach.
His logic was ruthless but effective, the kind that came from years of surviving in a world where power dictated everything. To him, keeping me confined would mean keeping me safe from the empire’s grasp, ensuring I wouldn’t become a pawn in their games or a victim. And yet, as much as he might justify it as a protective measure, the thought was just annoying. While I could imagine him going to great lengths to shield me, I couldn’t fully imagine him allowing the empire to go further, to harm me.
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But that didn’t erase the cold truth: Rayner’s idea of protection was control, and in his eyes, my freedom was a risk he couldn’t afford to take. He was walking a fine line, trying to keep me alive and not cause problems for the rest of the family.
“Putting that aside, I heard what your arrow did to that commander. Do you know what that means?”
“That you are well-informed?”
“... Only vampires can make arrows like that. Not many people know that, but the big shots of all countries know it. Since you are a half-human, you were already unwelcome pretty much everywhere, but since you can make arrows like that, you will be treated even worse.”
“Same shit, different day.”
“Moreover, only vampires with a very high ranking in their society have powerful blooded enough to make those arrows. Since you only have half of their blood, this is even more impressive. Do you know who your mother is?”
“No idea. Since he had four wives already, it is hard to say what Rayner’s type is. Maybe he likes women who connect him to important places.”
High priest, powerful mage, rich merchant’s daughter, and famous noble… those were what Rayner’s wives were known for. My mother wasn’t the fifth wife, but it was clear that she was someone important among the vampires. I didn’t know much about their society aside from that they were batshit crazy.
They had a lot of factions as well, and while they haven’t been known for a while, their many organizations had been doing things for centuries, so they left their mark in history. Aside from the Forsaken, I knew about the dark covenant and the night stalkers.
The Night Stalkers are a very small group and they reject the traditional vampire hierarchy and live as outcasts and mercenaries. They believe that power is earned through strength and cunning, not through bloodlines. Their goal is to survive and thrive outside the established vampire order by taking on assassination, espionage, and mercenary work. They seek independence from the aristocratic vampires and focus on personal gain and survival. It is easier to find them because of that, but one needs a lot of connections to pull it off.
The Crimson Covenant worships dark entities and ancient vampires that they consider gods, believing that vampires are divinely chosen to rule over all beings. They practice blood magic and rituals to gain favor from their dark gods.
Their primary goal is to gain power through blood rituals and dark magic. They seek to elevate vampires as god-like beings and bring about an age where vampires dominate both the human world and the supernatural realms. I was pretty sure that the tentacle monster that those guys used was one of those dark entities… Just by thinking about it, I felt a shiver run down my spine. No wonder people hated me so much.
“You call your father by his name…”
“We were never that close. I think that we talked like two times in nine years.”
“And he never mentioned your mother? The hero of the empire is a lot worse than I imagined…”
I couldn’t say anything in his defense since he kept me in the dark for most of the time. He also knew that I wasn’t treated well at home and my room was basically an old warehouse. Maybe he was training me to get used to my life as a half-vampire, but I also could tell that he had some difficult feelings about me being his son.
On one hand, my existence caused a lot of trouble for the name of the family. On the other hand, I was his connection to another unknown woman. A woman which he loved to the point of leaving behind the empire and his family for a whole year. I probably shouldn’t think like that about my mother in this world, but she should be pretty damn gorgeous to make Rayner forget the empire and his family for such a time.
“Do you want to meet her? Your mother?”
“I am not sure… if she is a control freak like Rayner, I won’t miss her that much. She also left me with him and never tried to contact me, so I am probably not very important to her.”
“Maybe she thought that you would be safer with Rayner.”
“Maybe, who knows?”
I could tell that Clarice was a bit worried about my situation, but pity was more annoying than anything. If I hadn’t had my memories from my previous life, I wouldn’t have minded it that much, but I wasn’t a helpless kid. In any case, she dropped the talk there and then we proceeded in silence to our destination.
A couple of hours later, Clarice began to slow down and then I realized that we were getting close. The atmosphere seemed a bit weird as well… There was more wind since there were few trees ahead. Soon enough, I was able to see the night sky on the horizon.
There were some fallen trees around as well, and it looked like they had been knocked down and pulled by something big… maybe a giant version of my grappling crossbow. When we found those signs, I was able to sense Clarice’s mood souring. She wasn’t much like the other elves who loved to hug their trees, but she didn’t like their forest being damaged like that, either.
“We are here.”
We stopped at the branch of one of the final trees in that part of the forest and soon I was able to see some lights ahead… after using Hawk’s vision, I was able to see the dwarven towers. They were pretty large… enough for them to have a campfire in the middle of them and since that was possible, it was obvious that the whole thing was made of metal, but light enough not to sink on the ground thanks to the square-cube law.
“This will be hard…”