Chapter V

Vaelion was in pain, he could barely stand up. Meanwhile, Alice was in front of him, relishing in knowing full well what the Peacemaker's fate would be.

“Don’t worry, our short time together was fun enough, so I won’t kill you right away. Maybe you could be my butler or a personal hunter.” said the girl while while walking in circles around him until finally sitting on the floor to continue her monologue “Oh! You can teach our army how to counterattack the Peacemakers! My father is going to love this for sure.” she was ecstatic, so much so that she didn’t realize Vaelion was standing back up. It was only when she heard the sound of a bottle being uncorked that she looked at him again. The man was drinking strange liquid from a small tube-shaped bottle while Alice just stared at him, she looked puzzled about what was happening and didn’t say anything.

Vaelion finished drinking after a few seconds and quickly stopped feeling pain. He then stored the empty bottle back in his bag. Ignoring Alice, he just grabbed his weapons and walked toward the door, but just before getting to the door, he looked behind at Alice.

“Let’s go, we’re finished.“ Alice found his response very strange, she hesitantly nodded and went with him while putting her hood back on to cover herself. Vaelion walked out of the village, they kept on treading for minutes, and in all this time Alice kept staring at the Peacemaker with the same expression. It was him who ended up starting the conversation. “What’s wrong?” asked the man after noticing Alice’s unusual demeanor.

“Are you a Vampire now?” the girl decided to ask that even though she already knew the answer.

“No.” his answer was really cold, but unusually cool-headed considering what had just happened. So the girl asked again.

“Are you mad at me?” Alice didn’t know what to think, Vaelion’s behavior only further disconcerted Alice.

“Why?” Alice couldn’t believe his response and retorted.

“What do you mean “Why”?! I tried to make a servant of you! Aren’t you angry at me right now?! You should want to see me dead or something!” weirdly enough, Vaelion didn’t look mad at all, but Alice was really angry after seeing that he didn’t care and didn’t try to retaliate.

“We are enemies, I expected you to do that. Besides, I need you alive to make sure you’re not lying about the locations, killing you now wouldn’t be efficient.” Vaelion was really dispassionate about this, Alice could at least now understand why but still, she didn’t get why he was so calm about what she had tried.

“Fine… you win… trying to understand you will be one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life…” Alice resigned and put up with Vaelion’s reaction after understanding there was no point for her to keep questioning it.

“I see.” they arrived at a stable where Vaelion had left a horse before going on his latest mission. Knowing that they didn’t have to go to Varis all the way on foot was a relief to Alice. After getting on the horse and beginning their journey, Alice decided to ask about something that had piqued her curiosity earlier.

“So… there’s a cure then? Why didn’t you try to give it to the ghouls. In fact, why don’t Peacemakers use it to fight vampires?” The girl asked about this “cure” as she was calling it. Alice didn’t seem to like this news too much.

“It Isn’t a cure, it’s a garlic-based antidote, it only works before the person turns into a ghoul. After that, it’s impossible to revert the effects.“ Vaelion didn’t seem to mind explaining the antidote, even to an enemy.

“That’s better then, human bodies are so weak and fragile… I wouldn’t like to turn back to a human” opined Alice, before trying to convince Vaelion once more “All vampires think that, you know? If you let I could-”before she could end the sentence, Vaelion interrupted her.

“No.” Alice didn’t like the sternness of his response and made him know.

“You should be more polite…” much to her surprise, Vaelion actually listened to her and corrected himself.

“Sorry. No, thank you.” It almost felt like he only said that to get her to stop talking, but it at least was a start. She gave him a jaded stare but looked up to the sky after realizing it had started raining, her expression changed completely and she sat in silence for some time until Vaelion realized she was quieter than usual.

“What happened? Did you hear something?” Alice looked back to him after hearing his words and looked slightly worried.

“It’s raining… Will you be okay?” This question surprised Vaelion slightly knowing what she had tried before, but he didn’t look too much into it.

“I’ve done this before, I don’t want to waste any time. The next village has a carriage to Varis, we have until tomorrow at noon to take it.” Alice seemed strangely empathetic, she even asked again after the answer.

“And the horse? I wouldn’t like to see it sick thanks to your incompetence.” It felt like she had turned back to her usual self midsentence, at least she was still worried about someone that wasn’t herself.

“Horses can endure much more than humans under these conditions, maybe he even likes it. Speaking of which, I didn’t know you liked animals” After hearing that remark, Alice talked back as usual.

“Of course I like animals, even as a vampire I’m still myself, you know?! Vampires aren’t just killing machines like you think…” after the answer, she got back to the main topic trying not to get angry yet again “Whatever, the rain doesn’t matter to me, vampires don’t get colds anyways…” Vaelion nodded and kept talking.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a few hours before we get there once we reach the bridge, after that we’ll be just waiting for the carriage. And who knows, maybe if it keeps raining like this, you won’t need the scroll” As he finished the sentence, he looked back and saw that Alice had fallen asleep on him, he looked at her for a few seconds and then turned back to the road.

It was morning time, the sky was a little lighter than before, but the rain hadn’t stopped, it even seemed to have gotten heavier. The horse stopped in the middle of the way at Vaelion’s command, he looked at the bridge, which seemed to be the next problem on their journey. The bridge was completely destroyed, it may have been taken down by the river due to the downpour, but what mattered was that they couldn’t go that way, so he looked to his surroundings after checking a map on his bag and he started to look for an alternate path.

According to his plan, they were about to go through a swamp. Vaelion didn’t like this, but there wasn’t another way. After some hours Alice woke up and saw that they were amidst a strange-looking swamp, the trees were large and she could barely see the sunlight through the leaves. The water at least wasn’t that deep, but every step felt as if they were about to sink.

“Vaelion…” the Peacemaker answered immediately.

“Good morning.” he said while still looking ahead.

“Yeah… good morning…” in fact, she didn’t seem to be having a good morning. “Why are we in a place like this?... I’m a vampire, not a mermaid, if I drown here, I’ll kill you…” Vaelion didn’t seem to care about her threat, he answered as laconically as always.

“Don’t worry, if you die here, I’ll let you kill me” Alice obviously wasn’t very amused by his joke.

“Ha… ha… I’m serious, I don’t like being here, it’s kind of creepy…” she said while looking around at the scenery. Vaelion thought about her comment for a second.

“Your castle was much creepier than this place” before Alice answered, he decided to talk once more to calm her down. “But don’t worry, this place isn’t too dangerous, we may find a kelpie, a golem, an ogre or maybe even a hydra, but we’ll be fine. Vampires are usually much worse than those creatures.” she wasn’t feeling much better after his explanation.

“You really think a vampire is worse than a hydra…?” Vaelion nodded before answering.

“Hydrae are just beasts, they aren’t hard to defeat, but vampires almost killed me several times, yesterday for example.” It was obvious what Vaelion meant by that, Alice couldn’t ignore it.

“You said you didn’t care about it!” she didn’t like his remark, but instantly regretted her words. “ Sorry about that…” Vaelion didn’t turn to look at her, but didn’t look mad.

“Okay.” he answered while they strolled through the vast swamp.