Redux: Lineage

The second the two of us were able to move, Zane was right by my side and more than eager to get the woman clutching at my back off of me. He was ready to physically move her away if needs be, but his expression softened as he saw the look on her face. I felt her arms limply fall away from me, clutching at herself as she began to sob quietly, tears brimming in her eyes as she collapsed to the floor. I scuttled forward slightly before getting to my feet, Zane standing taller beside me as we stared at the sobbing woman.

It was at this moment the redhead, Verella, rushed over to the our black-haired saviour, her eyes also brimming with tears, and hugged her tightly. I was never a fan of being in a room full of sobbing women, didn't exactly hit the spot for me in any kind of way, and I wasn't really sure what to do with myself. I sheathed my sword over my back, sliding the pristine blade in and locking it into place, before groaning loudly at the pain in my shattered nose.

"Here," I heard a voice say behind me. "Let me have a look."

I turned around to see a member of house N'vadi, both Zane and I recoiling in shock, only for her to hold up her hands and freeze us both in place with her magic.

"I'm not an enemy," she said in a cold, calm tone.

I looked her over, seeing that she met the standard appearance for a N'Vadi shaman. Her long, white hair was tied back and braided, keeping it out of the way, she had three lines of white paint over her smooth, dark skin; two along the lines of her defined cheekbones and one down her chin. She wore a long, loose golden robe that hanged down to her bare feet, and wore the top half of a jackal skull on the top of her head.

"If I release you, are you going to stay calm?" she asked, knowing full well neither of us could do anything more than grunt.

She killed the spell, giving us both our ability to move back, before walking over to me. She placed a gentle hand over my nose, even the light touch causing the smashed bones to ache slightly, but the pain soon began to melt away as her hand lit up a snow-white, channelling her power into healing the injury and restoring my nose to its proper condition.

"Anything else?" she asked. "For either of you?"

"Nothing worth note," Zane said, crossing his arms over his broad chest and looking around the room. "Mind telling us where we are?"

I found myself just as interested. We were in a dimly-lit wooden room, with a table in the centre, stacked with small pieces of paper, a single bed in the corner, and a pile of clothes on the floor. From the lack of windows, I guessed we were either in a storage shed or a basement of some kind, and the eerie quiet of the area besides the flickering of the candles and the quiet sobbing of the two women made it feel like a very hostile atmosphere.

"I'm not sure if I am permitted to answer that," she said, looking at the two women in the corner with a saddened expression. "Please. Excuse me."

With a curt nod, she headed over to the corner of the room with the crying ladies, inquiring as to what the situation was. Her eyes lit up in horror as they explained the death of Ellanora to her, the dark-skinned woman tightly hugging the other two as Cassandra tried her best to stem her tears, seemingly to want to talk to us. She climbed to her feet, wiping her eyes and moving over to us, standing with her hands gripping the bottom of her shirt and her lips trembling as she tried her hardest not to break down again.

"I... I'm sorry for what happened t-to you..." she said, mere moments away from bawling her eyes out.

"Who was she?" I asked, not wanting the sympathy to rest on either Zane or myself at this point.

"She was... she was my daughter," she said, sniffling loudly as she wiped tears away from her eyes. "I told her she had to be careful... but she was desperate to save you..."

"I'm sorry," I said in a heavy tone, nodding slowly. "Neither of you deserved this."

She was silent for a long moment, a gentle hand of the N'Vadi being placed on her shoulder, before I turned back to Zane.

"That was the High Queen," I said in a snarling tone, noting the surprised look on the women's faces as I spoke.

"What makes you say that?" Zane asked me.

"Vranthir. The sword she was using," I answered. "It's a relic that's bestowed to every ruler that ever sits on the Vampiric High Throne. She wasn't wearing the High Crown though... strange."

"Learn anything else about her?" Zane asked me, scratching his chin.

"She's not the same ruler that I was taught about and she's from a different Vampiric House," I continued. "She's from the House of Kaine, same as our friends here."

"How... how do you know all that?" Verella asked, walking over to me with a scowl on her face.

"The skin colour and the outfits, mostly," I said, turning to face her. "The Kaine family is usually identified by gothic and clear skin, symptomatic of your particular mutation of the 'curse'. Though there's one thing that I have to ask."

"Hold on. Who are you, exactly?" Verella asked. "I thought we were just saving some knight-in-training, but here you are with a university degree's worth of knowledge about Vampire politics."

"My name's Richter," I answered, smiling in as friendly a manner as I could without seeming smug or arrogant. "I've been trained to deal with pretty much everything that goes bump in the night. Zombies, ghouls, spirits, spectres, and all the other spooky things you can think of."

"You're a monster hunter?" she asked, stepping away slightly and reaching for her sword.

"Only for those where hunting is the only option," I said with a shake of my head, trying to defuse the situation before it got bad. "If I can talk to a creature and convince it to stop harming people, I'll usually let them off with a warning. It's only for non-sapient creatures that I immediately draw steel for."

"Right..." she said, moving her hand away from her hilt and still giving me a wary gaze. "Why are you in the city and charging at Vampires?"

"I was contacted by the Empress to assist her in removing the Vampire threat from the city," I said, looking between all of them as I spoke. "Initially, we just thought it was a little spat for territory... until I read a few reports on the N'Vadi getting involved. Maybe a shaman's point of view might help clear up why you're so far from the savannas?"

"It's not an interesting story," the shaman said with a long sigh, walking towards me and leaning against the wall. "It honestly reads more like a bar brawl than a war tale."

"I'm eager all the same," I said with a polite nod.

"Somebody hit my friends, then I hit them, and then their friends started hitting me," she said in a sarcastic tone. "This entire war we've got going on was one of allegiances being called on and personal politics being brought into play."

"It's a little more complicated than that, Jhene," Cassandra said, staunching the flood of tears and readying herself to explain. "The Vampires Houses... they're fragmented and at war with each other. Selana, my younger sister, began a campaign that she said would 'create a world where the Vampires reigned supreme and all those that had ever shunned our would be punished'. Everyone wanted to know what she was talking about, but when she explained her proposal for how she'd achieve it, it shattered our entire court."

"What was she suggesting?" I asked.

"Resurrecting a Vampire God to cure the weaknesses of our kind and conquer the world," she said in a dry tone.

"Sounds as fanciful as ever," I nodded. "She aware that Sanguine's a fairy tail traced back to a specific book?"

"Normally, I'd agree..." Cassandra said, running her hand through her fringe and sighing. "When we were first blooded, the two of us went exploring, we ended up falling into an ancient ruin that didn't look like it had been touched in a few thousand years. Under any circumstance, we'd have left in a matter of minutes... but there was a smell of blood like something we'd never seen before."

"You go Feral?"

"Something close to it," she nodded. "We couldn't stop ourselves. We were drawn to these ruins, made our way to the central area and found what looked like a holy altar... with a chalice sat on it that looked as pristine and new as it could."

"Was there blood in it?"

"Yeah, a strong, powerful type of blood. The two of us shared the chalice, gulped down every last drop of it and honestly felt like we could tear down mountains with our bare hands," Cassandra recounted, looking up the ceiling and squeezing her eyes shut. "It wasn't normal blood, wasn't the blood of any kind of earthly creature we'd ever seen, or have ever seen since. It didn't just keep us satiated for months... it cured us."

"What?" I asked in disbelief.

"After we drank from that chalice, we've never needed to feed since. It also seemed to reawaken our bodies, our hearts started beating, blood started flowing, and our bodies functioned as they did before we were blooded," she continued. "We were human again... only we had all the powers of a Vampire... my daughter, Ellanora... she was a natural-born Vampire."

That statement nearly took my legs out from under me. What Cassandra was talking about, if true, was a first in history. There had never been a natural-born Vampire due to the fact the curse killed off their bodies, made it so their reproductive organs didn't work properly. It's what kept their population so minimal on top of blooding being a dangerous and risky process. They couldn't reproduce naturally... but if she was telling the truth, then that meant a whole world of trouble."

"Did it make you stronger?" I asked her.

"Infinitely so," she nodded. "Our powers felt as if they increased ten times after we drank from the chalice... though I feel it changed Selana."

"How so?"

"I believe she became addicted to it. She wanted more, desired the strength it brought her. I believe her entire reasoning for becoming the High Queen of the Vampires was to be legally allowed to funnel all of our resources, not just that of House Kaine, into searching for the source of the blood," she relayed.

"And she thinks the source is Sanguine?"

"How could she not? Tales tell of a Vampire capable of doing so many things we've never been able to do, siring lines, and creating families. The legends say that each House was founded by a child of Sanguine himself," she said in a nervous tone.

"But he's been proven to be a myth," I cut in. "People have traced his origins back to a book found in the basement of a village story-teller. It was a tall tale that got way out of hand."

"Then what do you suggest created this perfect blood that can heal the afflictions of Vampires?" Cassandra asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Because I stood exactly where you did right now, so many years ago, fully aware of the fallacy of Sanguine... only to find myself presented with undeniable evidence of their existence with nothing else to turn to as a logical explanation."

I went quiet for a long moment, mind ablaze with every piece of knowledge I had about Vampires, even dipping into knowledge of necromancy, seances, and all other manners of magic and monsters that had restoration properties... but there was no creature, spell, or sigil I knew that could hope to work half as much magic as this blood chalice had on Cassandra... if she was telling the truth. I shook my head, eager to turn to more pressing matters before getting lead astray.

"What splintered the Houses?" I asked. "Why are they all fighting one another?"

"For the same thing we're debating," Cassandra said quickly. "Some believe that Sanguine exists and that we must fight the 'oppressors' and welcome our true ruler back into this world..."

"And others believe he's a fairy tale?"

"And one that Selana is willing to expose all of Vampire kind to in the effort to find," Cassandra sighed, turning around and walking back over to the table, leaning on it with both hands and screwing her eyes shut.

I followed over to her, still feeling the eyes of the other two in my back as I moved.

"And it got nasty from there, I take it?" I asked. "Vampires have always been as strict as it gets when making sure their castles, homes, Houses, and whatever else they hold valuable are hidden away from prying eyes and kept in the shadows. Selana not only declaring war against all the other races, but also painting a target on every Vampire house in the world, isn't something I'd imagine would sit well with your leaders?"

"Not just the leaders. You saw it yourself out there. Every member of every House had their own opinion on what was right, some desperate for power, others wanting things to remain the way they were, and others merely trying to break the other two camps apart from their fighting. It shattered every House to pieces and its merely two sides of every colour we have trying to kill one another before the other side ruins their plan."

"Why did Selana blame you, Verella?" I asked the redhead.

Her eyes turned to me again, lips curling slightly and revealing her pristine fangs for a brief moment, followed by a shake of her head and her side of the story.

"Because I was the first one to raise my blade against her," she shrugged, trying to act as if it was nothing, but not fooling anybody. "I couldn't stand by and watch her doom my friends and family, drew steel, and it all went to shit from there. So she's completely right. I'm the reason we're all killing each other right now."

"A conflict seemed to be coming either way. You stood up for what you believed was right. That takes a braver person than you realise," I commented.

"Thanks for the motivational speech, but my bravery doesn't really help change the fact my cousin is dead because of me," Verella sighed.

"Verella, please don't blame yourself..." Cassandra said in an upset tone.

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked, crossing her arms and moving to the corner of the room. "If I'd have just kept cool and not attacked Selana, none of us would be in this situation."

"Blame isn't going to get anyone anywhere," Zane said, speaking up after being quiet for so long. "We can point fingers and name names when the dust has settled and the war is over, but as of right now, we're wasting time. You say Selana's looking for a way to find Sanguine. What's she got so far?"

"A body she believes is his and a method of revival," Cassandra growled. "She's planning on using a soul funnel to restore the body to life."

"So she's planning on reviving a corpse and... then what? Sanguine's spirit is long gone. Even if he was real, she'd be waking up nothing more than an empty shell," I pointed out.

"She's apparently found a tapestry that states Sanguine's not dead, just dormant," Verella shrugged.

"Of course she has," I sighed in a bemused manner.

"My thoughts exactly," Verella growled. "She apparently just needs to pump enough power into the body and it'll come back to life and wreak havoc across the land, resinstate the glorious Vampire reign, yadda, yadda, yadda. We know the schpiel."

"Doom and gloom, end of days, that old chestnut," I said, waving it away and getting a small smirk from Verella in response. "Souls aren't exactly a quantity you can buy from people. You're either gonna need to mass-murder thousands of people to get enough of them to revive a god... or you're going to need to find some very powerful artefacts that have souls stored inside them."

"I'll give you three guesses as to which route she's going down," Verella growled.

"It's both, isn't it?" I asked with a disappointed glare.

"Eeyup," she sighed. "It's what she did to Ellanora, stole her soul just before it faded away and is gonna use it to revive Sanguine."

"Then we best make sure she doesn't get the chance," I said.

"And how are we going to do that?" Verella asked. "Last I checked, Selana had us vastly outnumbered and is the strongest Vampire walking right now."

"I've got some friends who have some friends," I said with a shrug. "I'm sure they'll be capable of sorting something out for us."

"Oh yeah?" Verella asked. "And who would those friends be?"