The first arrow found its mark in my chest and I caught the second and third. There wasn’t any pain this time, mostly anger since I had just repaired this shirt. Stop fucking shooting me with arrows!

I turned around as I pulled the arrow out of my chest. Signaling dog with my foot to do the same as he cowered on the ground covering his eyes.

“I apologize for walking up on you, can you stop shooting arrows at me? They aren’t really doing anything except ruining my shirt. Call it even?”

“Are you a spy from the Protectorate?”

“Protectorate? I doubt it, I was today years old when I learned about them. Some kind of religious nuts, right?”

It wasn’t exactly a fib, Vampir had prior knowledge, but I just happened to see a world map today. Semantics.

“Are you from Angleton? Why are you here in the Sea of Leaves peeping on a princess?!”

Princess? She was damn gorgeous so it makes sense.

“Technically yes, but unaffiliated. I was hoping to make contact, but not quite in such an unfortunate way. My apologies again for the rudeness, your highness.”

“Call me Leyara. Are you some kind of monster? Your eyes glow with an unholy light.”

I considered how I should answer her. On one hand, I was trespassing and mostly undead. On the other, she had no idea. I had a brief internal struggle before deciding the truth was my best option and who couldn’t use a princess as an ally? Much less a beauty of her magnitude.

“I am a vampire. Please milady, call me Vampir.”

Leyara visibly becomes less tense as my voice washes throughout the clearing. The pouring falls acting as a bassline for my very words. I realized the Mesmer had slipped out when I spoke. I tried not to show any panic as I made a mental note to ask Dog about it later.

I clapped my hands quickly to break the effect of the Mesmer. I tried to make it seem like I was happy to have been made acquaintances. She broke the mini performance.

“Leyara.”

“Yes?”

“That is my name. Not, milady, my lady, or your highness. I have a name, use it.”

“Ok…Leyara.”

I felt a little ridiculous to be in a vampire that’s three-millennium old and being chastised by this young woman. I was only trying to be polite. How the hell would I know how to talk to a DARK ELF PRINCESS? I was slightly irked, but decided better against it. She just might be a great ally to have!

Leyara and I spent the next hour or so walking and talking. Turns out even the Dark Elves had tales about me. They had a legend about an obnoxious shadow who killed anyone out after dark in certain areas of the forest. The shadow would announce that he was coming and then kill anyone who came to call regardless of man, woman or child. Then he would humiliate you before he killed you. This guy was such a lunatic!

Of course, she had no idea it was actually me. I realized it during some of the details about the shadow she mentioned. The shadow would always talk about how beautiful and bored he was while killing people. Sound similar to anyone we know?

“That is a terrifying bed-time story. Does everyone believe in this?”

“This is no story. This is one of the few things that we agree with the long ears on.”

“Long ears?”

“Elves.”

Elves were a thing here too. A little different than what I was familiar with back in my old world, but with some memories of Vampir and Leyara, I could remember? They were a little different. Elves in this world had long ears and brown skin like tree bark. They often had black or grey eyes and were not very friendly.

The Elven kingdom was the most massive kingdom in the land and some say the world. Vinitak was a great expanse of land that covered many terrains and regions from as far north as the Irveludian Bay and all the way west to the Elven Ocean. I didn’t pay attention to the oceans on the map when I had studied earlier.

“They have their own ocean?!”

“Absolutely, although they do not maintain a navy of any kind.”

“How do they defend from attacks from the oceans?”

“The only thing that makes those savages useful. They can communicate with creatures and have them do their bidding. They call forth giant creatures from the ocean deep.”

I made sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open as I walked in silence thinking about what I was hearing. Elves sounded more like a certain Atlantean prince from comics back home. These guys literally have the fucking kraken at their beck and call.

“What stop’s these guys from taking over the entire world? They have all the land and resources they need; they can control animals and are just as militarized as you.”

“While the Elves desire is truly domination of all other races, they have a distinct advantage and disadvantage.”

I stop and turn to her, the moon light illuminating my face clearly as my eye brow raises in question. The moonlight played through her dark hair as the wind blew through the underbrush. Back home, I had gone to the museum in the next city over and there was a painting of a woman walking along the beach at night. I remembered thinking to myself how beautiful she was. Here too I thought the same thing looking at the princess. She spoke in a steady, soft and firm voice like losing a pillow fight with the softest pillows in the world.

“Elves can only give birth once they are a couple hundred years old and pregnancies last for years. They have lost many citizens over the years with their aggressive stance on everything. They have fewer, but more highly trained soldiers than anyone.”

“Makes sense with hundreds of years of running drills. They must be individually formidable and monstrous as an army.”

“Very much so. Not to change the subject, but what did you say was wrong with your dog?”

Ron had gotten caught up trying not to step on our shadows. In the midst of his one dog game, he managed to fall into a hole of some kind on the side of the road. Only one of his hind legs and his bottom were sticking up out of this hole. The whole ridiculous situation looked like a perverse game of wack-a-mole I used to play at the local arcade called zombie tap or something to that effect.

“I don’t think anything is wrong with him. I think this is his normal.”

Dog struggled in the hole until I grabbed his back leg and lifted him out of the hole like a gantry crane. Dog had fallen in some kind of insect hive and his poor face was so ridiculously swollen his face looked like a balloon animal gargoyle. I laughed admittedly harder than I should have, but the only one whose luck was worse than mine was this poor dog’s!

“Hemiowgun.”

The glowing stars cascaded down like a localized star shower healing Ron’s face and everything else in a small radius around us. I patted his head and scratched under his chin. He responded by licking my entire face with one overly wet lick. I let him have this because I felt sorry for him.

We finally came to our destination, her camp. There were a couple other Dark Elves here that were part of her squad. They were uneasy about us entering the camp at first and then they saw the princess.

“Commander!”

The dark elves nearby all smartly saluted or something close to it. They made a knife hand, bringing it to their forehead and then straight out.

“At-ease men! Vampir and his dog… will be staying with us until tomorrow evening when we leave. Get him a bunk and something to eat. I wouldn’t recommend messing with him either, he took one arrow from me in the chest and caught the other two and is still right here.”

The magnitude of what their leader had just said sunk in and their jaws dropped in unison. There were probably warriors that are perhaps stronger or more well-known than Princess Leyara, but the men in her unit knew how hard she trained, how good she was to her men and how all around she was a proud Dark Elf. The soldiers looked at her with respect and she respected me under strange circumstances.

“Thanks for having us. This is Ron.”

The silence was palpable after I spoke and the men all around shivered. I guess my charms only work on the opposite sex.

Luckily, the Dark Elves dug trenches and stretched tents over the top. Leyara had some of her men dump leaves and dirt on top of my tarp to make sure no sunlight got in while I slept. Ron opted to dig a trench as deep as mine and right next to it so I would get to listen to him make strange sounds all night. He asked the soldiers to cover his entrance.

“Don’t worry about the leaves and dirt, I don’t have a ridiculous weakness like sun…”

I walked up behind him with a savage grin on my face.

“Who is Ridiculous? Ron. Who has silly weaknesses? Ron.”

“N-n-n-nob-b-b-body M-m-m-mast-t-t-ter.”

He didn’t even bother to stick around for what he thought would happen. He jumped and dove into this pit and collapsed it on top of himself his muffled voice going on about “…sun won’t get me.” It reminded me of waking up hungover in college and turning on the tv to watch cartoons. The old ones would play and there was always a rabbit or a crazy coyote diving into holes like a swimming pool. It was always nostalgic to watch those cartoons while I had a little hair of the dog that bit me.

The Dark elves being nocturnal was simply a plus. As I went into my underground tent, I looked up to see Leyara smiling at me and then quickly went under her tent. I went to sleep that morning as I thought about her. Was it wishful thinking?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Name: Vampir Darknaciel

Age: 3015

Race: Vampire (Human)

Hair: Black

Eyes: Red (Unholy Glow)

Current Value: 239.9 million Gold Coins

Magic Pocket: Pretty much one of everything (unverified), Journal of a Madman

Powers: Voice Mesmer, Animal Transmutation, Strength of 1000 men, Speed = PDQ, Immunity, Kinesis(Psycho), vaporizes people in a hissy fit, Derbegun (Cleaning Spell), Hemiowgun (Healing Spell)

Weaknesses: The Sun, Holy Water, Dog, literally takes home anyone who asks, Also Dog’s farts, cries blood, Dark Elf Princesses

Strengths: Barfights, Takes arrows to the chest like a champ, holes in the ground