The Vampire & Her Witch

The room Isabell found herself in provided a few clues that brought a few memories from the previous evening back into focus. The stones of the walls were ancient and rounded over on the edges and corners, even if they had been freshly painted in tones of soft blues and subtle greens.

It was the proportions of the room, however, that drove home the point of where she currently found herself. The doorway was larger than it would have been in any human bedroom she’d ever seen, and the ceiling was taller as well. The whole place felt like it was sized for creatures that stood head and shoulders taller than even the largest knights and strongmen she’d ever known.

Dimly she remembered that, by the time they’d arrived at the ancient fortress in the Vale of Mists, Tiernan had succumbed to the strong drink and lay propped up in the corner of the carriage. His snores were deep and loud, resembling a lumberjack’s two-man saw struggling to tear its way through soft wood as his chest rose and fell with deep, steady breaths.

Isabell and Ashlynn weren’t far off, and the gray-haired guild master wanted to tear her hair out in frustration as she struggled to remember what had happened when they arrived. She remembered people waiting to receive the,m but she couldn’t remember a single person’s name or face. Only that Ashlynn had promised her they were safe and that they would help her to a room.

Clearly, that had happened, and whoever helped her into bed had also helped her to change into a soft, silk sleeping gown, but she had no memory of any of it. The thought sent a momentary shiver down her spine as she wondered who would have been responsible for helping her change. It couldn’t have been Ashlynn, she was clearly too intoxicated to be of any help, but then, who would it have been?

For a moment, she wondered if Lady Ashlynn’s vampire lover had been the one to help her into a fresh change of clothes before tucking her into bed. She discarded the notion almost immediately as ridiculous. A powerful vampire wouldn’t waste her time putting a drunken stranger to bed, even if she was a friend of Ashlynn’s.

More than that, after the way she’d heard Ashlynn speak last night, she doubted either woman wanted their partner gazing at other people in the nude. But no matter how much Isabell tried to remember, her mind found no answers as to who had helped her change.

”Does she even have any human women serving her?” Isabell wondered. ”Maybe it was one of the other vampires... Zarya? She said that she was Lady Nyrielle’s handmaiden after all...”

It was a mystery without answer and everything she came up with would only be a guess. When she realized why her mind was so stuck on the question, however, a frown formed on her face as she confronted the reality of her discomfort.

Having another woman help her into bed when she was too drunk to care for herself shouldn’t be anything to worry over. In a castle as luxurious as this, she was certain that there were several servants trained in assisting ladies in dressing who would respect both her modesty and privacy. That clearly wasn’t the issue she was struggling with.

It was the realization that she was trying to decide if it was better to be helped by a human vampire or a normal Eldritch woman that brought Isabell face to face with her own biases. As much as she’d tried to tell herself during the carriage ride that she would treat the Eldritch people the same as any other people, decades of stories from the Church and even the recent tales she’d heard in Lothian March still twisted her mind in ways that made it difficult to accept where she was.

Her rational mind, her engineer’s mind, told her that everything Ashlynn had said about the Eldritch people was likely to be true. And so long as it was true, then the sooner she rejected what she had learned before as faulty, flawed information, the sooner she could adapt to being in a world that was vastly different than what she’d been told to expect.

And yet, no matter how much she bludgeoned her tired, aching mind to accept the new information as truth, she still found it unsettling to think that a vampire or Eldritch person had handled her in such a vulnerable state.

”I need to clear my head,” Isabell said softly. ”Sitting here stewing like this isn’t helping me to sort things out.”

Thankfully, a kind and helpful soul had left a bell on the table beside her bed, along with a cup of water and a note that read ’ring when you wake’ written in a precise, delicate hand. Even better, whoever had helped her into bed had been thoughtful enough to leave her silver-rimmed spectacles next to the note.

For a moment, Isabell’s hand hovered indecisively over the bell. She’d seen Ashlynn’s handwriting before, and it wasn’t this... delicate. The note had clearly been left by someone else. By one of the demons... no, one of the Eldritch, she corrected herself as she prodded her mind through the pain that felt like having her skull squeezed like a melon.

She remembered. She had been brought into the heart of the Vale of Mists, arriving just before dawn at a fortress with five towers that looked like a hand stretching out of a dark cliff. Ashlynn had told her that there weren’t many humans in the vale and that she hoped to change that one day, but Isabell struggled to understand how.

Right now, however, all she could think was that if she rang that bell, whoever answered the call would likely be one of the Eldritch. She was about to come face to face with one of the creatures that humanity had labeled ’demons’ and fought against for hundreds of years... and she was wearing nothing but a sleeping gown.

Briefly, she considered searching for the clothing she’d arrived with but a quick glance around the bedchamber was enough for her to realize that her clothing had been taken away, leaving her with few options. She could attempt to search for her things, but the idea of wandering around in search of a change of clothes and potentially getting lost in the Eldritch fortress sounded like the kind of foolishness a much younger woman would attempt.

”Lady Ashlynn wouldn’t have brought me here if it wasn’t safe,” Isabell reminded herself. She took a long swallow of water to calm her nerves and wet her mouth that felt like it had been filled with sand before reaching out and resolutely ringing the bell.

The sound was far too loud, and the pitch of the bell much too high for her, and the spike of pain in her ears left her cursing the ’helpfulness’ of whoever had left the blasted bell and the note. It wasn’t their fault that she was so badly hung over, but at the moment, she wasn’t feeling entirely charitable, and she cursed anyway.

A few moments later, the door opened, revealing the diminutive figure of a stunning young woman with horns like a ram’s and cloven hooves to match. She was dressed in luxurious brown silks, and her bodice was covered with coppery embroidery that resembled leaves dancing in the wind. The same pattern of embroidery spilled from one hip and ran all the way down the length of her skirts until it reached the hem that was just high enough above the floor to reveal her hooves.

”Good morning, Master Isabell,” the elegantly dressed woman said, pausing to retrieve a silver goblet before striding across the floor to reach the engineer’s bedside. ”I imagine that your head hurts quite a bit after drinking so much of Auntie Amahle’s thornberry wine,” she said softly as she held out the goblet. ”Drink this, and you’ll be fine in just a few minutes time.”

”Is this?” Isabell asked hesitantly as she looked at the faintly green contents of the cup. ”Is this a witch’s brew? Is it, is it safe?”

”We call them potions,” the horned woman said with a light musical laugh. ”And yes, it is. I brewed one for Master Tiernan and another for Lady Ashlynn as well,” she said as she smiled at the gray-haired engineer.

”My name is Heila,” she said, bowing slightly as she introduced herself. ”I’m Lady Ashlynn’s lady-in-waiting, and she asked me specifically to take care of you when you woke. I’m also the Willow Witch,” she added gently as she extended the goblet toward Isabell. ”And I promise, the things I brew for healing will only help you, never hurt.”

”So please,” Heila said. ”Take a drink. Think of it as simple medicine. Once you’re feeling better, we can talk about what comes next...”