The Scarlet Secret

Aster’s Research Entry #13: Tried mixing Aiyana’s blood samples with crushed herbs available. Sample A (mixed with Goldenseal Root) showed no difference under the microscope, fail. Sample B (with Ginseng) appeared to be more promising. Vampiric blood cells seemed to slow around the additive, however it was unable to kill the cells. Sample C (mixed with Echinacea) was the most effective, managing to destroy a few cells but ultimately failing to fully neutralise them all.

“Any luck?” Aiyana called out from the other room.

I was nose deep into my book I’d pilfered from Zaharia’s stash. “Nope. Not a one. Y’know I’m starting to think this is impossible.”

My lab assistant waltzed past me, gracefully spinning around and placing the tower of books beside me without missing a step. “I’m sure we’ll get it eventually, we’ll just have to try a few more samples.” Her words drew my attention to the arm I’d been syphoning our supply from. It’d been a few hours since our last harvest and her wound was still dark red, contrasting the drained pale white further up. “It’s taking longer to heal than it used to. Are you sure you’re okay?”

She smiled, “I’ll be fine. Never mind that, you’re trying to find something to kill the cells?” Her emphasis was on the kill part which was surprising to me.

“Well… yeah, we need to get rid of them right?” I replied quite cockily, as it seemed such an obvious question. But Aiyana saw it differently. “If it was a virus then I could see it, but it’s the cells that are vampiric. If we kill cells, wouldn’t we just die afterwards? Without any cells left at all?”

I did, and do still, hate to admit I wasn’t all too intelligent when it came to medical science. Grimoire had only just advanced from shamans to doctors when I left. Even then something like this would likely have been “treated” with leeches… how ironic…

“I, uh… actually, yes that’s a good point. So, what then? Think if we get bit by a human we’ll lose the vampirism?” I asked optimistically, a question responded with a puzzled face “no, I don’t think so, I think you’d just be in pain…”

*-*-*

Winter was at its end and the flowers were beginning to bloom again. It was worrying that our time outside would be lessened as the days went on, however it also meant that we wouldn’t fear of freezing to death. Things were on the up.

The sun had just set and I was on my way back from the forest, with firewood under my arm. All of a sudden, the ground shook. Fearing for the worst, I rushed in through the door, finding Aiyana in the same confused state. “You feel that as well?” I asked.

She nodded, “it felt like it came from right under me.” She added.

“Couldn’t have been an earthquake, and the only thing under us is…”

We both realised what the source was.

Without hesitation she unlocked the “storage” room and we descended as fast as we could. We were welcomed with massive chunks of ice scattered across the floor. Fallen from the units and shattered upon impact. Immediately, a new problem emerged.

I hadn’t stepped foot in the storage room since my prior outburst, and thankfully I had forgotten it’s sights. But even still, this didn’t seem right. “Is this supposed to happen?” I asked, not wanting to jump to conclusions.

Aiyana looked as clueless as I was, “I- no, I don’t think so”

“You don’t think so?”

“Well, it’s never happened before!” She snapped back.

We both had a quick check of the area, checking for anything that shouldn’t have been there. But, there was nothing out of place at all.

The body inside the container was fully mummified, so dry you could snap off a finger and watch it turn to dust. That wasn’t completely surprising, on the last visit most of them were already like this. Aiyana said her mother had set this all up if I remembered correctly.

The funny thing is, remembering this made something rather peculiar. Aiyana watched me as I quickly examined the three corpses closest to us, I’m sure, questioning what I was up to.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you never learned the magic your mother used on these, did you?” I asked.

She retained her perplexed expression, “no, she died before she could teach me it.”

“So it’s safe to assume these bodies have all at least been in here for over 10 years? Considering the fact that the attack happened 10 years ago.”

“I guess so. But, I don’t get your point.”

“I think you do. And I think you know why this happened, Aiyana. In principle, Magic needs something to power it. Short term spells use the caster’s energy, as for long term spells… I’d imagine it’d be the bodies. So with you, and the magic eating away at them for 10 whole years. They’ve gone dry, and I’d make the assumption that’s the same for all the bodies stored here.”

Aiyana didn’t respond, her face proving my suspicions.

“So basically, your food source is gone.”

*-*-*

Recently, we had started using the mountain’s peak as a nice getaway spot, a place to get some fresh air. Right now it was the scene of our lamentation. We checked literally every container in that hall sized room, each one as dry as the last.

So, we sat by the cliff side silently as we had so many times before.

“Right. Out with it.” I said as I jumped back to my feet. “Why did you lie?”

She didn’t look me in the eye. “I should’ve expected this. After all this time, it wasn’t going to go on forever”.

She continued, “If the blood is gone, we need to re supply. Neither of us want to kill for it but that’s probably the only choice we have… I panicked, so I just pretended I didn’t see it.” She was like she was when I first met her, timid and quiet, almost petulant.

Getting aggravated wasn’t going to fix the issue, I’d matured enough recently to realise that. Instead I sighed, “Aiyana, if we hadn’t found this, what was your plan?”

She jolted at the question and was unwilling to answer.

“There’s no way you could go out there and kill someone, you know that.” She was avoiding me, so I moved to the other side. “If you die, I die. You want that?”

“No.” She finally answered.

“Good.” I took a few seconds to assess the situation. Aiyana being an idiot aside, we were in a dire situation. A situation we needed to address pronto. But first things first. “We need to move them. Can’t have their bodies just lying around, what did your parents used to do?” I asked.

“You’ll need a shovel.”

*-*-*

The storage room was massive. This was because of the mass amounts of accessible blood, but also because it connected to catacombs. It went down so far, so deep into the earth I’d be worried adding more graves would mean digging through to the other side of the world. So many caskets lined up on so many rows on so many levels, centuries of murder and bloodshed. Yet no tombstones lay beside them, I’d assumed this was because they didn’t know anything about their victims, leaving a garden of nameless souls, forever trapped and forgotten by time itself.

There were so many bodies to bury it took us several days just to drag them down. Each day Aiyana looked a little weaker, so much so our ritual became less frequent as to not completely drain her. We’d spend our days trying to figure out a way to solve our issue but even when we were so close to finishing the burial, nothing had come to mind.

“Surely this has happened before, right? There’s no way those bodies have been there for hundreds of years. So, what did your parents do?” I asked while digging a new trench, Aiyana slowly dragged the next body along by their legs, ready to be buried. “You know the answer. We mostly took anyone we could find on the mountain. Some were travellers that got lost, some were killed by bears or wolves already. We relied on people dying on the mountain. But, ever since we let that woman go there’s been no sign of anyone travelling up here.”

I began to wonder if that was a mistake, it was the right thing to do but…

“Enough, there’s no point thinking about it now.” I advised internally.

“Then we’ll need another way. We should be able to make it to a town and back again during the night if we time it right, but then we’d almost certainly have to kill.”

“Maybe we should avoid towns. I’ve had my share of terrifying people already. That and if we get spotted we’d be the ones in these graves.”

It was as she said, it was seemingly hopeless. “Neither of us want to kill and it’s not like anyone would just willingly give us blood, well, not anyone alive anyway.” It was meant as nothing more than a joke, a playful jest and yet it sparked an idea.

“Aiyana, did you know that in Phaxi, there is a tradition upon death? It’s said that once a person dies, a priest will remove all blights: the eyes; the ears; the tongue and reproductive organs. But there’s one other thing they take out, care to guess what that is?”

She took a second to analyse it. “The stomach?” She replied with no confidence whatsoever. A quick wave of the finger revealed she had guessed wrong.

“The blood.” I answered.

“Now then, 100 points if you get this right. Is blood drained from bodies before burial in the other kingdoms? Kingdoms like our Regalia?”

She had realised the genius. “No, no they don’t.”

I had a terrible grin on my face. “Correct.”