The first Mission Part 2 - Vampires and Phoenixes

The outskirts of town have been dirty. Among the first things we noticed was that unlike those of the inner city, the buildings here didn’t have a paper stock as the highest floor. Most had not even two stocks, but only one made from crudely nailed planks. And while leftovers like rotten apples and cracked bones littered the streets every so often, there weren’t many beggars or homeless lingering around.

“There is a place for everyone in this kingdom”, had said the guard who had let us through the gates. We didn’t know exactly why he told us this. Maybe this town was unusual even in this world, and he expected us to except otherwise. Likely, he was simply proud of this. (And bored, because there isn’t much to do standing there watching and looking for intruders the whole of the day when actually no troublemakers were around to take care of.)

The sky was already faintly green when we reached the fields that were no longer tinted orange to purple. Our destination was a small village that bordered on the great forsaken forest. A monster was reported to harass the inhabitants and the local militia was “inept and incompetent, incapable of snatching it off the streets”, according to the guildmaster’s report to minister Lared.

When he had been gone, the two-legged crocodile had said to us: “You are incompetent too, or… no, you are simply in training. Tharamir, go there and burn it out with your torch hands. An easy task to bolster the spirit, is it not? The village is close to the forest. It is probably about something undead and susceptible to your blaze.”

We moved through the paths that split the fields into irregular geometric forms; usually squares, but sometimes triangles too. Where the river cut through, the pattern was broken completely, as if something had gnawed on the land, biting out piece for piece. Crossing an old brick bridge, we could hear the water churn and splash onto the rocks below. Ugly malformed fish hunted for insects or - depending on their size - one another to still their never-ending appetite. They looked like leathery blobfish, but without the nose, and with bodes bordering on cube-formed.

“What in the world is that?” I pointed at them from above.

Elana stood behind me. “That’s what you’re asking but you didn’t care for a clothed, speaking lizard, or – I don’t know – literal undead?”

“Is this unusual?”, tried Sarran to ask.

Elana and I silently agreed that it is.

“These fish have no streamlined bodies in a water that is literally raging wild.”

“Isn’t there always some explanation in the form of ‘actually, its beneficial to them because X’ or ‘actually, they don’t need it because they do Y’.”

Sarran wasn’t finished yet with adding his sauce: “Did you know that the locals like turning these things into perfect cubes while they are still alive – with big bulging eyes in their wobbling around faces – to make something that translates as ‘cake’.”

One bit more and I would have vomited.

Elana put a hand on my shoulder as I tried thinking of something else. “Of course it is not a cake, at least not as in ‘cake’.”

“Can you just stop it?”

“Didn’t you have to take apart animals in your studies?”

“That is something completely different.”

“Not so sure…”

Deciding to leave it at it, I kept “they weren’t alive anymore!” to myself.

A few snowflakes landed on Sarran’s cloak when we sat foot onto village grounds. It wasn’t cold, neither that nor warm. And yet, it was supposed to be summer.

“Finally, give me a break!”, our friend wasn’t used to long marches. Neither were we. He wasn’t used to doing much more but siting at a desk. Neither were we. But I and Elana were also frequently participating in the university's sport courses until last year. He was obviously not. We were always mediocre at best in any game we played together, but when he couldn’t hit the ball at badminton at all, irony was forecasted: After he gained clairvoyance, things changed...

“Sarran, from what hand will I hand you the apple?” Elana hid it behind her back, both hands on it. “Wait, don’t tell me, tell Tharamir.”

He whispered into my ear that it is going to be the left.

It was the right.

...but not so much apparently.

Townsfolk approached us. We introduced ourselves. “We are here to deal with the monster.”

“Oh, praise be to Avenar”, muttered a crone whos’ teeth had clearly never seen a dentist. “This thing stalks the streets at night, snatching of poor late workers. When they return, they are pale and have tiny wounds.”

“What did she say?”

“There is a vampire. The night stalking type of vampire.” She proceeded to answer the woman: “This is our specialty. Tomorrow morning, your mosquito is gone.” (That is Elana’s favorite term. She was even going to create a branch of vampires for our game with this name.)

“Is there a library here? Could you ask her that?”

Elana looked at me. “Uhm, sure, but why?”

“Research on my bloodlines. The one in the castle didn’t help much.”

“That’s because you can’t read these books.”

“Yes, but… you two can.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“And we need to wait for sunset anyway.”

“What a splendid opportunity”, commented Sarran and Elana nodded. “Fine.”

“So, what is the plan?”

We sat in the library, which was only a small house, but surprisingly, it had two floors to boost. The lower floor was the librarians living place. We had to use half rotten stairs to reach where the books where stored. They were wet from the minor snowfall and I nearly slipped into another seven days of darkness. Albeit, it wasn’t really darkness for me, more like a very deep sleep.

Speaking of which, we needed a plan to protect the sleep of the villagers. Most of them needed to start work very early in the morning. Half of them were peasants.

Sarran had already had some thoughts on the matter. “It seems to be a rather nice vampire. It hasn’t killed anyone – as far as we know at least. We could use a decoy…”

We chanted in unison: “And this is going to be you!”

“No! Tharamir should do it, he is immortal!”

To my discomfort, Elana put a finger to her lip, saying nothing for a while. “You are right, but his blood may kill our mosquito. We don’t know.”

“Yes”, I added, “We don’t know that!”

Sarran said: “Exactly, we do not know if that is the case!”

But Elana had the last word: “Which is why we won’t risk it.”

I padded Sarran on the shoulder. “It’s a nice vampire. No one died yet.”

“Yet…”

Then he went on that he wanted to have a very long visit at the tavern this evening. “Give me so much to drink that I won’t mind my role.” He accepted his task to easily.

“I can’t find anything about ice, but I found this”, said Elana, summing up her findings so far. She held up a yellowed book in a worn leather binding with an image of a bird that got nearly indiscernible from time. “The chapter is called ‘of the phoenix family’ or something like that.”

A phoenix was a good lead to follow. It fit the ashes inside my egg and the egg itself.

“Simply because it’s a bird?”, asked Sarran.

“Yes, the egg was oval shaped, wasn’t it? Reptiles, amphibians and fish – I mean almost everything that isn’t a bird – usually lays round eggs.”

“What about drakes?”

“Huh?”

“What sort of eggs do dragons lay?”

I didn’t get it. “Dragons don’t exist.”

“They do.”

“I know we are in a sort of fantasy world, but this doesn’t mean that every fantasy thing from our earth stories' exists here. Rather not every, but any of it doesn’t have to exist. We didn’t see dwarfs yet; they may very well not be there at all.”

Sarran's finger lay on a shelfed book. Its title simply read: Dragons

He and Elana studied my expression. Elana giggled into her hand, eyeing me from the corner of her eyes. There was a lively ring in her giggling that we were missing from her as of lately.

Sarran sat back down onto his chair, shaking his head. “Why would you even you think otherwise?”

Defeated, but not in pride, I replied: “I just explained.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

We flipped through the pages. There were flaming birds in a plethora of different colours and shapes, each stranger than the last one. But the very last one was not covered in fire. It was depicted diving in fresh lakes and feeling at home in colder regions, like in the northern tundra or the eastern mountain ranges. Its feathers bore an icy cyan, sometimes even lime tone, resembling the colour palette of aurora lights. Described as laying eggs made from ice that never melts, it was indeed a very good lead. Servants had collected the crystalline shards after my egg had burst open for the senior court magician. But be it for study or crafting potions, they couldn’t tell us.