“You’ve been hunting those creatures for a while, right? And people before you were as well?” I finally ask to confirm my earlier suspicions. “How are there still so many Succumbed?”
“An entire world was lost.” Lavenzia groans as she sits on one of the rafters of the wooden ceiling. The wood is old, but it holds. Especially well, given that the roof overhead has caved in a few places.
“Countless people Succumbed before the slumber was implemented.” Ruvan sheathes his blades.
“I always forget how long it’s been.” Winny sighs. “It feels just like yesterday.”
“For us, it practically was,” Ventos says solemnly. “Yesterday and a year.”
“What a world to lose, and to wake up to…” Lavenzia says sadly.
“It’s why I hate being in the lower rungs of the city and the old castle now.” Winny sits next to Lavenzia, resting her head on her shoulder. “To think, I once enjoyed it.”
“It’s certainly no picnic,” Ventos agrees.
As they speak I cross to the opening in the roof, trusting most of my weight to the primary support beams, rather than the rotting planks suspended between them. Snow falls in silvery motes in the gray twilight. The opening reveals more sprawling castle, hidden between ridges and peaks around the caldera.
How deep does this place go?
“No one has lived here for thousands of years. Well, no one still sentient, that is.” Ruvan stands beside me. I’d heard him coming thanks to the creaking of the floor and the shifting conversation he left behind. Winny, Lavenzia, and Ventos talk amongst themselves in hushed, barely audible words. “From the records left between lords, all the way back to Jontun, I believe we’re the first to have laid eyes on this particular stretch of the castle in almost a thousand years.”
“How is that possible? Isn’t this your castle?” My curiosity is beginning to bubble over. Perhaps it’s his calm demeanor finally wearing me down. Perhaps it’s something akin to trust forming between us, begrudging, unwanted, and unwelcome…but budding up like determined weeds between cobblestone streets.
“It’s no one’s castle, not anymore,” he says solemnly.
“But you’re the vampire lord.”
“Vampirlord, and yes, a lord, not a king.” He stares out over the frozen spires and rooftops. “I’m a glorified attendant. A watcher and protector. I’m keeping this castle and looking after everyone in their slumber while trying to do my part to end the curse.”
“Sounds like a lot,” I murmur. I wonder if that’s how Davos felt. Drew always blamed his off-putting nature on the things he had seen as master hunter. But perhaps some of it was the stress of looking after all of Hunter’s Hamlet.
“It is.”
“So the curse has caused everyone in the castle to turn into those monsters?” There’s a weight to this place that gets heavier the longer I’m here. A deep sorrow that’s the same as the bitter and lonely void I wallowed in after my father’s death. This castle has known such immense loss.
“Not just the castle,” he says solemnly. “It was placed on our people not long after the end of the great magic wars three millennia ago. It’s a slow, creeping poison of a magical nature. No vampir escaped it, and, as long as we’re awake, it slowly turns us into the monsters we have been fighting.”
“Does the curse get worse for you the deeper we go and the closer we get to its anchor?”
He shakes his head. “Thankfully not; the curse affects all vampir evenly, for the most part. It’s a curse laid on our blood with magic humans should have never meddled with. There is no escaping it, only slowing it. That is also why the consumption of fresh, untainted blood restores our proper visages and powers—even blood taken by force, the affront to the lore that it is, is better than no blood. It’s why we need the Blood Moon to replenish our stores. We’re not strong enough to harvest the blood of those here in Midscape—those with magic—in this weakened state. They’d hunt what’s left of us if they saw the danger we’ve become.”
Ruvan’s eyes drift back to his companions. His brow furrows slightly with worry. I leave him to his thoughts, keeping my own. He said that his true form was not the monstrous sight I first saw him as, but the almost ethereal man standing before me now.
“The curse weakens your magic and turns you into monsters, and the creatures we’re fighting have been turned by it?”
He returns his attention to me with a tired nod. “We call them Succumbed. It’s the second stage of the curse. We—” he motions to himself and back to the other three “—are still vampir. We areAccursed, but have our wits about us.
“The Succumbed have fallen prey to the curse. They are no longer living, thinking beings and cannot return to what they were, no matter how much blood they consume. They are beasts of instinct, hunting to regain what was lost even though they cannot.”
“They sound like they should be weak.” But I know better.
“If only. The Succumbed are not without magic. In some ways their powers have been heightened by their frenzy. But they are blunt instruments, lacking any strategy or tactics.”
“I see…” I look back out over the vast expanse of ice and stone. “That’s why whenever they’ve attacked us it’s been without organization. There’s no plan. It’s always one or two—if any—hunting on instinct alone.” There was never a “hive mind” to the vampir. We were wrong all along, about everything, when it came to our enemies.
“Attack you? But the Fade is only weak enough to cross during the Blood Moon.” Ruvan sounds genuinely surprised.
“Weak enough foryou, but those cursed monsters come every full moon from the marshes.” I wonder if I should be telling him this. Can he use this information to find his own way across the Fade during the full moon? Though it’s not as if Ruvan has the army I once thought he did…
