Christina Greystone.

A girl in sore need of a nickname.

A vampire and a noble, but what does that mean, and what else is she?

I’m a necromancer, and it’s an important part of me but it’s not who I am. There’s more to me than just that, and I know it’s the same for her, but the rest of her character is made up of things that I can only learn by being around her. Like how I know that Theo is a worrywart, who is always expecting the worst to happen, and Adeleya isn’t as cheerful as she always acts.

Christina—Tina? No that’s not it. That’s what the other girls were calling her and I don’t want to share that with them—is one of the few people in this world who has accepted my necromancy without blinking, and now I want to see if she can accept the rest of me too. I want to see if she can be someone that I trust. If she can be someone important to me.

“Syr, pay attention,” Theo says, pulling me back into the conversation.

“As, I was saying,” Christina—Christy? Nope—says. “Control your fear, that is the greatest weapon that you can give to a vampire. We are only as powerful as you make us.”

“So, we can’t show fear?” Lothar asks, adjusting his stance.

“That’s not quite right,” she shakes her head. “I can already taste the terror that is flowing off of you, even though it is not fear of me. It’s from something distracting you, something in the back of your mind. Even that, is enough to invigorate my powers. You must learn to alter your own heart, to force yourself into another emotional state. Nobles are taught how to do this at a young age, and you must learn it as well.”

“Another emotional state?” I ask. She can sense what we feel? I’ve never really tried to control my feelings before. What I feel is what I feel.

“Yes. Though I do not advise this particular tactic, losing yourself in drink can shield you to a degree,” she explains. “The most effective means of resistance is faith, but not all can dedicate themselves to a god or purpose to such a degree that it can affect us.”

Yeah, I don’t get it.

Maybe I can understand it a bit better while we’re fighting.

The others are more invested in the idea, trying to break it down and understand how and why it works and what they can do to respond to it. They talk like a proper mercenary team trying to figure out the weaknesses and strengths of the monsters that they’re hunting. They don’t mention my necromancy, only sometimes taking into consideration my strength and wide strikes.

I’m an extra.

I’ll always be an extra because they don’t want to include my greatest strength in their plans.

I call down Crow from the rooftops. He’s a little wet from a light mist of rain that fell for a little while, but he doesn’t mind. Unlike Christina—Chris? No, that’s not right either—he’s not cold so much as he’s not warm. He’s the same temperature as the world itself. He’s already lost his life, he’s closer to the soil beneath my feet than the rest of us, I’m just holding him together for a little while longer.

“Let’s begin with duels,” Christina says, looking to me. Her cheeks are hardening with the cold, ice slowly forming over her pale skin. “Syr, you first. Are you ready?”

I adjust my grip on my sword. There’s room here, and I want to use my longer sword again for this, it’s been too long since I could properly practice with it. I like to practice every day, morning and evening.

Nodding at my opponent, I step forward. Maybe I can get to know her a little better through this?

“Allow me a moment to cover myself in shadows and we may begin.”

Everyone else leaves me standing here alone, for this duel. They’re still nearby, but it doesn’t take long before they’re hidden in the darkness beyond my reach. Even Christina—Nana? No, no—is gone in just a few seconds, pulling the darkness around herself like a cloak, though her gaze never quite leaves me.

The prickling hair on the back of my neck warns me that she’s still here. The air around me grows heavier the longer I wait, and I can feel the change in her. The mask has slipped away and the predator in her is loose.

No longer am I in the company of humans and their drama. Now it’s something that I understand.

This is a hunt.

Gripping my adamant sword, I look for her in the shadows that are darkening beyond natural reason. The air is thick with her magics and even breathing becomes harder, pressing down on my chest as I try to find her, in the changed world around me.

I don’t know when it happened, but it’s not the same field I was in before. It’s almost like she’s moved me somewhere else entirely, but I can’t remember any moment when that could have happened.

Faint impressions of shapes form in the distance, buildings that weren’t there a moment ago, and shapes that don’t quite make any sense. People that aren’t quite people surround me, and their whispers tickle at my ears but I can’t make out the words.

The other vampires were doing something similar, pulling us into a new world, but this is taking it to a new length.

How powerful is she?

I stand still, waiting for her to make her move, just as she’s waiting for me.

A flash of light burns itself apart from the shadows, a figure without a face and only a vague impression of a shape. Instead of lighting the darkness, it walks upon the shadows like a picture born on a canvas.

“Join me,” she whispers, her voice clearer than the others but only just enough that I can understand her. “Let this suffering end. Don’t fight it.”

Another shape pulls itself out of the darkness, stepping closer to me. This one is a deep grey that nearly blends into the black canvas, standing taller than the first and wielding a sword in one hand. The faint glow of illusions runs off the metal plates of the knight’s armour in tiny wisps.

This one is not just a knight; he’s the same as the one that I fought not long ago. A reflection of what is now dead.

The shadows that the two figures walk upon stretch closer to my feet, their fingers gripping the earth and flowing over the grass.

“Crow,” I whisper his name and send him up into the sky. Even from his vantage in the air high above, the two figures stay true and complete, though the more distant shapes disappear entirely. He sees a third shape hidden behind the knight, the darkness curls around it, but can’t fully hide it.

With all my practice it takes less than half a second to launch forward in a simple charge.

Vampires work through lies, and even without dispelling the illusions, I can still figure them out. The knight rushes at me, faster than is proper for his shape and size, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not real. The real knight is dead.

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His sword disperses like mist as he slashes at me, trying to waste my time.

I fly through the darkness, kicking off the earth and tearing up the yard to move faster still.

Christina—Isty? Rissy? Trissy? No, no, and no—is powerful. She can heal from almost anything so long as I don’t use fire. That means that I need to find a good way to slow her down, so I aim low as I slice through the legs of the hidden shadow that tries to escape.

I cut through air and shadow, my sword not even slowing. It was a fake.

While I work to correct my momentum, the knight stands there as if broken. I guess now that I’ve seen through the lie, he’s been made pointless, and she’ll probably disperse him soon. More important is the other one, the pale white figure that appeared before all the others. It’s around her shape, and I’ve seen her hide in an illusion before to trick the knight.

Would she make herself that vulnerable this time?

I’ll have to see.

I spin my momentum around and charge in her direction.

The knight is in my way again, but he doesn’t matter anymore. The grey shadow reaches out for me, and at the same moment, the ground itself grabs my legs. The knight was a distraction.

Thick black vines wrap around my legs, pulling me down while my sword pulls me forwards, I stretch as the two forces fight each other until I lose grip on my weapon.

Someone grabs my arm while I lift them to protect my face, pulling me to the side and tossing me to the ground. Christina appears from nowhere, her hands moving to my neck as the black vines whip around my arms and legs, her eyes glow with a vicious red hunger no longer showing even a hint of the natural blue eyes I remember.

She’s stronger than she should be.

Her eyes open wide with excitement as she grips my throat tighter, her fangs growing longer. She’s a proper predator now, but she’s still hesitating at the last moment, holding herself back. She quirks her head to the side in confusion, a faint whisper of a groan escaping her lips as she slouches over me, her nails tracing over my throat.

She’s won this round, but next time I’ll do better.

Christina—Ina? No, that sounds like something with tentacles­—Leans more heavily on me, her hungry gaze clinging to my neck for a moment longer before the invisible chains pull her back inside. The huntress disappears as the noble takes her place, cold and unfeeling. Her expressions return to something alien, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking or feeling anymore.

“If you can maintain that same poise against other vampires, then it will be a powerful tool,” she says, looking away from me to focus on the other mercenaries. “You must learn to anticipate an attack from any angle, at any time.”

I nod quickly.

I back away as she takes another turn with the others, not slowing down or resting between matches.

“You’re a powerful little brat, aren’t you?” A large man, a warrior of some sort, stands by my side. There’s one of the maids here too, but she doesn’t say anything to me.

“Yep,” I nod quickly. “Still got beat.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it, she’s set this game up to make sure you lose,” he laughs. “It’s just the way it is. I’m Henry, the little lady’s favourite guard.”

“Syr,” I say, holding out my hand. He takes it and shakes it enthusiastically. “Never met an elf quite like you.”

“I’m special,” I say. “What do you mean, she’s making sure we lose?”

“It’s how she trains us,” Henry shrugs. “You heard what she said about fear? Well, it’s difficult to make you properly afraid if you’re winning half the time. So, she sets you up to lose. That way you get used to the feeling of fear and learn to deal with it.”

That makes sense. She was serious when she was talking about fear before the training started, so I guess that’s what this is about.

“She’s a good teacher. You’ll see later when she shows you her weaknesses. There are not many folk who’ll do that so lightly. Have to worry about her sometimes.”

The maid lifts her chin high.

“She’s a proper noble,” she says. “She’s making a sacrifice of herself to help all of us. That’s what a proper and good noble does, like in the storybooks. Like that story of the king who has to choose between letting a witch curse the lands or his crown, and he lets the curse sit on his own brow so that his people can be safe. Eventually, it kills him but his people are prosperous, and they hunt down the evil witch.

“All the stories of proper nobles are sad stories, like that. They take on all the suffering so that the rest of us can continue to live in a safe world. The shine of the gold and the pale white marble all just helps to make the curses easier to bear.”

“She’s hurting herself so that her people don’t suffer?” I ask, watching the noble vampire tear Adeleya’s staff away and pull her into a shadowed maw shaped by the shadows of grass stems. The predator that stalks through the darkness doesn’t seem like that at all to me.

“That’s why I want to help her,” the maid says. “To make it easier for her to handle that weight.”

Henry grunts but doesn’t say anything to contradict the maid’s words.

Are they right?

I haven’t seen it much myself, but she is showing us her weaknesses so that we can better fight against her kind. She is making herself vulnerable to make us stronger. Is that who she is?

I want to see it myself before I’ll believe them.

Belle and Piper had a lot to say, too, but I’m not going to just accept everything they’ve said.

Everyone told me that the wolven in the forest were evil, that they use their cruel necromancy to rule over the forests and to hunt down travellers. That they do all sorts of other terrible things.

They weren’t right. Not about everything.

Theo tries to defend against the shadows that Christina—Chri-Chri?... maybe?—but she slowly corners him using her shadows until she finally covers his head in an orb of illusionary lights. He swings wildly, but she pulls him down to the ground using more shadow limbs, and he surrenders.

Lothar’s fight is over quickly, a few whispered voices leave him panicking before a powerful wave of darkness throws him to the ground. He can’t even fight back. It’s the most powerful I’ve seen her magic yet. Is it because he was afraid?

“My turn,” I step in, my guts churning as I try to figure out what I want to say. I’ll convince her to spare some time for me, I’m not going to let this chance go to waste, I want to know where this is going to go.

“Before that,” she stops me short, looking at all of us. “I needed to ask if you understood what I’ve shown you here. You’ve faced our kind before, so I know this isn’t entirely new, but even so. You understand that your emotional state empowers my magics?”

“Yeah, that was… something,” Lothar says, rubbing at his side. “But really? I was the only one who got creeped out by those whispers?”

“It wasn’t that bad, you wuss,” Adeleya slaps his shoulder. “If you wanted to scare us properly, you should try centipedes. Those things are unnatural, and the sounds that they make…”

“And the taste,” I add, scraping my tongue on my front teeth just at the memory.

Everyone is looking at me strangely.

“What? Ah, you guys don’t actually like the taste of them, do you?” I ask, looking between Christina, her maid, and Henry.

The large guard huffs a loud laugh, pounding a hand on his chest as he smiles wide.

“The taste is terrible,” he agrees, shaking his head. “I don’t think the lady could even imagine it.”

“Lucky,” I say.

“Ah, thank you for the advice,” Christina—Fangs? No, that’s no good either—says. “I may have to try using the shapes of insects in the future. Snakes as well, as I hear that they’re despised, and Wolven howls, perhaps?”

“Silence,” I suggest. “Silence is scary, too.”

“Silence?” she asks, thoughtfully. “I’ll have to consider how to use it. In any case, this time you may use fire and light, but please do be careful not to directly burn me. Fire is far more lethal to me than your blades.”

“Okay, let’s go!” I say, bouncing on my heels as I get ready for another fight. She probably won’t have the strength to keep this going all night, so I have to try asking her out right now, while we have a chance.

“Then allow me to get ready,” she says, backing away into the shadows.

The world decays into a silent expanse of shadows as I’m given the field. I raise my sword high. If I delay and wait, then this is going to be hard. I need to catch her fast, and then ask her out.

Measuring my breathing, I set my sword low and listen for her. Crow watches from overhead as the first shadows start to bend. They never take on a shape that I can clearly understand, it’s more a slight movement with hints of tiny legs, made real only by the chittering that fills my ears, the sounds of thousands of insects crawling over everything. Their shadows cover everything, there’s nowhere that I can escape from them.

If I stepped into a cave and saw this, I’d run and I wouldn’t stop running for an hour.

Looking past the lies, which stir up an uncomfortable feeling in my gut even though I know it’s not real, I look for her. I need to find her, or… no. When hunting a predator, sometimes it’s better to be good prey until the last minute. Then I’ll get her when she thinks she’s won.

Tickling black shadows crawl up my legs, their feet touching my skin even through my clothes.

I squeal, slapping at the shape.

I don’t mean to, it’s my plan to be good prey, but I still didn’t mean to drop my guard so much.

I slap at the shadows, but they slip under my clothes, crawling up my legs and under my shirt. I’m swiping at them, but they don’t go away. It’s a lie, but I can’t stop myself from reacting.

Someone grabs my shoulder and throws me to the ground, but I roll before she can grab me with her shadows. Crow never even saw her coming.

Kicking at her legs, I roll away, but the insects don’t disappear. Christina jumps at me, her hand reaching out for me. Her hungry eyes glow brighter than ever before, and the insects start to wring around my arms and legs.

Pushing myself to my limits, I reach out to catch her and throw aside grasping hands. After a brief struggle, I get a hold of her arms and roll on top of her. She flails and fights, the insects crawling everywhere, but they’re losing their power as I stare down at the vampire under me.

“I… I want you to drink my blood!” I shout, and she freezes in place.

She wriggles weakly beneath me, her shadows slipping away as she groans in defeat.

“I want to spend some time with you and talk about things. Important things.”