Chapter 565: The Shadow of Stryg

  Gale bowed to Stryg, “I’ll leave you and your— mistress alone for some ‘private time.’ In the meantime, I’ll speak with Uncle Gian on how we can salvage this mess.” She winked at Tauri, “Enjoy betraying your family’s honor.”

  “I didn’t betray my family!” she snapped.

  “Why don’t you try saying that while you’re—” Gale made an obscene oral gesture with her hand and mouth before she walked out the gate.

  The gate slammed shut behind her and the pair of guards posted outside jumped a tad at the sudden noise.

  “L-Lady Gale? Is everything alright?” one of the guards asked uncertainly.

  “Fine. Do not disturb Lord Veres unless he calls you.”

  “Yes, my lady!” The guards saluted as she walked away.

  The manor loomed over her right, its dark windows enchanted to keep the sunlight out. Gale doubted Gian would be there. It was a beautiful day and it was a little past noon. He’d no doubt be sitting below his favorite tree in the gardens having a bit of lunch by himself.

  Yet, instead of heading to the gardens or the manor, Gale headed to the estate’s gates. Stepping out into the Villa streets she made a beeline towards the Commoner District. She needed answers and there was only one place she would find them.

~~~

  The commoner houses had been left in ruin after the siege. Some were raided by the barbarians, others were crushed by trebuchet boulders, most had been caught in the fires. There was no living soul in sight. The bustling sounds of the district had died that night.

  Most of the nobility cared little for what happened to the commoners. Even now, it was the Sylvan army that had relocated the commoners to survivor camps deeper in the district. There was no one left here at the edge. Or at least that was what Gale’s senses told her. She knew better.

  “I know you’re out there,” she called out to nobody in particular. “I don’t want to fight. I came here yesterday in the company of Lor– Chieftain Veres, er, Chieftain Stryg of the Ebon Tribe.”

  Movement caught at the edge of her vision. Grey-cloaked figures emerged atop the roofs, bows pulled taut and aimed at her lone figure.

  “I don’t want to fight,” she repeated. “I only seek an audience.”

  “I know why you’re here.”

  Gale spun around and saw a familiar goblin leaning on the charred wall of a burnt-down hovel.

  “Lord Arden,” Gale inclined her head. “I did not expect you to be here.”

  “If you think I have better things to do than patrol this simple perimeter then you would be right. Today is an exception.”

  “Like yesterday?”

  Arden narrowed his yellow slit eyes. “Moreso. Follow me.” He turned and walked away without waiting for a response.

  Gale hurried to catch up. It wasn’t difficult. The goblin was over a head shorter than her and he walked with a calm but steady pace. Arden seemed a tad taller than any goblin she had met, save Stryg, but she was tall for a vampire, even amongst the men. She had found that sort of stature intimidated most people she came across, but Arden didn’t bat an eye.

  It was odd. And it didn’t help that her nerves seemed to grow more uncomfortable the longer they walked in silence through the ruined streets.

  “We’re taking a different path from yesterday,” she noted.

  “We are.”

  “Why?”

  “We are not going to the same place.”

  “Where are we going then?”

  “Why did you come here, vampire?”

  “...I came looking for answers,” she admitted.

  “Without knowing where you might find them.” It wasn’t a question, more a simple observation.

  “Yes. Sort of. I guess I did.”

  “Then the where does not matter, only what you find.”

  “And what will I find?”

  He stopped and glanced at her. “Do I look like the Silver Mother to you? A First Mother? A priestess?”

  The tarnished blood-stained cloak, leather armor, scruffy beard, and piercing eyes did little to convince her of any of them. “No,” she replied dryly. “You look to me like a warrior. Though, I must admit my knowledge regarding Sylvan ways is lacking. Are not all your priestesses warriors?” she added with the slightest of smirks.

  “Hmph,” he shrugged and kept walking. “They are not.”

  Gale followed at his side.

  After a few minutes he broke the silence. “Sylvan culture demands strength, it is the only way to survive in the scarlet forest of monsters. Our people are all trained to fight, we must all pass the coming-of-age challenge, but that does not make one a warrior. Those who lack the strength of the claw pick up different Paths; gatherers, carpenters, blacksmiths, cooks, whatever the tribe may need.”

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  “And what if they aren’t particularly good at any of those vocations either?”

  “The ones who prove unable to walk down any Path or pass the coming-of-age challenge become Nameless and are exiled from the tribes,” he answered if it was obvious.

  “There is no room for the weak.”

  “Does your tribe leave room for the weak?”

  “...No. My House demands strength, we are trained from a very young age to excel in combat, strategy, politics, whatever is deemed necessary of us.”

  “And the ones that cannot rise to call?”

  “We all rise to the expectations of our family.” There was no Gale spared from the duties of their bloodline. She supposed it helped that there weren’t too many family members to begin with, each one had several teachers dedicated to ensuring their success.

  Arden scoffed at her words. “Am I to believe that in all the centuries your tribe has existed there has never been a failure?”

  “Well.” Gale furrowed her brow. “There are those who never awaken magic, but they still serve the House in what ways they can. They are still more than capable swordsmen.”

  “The Path of the Shaman is rare enough,” Arden nodded. “Although I suspect there were those who did not meet expectations of the sword either.”

  Gale thought of one of her older cousins, a kind elderly vampire. “My cousin was born with a twisted leg. He could never walk upright on his own. Suffice it to say the way of the blade was blocked for him. Instead, he found his purpose managing the family’s library.”

  “You’re serious?” Arden frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “...Huh. The Sylvan Tribes would never accept a born cripple.”

  “Born? What if someone is crippled later in life?”

  “There are many warriors and hunters who are crippled while fighting beasts in the forest. They at least can show others how to avoid their mistakes and teach the younglings how to fight. Those that cannot, walk out into the forest alone, without weapon or food.”

  “You force them to their deaths?” she whispered.

  “They cannot live with their own shame. Rare is the warrior that must be forced by others to walk out.”

  “So what do you do if a child is born cripple?”

  “Simple. The tribe’s Mothers take the newborn and leave them in the woods.”

  “What? You’d just abandon a baby to die?” she asked in disbelief and anger.

  “A newborn has no knowledge to give, no skills to impart. They are of no benefit to the tribe—”

  “Neither are ordinary babies!”

  “—Nor will they ever be. A Sylvan tribe’s life is difficult enough without feeding useless mouths.”

  Gale thought of her cousin, always with a kind smile and a patience with others that even surpassed Gian’s. What would have become of him had they just thrown him off the wall? “I see now why people call the Sylvan savages,” Gale muttered.

  Arden glanced at her curiously, examining her expression, his eyes lingering on the sword at her waist. “It is easy for nobility to hold lofty ideals when it costs them nothing. But it was your nobility that forced my people’s ancestors, the armies of Lunis, into Vulture Woods. They were cut off from food, water, and medicine. They had to make the difficult choices to survive. Do you think they’d have survived with your lofty ideals?”

  Gale hated to admit it, but she suspected he was right. She could only imagine what horrors they must have endured, but the thought of sacrificing newborns broke something inside her. “They’re just children,” she whispered.

  “Do you think the Lunisian soldiers did not have children of their own? When word of Holo Shade’s betrayal reached the Lunisian armies out in the field, of how the Ebon Lords’ armies ransacked and razed Lunis to the ground, do you think they did not mourn? Their children, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, every single person they knew was either killed or captured.” Arden narrowed his eyes, “I serve the Mother Moon and I am escorting you on her orders, but make no mistake, vampire. What trust my ancestors extended to yours has long been broken. I am the Guardian of the Sylvan, and I will protect my own from the likes of yours no matter the cost.”

  He stopped in front of one of the district's garrisons. The building seemed mostly intact, the walls had only a few cracks and a single shattered window. “We’re here. She is waiting for you, do not make her wait any longer.” And with that, he turned around and walked away.

  “Thank you… and I’m sorry,” Gale said.

  Arden ignored her and walked off without breaking his stride.

  “Dammit,” Gale sighed. She had let her anger get the best of her, again. Gian had trained her since little to control her emotions, but ever since Widow’s Crag, she found that control slipping away more each day.

  With another sigh, she knocked on the garrison’s door and after a moment of no response, she opened it and stepped inside. “Hello?”

  Her voice echoed slightly in the large empty room. She caught a glimpse of a woman passing through a corridor. Gale went after her and was surprised to find a dozen different women walking back and forth through the halls. Each one was dressed in white robes and had scarlet wreaths atop their heads.

  Priestesses, Gale realized.

  They sent her an occasional glance but ignored her when she tried speaking to them. They didn’t want to be bothered, she guessed. Gale shook her head and walked deeper into the abandoned garrison, noting fallen tables and scattered papers. The guards had left this place in a hurry.

  She came across the jail cells. They were all empty save for one. A naked drow hung from his shackled wrists. His grey skin was horribly disfigured by old burn scars. He had fresh bloody lacerations and bruises all over, particularly around his genitals.

  A woman sat on a chair in front of him, relaxed, almost as if lounging at home in bed. In one hand she held a bloody knife and in the other an open book with a quill nestled between the pages. Her robes were a staggering deep blue. Gold and silver laces were intertwined in her black hair.

  Gale recognized the woman from yesterday.

  The Shaman Elect noticed her entrance. “She is waiting for you in the courtyard.”

  “O-Oh, I see. Thanks,” Gale nodded stiffly.

  “Now, Lord Loch, where were we? Ah, yes, you were telling me about the defenses of your city…”

  Lumi’s voice faded away as Gale left. She found a young woman sitting outside in the small training courtyard. She had a dark silver complexion, with hair as pale as the moon and longer than any Gale had seen, its sleek locks stretched to the ground and wrapped around her in a loose circle.

  The young woman, more of a teenager really, sat cross-legged on the grass, her head tilted up, eyes closed. She seemed like a painting, frozen in a perfect moment of time.

  “Lady Lunae…?” Gale called out uncertainly.

  “The sun is beautiful, isn’t it? Even when I close my eyes I can feel its warmth.”

  Gale squinted at the golden orb of light in the blue sky. She pulled her cloak closer to herself. “We vampires have never been very fond of it.”

  “There were once many vampires among the Keepers of the Dawn. They worshiped the sun god with fervor. A sunburn to them was a mark of Solis, a reminder of his power.”

  “I’m not familiar with the Keepers of the Dawn,” she admitted.

  “Really? They attacked your city only a few nights ago.”

  “The valley tribes?”

  “They were peaceful once. Before the Ebon Lords became greedy and turned their sights on their lands. Before Lunis was ransacked. Before Solis’ fall. There was a time when the Keepers of the Dawn were a safe haven to all those fleeing from the vampire and drow wars of the Northern Lands. Solis welcomed them all, he cared for them no matter who they were. My brother was kind, far more kind than I ever was.”

  “...I’d have liked to have met him.”

  Lunae opened her eyes and looked at her. “No, I do not think you would want that. Not anymore.”