I still wonder what the exact story behind Eryk’s parents was. He had indirectly told us more, later on, but never the full details.
I think he’s alive nowadays. I sometimes actually miss him… I even considered finding him one day, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Perhaps one day I’ll reunite with him.
-
Eryk never came back to the room that night. Arwen had fallen asleep expecting to awake to his presence in the room, or perhaps to be awoken by his return late at night, but morning arrived and the vampire still failed to show.
The group were in the process of discussing a search strategy for him on their way to the dining hall when they found him. Eryk, as it turned out, had been waiting.
He was sat in the dining hall by his lonesome, eating a healthy portion of bread and some sort of jam the innkeeper had served him on the same table he had fashioned a healthy crater into yesterday. The vampire’s clothes looked damp and clung to his skin around his arms and chest as if he had been standing out in the rain all night, and his hair looked strangely messy, but otherwise he looked incredibly… content.
“Eryk,” Cai greeted cautiously, gesturing to Arwen to keep her distance. “Hello there.”
“Good morning,” Eryk seemed his ever-polite self. “Please, take a seat everyone.”
Nobody moved. The boys exchanged glances. “Are you okay?” Gwyn asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“Come now,” the vampire’s tone mirthful, friendly. “I understand your concern, but I am quite alright. I am not at all intending of violence or any form of harm on any of you. Please,” he repeated his request with a gesture, “take a seat everyone. There is much I want to discuss with you.”
Arwen shared a look with Cai, who shrugged but gestured for her to keep on her toes just in case. Surely, the vampire wouldn’t attack them all in broad daylight… right?
When they had sat down in a semi-circle on the table in front of him, Eryk began speaking. “I assume Princess Arwen has already informed you of what happened yesterday, so please allow me to explain myself. The… vision, that the Princess and I shared with each other distressed me greatly, and I ended up acting irrationally out of fear and my dire emotional turmoil. It’s no excuse for my behaviour, but I hope you’ll accept my apologies.”
When no one spoke, Eryk continued after a slight pause. “I… hope to discuss what you saw with the gemstone. I can explain whatever you like, before you all jump to conclusions.”
Arwen cocked her head and frowned. ‘Jump to conclusions?’ “I didn’t see much,” she told him. “You were mostly in a tiny box with those people… you called them White Beard, Bad Man, and Wavy Hair, though there were more of them.”
“Ah,” Eryk looked relieved before his expression moulded into a morose countenance. “After I… left my home village, I was found by what I assumed were trustworthy individuals. As it turns out, the woman who found me reported me to the mayor upon her return with me to her town. The town itself looked rundown, so I can only assume that the mayor saw an opportunity to gain some much-needed coin. He contacted a group of vampire-traffickers, who came to kidnap me in the middle of the night. I was with them for almost a week before I managed to escape their clutches.”
“How did you escape?”
“I was bought,” Eryk explained. “By a man who I consider my adoptive father. He looked after me, treated me well. He trained me in sword combat and taught me to speak and understand Deinian as I was nursed back up to health. With his generosity, I transformed from a shell of a man to the person you see today.”
“Hold on,” Owen sounded unconvinced. “You were bought by some random dude who wanted… what? A vampire-son?”
“No,” Eryk shook his head. “I was only with my adoptive father for around a year. After I was ready to move on, he arranged my transport to Cyfoeth with his wishes for a better life for me. Likely, I’ll never see him again. To be frank, I suspect he had a soft-spot for vampires, which was something he couldn’t tell his… friends. The vampire trade seemed to disgust him.”
So, the Keep hadn’t been the ones to send him to Cyfoeth as a refugee, like most vampires that had arrived in the country. How interesting…
“What happened to those other vampires on the carriage?” Arwen asked. She had spied at least six or seven through Eryk’s memory.
“Two others were delivered elsewhere… I couldn’t tell you where, however. As for me, I was the third and final sale. The rest all died. There were eighteen of us when we first begun to travel.”
Another grim silence further incited Eryk to speak. “Look, I am aware of my… questionable past, but I felt your method was invasive. Should you have gained my trust, then in time I would have explained, yet none of you ever speak to me much,” he held up his hands quickly, “and that is fine! But I implore you to merely see things from my perspective.”
“Who were those two vampires in that other world?” Arwen shifted the direction of the conversation. She noticed Gwyn shoot her a dirty look for her lack of decorum, but she felt little sympathy for the vampire of which she still felt a modem of distrust for.
Eryk hesitated, his expression growing uncertain. “They were my parents, as you probably guessed. I… would rather not talk about them.”
“He definitely killed them,” Cai muttered quietly so only Arwen would hear.
“Why are your clothes wet like that?” Gwyn asked.
Eryk seemed happy to shift onto another topic. “Oh… I slept outside last night. It was peaceful, laying under the stars. I bathed in a nearby pond not long before coming back to the Inn, but I failed to dry myself properly before re-clothing.”
“You went outside in the dark?” Gwyn hissed. “What if-”
“Good morning,” Wynn appeared in the doorway and approached an empty chair by the table, disrupting Gwyn’s scolding of the vampire. “May I sit?”
Cai was often the one in the group to initiate and manage conversation with officials, she noticed, so there was little hesitation in him speaking first. “Please do.”
“I hope I am not interrupting anything,” Wynn apologised in his typical polite tone as he sat. “I would like to speak on the Dark Entity with you all, but first… whatever happened to your uniforms? I was curious about them yesterday, but had forgotten to ask.”
“Ah,” Cai smiled a little sheepishly. “They were quite dirty, so we put them into cleaning and bought these replacements for now.”
Wynn smiled warmly. “How delightful! I appreciate you making use of our facilities, Alaru could always do with more money to maintain the wall. I admit, the uniform made you all come across as rather stern. I feel your current clothes suit you all far better. Especially you, Princess Arwen. I particularly think the colour goes well with your hair.”
Arwen smiled awkwardly, knowing she was wrongly interpreting his compliment as sarcastic but unable to prevent her emotions from bleeding into her face. She couldn’t envision herself anything other than stupid-looking in her current clothes. “Thank you.”
“I am sorry if I offended,” Wynn surprised her with his astuteness. “I mean only shining compliments.”
“Not at all,” Arwen smoothly waved him off, though Wynn’s attempts at salvaging his compliment only made it worse for her.
Wynn happily took the hint that the conversation should move on. “Have you any news on the matter of your investigation?”
Arwen’s right hand tensed. She needed to ‘invade’ Wynn’s memories for his first-hand sight of the Dark Entity, but she was reluctant to make use of the Light Gem after yesterday. “Unfortunately, no,” Cai answered while she hesitated in reaching for the gemstone. I’ m not strong enough. The voice flashed in her head so brightly that her hand instantly went limp. She would do it later. “We have inspected the wall and part of Alaru’s outer perimeter, but so far with no yield. We do have our theories, however, and are formulating our recommendations to you once we have finished.”
Arwen hoped Cai’s varnishing of words had made them seem more official than they obviously were.
“Excellent,” the aide did not appear bothered by their lack of progress. “Is there anything I can do for you, today?”
Cai swayed his head, signalling his ambivalence. “Not for the next few days, no, for we plan to continue our search of Coed’s Forest. But, if you may request the mayor for another meeting, that would be greatly appreciated.”
Wynn cocked his head. “The mayor?”
“Yes,” Cai affirmed. “We want to hear a more… descriptive recollection of his father’s fleeing,” by rooting through his memories with a divine healing artifact he meant, but did not voice that little detail.
“I see.”
Gwyn spoke suddenly. “You don’t believe he ran away, did you?”
Wynn seemed to stiffen, as if caught in a lie. “Excuse me?”
Gwyn opened his mouth to speak again, but Wynn raised a hand. “Please. Forgive my reaction, I was merely surprised. To answer your question, no, I do not believe Myrddin would run away like that. I worked extremely closely with him during his tenure and simply cannot see him doing such a thing. It contradicts everything about his character. Myrddin was kind, considerate, a brave man, and a good mayor, too. To see his name dragged through the mud by Alaru’s citizens is… painful, but I cannot voice my opinion for fear I will undermine Hefin’s position by attempting, in their eyes, to ‘make excuses’.” He punctuated the last two words with two bending fingers.
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“Do you think his disappearance had something to do with the Dark Entity’s silence as of late?” Cai asked.
Wynn turned the question on its head. “Do you?”
“I cannot say.”
“Then neither will I,” Wynn maintained an air of neutrality despite his obvious opinions. “I will arrange the meeting with Hefin, though it may be some time before I can do so. He tends to… wander and does not inform me of his whereabouts. I used to try and look for him, see, but Alaru is a large town and he never leaves the walls- my guards make sure of that- so I gave up and simply deal with the town’s affairs instead.”
“I see,” Cai muttered. “Is that all? Or would you like to join us for breakfast?”
“Oh, no,” Wynn waved away his offer. “I have already eaten and must be on my way to other business,” he paused. “Though, I will clear my morning tomorrow to join you, if you do not find the idea offensive.”
“Of course not,” Gwyn smiled. “That would be great.”
“Then I will bid you farewell and good luck.”
Wynn had barely left the hall when Gwyn set upon her. “Did you use it?”
Arwen sighed. She knew she was in for a telling-off. “I did not…”
“What? Why?”
“I will do it tomorrow, okay?”
Gwyn huffed, but let the matter settle. She liked that about the Sentinel. He let things go. “I suppose there’s no rush.”
-cut-
“I spoke to some people while waiting for you,” Eryk was eager to share his little investigative work as his companions began to collect their food. “Mostly workers and the like, so I strayed from asking about the entity. I did ask about the old mayor, though.”
Eryk’s recounting of the worker’s opinion of the mayor was equally as unflattering as previous prying. All of them felt betrayed and abandoned by Myrddin, some even wished for his death. His son, Hefin, was generally met with a tad more sympathy, but he was equally as lumped into the same ‘cowardly’ category as his father, especially when he immediately shirked his duties to haunt the local bars all day.
What was particularly interesting, however, was a rumour that one of the workers had shared with the vampire. Apparently, it was highly secretive, and almost no one knew of it, but Myrddin was said to have been afflicted by some sort of illness, though the man could not provide any description to Eryk over what it was. The response to this from the group was… ambiguous. It could be a lead, or they could end up finding out he had haemorrhoids or something equally as useless. Regardless, the group made plans to visit the local doctors to ask.
After breakfast, they had set off to collect their uniforms from the cleaners and returned to the Inn to change clothes. The group then spent the entire day continuing their expanding circle search around Alaru. Arwen took the opportunity to practise her ‘lightning sight’ to try and scan for any unusual signatures, though she was unsure whether the Dark Entity would even be detectable by this method. Still, it wouldn’t hurt, right? And it made for good field testing. More encounters with game hunters occurred, though this had become a common happening in the forest. Each one was stopped and asked whether they had seen or heard anything suspicious at all, but all had reported business as usual lately.
They only stopped for an hour during midday for lunch, eating some of the renowned meat Alaru was famous for. The meal was some sort of venison served with vegetables and some sort of sweet-spicy sauce and Arwen had found the food exquisite. Alaru’s meat processors were excellent in their choice and amounts of spice and herbs they used.
A bit of their daylight was also sacrificed visiting the local doctor, who immediately met them with a concerned greeting. “Are you all okay? Have you been attacked?”
It was flattering that the good doctor had been so concerned about their outings, but they quickly alleyed his fears and asked for information on Myrddin’s supposed illness.
The doctor, who had introduced himself as Jac Gaynor, offered them an apologetic look. “I am truly sorry,” he winced, as if pained. “I cannot divulge any information on my patient. It’s against our code.”
“Can you at least confirm he was sick?” Cai tried.
“All I will tell you was that his outlook was… bad,” Jac sighed. “I don’t think he had long left, truthfully… now please go, if you don’t need anything else. And please do not repeat my words to anyone else. I’ve only told you because you are here representing the King himself.”
They had left feeling… unsure. Arwen herself felt that the news had to be significant to his disappearance on that night, but she couldn’t think of how. So, they ultimately decided to chew on it for now while they resumed their search.
They had gotten straight back to work scouring the featureless and samey forest for any sign of disturbance or clue as to the entity’s location. But it was only when the sun had crossed its apex in the sky and had begun to lower itself back towards the horizon that Arwen spotted something. She was resting her magic after feeling the classic exhaustion- an early sign of oncoming mana madness- pull at her mind when, there, between the tree trunks, was a man walking silently within the forest.
“Excuse me!” Arwen called out as a greeting, breaking from the group to approach him. The man turned to her, revealing a broad and muscular frame supporting an aged face with blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. He wore a classic hunter’s outfit, complete with a dirty leather tunic adorned with a bushy sleeveless vest made out of some sort of fur skin. His trousers were a mix of black and greens in a splotchy camouflaging pattern, mimicking the dull colour of the greaves that guarded his well-defined legs. Arwen noticed he didn’t have a weapon, but assumed he relied more on traps and snares than direct kills “I am wondering if we could ask your help?”
“Arwen, what are you doing?” Cai sounded worried.
She waved him off. “How can I help?” the man asked once he had gotten into earshot of conversation that didn’t require shouting.
Arwen noticed Owen shooting her a completely baffled look. She frowned, failing to understand their concern. It wasn’t like this singular man could be a form of danger, right? “We are scouring the forest for any sign of the ‘Dark Entity’ that has been plaguing Alaru. You have heard of the attacks, no doubt. Have you got any information that could help us? Being a hunter,” she gestured to his clothes, “you spend a lot of time in Coed, yes?”
“I do,” the man confirmed. “Though more so than usual lately. As for this ‘Dark Entity’,” his face creased in confusion, “I thought it had been dealt with?”
“It has stopped attacking, but we do not know if it will return.”
The man’s eyes widened, as if realising something important. “Of course… I did not factor that. Well, I’m afraid I can’t offer you any help in that regard. I have found nary anything of note out here.”
Arwen suppressed her disappointment. “No matter, thank you nonetheless.”
“Hey, could you confirm for me,” the man pointed behind the Princess, “that’s the way to Alaru, right?”
“Yes,” Arwen cocked her head, wondering why she would be asked such a pointless question.
The man explained himself, sensing her confusion. “My sense of direction isn’t quite what it once was. Just making sure for myself. I’ll be seeing you.”
“Goodbye,” Arwen called, turning to follow the hunter’s retreating form as he walked past them. When she met Gwyn’s eyes, she was struck by his look of utter disbelief. “…what?”
“Arwen,” Cai said slowly. “What were you doing?”
“Wha-” Arwen splayed her hands in protest. “I was just talking to him. Why, did I do something wrong? I thought he could help us.”
“You were talking… to him?” Gwyn asked.
“Gods, guys, I am sorry if I did something wrong!” Arwen protested. “But I seriously doubt that old hunter could’ve done anything against three well-trained knights. What is with you?”
Gwyn took a step closer. “Arwen, there was nobody there.”
Arwen stepped back away from him. “What?”
“You were talking to no one,” Cai corroborated the Sentinel. “You just stopped and started talking to the air.”
A play of emotions crossed the Princess’s face. “What? No. You’re lying to me. There was a man, right there!” she pointed out the spot she had initially seen him. “He came up to us and was like, ten metres from us tops. There’s no way you could miss him.”
“There was no one.” Owen stated quietly, as if afraid to stir her up.
“What are you all talking about? There was!”
“They’re right,” Eryk added. “You were talking to yourself the whole time.”
“But…” Arwen’s lower lip trembled. “That’s impossible. Tell me you’re joking.”
“Arwen… you’ve been using magic all day,” Cai cooed. “Why don’t we go back and get some sleep? It was probably just a hallucination, nothing to worry about.”
A surge of anger replaced her trepidation. “I am not mad!” Arwen snarled. “And I told you not to talk to me like that, for Gods’ sake! I think after four years of constant use, I know how to manage mana madness. I did not overuse my magic!”
“Then what else could it have been?” Cai kept up his annoyingly soothing voice. “Come on, Arwen, use logic here.”
“I do not have mana madness!” she insisted. “I know the signs, and there is no way I could’ve pushed myself into hallucinations, I’m telling you!”
“Arwen, please, be reasonable.”
“Reason this,” she stuck up her middle finger. “I am not hallucinating!”
“What if she truly wasn’t hallucinating?” Eryk spoke up in her defence.
“Okay, then what was that?” Cai snapped back at him, as if he was some sort of child that had gotten in his way.
“Perhaps she really did see a man,” Eryk was undeterred by Cai’s hostility. “It is obvious that strange ongoings are occurring in Alaru. The otherworldly creature attacks, the mayor’s unexplained disappearance, there’s a lot happening we cannot explain.”
Arwen grabbed the Light Gem from her pocket and thrust it by the chain towards them. “This thing can do all sorts of crazy things. The Entity has an artifact itself, right? What if that sword is behind this? Please, you have to believe me.”
“It might have an artifact,” Cai corrected, sounding unconvinced. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“You had quite an… intense day yesterday. We were walking in the sun the entire daytime and you had two subsequent visions from the Light Gem… that would factor into mana madness, wouldn’t you say?” Gwyn reasoned.
“Are you serious?” Arwen took another step back. She suddenly felt like a cornered animal, snapping and biting as the hunters drew close. “Why won’t you believe me?!”
“We do,” Cai changed his story, raising his hands in a non-threatening gesture. “We believe you, okay? Let’s head back to the inn and we can talk about it after we all get some rest.”
“No!” Arwen shook her head. “I refuse to accept you believe me!”
“Think about what you’re doing!” Gwyn appealed to the logical part of her mind. “You’re acting like a wild animal. We’re not going to hurt you. We just want to figure this out with you.”
Her smouldering anger erupted into full blown-blown fury, racing through the Princess with a burning sensation in her veins. She damn well knew what she fucking saw! That was not a hallucination! How dare they act as if they knew her mental state! Trying to coo her like a wild cat being put up for adoption! How could they?!
In a sequence of events she hardly had any control over, Arwen’s irises began to glow a purple hue as jolts of electricity begun to arc along her arms. Unbidden and fuelled by her anger, Arwen’s lightning magic stirred and began to manifest, her control over it robbed by her emotional state. “Holy shit!” she heard Owen exclaim.
“Fuck! Arwen!” Cai yelled. “Stop this, now!”
A small bolt of electricity escaped her fingers and shot into the forest ground, making a buzzing noise as the smell of burnt leaves assaulted her nostrils. The acrid smell snapped Arwen back to her senses. What was she doing?! Immediately, the lightning smouldering around her arms begun to dissipate as Arwen worked on controlling her magic. Her purple irises flashed dangerously as she guided the excess magic into the ground, concentrating on removing every arc of lightning from her body. When she was done and her eyes returned to their normal blue, she took a deep breath. “I am sorry,” she apologised unsteadily. “I cannot remember the last time I lost control like that.”
She was truly ashamed. Lightning was the most powerful type of magic in existence. If father caught wind of her mess-up here, she would be subjected to months of intense control exercises before he would be satisfied once more. “Control over your magic is the most important factor for us lightning mages,” her father’s voice echoed in her head. “If you cannot control it, someone could easily die by your hand unintentionally.”
Lightning magic had little weakness, but it was lifelike and volatile by nature, and was thus hard to control. For instance, Arwen had particular trouble preventing her manifested lightning from immediately shooting through her feet into the earth below her when she first started training. Lightning simply wanted to do its own thing, and forcing it to subvert its wants was a difficult task.
“Arwen,” Cai exhaled, clearly having been holding his breath since her little episode. “Let’s get back to Alaru.”
A wave of dizziness struck the Princess, and she teetered for a moment before correcting herself. She was definitely on the verge of mana madness now, which would no doubt hinder her efforts to convince them that the man she had seen was real… or was he?
Arwen nodded. “Of course.”
“Come on,” Cai stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He smiled down at her. “That was a close one, huh? I thought for sure we’d all be getting zapped.”
Bran’s face flashed before her eyes. She stiffened under his arm, but didn’t try to break free. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. She had just made things worse for herself.
Cai begun to lead her back towards the town. “Let’s go home, yeah?”