Cobbler’s Hold was sick. Nuncio could feel the disease in the air. It was like some animal had crawled between the floorboards and died there. Now the stench of rot was everywhere. After a restless night full of dreams of white faces, people would wake up but be too tired to get out of bed. The few who managed to pull open the curtains would scream at the sight of the sun and hide in the dark.

When Nuncio went to buy groceries, it felt like he was the only person there, but it no longer made him feel playful. People would peek out between the curtains when he passed by and glared at him with suspicion… or worse. Hunger.

Some talked about the plague coming to Cobbler’s Hold and the doctor had told people to stay inside while he tried to get to the bottom of it. Then he had fallen sick too. Nuncio was the only one who knew who had brought the sickness to his village but… what good was the truth when no one would listen?

When Nuncio got home, he started making vegetable soup and when it was ready, he carried a bowl to his mother’s room. The curtains had been drawn and mom was hiding under the blankets.

“Mom?”

Mom looked at him from under the blanket with her bloodshot eyes and smiled when she saw the soup.

“… for me? When did you get so handy in the kitchen?”

Seeing mom eat the soup was a relief and she was able to drain most of it before setting the bowl aside.

“… thank you, Nuncio.”

Nuncio didn’t answer and bit his lip.

“… Nuncio?”

“Mom… we need to get you to a doctor.”

“… the doctor is… sick. I just need to… sleep this off.”

“We can go to a neighbor village. If you just…”

“No!” Mom growled with a voice that was not hers: “We’re not going anywhere! Not when the whole family is finally here!”

Mom had cast aside the blankets and was now moving towards him. All the weariness had gone out of her when some terrible strength took over her. For the first time in his life, Nuncio was afraid of his mother. He scampered back towards the window… and pulled down the curtains.

“No! Not the sun!”

Mom covered her eyes like they were on fire and dived back under the blankets like a wounded animal would into its nest. Nuncio lied on the floor waiting for his heart to stop beating so fast. Mom had always been… his mom. His protector and caretaker but now… he knew she could also be his enemy. The thought alone was almost enough to make him cry.

Then mom started weeping under the blankets.

“… Nuncio… sorry… I am sorry… I just… I’m just so tired and… I would never hurt you.” Mom said.

She could. Nuncio knew that now. She would hate herself for it afterwards, but she could hurt him if it came to that. He didn’t say that out loud. How could he ever hurt his mother like that?

“I know, mom. I know.” Nuncio said.

Before leaving the room, he closed the curtains and took the bowl. He found his sister Elysa in the kitchen. She was younger than him only by minutes and had come to this world holding his heel but that still made him the older sibling. Her big brother.

When he walked into the kitchen, Elysa looked up from her hands and Nuncio saw she had chewed her lip bloody. A habit neither of them could shake.

“… is she going to be okay?” Elysa said.

Nuncio looked at his sister… and then smiled. Maybe the smile could cover the lie.

“She just needs to sleep.”

She nodded and looked outside at their garden that was growing out of control.

“I… saw Mathilde last night.”

Nuncio flinched at the mention of Mathilde. The only death no one in the village had mourned. Children had been taught to never go with Mathilde no matter what she offered them, and everyone had let out a sigh of relief when she passed away. Nuncio had seen her once and wondered how anyone that beautiful could be so despised. Then Mathilde had looked at him… and he had seen her hungry smile.

“Mathilde… she went away… because of the plague.”

His sister let out a terrified giggle.

“I guess she came back. She was asking for you but… you were asleep. I… I told her to fuck off.”

Nuncio nodded.

“Good.” He said.

Nuncio started rinsing the bowl while his sister sat by the kitchen table. They had come to this world together and sometimes… they could sense what the other was thinking. He could feel the plan forming in her mind and could make out its general shape before she even said it out loud.

“No.” Nuncio said.

Elysa flinched at that.

“No, what?”

“We can’t leave mom.”

She bit her lip again.

“If… we left… just the two of us… we could get help from the neighboring villages. Someone has to know… what is going on.”

“We can’t leave mom here.” Nuncio said.

“But she doesn’t want to go. If… we stay here… we’ll get sick too.” Elysa said.

Nuncio started drying the bowl so hard it almost cracked.

“I… I’ll think of something.”

No one would listen to him so… maybe it was time for actions and not words. When King Eld had been a boy, a demon bear had been terrorizing his village and he had killed it. Who said he couldn’t kill a monster too? He could be a hero too.

Once he was done with the dishes, Nuncio left Elysa in the house and walked to the workshop at the back of their home where grandfather had made his living as a carpenter. He had helped grandpa often enough to know how to sharpen a stick into a stake. If the legends were true… he would only need one. Driven into the beast’s heart and if his resolve wavered… he would only have to think of mom hiding from the sun in her bedroom. That told him what to do.

Armed with a stake and a hammer, Nuncio started following the hoofprints of the monster’s horse. No hero would come to save them so… Cobbler’s Hold would have to save itself. His greatest ally was the daylight but… he no longer trusted the sun. The light and the heat felt oppressive like the eyes of a callous witness who refused to intervene.

The search took him into the forest.

To the Wyrd Stones.

Every child was warned to never venture past the stones and every year a child ignored the warning. Sometimes they would come back scared and muddied. More often than not they were never seen again.

When he approached the stones, the space between them began to glow and distort and he could see a different world at the end of a long portal.

Nuncio stared at the white stones. If he stepped through them, would he ever come back out? Maybe… maybe all he could do was save himself and Elysa. Who would ever know that he had abandoned his mother? Who would blame him even if they did?

I would know, Nuncio thought.

He crossed the Wyrd Stones that guarded the border between Garuccia and The Wyrding.

The woods beyond the Wyrd Stones had been beautiful once. You could still catch glimpse of the former glory, but those days were now long gone. The presence of his father had spoiled the soil and poisoned the trees. Instead of a playground, the forest was a place guarding a terrible secret. The tree branches were heavy with crows who were waiting for the feast to begin.

When he looked at the crows, they met his gaze with their black, beady eyes. Just their presence felt like a promise. A promise that he would fail, and they would clean his bones.

“I won’t fail.” Nuncio said.

In response the murder of crows laughed in unison. The sound of human laughter almost made him turn tail and run but he was frozen in place. Once the laughter had seized, the crows spoke.

“Don’t play that game with us, kid. We all know you’re fucked.” The crows said.

The crows took flight laughing like a pack of cruel children. Nuncio watched them go, his heart beating too fast again. It actually hurt. Like his heart was trying to hammer its way out of his chest. Then he slapped his cheeks.

“What do you know? You’re just dumb birds.” Nuncio muttered to himself.

Nuncio followed the monster’s horse hoofprints deeper into the forest until he arrived at a cave. The entrance could be an ogre’s open maw and he shivered seeing it. Nuncio held the stake close to his heart and said his prayers. Not just to the God he had been taught about at church on Sundays but to the old gods of The Wyrding as well.

When he took a step towards the cave, he heard the clacking of hoofs and the vampire’s steed walked out of the cavern.

At night, the horse looked black but now Nuncio saw that it was dark green and smelled of seaweed. When the horse saw him, it scraped the ground with its hoofs and let out an angry bray. Then it came at him. Nuncio was running before his brain even could tell his feet to move. He ran as fast as he could and tried to get back to the village, but the horse blocked him at every turn. It drove him deeper into the ruined woods and then up a tree. Nuncio climbed as high as he could while the horse skulked around, and together they waited for the sun to set.

It wasn’t Pietro who found him first.

“Nuncio?”

The voice sent shivers down his spine. He knew that voice. Every child knew it. A kindly voice offering children candy if they only came to her cottage.

“… no.” Nuncio whispered when she saw the creature appearing from behind the trees.

All the color had been drained from Mathilde until her skin was white as bone. Her eyes glowed red in the night and the green horse gave her way.

Mathilde smiled at him.

“Hello, Nuncio. Why don’t you come down? There’s something I want to show you. A game that adults play.” Mathilde said.

The creature that had once been Mathilde started climbing up the tree like a great, pale spider. There was a terrible thirst in her that not even a blood-tinged tide could sate.

“No need to be so shy. It will be fun. I promise.” Mathilde said while climbing towards him.

Before Mathilde could get to him, there was the fluttering of great wings.

When he looked up, he saw a black owl flying over them. The owl was large enough to hunt humans and its eyes burned like cinders. When it landed on the ground, Pietro stood in its place.

“Master!” Mathilde cried out.

Pietro shoved her roughly away and with enough force to send Mathilde flying. She let out a hiss before disappearing deeper into The Wyrding. Pietro watched her go before turning his attention to his mount who was still holding Nuncio’s stake in its teeth. It dropped the weapon in Pietro’s hand, and he studied it for a moment… and then crushed it into splinters in his grip.

“Nuncio!”

Some would have compared the growl that left Pietro’s mouth to that of an animal, but animals were natural things. Even the most vicious ones. There was nothing natural about the growl of a vampire. Pietro cast the splinters aside and gave the tree he had climbed up a kick. A single kick from Pietro was enough to make the tree groan… and fall over. Nuncio yelped and held on to the branches, but the fall still knocked the wind out of him. Before he could pull himself together, cold, powerful fingers grabbed his hair.

“… father… don’t…”

“Father?! You try to murder me and then call me father?! How dare you?! I will show you what happens when you get uppity!”

All Nuncio could do was cry and beg when Pietro dragged him by the hair to the cave where he hid during the day. Torches inside the cave were lit when Pietro walked past them and in the middle of the cave was a coffin built from steel and wyrd wood. The lid was far too heavy for one man to lift but Pietro pulled it off like it weighed nothing.

“… no… no!” Nuncio cried when he realized what Pietro had in mind.

The coffin was filled with vermin infested dirt and reeked like a rotting graveyard. Nuncio fought with all his might, but it was no use and Pietro forced him inside before shutting the lid. He was trapped inside with the vermin and the cursed soil. He cried, screamed, and begged until his throat was sore. He banged on the lid until the skin on his knuckled cracked. All the while the vermin living in the dirt was skittering over him. Nibling and stinging him. Trying to find a way inside his mouth and ears.

It was the first time he had felt true darkness and he understood that darkness had little to do with being unable to see. Real darkness could only be found in the primordial chaos that had existed before creation… and inside the coffin of a vampire. He’d had an inkling of it before when he had been younger. Every night after bedtime when the house had gone silent, the darkness had made the monsters hiding in the shadows real. But that had been a mere echo of this. There was no time here and there was no difference between a minute and a hundred years.

He cried.

He prayed.

He begged.

And it was no use.

He fell silent when he thought he would die there.

But the vampire had other plans for him.

When Pietro finally pulled the lid open and dragged him out, Nuncio had to check his hands to make sure he hadn’t become an old man. Pietro no longer bothered hiding what he was under illusions and looked like what he was. A pale corpse animated by black magic.

“Did you have fun?” Pietro said and flashed Nuncio his fangs: “That is just the beginning of your education. I have made arrangements for you.”

Nuncio couldn’t speak only writhe on the ground like a dog who had been beaten so badly it couldn’t even whine. Then he heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Come now, Capello. Don’t be so hard on the lad.”

A kindly looking old man walked into the cave. He was small. Just a bit taller than Nuncio with something… rodentlike about his features. His ears were long and pointed, his hands were paws, and a tail was wagging behind him. His hair and stubby beard were the color of iron and his eyes had sunken deep inside his skull. His clothes and bowler hat were worn down by too much travel which made him look almost pitiful. The old man kneeled next to Nuncio and started wiping off the insects stuck in his hair.

“You’re a brave lad putting up with all this like that.” The old man said and put a comforting paw on Nuncio’s shoulder: “Me and your poppa had a chat and thought it might be for the best if you came with your pal Old Flea. Don’t that sound nice?”

“And you will stay there until you’ve learned manners.” Pietro said and glared at Old Flea: “I expect you to return him to me once he has learned.”

“Of course, Capello. Of course.”

“Good.” Pietro said and looked at Nuncio one more time: “Blessing of the Dark upon your journey… my son.”

“And blessing of the Deep upon you, vampire.” Old Flea said.

The sun was rising, and Pietro climbed inside his coffin while the green horse continued guarding his sleep. Meanwhile Old Flea took Nuncio’s hand and escorted him out of the cave where a white wagon was waiting for him. It was pulled by the most beautiful white horses he had ever seen.

“We’ll fix you right up, laddie. You won’t remember any of this once we get you to my master’s castle. You’ll be so busy having fun that this will feel like… a bad dream.” Old Flea said.

Nuncio could only nod and let himself be pulled away. Forget… yes. Forgetting sounded good. He wanted to forget. He wanted all of this to be just a bad dream and climbed inside the wagon willingly.

It was only when Old Flea slammed the door shut behind him that he realized what the wagon really was. A cage.

“… no… No! Let me out!”

Old Flea just laughed over his scream while he made his horses move with the crack of his whip. Nuncio could only watch helplessly as his home was left at the vampire’s nonexistent mercy. And not just his home. His sister and mother as well.

Why won’t anyone help me, Nuncio thought.