Kal took a deep breath as what was left of his forces slowly trudged through the forest at the foot of the mountain range that housed the dancing caves of Noxis Nyx, and the location of his most gruesome defeat. Of course in the eyes of others this might not necessarily be a defeat, the full capabilities of his opponents were never known, so he made the biggest blunder any general could make on a battlefield. He underestimated them.

But right now, with that mountain range behind him, and an unknown future before him. He could not help but have a smidge of respect for those vampires and dark elves. They were seriously out gunned and out matched. According to statistics there should have been no way any of them could have fought back, even if the effects of Ionite had already worn off, and they were all gaining access of their natural abilities again. With magic by his side Kal expected a swift victory, instead he tasted bitter defeat.

His heart was heavy, apart from the grief of loosing his comrades, he also lost his pride. A naga would never scurry away from a battlefield. They would much rather prefer to fight till the end. But as a leader he had to take into consideration a lot of things, and chief among them was how to make sure the men under him, live, survive and succeed so that they can get back to their families.

Now he couldn’t even secure their bodies for burial. He was going to end up being a laughing stock in the eyes of every single person I’m Shearath. The. Vampires and dark elves were considered inconsequential. And while there was a bevy of activist and protesters, all of them from different races, each lobbying for the improvement of lives of every vampire and dark elf on the planet.

A significant amount of their population was trapped right here, under a mountain and being treated worse than slaves, but there were little pockets and groups of them scattered all over Shearath trying to survive and to stay under the radar of the council of light.

No one would ever believe him, the series of events that led to his unexpected defeat was just to much out of the ordinary, and without sufficient proof he would be treated as a joke for being unable to handle a bunch of vampires and dark elves that metaphorically had their wings clipped.

At this point in time Kal did not care, he was under an obligation to report what had happened here, and he would do so. Then he would lead what ever was left of his forces back home to recover and mourn. And once that was done, he would return back here with forces of his own, and he would make sure to bring this damn mountain to the ground. He did not care if the council would loose their nation of slaves, he was going to wipe them out, down to every last woman, and child. There was a blood debt between him and this people, this race of dark ones and moon children. And he intended to collect in full.

*******************

I think I can confirm at this very moment that I hated funerals. It was an entire charade of gloominess, grief and tears. It was actually the first time I have ever seen any vampire or dark elf cry. Say what you want about them but this people can compartmentalize, they knew how to put their pain aside, only choosing to grief at the most opportune moment. It was a show of strength I could not help but respect.

But the customs of both the vampire and dark elves were still a mystery to me. Especially when it came to burials. Both races demanded that the bodies of their dead be burnt immediately after a battle, a single day should not pass by before they are finally laid to rest. They all believed that the body of a recently deceased person still had vestiges of their soul that would anchor and hold them back in the physical plane. Wandering in between the veils as a spirit without the ability to move on or make peace with their deaths. As such a bath of fire is meant to cleanse them and detach them completely from their body and their old life, so that they could be sent on their merry way as they went on their next great big adventure.

And it was only when the fires were blazing and the smell of burnt flesh wafted into the air, would the vampires and dark elves finally start crying and wailing. Each letting themselves drown in grief, and all in their own way. Some actually mutilated themselves and poured their blood over the ashes and dying embers or the remains of those that had fallen.

I had grown to have a soft spot for this people but, this looked somewhat barbaric to me. But it was something I could never take from them. Because in some way, I could understand them. There was only so much you can take when you bottle pain, hurt and animosity deep in your heart for thousands of years. Eventually you’re going to want a release, to let go of your control and let the waves of grief, anger and pain wash all over you just so that tomorrow, you can still wake up and say I’m in control, to be stronger and ready to face a new wave of challenges.

But apart from this I had my own demons to face. Guilt was a rather peculiar thing, it could make you feel that all that’s wrong with the world was your fault alone. I couldn’t exactly say that was I was sure I was not to blame. No matter how this ended a lot of people would have still died.

But when you look at it, all this would not have happened if not for the fact that I made a split second decision to kill someone in authority just to save a child.

I saved a child, and she was growing to be quite the bundle of joy, but Cassie’s life was bought with the lives of hundreds of other innocent souls. She would live, safe and healthy, but thousands more will still die for her to see a future and live in it without worries.

But with all that aside, just like Soren had said, there was a price to be paid. And it was a price that had to be paid from my pocket alone. Killing was not easy, it put a lot of things in perspective for me. It also raised a lot of what if questions. Questions that as I stared at the flickering flames that licked and caressed the bodies of my fallen comrades did nothing more than put even more of a burden on me. I wondered if things would have been different if it was the vampires and dark elves who won the war instead. If we had the power and not the council of light, would we have acted the same way, or would we have taken the high road. As of this moment I could not see a future, missing memories of not, I absolutely knew nothing.

I was being pushed by waves and forces beyond my control, sometimes when I feel certain about every little thing around me, I realize that just like any other living thing I’m inconsequential and can only struggle to survive like the very ants that crawl on the floor.

I want to change everything, I want them to be free. But the world would not just seat back and let it happen. This freedom that I want, its going to take a lot of blood for it to become a reality. And to be honest I was not sure that I was ready to make such a sacrifice. I couldn’t do it, I would not do it. Being king was fun while it lasted, but I think someone else could do this job way better than I could.

“Kael! Kael!”

Over the clamor and wails of intense grief I heard somebody calling me, and then I smelt blood. I looked behind me, and standing behind me with an obscene amount of blood on her body was Nisi. She was so injured, that i could feel the blood flowing from her open wounds. My fangs ached, but I was able to wrest control from my primal instincts with a lot of strength I honestly didn’t know I had. I guess I really did not want to hurt Nisi, she was like a sister to me, and seeing her like this was beginning to piss me off fiercely. Whoever had laid their hands on her would not be having those hands in the next few hours.

“Nisi what happened, are you okay?”

I was notably worried, and I could hear the tremors of anger and fear in my voice. The battle has only been over just for a few hours, but my nerves were still strung tight and heavily tensioned by the atmosphere.

“They took them…..th…..t..hey……they took them away.”

Nisi was crying now, and as I cradled her tiny form, fearful of the intense and wracking sobs that shook her injured body I could not help feeling my entire body go cold.

“who Nisi, who was taken, and by whom?”

I spoke as gently as I could. Nisi seemed so fragile I almost felt like my questions would break her. She was just so tiny, and with her injuries she seemed even smaller than normal.

“Kuyait, She took them both. She took Cassie and Teluna. And she was with someone.”

I was confuse, I had an idea of what she just said, but I rather be sure.

“Wait a minute, you said someone took Kuyait, Teluna and Cassie.”

Nisi shook her head vigorously that I hoped her head won’t fall of her neck. Then she used her tiny hands to grab a fistful of my shirt and drew me closer.

“Kuyait betrayed us, she was with them. She took Cassie and Teluna with her and then they went deeper into the pit. To the place no one has ever gone before.”

I was shocked and shaken. Teluna and Nisi aside, over the past few weeks I had grown to be seriously attached to Cassie. Holding that little girl has always served to calm me down and give me strength. And Kuyait, even with the scars on her face was such a beauty that it would have been impossible for me to not have felt something for her. She had sincerely taken care of me and helped me whenever I needed it. At least I thought she was sincere, but now with Nisi’s story I was no longer sure.

This turn of events reminded me of the time Xaseah had warned me about Kuyait. But I wondered how Kuyait could have made contacts with the Nagas, and I also knew the Nagas had collapsed the tunnel during the process of their retreat. But if they were with Kuyait, did this mean that were other ways into the pit, or had the Nagas deceived us about leaving and were hiding somewhere in the pit. I needed to be sure, and only Nisi could give me the answers I needed.

“Nisi, who was with Kuyait when she took Cassie and Teluna with?”

Nisi took a deep breath and rolled her eyes a little. It was obvious she was spent and had lost a lot of blood. She was rapidly approaching her limit and I needed her to tell me what I needed to know before she passed out. It did not occur to me that her life was in danger, stupid as it was I chose to block everything out and focus on the fact that someone took some of the people I cared about while my back was turned. I really wanted to know who was so stupid. I had killed once for Cassie and condemned thousands more just for her to live. I was not adverse to doing it again.

“it was vampires, the people who took them away are vampires. But be careful, they have no seals, just like Teluna.”

“what?!!”

A council was being held, not to gloat but giving an order for the leaders of two races to gather so suddenly felt good. But that was just me stroking my ego and anger at the moment. I couldn’t see clearly, I was blinded by rage and I did not care what anybody said to me, as far as I was concerned they were the enemy.

I turned straight to Xaseah, she had hinted about a betrayal from Kuyait before. I just didn’t care enough to listen because that warning came from Xaseah’s mouth.

“You all owe me an explanation, especially you Xaseah. What the fuck is going on?”

Majority of the twenty vampire elders and what was left of the three hundred dark elves priestesses, some of them had died on the battlefield, were shaken. I saw the way their eyes moved every which way and the nervousness that they held in their gaze as I asked my question.

They all were looking at Xaseah, this people were way stronger than me, but at that moment I seemed to command a power that made all of them fearfully apprehensive of me. That and the fact that Soren was right beside me looking at each of them like they were his dinner seemed to play a part. Xaseah seemed to be the chosen scape goat for all of them.

“My apologies lord Kael, but if its as Nisi said and that her attackers went deeper into the pit, then there could only be one person capable of such cruelty to a child. Meadivh the rouge of house Nix. The last survivor of the great war, and the only living royal vampire. He was mostly known as king Meadivh the rouge.”

I was sorely confused. I thought that due to the suppression caused by the council of light, and the fact that the pit was not that conducive a place to live in, all vampires from during the time of the war had passed. Dark elves lived long too, originally they had shorter life spans than vampires, they could live for thousands of years, but not like vampires who could live for hundreds of thousands of years. It came as quite a surprise to me that a vampire from that era was still alive. It made him someone who really knew what happened during that period of time.

“But why did you guys not tell me about him.”

My voice was quite raised now, I don’t think it would have made any difference whether I knew or not. Because he could have still taken Cassie away. Due to how busy I had been I couldn’t properly watch her, and now the person I trusted to watch her for me betrayed me and took her away.

Vampire or not, I should be only twenty years old, but when it comes to Cassie, I felt like I have been her father for an entire lifetime. I couldn’t really be sure what the connection between me and that little girl entailed, but I was so very sure that I loved her.

“I apologize once again my lord, but we have been rather busy trying to find a way to survive an invasion. Forgive me for not remembering that we had a rouge vampire who has made it his life’s work to steal every un sealed vampire or elf child and take them deep into the pit, never to be seen again. Leaving their parents to pain and heartache because they had no idea where their children were and could not go looking for them because they were prisoners.”

Xaseah was screaming at me, I was a little surprised at the audacity of this woman, okay not really. I knew how capable Xaseah was, she was someone who would never let anybody walk all over her. But this situation seemed to have hit her harder than I expected. There was a story to be told here, she seemed to have quite the history with this Meadivh guy.

“But how does Kuyait ties into this. You warned me about her before, so you should have an idea right?”

I never claimed that I was an expert at understanding people, I could judge a person’s character, but I was not sure I would do it properly. I was still worried, but less angry. Looking at the face of everyone on this council meeting made me understand that one person or the other had a bone to pick with this Meadivh fellow. He had hurt them, so it would have been in my best interest to not act like I was the only person in the world.

“your maid Kuyait, would most probably be one of the children Meadivh had stolen away. She showed up here about twenty years ago, tired, hurt and claiming that she had escaped from the rouge. There was no seal on her, but it was only a matter of time before the warden found out and promptly sent for a device created by the weavers who sealed out races on the first place. After she was sealed by the device, a lot of the wariness about her arrival was washed away. People accepted her with open arms, and at the time I thought that she might have been……..forget it. But later on I discovered that Kuyait was secretive, quiet, and manipulative. She had a beauty that could hardly be compared with any body else, so she had no shortage of suitors among prisoner and jailers alike. In the course of a few years, she always seemed to find herself in a position of power among the inner circles of the more powerful vampires and dark elves.

It was a particular talent of hers, if not for the fact that each of the people she had chosen to attach herself too, or serve somehow ended up being ruined or suffer a fate worse than death. It made everybody wary of her, and then she had her son.

After the tragedy where she was raped by guards, she hid the young boy at the edge of the pit and then she chose to live a life of mediocrity, being indistinguishable from any other vampire or dark elf.

And now this happened. First off I don’t really blame you, you’re a man so you think with the head between your legs mostly, not to mention you’re also a child. You’re really nothing more than just a boy, each of us here have way more experience than you, but we couldn’t stand above our selfishness to educate more and keep you prepared so that something like this would not have happened.

I’m sorry, but in the end there’s nothing to be done about it. Sorry for your loss.”

Apart from being called a child multiple times Xaseah’s explanation seemed to put a lot things under the light. So basically Kuyait was kidnapped, what for, no one knew. But she was ripped away from her family, even though her life wouldn’t have been any easier. And then she was brainwashed and turned into a loyal servant of a child snatcher. Now the same thing was happening to Cassie, history was repeating it self and no body wanted to do anything about it. I could see it from their posture and the way they moved, this council had no intentions of chasing after them.

But this was not enough for me, and I was sure each and everyone of them knew it.

“thank you for telling me this Xaseah. I need some time to think, so this meeting is adjourned until a later date.”

I watched them file out, their departure left me in a state of solitude. Even though Soren was there, I was not sure he counted as a person. He acted like my conscience sometimes that it was hard to consider him as anything other than the voice in my head.

But all this formalities aside. I had to make preparations. Whether the devil or whatever force in power liked it or not. I was going into that darkness, and I was going to get my daughter back. And Telun a and his mother were coming with me.