Before Arwen could gain her wits again, she was tackled and sent sprawling into the ground with a resounding splash. Her head bounced painfully off of the smooth ground and an involuntary cry of pain escaped her lips.
Wide, bloodshot, crazed, animalistic eyes stared inches away from Arwen’s. It was only then that her recovering mind grasped that she was being straddled by a crazed vampire intent on killing her in some violent and horrible way. “What have you done to me!” Elain screamed so loudly that sprays of dark coloured spit flew into Arwen’s face. “Where are we?!”
Arwen tried to escape her grasp, but the vampire was strong and had far too good a hold on her body. The feeling of pleasure as the vampire fed, muted as it was through the murk of memory, had sent all rational thoughts scattering in the Princess’s mind. Such was the soul-shuddering sensation that even Arwen wanted to taste someone’s blood after the event, though the thought now thankfully repulsed her.
Two hands began to compress around Arwen’s neck, causing an intense build-up of pressure in her head and her face instantly reddened in response. Though the vampire was being comparatively light, else Arwen’s windpipe would’ve collapsed- and where was the chances of an explanation from a dead human?- it was still enough to completely cut of the Princess’s lungs of much needed air.
Arwen let out a visceral gasping noise. Her hands flew to the vampire’s arms, trying to pry them away from her neck, but Elain was far too strong and Arwen couldn’t use her magic at all. Her vision blurred, and past Elain’s head, she could see an endless void of white light streaming into her eyes from the sky above. Her head felt like it was going to explode. Blood roared in her ears. Involuntarily, her hands found the vampire’s face and palmed at it uselessly, attempting to push the stalwart vampire away from her.
From somewhere behind the choking Princess, a frightened male voice reached their ears. “Elain?!”
The vampire burst off of Arwen’s choking body and darted to her feet in such a fast movement that it’d have looked like teleportation had she blinked. Arwen’s pain-gripped face contorted as she sucked in a deep lungful of air and rolled onto her side. Her neck throbbed and her entire upper body felt swelled and foreign. Another deep, wheezing breath let loose a torrent of tears from Arwen’s eyes, and she began to sob uncontrollably between desperate inhalations and exhalations.
Somewhere to her left, she caught the vague sounds of a deep conversation between the vampire and her visitor.
“It truly is you, Iago!”
“Elain… what happened to you? What have… you become?”
Arwen wanted to shift herself so she could assess what was going on around her, but she was scared that the sloshing water would alert the vampire, who would then turn around and finish her off. She remained still, her left cheek half-submerged in the tepid liquid, simply recovering and listening, feeling helpless that she was stuck with a vampire that retained her strength while Arwen’s magic was disabled.
“No! You don’t understand! I didn’t want this!” Elain tried to appeal to her dead husband. “When you died, I lost everything! I had to find a way to survive, please believe me!”
The Princess almost immediately terminated the meeting by escaping the dimension, but her instincts told her to wait and assess the situation before doing so. The second Elain turned her attention back to Arwen, however, she was immediately getting out. She was unsure if death in the dimension meant death in the real world, however she had retained small bruises from Eryk’s manhandling of her when she first encountered the dimension of the dead with her vampire companion. She therefore did not want to risk mortal wounds.
“But who have you harmed to survive, Elain? How can you be so selfish?!”
“Selfish?!” Elain screamed the word. “You never saw me at your burial. I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe! When they lowered that ugly wooden coffin into that hole, I kept expecting you to burst out and embrace me like one of your characters in those books you write! But you didn’t! You stayed dead! And there was nothing I could do! There wasn’t an author controlling my life, steering it toward a happy ending! I had to make my own fate!”
There was silence, and in that brief moment, came the horrid realisation that if Arwen was further choked by the deranged vampire, she wouldn’t be able to say the words to escape from the dimension and her oncoming death. Without hesitation, Arwen rolled onto her back so she was staring at the endless sky. Requiring a surprising amount of force to push the words from her throat, Arwen croaked up at the sky. “Get me… out.”
A sinking feeling tugged at Arwen’s soul, and the last thing she heard before being whirled back into the real world was a small, morose voice. “I love you, Elain.”
…
Arwen clutched at her agonisingly raw throat the moment the blossoms and surrounding ponds returned to her vision. “Arwen!” she heard Eryk yell at her as he clambered to his feet. “Run! Now!”
“Get out of the way!” Owen screamed somewhere behind her.
A pained gasp was all Arwen’s wrecked throat could muster before a crushing grip sent a burst of pain down her right arm. A moment later she was pulled downwards towards the fallen vampire woman with such sudden force that she felt something in her shoulder pop and a wave of spiky agony rushed through her shoulder and up in her neck. Arwen tried to scream, but a pathetic whimper was all she could muster. The Light Gem fell from her right hand and bounced in an almost skittering manner away from the tangled pair. The vampire ignored her captor’s pain and pulled her close. “What did you do to me?!”
Cai charged at the woman, intending to release her grasp on the Princess by cleaving her arm in two, but Arwen held up a hand at the glowing knight. “Wait,” she managed to scratch out.
Surprisingly, Cai obeyed and immediately ceased his advance. Arwen refocused her gaze at the vampire, trying her best to ignore the thousand pains her body was yelling at her. Her throat felt horrid, her shoulder and left arm was on fire, and her right cheek burned, but Arwen was mentally sharp, and she could see a spark of humanity back in the vampire’s eyes. A semblance of… something normal.
Elain’s grip loosened into a gentler clutch. “Please…” she begged the Princess with misty eyes. “Please take me back to him.”
Owen lowered his bow somewhat, sensing a complete change in the vampire lady’s constitution. Cai stood on the balls of his feet, looking ready to pounce but just barely holding off, while Eryk stood stiffly and was observing the confusing turn of the events with wide eyes.
“Let… go of… me,” Arwen wheezed the words, “and I… will. I… promise.”
The vampire immediately released Arwen from her grasp, who staggered back a few steps and squeaked in pain as her busted shoulder jolted in tiny little pins and needles of agony. She resisted the urge to clutch her ruined appendage, however, and instead laced her right hand behind her back. Her fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger.
“Take me back,” Elain had shuffled onto her feet and utterly ignored the surrounding Cai and Eryk, focusing solely on Arwen with a determination fuelled by her desperation. “Take me there.”
“Come…” Arwen took an uncertain step towards her, slowly pulling the dagger out of her waistband and extending her elbow outwards so that it was free, but still hidden, behind her back. “Come… to… me.”
Elain barely hesitated and closed the gap. She wrapped her arms around Arwen’s back, her fingers barely missing the pointed tip of the dagger, and nestled her head into the Princess’s good shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” the vampire sounded utterly genuine. “I’m really truly sorry… and…”
Her words were cut off as Arwen plunged her dagger into the vampire’s torso and channelled as much lightning magic as she could into Elain, using the metal blade as a conduit to guide her burst of power. A foreign buzzing noise filled her ears for the briefest of moments before a loud popping noise clapped in a boom burst of sound. The resulting force sent the vampire flying back from Arwen into a tree, sending explosive shards of bark into the air as the unfortunate blossom creaked and splintered from the strain.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
In an unconscious heap, the mangled body of Elain, the crazed vampire, fell onto the floor.
Arwen’s breaths came out as ragged gasps. She fell to her knees and an uncontrollable dizziness swirled her vision into liquid. She had used all of the power she dared, but failed to fully control the dazzling lightning as it channelled down her arm and into the dagger. Her left arm was hanging loosely from her shoulder, but her right arm burned blindingly with a staggering jolting pain that seared its way through her veins as her body reacted to the searing magic that had been pushed through in a desperate and panicked attempt to disable the deadly vampire once and for all. Her muscles cramped uncontrollably and, worse still, she couldn’t move her right arm at all.
“Arwen!” Cai caught the Princess before she could fall onto the floor. “What happened? What did you do?!”
She heard Owen running up to her from behind, but turned to face Cai. “I… kept my… promise.”
Cai’s face froze in alarm. “What?”
“My arms…” she complained. “I cannot move them.”
Eryk was cautiously approaching the unconscious vampire woman and prodded her thigh with the tip of his sword. Cai’s hand on Arwen’s right shoulder diverted her attention back to the knight. He gently grabbed the sleeve of her uniform and rolled it up to her bicep, letting a small gasp escape his lips. “What the…?”
“Are you okay?” Owen slowed to a stop behind the Princess.
“See if Gwyn’s okay!” Cai barked back. Arwen looked down at her exposed arm and saw deep purple marks running in vein-like strings down her arm at towards her fingers. She croaked in relief at the disturbing visage.
“It’s… fine,” she rasped. “It will… heal.”
“Are you okay, Princess Arwen?” Eryk jogged up to the pair after determining the woman was no longer a threat.
“I’ll have to look over her to truly tell,” Cai looked up and met Eryk’s gaze. “Is the vampire dead?”
“No.”
Cai moved to stand, but Eryk intervened. “Don’t,” his voice lowered a couple octaves. “This one’s mine. A savage creature like her must not be allowed to live in this world.”
Arwen remained supported in Cai’s arms, both of which were watching the tall blonde vampire stalk his unconscious victim. With an almost lazy nudge, he kicked the slumped figure to the floor and unsheathed his sword with a loud sliding noise. Eryk knelt, almost sombrely, besides the vampire and positioned his sword by her throat.
“Ahhh!” Arwen burst into tears when Eryk, with one great cry and brutal movement, sliced his sword so deeply into the woman’s neck that her head rolled clean off, sending rhythmic bursts of blood spewing onto the innocent pink-white leaves decorating the Ceiros Blossom’s soil and splattering them in flecks of deep red. The smell of tangy metal filled Arwen’s nostrils and assaulted her mouth with a harsh taste. Her pain was momentarily forgotten about. She couldn’t tear her eyes off of slowly weakening bursts of blood rupturing from the headless corpse. She felt Cai stiffen against her, and a quick glance revealed a face twisted in sick horror, but neither could break away from the morbid horror scene that lay before them.
“You sully our kind with your sick ways,” Eryk rose to full height. “This was your path from the beginning.”
“Gwyn’s alive!” Owen had opted not to address the chilling execution he had just bore witness to. “I think he’ll be fine!”
The news was a relief to Arwen, but she was too focused on shrinking back from Eryk’s approaching form to celebrate. A dull thud kicked up a small puff of dirt as Eryk dropped Arwen’s bloody dagger by her side. He knelt down and looked into her crying eyes. “Are you okay, Princess?” his tone was light and gentle. His sky-blue eyes, which Arwen expected to hold the glint of madness she saw in Elain, was filled with shining concern and empathy. “I am sorry you had to see that.”
As Arwen stared dumbly at Eryk’s blood-splattered face, Cai spoke up in reply. “Eryk… that was… too much.”
“There was no other way to kill her humanely,” Eryk softly appealed to the knight, watching the rivers of tears fall down Arwen’s face and drip onto the dry ground below. “When I was young… my home in Helvetia, Kald, was raided by those bastards from the Keep. The lot of them were blood-fuelled, and I watched as they slaughtered my people like they were nothing. One had his throat slit, and yet he continued on like a… like a deranged animal, even as his blood cascaded out of his neck. I watched as he ran a fist right through his attacker. I watched as he then turned and ran towards me. And then… I watched as he murdered my parents for the simple crime of existing. Nothing short of brain damage or beheading would’ve killed that vampire, nothing. I know it.”
“Okay,” Cai exhaled ambiguously. “Go and help Owen with Gwyn, please. I’ll see to Arwen.”
Eryk, perhaps sensing their trepidation, simply nodded and rose to walk away.
“Right,” Cai turned his attention to Arwen. “W-what happened to your throat? There are red marks all over you, like someone tried to throttle you or something.”
An image of Elain’s feral eyes staring directly into hers flashed in Arwen’s mind. She shook her head at Cai.
He lightly caressed her injured cheek with his thumb, simultaneously wiping at a trail of tears running down from her eyes. “I don’t think that’s shattered your cheekbone, you got lucky. But it’ll leave a hell of a bruise.”
Arwen had nothing to say, nor the real ability to express herself with her swelled and aching throat, so Cai simply moved on to her left arm. “It’s dislocated,” he declared. “You will have to get it looked at in Ffin, but I’ll reset it myself for now. It should restore mobility, but… it’ll hurt,” he made sure to stare the Princess dead in the eye to ensure her understanding. “Are you ready?”
Arwen nodded slightly. Without warning, Cai slotted her arm back into its shoulder socket with an excruciating crunch that would’ve had Arwen screaming if she could. The pain was so sharp and sudden that it robbed her of breath, and sent her reeling forward as even more tears burst forth from beneath her eyes. Mercifully, the pain quickly subsided and Arwen found herself instinctively rocking back and forth. “It hurts…” she mumbled like a child. “It hurts.”
“I know,” Cai cooed. “It’ll pass. Listen to me, you said your right arm will fix itself?”
Arwen tried to speak, but just nodded instead. Cai let loose a deep, soulful sigh, and lowered himself further onto his knees. “I just… that was close.”
-cut-
A gentle fire crackled as an opposing light to the otherwise total darkness of the blossomed dirt trail, surrounding by five lone soldiers wallowing in their post-traumatic misery. Owen sat uninjured and unfazed, but that could’ve been an act. Gwyn, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically silent and never let his arms away from his ribs unless he was eating, which he had partaken in about three bites of cured jerky before giving up. The Sentinel had retained consciousness throughout the entire ordeal, but was so certain that he had broken his ribs that he did not dare move in case one was positioned as an awaiting blade against one of his lungs. Thankfully, Owen had ascertained that his ribs were simply fractured, not broken, but Gwyn appeared too miserable to react lightly. Arwen suspected there were mental wounds accompanying his physical ones.
Eryk had also fractured a rib from the vampire’s kick, and was heavily bruised down his right flank from his fall. He also had a sprained ankle, four jagged scratches running across his face, and had a bruised neck, but was otherwise fine and let not a word of complaint slip by his lips.
Cai was almost entirely uninjured, save for an aching back, and had been instrumental along with Eryk and Owen in assisting Arwen and Gwyn, who had taken the brunt of the vampire’s ire.
Arwen herself was in physical pain but mentally numb. She stared catatonically at the fire; her mind having turned itself off from the trauma of the events two hours prior. Her left arm pulsed in an agonising throb in tune with her sore cheek, which felt like it was pushing her right eye shut despite Cai’s assurances that it was perfectly fine. She also had a sore back, but it was nothing to the scratchy and raw ache in her throat after the attempted strangulation. She tried not to dwell on the fact that she’d have died instantly if the vampire had truly wanted it.
Her right arm was still dangling at her side, but her immobility was her own fault of poor magic use, which she blamed on the physical pain and mental arousal that the fight had instilled onto her poor body. Lines of burning pain wormed its way down her right arm, but the cramping had ceased and the purple scars had already faded into ugly patches of greyish skin.
“I don’t think this will be a day we’ll ever forget,” Owen tried a light attempt at levity, but none of the grim faces responded.
“I didn’t think anything could affect me like that ever again,” Arwen confessed. Her voice had thankfully returned after much waiting and greedy gulps of water, but it was still raw and strangely deep. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”
“You will,” Gwyn spoke cautiously, for fear of aggravating his sore ribs. “When shit like this happens to me, I always think about how I’d never be able to sleep again. But then, when the night draws in and the mess is cleaned up, I go right to bed and sleep just fine.”
“I don’t want more nightmares,” Arwen whispered back. She looked at the Light Gem laying by her bag on the outer perimeter of the circle they had established with their bodies. Eryk had retrieved it from where it fell and also cleaned her blood-covered dagger in one of the ponds for her. “I should throw that thing into the fire.”
“What made you use it on her anyways?” Cai asked.
Arwen’s gaze grew downcast. “I wanted to sneak up on her and use my magic, but she caught me and was about to attack,” her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip trembled uncontrollably. “I was about to die,” her voice hitched. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“You should’ve run away, like I told you.” Owen ruthlessly reprimanded her.
Cai disagreed. “Then we’d all be dead.”
His words befell another grim silence that lasted until they had wordlessly decided to go to bed. Laying in her uncomfortable sleeping bag in her uniform, for she hadn’t bothered to change into her night clothes, Arwen sobbed silently until, eventually, she cried herself to sleep.