The Nightshade Estate

If there’s one thing I missed about being human, at least what I missed right at this point in my life, it was the sun.

Hunting at night sucked. Pure and simple.

Everything worth catching is asleep, and anything dumb enough to wander around is picked off by wolves or snow leopards. Then there’s the fact you can’t see a damn thing.

At least I looked the part. Fashioned myself a nice supple bow and a few wooden spiked arrows. Not like they were much good now, the bow just sat beside me leant up against a felled oak log that I was using as cover. “Well… this sucks.” I groaned.

*-*-*

Just after my return to the peak, Aiyana had led me back to the Nightshade estate, rather slowly if I may add and always with a suspicious glare as if she thought I was planning something. Suppose I was forcing my way into her home so there was that. I didn’t really care all things considered, the only thing on my mind now was that being back here left a bad taste.

The sun was beginning to rise as we arrived and Aiyana was trying to hide how sleepy she was to no avail, she would take a seat for a second and start dropping off then regain her consciousness before doing it again… and again…

She had posted me up in an old guest room that must’ve belonged to one of her father’s now dead acolytes back in the day. What a downgrade that was, going from a small, cosy, slightly run down cottage with a loving family, to a hand me down room from some jumped up prick… ha, prick…

Anyways, I laid down for a while, staring at the wall and thinking about Myra and the old man.

*-*-*

Another hour gone, awoken in darkness with an unpleasant dryness in my mouth, and an itch on my teeth, an itch to sink into flesh and drown in blood. A feeling that I couldn’t help dreading.

Aiyana took the opportunity to show me around the estate. Not sure how but it was even bigger than it looked from the outside, however quite a few of the amenities had collapsed away either through war or winter, she liked to keep these doors closed.

Of the rooms she showed off, only the greenery, armoury, archives and her father’s old study were of any interest, the others were just more rooms belonging to the dead and gone, or stuff that didn’t concern me.

The greenery was a rather impressive collection of wild flowers and herbs, for a bunch of dead folk they had some green fingers.

“Wait…” the confusion noticeable in my voice. “How do you even grow these? Don’t you need sunlight?”

Aiyana smirked. “You can get around it with spells.” She responded with a smug look on her face. “We had a few skilled people around that tended to these in case we needed potions or poisons. I learned the basics from my mother, and I’ve been keeping busy here ever since.”

*-*-*

Whilst noting down some notes of the greenery for later, we continued onto the master bedroom… currently occupied by the current head, Aiyana. Though previously this room belonged to her parents.

I was a little disappointed by it, you’d think the lord of a vampire brood would style it up a little, maybe an ornate coffin fit for his concubines and a few blood fountains… It was just a boring old room.

The study however, was anything but boring. More like a library with ancient scrolls and parchments probably dated back before even Grimoire. Reading through ol’ Lord Vampop’s notes was quite interesting.

The first tome I picked up seemed to be his personal notebook, he even personalised it, “Zaharia Nightshade…”

“Ah, that’s father’s research. Whenever I came to visit he would be scribbling away” Aiyana explained as I thumbed through the pages. It withheld all sorts of information of experiments he had undertaken, seemed Mr Zaharia fancied himself an intellect. Throughout the notes there was a careful design to it, he would mark it as a test, and write an anecdote or summary of what made him research the topic and then, it would be followed by pages of his findings. He would write the conclusion, sometimes with a remedy or resolution, most of the time with more confusion.

Test #13 caught my eye. It was about the effects of the sun on vampires and possible treatments to allow them to survive in the rays. He wrote, “Elder Yagura has passed. His mission dragged on too long and he was caught by the light. He was lucky to make it back to the coven, however his injuries were too severe. If we are to prosper, nay, if we are to survive we must overcome our weaknesses.”

Several tests took place, first with blood cells that caught fire and exploded once the morning sun caught a glimpse of them. The second was with dead skin. He tried again with blood, this time with a tonic of elderflowers and black root, and though the cells survived slightly longer it was only a few moments more.

In the end, he had 15 tests, and 15 failures. The last comment, a reminder of the dangers of the light, and a promise to one day resolve the weakness I now shared.

*-*-*

“Lastly, we have the storage room.” Aiyana explained on our way down the stairs. Apparently it was important enough to have the most security, protected by a big metal door and lock. The reasoning as to why a simple storage room was so sacred was unclear to me, but if there was anything that a vampire held dear more so than itself… well, I could take a guess.

The door creaked open revealing yet more stairs. Apparently all the space above ground wasn’t enough for the brood, they needed to dig themselves a basement and fill it with essentials.

It was freezing, the floor itself was covered by a thin layer of ice. The walkway itself was only just lit up by the braziers that had clearly burned away. Aiyana was explaining what this place was while I was still going down the stairs so a lot of it went over my head, only for me to completely understand when I saw what lay further in.

“Mother was a skilled ice mage. When we had a shortage of blood she put stockpiles in here and imbued the room with powerful freezing spells.” Aiyana explained nonchalantly, as if it was normal. I didn’t really pay attention, I was having trouble staying stood up.

I finally understood. It wasn’t a storage room, it was a catacomb.

Caskets lined the walls as far as the eye could see, stacked up one above the other right to the ceiling. There was no way this was for the brood, there couldn’t have been that many members. No, this was a burial chamber for the victims these monsters imprisoned and murdered!

It reeked of death. Aiyana just walked it as if she was in a field of flowers, not the pits of hell itself as I saw it. At the edge of the expanse was a dull glow. It was ice imbued with magic, surrounding yet more corpses. They looked fresh still, yet with the ice they’d likely been there years, having blood slowly syphoned away, slowly being sent to the void, suffering.

Aiyana came rushing back to check on me when she saw me doubled over, emptying the last meal I’d had as a human onto the floor. “Aster? What’s wrong?” She asked so casually it pissed me off. My hand wrapped around her neck, lifting her off the ground as she clutched at my arm, trying to free herself hopelessly.

“What’s wrong?! Look at it! How many years have you murderers spent ruining our lives and for what?! You selfish no good leech!” I let go, throwing her to the ground. She choked as she tried to catch her breath.

I looked again, looked at the bodies that lay beneath the cesspit. “Aiyana” I growled. “How many people died to fill this room?”.

*-*-*

Whilst I was learning of the darkness below, a band of hired adventurers left Grimoire, under the payroll of an old man searching for his missing grandson.

A search party for one Aster Hawthorne.