“How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.”

- Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

Alyssa stood protectively over her fallen friends and looked around the yard, the mercenary who had been slammed into the wall by the brutal blast of the wand was no longer moving, the one at the door to the inn had been eviscerated and the last had just been killed by this bear of a coachman. She shuddered a bit. Maximilian ran towards them, in his right hand he carried a translucent blade of a metallic substance, glyphs glowed inside, barely visible, the edges were constantly disintegrating and growing anew, keeping it sharp. “Alea!” He called hoarsely, “Is she all right!?”

The spider clambered down from its perch on the wall and scuttled towards the fallen girl. She turned her head towards her brother and weakly gasped, “I will survive, Max.”

The coachman shook his cutlass, bloody fluids splattered on the ground and dripped from his oiled coat his massive form dark before a darker forest. He grinned with a face streaked with drops of red. The innkeeper retched as he saw this tableau and stepped further back into the inn. The manservant -Luke was his name- that Maximilian had brought with him stumbled out of the inn, holding a poker with shaking hands. “Is it over?” Came his plaintive voice.

The second maid, who had a slim figure with white-blonde hair, had fainted during the battle and lay unmoving, but still breathing, on the ground nearby.

Lucien was nowhere to be seen and Mathilde had vanished with her second maid, the dark-haired one. After taking stock of the situation Alyssa sighed deeply and to her consternation felt tears running down her cheeks. She knelt down and stroked Alea’s hair while pulling Mireille closer to her with the other hand. Keeping herself calm by force of will she said, “I will try to heal Mireille's wounds, stay with me, I need to see that you are all right, Alea.” Then she began to sing and moved her hands over Mireille's still form, who was still bleeding from the nose and mouth. Glowing water gushed from her right hand and arcane symbols shone briefly beneath her skin. Asandria danced about her singing the counterpoint.

Maximilian stood beside Alea and gave her and the spider a relieved look. “Ok, that is good, I feared the worst.” He gasped, still winded from the fierce combat at the door. “I could not cast my spells with one arm still handicapped.” He looked apologetic. “And I never would have guessed that Mathilde would go so far. I mean, I knew she had designs on the county but we…” he sought the right words, “...are family?” His last words lacked conviction. “She was annoying and even a bit evil, but trying to kill us?”

Alea put her hand on Mireille's lying beside her, “We are still alive because of our friends and the forethought of grandma.” She nodded at the coachman.

“I am but a humble driver.” His teeth shimmered in the light of the moon. The spots and streaks in his beard and on his face creased as he smiled. His cutlass was still dripping. “And I am glad to have been of service to the mistress. Sadly Mr. Caravar and the Madam von Nordmark escaped, a pity.”

Meanwhile

Lucien coughed and held his burning chest as he leaned against a tree shielding him from view. He uncorked another potion, there had been two more before this one, and drank it down in one gulp. Shuddering he spat black blood on the earth, the wyverns poison sizzling on the leaves.

‘This shitty little beast! What in the name of Garualon and his foul exhalations is this poison? I can't seem to get rid of it.’ Pain burned in his neck where the stinger had hit him, foul polluted blood ran down his back.

‘I will survive, I survived the Kingdoms of the Broken, I will survive this.’

The memory of a pale-haired sorceress tearfully pleading with him to save a young prince rose in the shadows and kept pace with him as he fled deeper into the small forest.

He coughed and spat some more black blood. At least the flesh on his torso had closed after he had imbibed two expensive healing potions. ‘Never scrimp on what can save your ass.’ He silently recited one of his favorite sayings.

He grinned weakly. The apparition looked at him before it faded. Childish laughter echoed from his right, the hairs on his neck rose as he gritted his teeth. The child-prince was long dead. The usurper had killed him and then used his ork and goblin mercenaries to raze the clan hall and the small town surrounding it. ‘What did happen to her in the end?’ From the memories faces rose, dark and bitter. ‘I never bothered to learn.’ He stumbled and fell. A patch of moonlight before him revealed a stretch of road. Crawling forward he gripped a young tree and pulled himself to his feet.

A small cloaked silhouette stood in the moonlight, the lost eye gazed impassively from far above, a soft wind rustled through the leaves, and an owl hooted deeper in the woods. “Who are you?” He gripped a small wand in his pouch. His thoughts echoed around in his head like stones thrown down a well ‘That will be expensive but worth a lot less than my life.'

Long, pale hair fluttered in the wind luminescent green eyes reflected the light and gazed on him with pitiless hunger. “My aid was no longer needed, so I thought to cut some loose threads for it makes for a tidy tapestry. I am Vanessa’ellariel Erellathiel.” Her nails grew longer as she spoke, transforming into ten-inch claws of black ice, vapor rose from them, the night air condensing in the bitter cold. “Do you know a curious thing? When...”

“Can we talk about this? I possess here a fine…” he slowly raised a jeweled wand while the other was held in a placating gesture before him.

Vanessa vanished from where she stood and the wand spat a bolt of near-invisible force, the air seemed to ripple and then a tree burst into a shower of splinters, teetered for a moment, and then crashed to the ground, leaves, and branches fluttering and snapping.

Lucien wildly turned, pointing the wand frantically at the surroundings. Silent as a falling leaf, Vanessa appeared again, this time behind the mercenary, a claw flashed and the wand tumbled into the bushes together with three fingers, spurting blood.

“Aaaah, my hand!”

a whisper continued near his ear, “...a person is near death, their thoughts become sharper and more vibrant and if you are skilled in the craft of the mind," she inhaled the rank scent of his fear, her pupils dilated, "you can make those thoughts...real.”

She spoke arcane words in Elven, it seemed to be a poem or a song and it was a spell echoes whispered in the shadows. It sounded sad like an untended grave. Her hands carved the air before her with runes tinted a dark grey.

The forest vanished, he stood before an old house, a house he knew very well and as the door opened he saw his mother's corpse, flesh festering, much too thin, hunger marring her features, her lips pulled back from her teeth. She stumbled towards him, her left arm pulled the corpse of his young brother “Why did you take everything, we could have survived if you had left us something, anything…”

Snowflakes fell, or was it the ash of a burning steading? It was the cold winter morning when he had taken the supplies and money and left for the city, to make his way in the world, he had looked back, but only to make sure he was not spotted.

The child prince stood in the shadows and his laughter hung in the air like bells, dark blood ran from his slit throat like a waterfall in black. Behind him, he saw the form of the sorceress he had seduced and cast aside and there were more, so many more.

He screamed and never stopped as they came for him.

Vanessa raised her bloody face from the neck of the dead mercenary stood up and gathered the spoils of her hunt. She mused ‘I fear the time spent in slumber did not completely cure me of my vampiric nature. But even if I know it to be wrong it feels so delightful.’

Savoring the blood flavored with abject terror she licked her lips with a long slightly pointed tongue.