The Vampire & Her Witch

For Hauke, time seemed to pass incredibly slowly in the aftermath of the battle. Trapped in the frozen cave of his own mind, it seemed like his struggles were utterly futile against Eraric’s sorcery. The ancestor most famed for the constructs he birthed from Eternal Ice hadn’t held back when he retaliated against Hauke for the young lord’s interference in the battle against Ashlynn.

Now, with his hands and feet frozen in place, after what felt like hours of struggling even if it had only been dozens of minutes, the captive Frost Walker finally gave up in his struggles against the ice that held him captive. No matter how much strength he expended, it seemed like the ice only grew thicker in response to his struggles. If he wanted to defeat the ice and free himself from the prison within his own mind, he would have to outthink it rather than overpowering it.

In the world outside, Erkembalt and Aspakos carefully transferred the young Frost Walker to a litter in order to carry him into the castle. While there were times when everything should be left exactly in place before disturbing anything that might have been an important part of a ritual, Hauke’s circumstances amounted to battlefield injuries and the best thing to do would be to take him somewhere out of the cold.

Or at least, that’s what the two sorcerers told themselves as they hurried into the shelter and relative warmth of the icy fortress. Nothing in this frozen world could ever be called ’warm’ but at least with shelter, they could escape the biting mountain winds that sliced through their clothing like countless freezing needles.

”Do you want me to examine him, old friend?” Aspakos said once they’d been guided to a cell in which they could do their work. ”I can still do at least that much.”

”Can you?” Erkembalt said as he sat a heavy leather case on a nearby table and began pulling out tools, neatly arranging them on the table as he gathered his thoughts about the curse that seemed to have taken hold of the young Frost Walker. ”That bloody aura of yours won’t taint the work?”

The artificer paused in his preparations, looking at his dark-feathered friend with eyes that barely concealed the pain he felt behind a layer of professional skepticism. In the days since their reunion, he’d seen how often Aspakos restrained himself from what should have been simple, ordinary actions because of the smothering aura of crimson darkness that had settled over him.

When Aspakos said that his hands could no longer hold the tools of their trade, he’d been understating the limitations he suffered for attempting to use sorcery meant for the founder of their order alone. It wasn’t only the tools of creation that he’d been forbidden from, even common cutlery, forks, and spoons were impossible for his taloned hands to hold.

Weapons, however... nothing prevented the sorcerer with a broken beak from picking up weapons, as if the only power left to him was the power of destruction.

”I have lost some things, but I see more clearly now,” Aspakos said as he knelt beside Hauke’s glassy-eyed figure. Heavy iron shackles bound his wrists and ankles, binding his movements in case he recovered enough to pose a threat, though both men in the cell thought that it was exceptionally unlikely. Whatever bound Hauke, it wouldn’t release him easily or the young man would have broken free of it by now.

”Do not disturb me, old friend,” Askapos said as he used one taloned claw to pierce the flesh of his brow in several places, forming the pattern of the constellation of Sitka the Weaver in tiny drops of blood.

”Celestial eyes that watch and wait,

Unveil the threads of woven fate.

Through starlit night and endless days,

Into tomorrow’s tomorrow I cast my gaze.”

Steel clattered on wood and stone as tools fell forgotten from Erkembalt’s hands the moment Aspakos’s words reached his ears. He wanted to shout at his friend to stop, to tell him that this young lord wasn’t important enough to harm himself even further with the founder’s art, but the words caught in his throat as he watched the air above Aspakos darken until it resembled a patch of the night sky, filled with tiny twinkling lights.

”For this sight, I yield my path,

Freely accept dark aftermath.

One step deeper into night,

One truth closer to the light.”

An inky darkness blacker than the night sky swirled in Aspakos’s eyes, reflecting the hundreds of twinkling lights above. Then, ever so slowly, several of the lights within his eyes grew dim before winking out entirely. Meanwhile, above him, a series of lights grew brighter, twinkling in colors of pale blue, dark purple, pure white and soft green before the entire scene faded away as though it had never been there at all

But to Erkembalt’s eyes, the darkness enveloping his friend had grown greater still and his shoulders slumped as though he’d picked up another burden to bear.

”Aspakos, why?” Erkembalt asked. His tail hung low, nearly tucked against his legs as he watched his friend stand up, shaking his shoulders as if adjusting to a new pain... or a new absence. ”What did you trade away this time?” the artificer asked flatly. ”What did you need to know so badly that you couldn’t even wait until I’d had my turn?”

”Be easy, old friend,” the dark-feathered sorcerer said, crossing the room to place a taloned hand on Erkembalt’s shoulder. ”This young man, he’s only just begun his journey. That’s what I needed to know,” he said with a slight smile.

”I said it outside, didn’t I? That it might be justice for him to be left this way,” Aspakos said slowly. He didn’t regret his words, they’d been the right words to give to the Harbinger of Death after she’d seen what this young man had done to the Mother of Trees, but he didn’t want those words to become a prophecy all their own.

”Whether it is justice or not,” he continued. ”If his journey ends here, then so will many others in the years to come. Many lights will fade before their time and the world we live in will grow darker still.”

”Whether it is just for him to recover or not,” the sorcerer said, looking at Hauke’s slack-jawwed, shackled figure. ”It would be better if he does. Now, it’s your turn old friend. Find a way to mend the broken,” he said, as though he were talking about fixing broken pottery like nothing could be more simple. ”Young Hauke’s future is in your hands.”