The Vampire & Her Witch

”I should ask if you are satisfied with what you’ve accomplished,” Ashlynn said as Ollie lay twitching on the grassy hillside overlooking the village he had been charged with caring for. ”But I think we both know that you aren’t. What happened to you, Ollie?” the vision of Ashlynn asked gently as she knelt by his side.

The memories of being burned alive by Holy Fire continued to torment him, trapping him in the feeling of his flesh blistering and tearing itself apart before his bones cracked under the intense heat... Watching as the flames consumed his friends and companions before pain engulfed his vision as the fluid within his eyes boiled, robbing him of his sight as his eyes ruptured...

Ashlynn’s voice failed to penetrate the hazy fog of agony that clouded his mind for several minutes as he lay shaking on the ground, curled into a tight ball with his eyes screwed shut as if to deny the reality of the horror he’d witnessed. The horror he’d led his men into. The horror that was entirely his fault.

”Ollie,” Ashlynn said, reaching out with a hand wrapped in soothing emerald mist. ”It’s all right. You can stop now if you wish. Just tell me what went wrong, and this can all be over.”

Ashlynn’s magic did nothing to heal Ollie’s wounds. Those wounds had vanished the moment the vision brought him back to the beginning of the trial. The pain Ollie was suffering was entirely within his mind as it refused to let go of the agony of his final moments. Part of that was to be expected as it was difficult for the mind to accept sudden changes in what it felt, but part of that came from Ollie’s determination to hang onto the pain, as if he felt that he deserved to suffer some kind of punishment for what had happened to his companions.

When the vision of Ashlynn wrapped him in soft, soothing mist, it did little more than provide a calming, soothing sensation to slowly wear away at the pain and agony his body had felt, but it still took several minutes before his mind was willing to let go of the bone deep feeling that he deserved that suffering.

”What went wrong?” Ollie spat as he slowly opened his pale eyes to find the vision of Ashlynn kneeling over him. His eyes were red and swollen, and his voice was tinged with deep bitterness and self-loathing as he spoke.

”I got everyone killed is what when wrong,” he said. ”I, I had no idea the Inquisition had such terrifying sorcery! I thought sorcery was weaker than witchcraft, but that... that was more powerful than anything I could do, even with the support of dozens of trees. I never should have brought everyone so close to something that, that... powerful.”

”How can they be like that?” Ollie asked, his eyes misting with tears of frustration and a deep, heart-twisting pain he couldn’t begin to describe. ”How could they be so strong?”

”The Church is very familiar with the limits of sorcery,” Ashlynn said as she gently cupped Ollie’s face and wiped away the tears forming in his eyes. ”They weave their sorcery into their battle hymns and prayers, reciting them so many times that whole groups of them can combine their might.”

It sounded simple and logical when she said it, but in truth, the practice of several sorcerers working together was rare among the Eldritch Clans. The Eldritch people celebrated individual strength and the power of champions far more than collective effort in battle. Eldritch wars could be decided in duels between feuding Eldritch Lords or small-scale battles between elite forces, leaving the common people safe from harm so long as they submitted to the rule of the victor.

It was humans who brought the concept of grand armies to the continent, along with the notion of pursuing a defeated enemy to utter destruction. That fundamental difference and failing to understand it had led to the fall of countless Eldritch nations during the First Crusade and now, it had led to the complete destruction of the small, elite force Ollie had brought to attack Owain’s army aswell.

”How do you defeat that?” Ollie asked as he searched Ashlynn’s face for answers. There must have been some magic he simply hadn’t learned yet, some stronger form of witchcraft that would allow him to stand against a force like that, he thought. Or perhaps it wasn’t more powerful witchcraft that he needed to learn, but a different strategy for using it instead. Whatever it was, at the moment, he desperately wanted Ashlynn to teach him!

”How can any one person defeat something like that?” he asked.

”Let me ask you a different question,” the vision of Ashlynn said as she studied the storm of emotions swirling within his heart. At the moment, he’d already shifted his focus to what he could do better, much like he had in the first several rounds of the trial. On one hand, it was an admirable trait and part of what made Ollie such a remarkable young man.

He refused to give up when he felt that if he worked harder or learned more, he could achieve a better outcome. It was that selfless drive to do better for the refugees that had earned the loyalty of so many different Eldritch people despite the fact that Ollie himself was human.

On the other hand, it was the young man’s unwavering belief that he was the one who was too weak, too inexperienced, and that others could have done much better than he could have that prevented him from learning other, potentially more important lessons from the trial he faced.

”When you unleashed your storm of cypress needles,” the vision of Ashlynn asked gently as she redirected the young man’s thoughts. ”And you inflicted agony and suffering on hundreds of Owain’s men, how did you feel?”

”How did I.. feel?” Ollie said, pausing in surprise as he tried to remember the moment his spell had completed and he’d watched the front ranks of Owain’s army crumble under his withering assault. He’d been so focused on his crushing defeat and the agonizing death that he’d consigned his companions to that he hadn’t even stopped to consider anything else.

At that moment, when he unleashed a storm of wicked cypress needles that carried an agonizing toxin... how had he felt?