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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Wolventraum - Chapter 1

I walked through a gate arch half collapsed onto the road. Someone must have tried to use the bricks as a shield, but the claws had still struck. Broken glass screamed under my boots. The capital had fallen. The Kingdom would follow. That was all my mind circled back to as I wandered between the numb, haunted people cleaning out houses and tossing bodies onto funeral pyres in the street. The weak winter sun barely even kept the monsters at bay. I heard them grunting and snarling in the shadows, as if daring each other to snatch someone out of the light. Small demons, some ghouls, too, lured by the devastation. A small army of vampire thralls hid away from the daylight, mindless on their own, dirt and blood disguising who they used to be. It was the thralls that had taken the city by surprise, I figured, though a few still smoking ruins told me that some folk tried to fight back. Fire was an obvious choice, and usually the right one. It just hadn't been enough, not against this many.

Blood dripped from my cheek and soaked my collar. The bite had opened up again, the result of my own most recent encounter with a small group of thralls. I tried to ignore the pain when I pressed a bit of cloth to the bite. I'd been lucky to avoid infection so far, and I was ready to sing the praises of our order's enchanters. Their medical kits were godlike when I compared them with my makeshift little pack, and I had hit the jackpot when I found one of them in one of our caches along the main roads on the way here.

It was beginning to get dark. I slipped through a doorway, sword drawn, and found the house clear of monsters. Not so clear of body parts, though, when I made my way to the partially blocked off basement. Most of them bore the bite marks of dull teeth but strong jaws.

A diary sat on a writing desk, next to a burned out candle. A few bits and pieces of the former homeowners littered the floor, dark shadows in pools of dried blood. They were newer than some others I'd seen, two days at most. The setting sun threatened to drown the entire room in darkness.

I snatched the diary from the desk and booked it out of the basement. If I needed to hole up in a different building for a while, I might as well have something to read. Boredom could be just as dangerous as the monsters, and I had no patience for a dozen recitals of our rules and bestiary.

The neighbouring building was free of monsters and body parts. It had a basement with a few tiny iron-barred windows towards the street, and a heavy door that could be locked from the inside. In another room, I found a narrow couch, which I shoved and cursed at until it was down the basement stairs and in a spot I could see the windows and door from. I sat back and leaned my sword against the couch.

Even with the door latched and locked and on the admittedly comfortable couch, at least compared to the floor, I didn't sleep a wink. As night seeped into the streets, so did the monsters, and I heard them several times as they passed by my hiding spot and found easier prey. Every time I heard screaming, I resisted the urge to jump up and run to help. It was my duty, of course, but so was resting. I was more likely to add to the body count if I threw myself into battle with a bleeding face and throbbing headache. My movements had already become sluggish.

In the morning, with the sun and clear sky weak but reliable allies, I ventured out into the streets to search for some breakfast. I had some rations left, but if there was a chance I could find something better, I would gladly spend some time wandering.

“You!” someone called out from near a row of bodies. “Get here and help if you can walk!”

“You got any food?” I called back, and slowly walked closer. A few civilians tended to the bodies, avoiding a thrall that was starting to turn to ash where a ray of sunlight hit it. I took out my matchbox and lit the thrall up, ignoring how the man who'd called me over screamed in shock. The others backed away, mirroring his fearful expression.

“You have to burn the thralls,” I explained when he was done screaming and the thrall was a pile of ashes. “If you leave them in the shadows for too long, they get back up eventually.”

The man looked from me to the ashes, then back to me. His eyes fell on the emblem on my coat. “You did a shit job, you people,” he said, but our reputation as merciless monster hunters still commanded enough respect to make him keep his eyes down and voice low.

“We weren't hired to prevent a surprise attack no one saw coming,” I said, shrugging. “I'm here now. Not paid, mind, so I'll help now. You can pay me with breakfast.”

He glared at me, but didn't protest. He was right, though, we'd done a shit job in recent years. Dwindling numbers as our active Hunters died off in action had made our leader decide to take jobs only when someone called for us. We needed enough experienced Hunters at headquarters if we wanted to train the recruits we got. I'd left headquarters in summer precisely to avoid that duty, and was dreading the paperwork for not reporting back regularly.

For a few days, I assisted the survivors in burning their dead and the thralls. I stopped counting how many times I told someone that thralls needed direct sunlight, ideally not the weak winter light, or fire to burn to ashes. Once they were ash, they wouldn't get up again. The same was true for the vampires that made and controlled them, but vampires were much harder prey to take down. Even we Hunters usually tag-teamed them or went three on one. And they were hiding well enough within the city that I couldn't even track them. Not that I had a death wish, but it would have been nice to warn people what houses to avoid.

Every once in a while, I got some time to peruse the diary. It was fairly new, not even half the pages had ink on them. The last entries especially caught my interest, and I carefully pried the pages open. The blood had done some damage to the ink, but most of it was still legible. The diary's owner was a Lady Viviane Walkers.

December 25th

I cannot help but pay attention to the whispers now. Every time I go out for tea, pass by a shop, glance at a newspaper. Ink and tongues whisper of something horrible bound to happen before the year is over. I could write a story from this, but it would be in poor taste, at least until I know what is really going on.

Perhaps it had not been as surprising an attack as I had thought. If people had known something was going on, someone had neglected to tell them exactly what that was, and how to prepare for it. My first suspects were the King and his advisors.

December 28th

What everyone feared has come. Fires are lit day and night in the city, no one goes out when it’s not a bright, sunny day. We received notice to stay inside and keep doors and windows locked, to let no one in, not even if we know them. An enemy siege, the notice read, but no one has heard anything about a war or even any conflict with our neighbours. And there is nothing outside the city, no one is besieging us. From our attic, I can see the outskirts of the city in the distance. There is nothing there, no army, no siege armaments.

Things howl at night, but not like wolves. And things, creatures, rattle the windows at night. It’s not just the wind, I know it. They try to get in, but the bars and boards hold firm. I dare not light a candle after sundown, not even with the curtains drawn and windows barred.

Smart. Fire kept them away, but small lights lured them in.

Everyone is afraid. Before we were locked in, Elizabeth and Tomlin and their little Lydia made it here, just in time. No word from my grandparents.

I dread to think how Liza must feel, with her birthday in just a few days. I want to give her something, but I can't go out. Maybe I'll write her a poem.

Liza's suitors withdrew their proposals before the lockdown came, and I can hardly blame them. She didn’t seem all that upset about it, either.

December 30th

Something tore the windows next door apart last night. The screaming was horrible, but the quiet after even more so. We all moved what we could into the basement, only father and Tomlin go up from time to time to patrol the house.

They went up two hours ago and haven’t come back. I didn’t hear anything, no one did. We have little hope, though no one dares to say so.

And yet, it is Liza's birthday, and I will write her a poem, even just a short one. I know you sneak looks at my diary, and I hope this will take the dread away for a moment. I love you, my dear sister.

Winter child,

And yet your hair is sunshine and your laugh is warmth

Year-end child,

Your smile brings promises of spring

Sister, friend, heart,

May your joy forever sing

I could have written a better one, I suppose, if it were quiet outside and warm inside. I recited the poem to Liza and she sobbed, as did mother, and I almost did, too. This dreaded sound. I thought it was howling, but it's more like crying and screaming and growls.

I cannot keep Liza and mother calm. I am on the verge of tears myself. I wish Valentin was here, I’d feel safer with him. I wish I’d stayed in the village, maybe then I wouldn’t have to hear

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dreaminggoblin · 11 months

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Hello and welcome, fellow dreamers!

I am Dreaming Goblin, going by Marje, Sophie, Sora, and just Goblin.

She/They pronouns, please and thank you.

I write fantasy and sometimes draw.

The tag #Wolventraum is for my first book, which is uploaded in full and for free on here. The posts will have links to letters and diary entries, as well as to the first, last, previous, and next chapters.

You can read Chapter 1 here.

I upload a free Paths of the Dream Folk short story to my Patreon once a month (starting December 2023; November was the introduction)

I also have a tip jar through Ko-fi, if you don't want to commit to a monthly donation. There's nothing on there yet, but I'll figure out what I want to put on there eventually.

I do not use Twitter, Facebook, or other social media besides our beloved/beloathed hellsite. Reblogs and interactions will happen from my side blog @dreaminggoblin-yells, from which I will also answer asks and the like, so please direct your messages there.

#dreaming goblin writes books #writeblr #writeblr introduction #artblr #intro post #subject to change #Wolventraum #fantasy writeblr #fantasy writer #creative writing #writing community #writers on tumblr #writer #patreon #ko fi #dreaming goblin writes #paths of the dream folk

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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Wolventraum - Chapter 5

The sun had risen by the time the howling stopped. Now, Lucie and I sat around a silent table, politely putting spoonfuls of leftover soup into our mouths. An overlooked shard of glass glinted in a beam of sunlight coming in through the window.

Viviane’s diary sat on the windowsill, and her echo looked out to the forest, just barely out of the light. She had to be strong, for an echo, being outside her bonded object when the sun was up, even if she wasn't directly in it. No wound was visible on her. She wore a delicate dress, white from the lace at her neck to the hem trailing behind her on the ground. I'd seen wedding dresses like that a few times in the towns I'd gone to. But there was no colour to her. She looked like a hesitant artist’s first pencil sketch, like she might fold in on herself at the lightest touch. And yet she stood during the day, and watched the sun and the forest.

I set my spoon down into the small puddle of soup left on the plate.

Lucie stood, her chair scraping deafeningly over the floor boards. “Thank you for the meal,” she said, altogether too loudly, and walked to the guest room.

Perhaps in an attempt to ease the tension, Ysolde said, “Lucie said you were a legend.”

“Ah, about that.” I had been about to get up, but scooted my chair closer to the table again. “Only among my own, and I'm not sure if I've earned that title. It's mostly an exaggeration.”

Ysolde nodded. “Stories often are. But it made me curious. For someone who looks so young, and, in such a line of work, is still alive...”

“I'm almost thirty,” I said. “But for an active Hunter, that's a decent age. Some of us are still active at almost fifty, and we all eventually die in the line of duty or become instructors. If you're doing well enough for long enough, you gain a reputation.” I shrugged, hoping that would quench her curiosity somewhat.

Roslyn squashed that hope. “What kinds of monsters have you hunted?” she asked, and though her voice was one of polite interest, perhaps because her parents were watching, her eyes sparkled, and she leaned forward.

“I've hunted ghouls, done a lot of investigation into hauntings and cursed buildings, some demons, cursed creatures, a lot of vampire thralls lately. There are a lot of things to hunt when you know how to spot them.” Come to think of it, all of last year, the number of thrall attacks had gone up. I was a fool not to have put it together by the time I reached the capital.

“What was the scariest?” Roslyn asked, saving me from a spiral of self criticism. “Or the one that made you the most famous among other Hunters?”

I thought on that for a while. Storytelling wasn't my strong suit, but I could treat it like a short report. Because all Hunters learned before anything else to report as accurately as possible in writing and speech, even years later, I still remembered most of the details of my hunts. “When I first started taking on hunts on my own, Master Vrehden, who had just become the new leader of our order, sent me all the way west to the coast, to a small village near an old port fortress,” I began, and then fell into reporting. “The villagers stated that they heard screams from the fortress ruins, and that this had been happening for over a year. They refused to go near it, though they did not discourage the wanderers that occasionally reached the village from spending the night in there. The reason I was sent there was that a scholar of our order had gone missing in the area.”

I continued my report. How I had found a fortress with several echoes, two ghouls, and a cursed crown in the throne room that gave its wearer insatiable bloodlust, along with control over all the monsters within the walls. I skipped details of the fight, it had been long and ugly, and I still bore its scars on my left shoulder and back. At the time, I had been twenty, it had been my first solo hunt far away from headquarters, and I had almost died from exhaustion and fever on my way back. I didn't include that last part, but I had been furious with Vrehden for not telling me what I was getting into. He had brushed me off, and told me that in my eagerness to prove myself, I had neglected to do my research and scouting duties. I didn't mention to him that our rules were, since the beginning of the order, that no Hunter went alone. It was a rule he ignored very often with those he didn't like. That hunt had marked the beginning of my dislike for Vrehden, not just as our leader, but as a man. He had little regard for us Hunters, even though he still went on solo hunts himself and left matters to other Masters at headquarters for months at a time. If the no-solo-hunts rule didn't apply to him, maybe he thought he didn't need to enforce it with others, but that only made it harder and more dangerous for us. He never seemed to hunt anything dangerous himself.

Roslyn had listened with rapt attention, but suddenly her head snapped to the guest room. “Another question,” she said, and turned her attention back to me. “I have some books about monster Hunters and the like, and there's always some sort of romance or something in there. Does that actually happen? Do you fall in love with people you save? Or with other Hunters?”

I tilted my head and made a show of thinking seriously about it. “I don't do romance as a whole. Some do, sure, but it's dangerous work we do, so it usually doesn't start until someone retires from active hunting. Or there's suddenly a child to take care of, then they might retire early.”

Ysolde nodded. “It would be horrible if the child lost a parent.”

“Yes. We have a high risk of getting torn to bits by a pack of demons or whatever else we're hunting that day. Most of us care enough about others that we don't want them to lose us like that.” Not to mention that a lot of us knew what it was like to lose their parents.

Roslyn looked back to the guest room. “What about your friend?”

I shrugged. “Not my place to tell how she's feeling about any of this. If you'll excuse me...” With that, I left the table and joined Lucie in the guest room.

The room felt more cramped than before when I closed the door. Lucie had already taken control of the bed, emptying and sorting her backpack's contents and arranging everything so any spare daggers were easily within reach. A habit I shared when I was stressed. I watched her for a while, and then sat down to do the same until most surfaces in the room were covered with our collective stuff.

“You want a spare?” Lucie asked when she noticed my lack of blades. She held one out to me hilt first. I had three daggers laid out and was going through scenarios in my head that would require easily accessible hidden weapons. At least one would need a new sheath if I wanted to hide it in my boot. I took the offered knife and tucked it into the back of my belt, under the shirt.

Later that afternoon, after all our sorting was done and my mind, at least, felt more settled, Ysolde offered for us to join everyone for dinner. It felt as uncomfortable as breakfast did, and as we ate an admittedly delicious venison and vegetable stew, I couldn't stop myself from watching this family. They seemed like regular people, could have tricked anyone who didn't know they could turn into massive wolves at will. They showed none of the bloodlust or hunger for raw meat I'd learned to associate with cursed werewolves, they had better table manners than many of our younger recruits, and seemed entirely in control, even though they had lost someone very dear to them. That, maybe, was just them not wanting outsiders to see their grief, but it was impressive. I had heard stories from older Hunters about werewolves coming for their throats just for looking at them wrong.

Most importantly, I thought, the cursed ones couldn't talk in their wolf form, having become beasts in body and mind. What Lucie had told me had confirmed that. But Ysolde had first spoken to us as a wolf. That certainly made me feel less like I could be torn into pieces any second.

I glanced over at Lucie. Her hands were shaking just slightly, she was taking slow breaths as subtly as possible. In, hold, out. I bumped my knee to hers under the table.

Morning brought with it heavy storm clouds. Thunder shook me awake, and for a moment I thought it was still night.

“Lucie?”

“No,” she said, turned her back to me again, and soon after, I heard her even breath. She must have been a lot more tired than she had let on. Probably didn't sleep well. No matter how hard she tried to stay professional, no matter how welcoming this family had been despite the circumstances, werewolves were still werewolves to her. I couldn't blame her, especially after what she'd told me. When we got back to headquarters, or somewhere on the way, I needed to make it up to her.

I folded my blanket and placed the pillow on top of it. I hadn't slept much better, truth be told, but at least the house barely creaked, no matter how hard the wind tried to knock it down. It made me wonder about the strength of true werewolves. Did it extend to their homes? Was that why the door still looked to be in one piece? Did their homes feel pain as they did? There were stories about witch houses like that, some even confirmed, so it wouldn't be too strange. Witches were known, or at least rumoured, to have a strong bond with the places they called home, whether they were huts in the woods or fancy town houses.

For a while, I watched the storm through an opening in the curtains, letting my eyes wander along the peaks and valleys of the clouds, and my mind wherever it would. We would have to get back to headquarters soon, to report on what we had seen in the capital, get our orders, figure out where this started and who was behind it. We could follow the trail without orders, of course, but with the documents, nobles would be more likely to assist us, or at least not cause us as much trouble along the way. If they hadn't been overrun yet, anyway. And if our paperwork was still worth anything. Vrehden was responsible for maintaining contact with nobility, but it was hard to tell how much work he actually did for that.

“Reaper?” Lucie shifted on the creaking bed. “Hey, Reaper?”

It took her pinching the uninjured side of my face to bring me back to myself. I blinked. “Yeah?”

“Do we have to stay until the storm is over?”

I watched her face for a moment. She still looked tired. “Bad dream?”

Lucie nodded. “Sorry, I know going out now is inviting death.”

“Can you go back to sleep?”

“No.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Almost like old times, huh?” Before we'd gone to our separate trainings, she'd often had nightmares, and would come to me if she saw the light in my room was still on.

“Shove it.”

I reached for her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “Doom, werewolves, and now we've got horrible weather. Could really use a break, huh?”

Lucie glared at me, but returned the squeeze. “Shut up. Don't make fun of me. Storms mess with my illusions.”

“I know, I know. Sorry.” I stood up. “Should I go see if there's any breakfast?”

“I'm not hungry.” She looked back to the window.

I gave her a stern look. “Lucie.”

“Ugh, fine. Don't lecture me, oh grand elder Reaper.” She flung herself back onto the bed, waving a hand towards the door.

I grinned. “Be back in a bit, young one.”

“Good morning,” I said as I walked to a small water basin on the windowsill to wash my hands.

Viviane's echo nodded to me, and I could have sworn I saw a smile on her face.

“Good morning. Do you like fried eggs?” Ysolde asked.

“Love them,” I replied. “Would it be okay to bring a plate to Lucie? She's not feeling great right now, so she wants to eat in the guest room.”

Ysolde handed me two plates with generous amounts of fried eggs and strips of of meat spilling onto slices of dark bread. A meal to last the entire day, I thought.

“Thank you, Ma'am. I'll bring them back later.”

Roslyn motioned to the empty chairs squeezed together on one end of the table. “Won't you eat with us?”

“I'd prefer to keep Lucie company, if you don't mind.”

Ysolde smiled. “Of course. Roslyn, you can ask them more questions later, I'm sure.”

A hushed conversation resumed behind me as I shouldered the guest room door open.

“How do they look?” Lucie asked.

I held out a plate to her. “Better than yesterday. The echo—Viviane still looks strong, too. They'll be able to say goodbye properly.”

Lucie quietly stabbed at her food for a while, but ended up eating everything. When I returned the plates, Roslyn questioned me about my training. When had I started, how had I learned, who were my favourite teachers? I answered as best I could, considering it had been years since I'd finished the order's compulsory training. Not that I ever really stopped, I needed to keep my sword skills sharp, or I'd get jumped by another thrall. I wasn't eager to repeat that experience. I even demonstrated some of our basic moves, though with a wooden spoon rather than my sword for a weapon. Roslyn picked up a spoon to copy me. We all knew where the sharp end was when we started, but everything from grip to stance to quick reactions was something we'd had to learn. None of us went to bed without bruises for the first few months, and our egos often bruised for much longer.

“Were your instructors that harsh?” Ysolde asked, a note of anger in her voice. “That's not a way to teach children.”

I shrugged. “Some of them were, but the younger ones aren't as bad. They've learned that kids don't learn with just pain, so they're doing a lot of movement practice before they hand out weapons. Last I saw, some even had the weapons wrapped so it wouldn't hurt as much.”

She nodded. “So it's more play-fighting now. Good, you can learn a lot from that.”

Roslyn placed her own wooden spoon on the table. “Val and Thomas and I rough-housed a lot as pups. It was good practice.”

“When you didn't get all scratched up,” Ysolde said. For my sake, she added, “Very young wolves don't always have control over their transformation, it's something learned over time.”

“That makes sense. It's a bit like magic, then.”

“Can you do magic?” Roslyn asked.

“Barely. I can do some investigation, and make my sword hit a little harder, but that's it.”

She tilted her head. “How?”

I regretted mentioning magic at all in that moment. I really wasn't the person to ask. “I'm a bad teacher in that regard. My investigation is like, how do I describe it, like extending my awareness. It took me ages to learn. I focus on what's immediately around me, and sense movement, and then extend that outward a little. It's probably nothing compared to your perception, though.”

“I can smell a boar two miles away when I'm a wolf,” Roslyn agreed. “But when I'm a human, it's nowhere near as good. Same with hearing and seeing things.”

Ysolde chuckled. “Unless I try to make apple pie in secret.”

“Only when you make the crumbs ones,” she protested.

“Oh, I can imagine,” I said. “Crumbs are the best.” The conversation derailed to baking and home cooking, but Ysolde held firm to the secret family recipe for apple pies. At some point, Lucie poked her head out of the guest room. She listened to us for a moment, then shook her head and disappeared again before anyone could ask her about whether crust or crumbs was better.

The sky soon cleared up, and in an attempt to escape the confines of the house, Lucie and I took a walk around the village. The few villagers we saw didn't go near us, let alone talk to us, but that was neither surprising, nor did I feel any different towards them than before we'd even arrived. We had brought bad news, after all, and we were Hunters. There had to be stories about our kind here. Some of them were probably true, too.

“I feel weird without my sword,” Lucie said over the crunching of snow under our feet.

“Same. Can't be helped.”

“I want to go somewhere else.”

I stopped. “We can leave tomorrow.”

“What? Not getting adopted by them after all?”

“Oh, Lucie, you wound me,” I said in a theatrically tearful voice. “But, really, we did what we came for. I haven't reported to headquarters since summer. We can leave the family to their grief, they'll be fine.” Or so I hoped, anyway.

Lucie studied my face for a while. “They'll think you're dead at headquarters.”

“What about you, then?”

“About the same.”

I grinned, but it probably looked more disturbing than amused. “So let's visit them and report a fallen city, and then get our orders to fix it.”

Lucie looked back towards the village square we had just left. “Alright, let's get ready. I'm not looking forward to the paperwork. They'll bury us in warnings and writing duty before we're allowed to go anywhere again.”

“Probably. But they have a point. I'll do the city part of the reports,” I promised.

Valentin’s family bid us farewell just before sunrise. Ysolde treated us to a hearty breakfast before we set out, Roslyn walked with us to the edge of the village. Her innocent curiosity even got Lucie talking a little about her training time, before she went to her specialised school, and I saw her smile a little when she recounted pranks she'd played with her magic.

The moment we stepped outside the village bounds, Lucie got a spring in her step. It took us a while to get to the nearest town, even with decent weather, and would then take almost two weeks to headquarters by carriage. Or rather, to the town closest to headquarters. No carriage ever went into the woods, so we'd have to spend almost a whole day walking until we finally reached home.

By the time we got a driver to take us along, I had gotten back into work mode, and that trip to Wolventraum was joining other pleasant and unpleasant memories.

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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Wolventraum - Chapter 4

Wooden cabins surrounded a rough hewn stone square. In spring, I thought, the wild flowers and grasses growing between the cracks had to be beautiful. But now, the stones were slick with ice and trampled snow, and the cabin roofs bore a heavy burden.

At the foot of the mountain, grass and the first flowers were peeking out at the sun, most of the snow melted into flooding creaks and icy rivers. But up here, it was still bitingly cold, now that we were out of the forest. It would take a few more weeks for spring to grab hold of this place and the forest around it.

As I watched the cabins, I sensed eyes on us. Many. They had to be behind every door and window facing the square, even though I couldn't see anyone. No lights shone behind the shutters.

No one had moved inside the houses as Lucie and I had walked towards the well in the centre of the square, but we felt them watching us. Two Hunters, an untold number of werewolves. It was hard to get a read on how many there were without tracking magic, they had to all be huddled together indoors. But even without my magic, I could tell that there were too many for us to stand any chance at all. If things came down to a fight, it would be quick, painful, and ugly.

We waited, leaning against the well, watching the darkness settle on the village. The moon offered little by way of visibility, half hidden behind clouds.

“What if they just attack us?” Lucie asked, her voice so low I barely heard it.

I straightened my back and gave her what I hoped to be a reassuring smile. “It’ll be fine. If they do, it’ll be so quick we won’t have time to complain.”

Her face twisted and she turned away. “You know, that scar isn’t exactly helping you. Or me, for that matter.”

“Thanks.” I squeezed her shoulder. Then, I turned towards the houses closest to us, and said, “We’re looking for someone named Valentin.” In any other place I would have raised my voice, but I doubted that was necessary here. “We’re from the capital.”

A door flew open.

A large wolf was on us before we could even draw our weapons.

The wolf’s jaws snapped shut right in front of my face, its hot breath smelling, surprisingly, of vegetable soup and herbs.

Lucie cursed, and finally got her sword hand steady enough to venture a strike. The wolf slapped her blade away with ease.

“Easy, Lucie,” I said as I slowly lowered my arms. “Easy, villager. We’re not here to pick a fight.”

“It tried to kill you!” Lucie shrieked.

The wolf growled at her. Then it said with a gentle, motherly voice, “And you tried to kill me.” It turned back to me. “You have something of Vivi’s, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Her diary. I want to give it to Valentin.”

The wolf held my gaze for longer than I thought healthy, then transformed into its—her—human form right in front of us, grey fur fading into work-brown skin and greying hair. Only the yellow eyes remained the same. It took heartbeats, and she seemed unbothered by it, relaxed, even.

That was the difference, I thought, between voluntary transformations and curses. The poor cursed sods transformed the moment they got angry, or if someone looked at them funny, or if the moon was full. And it hurt them so much that they lost their minds. We all knew the stories.

The woman pointed to our weapons. “Put those where you can’t easily reach them, please. The whole village is on edge, as I am sure you can imagine. We do not often get your kind of visitor.”

I complied, and thankfully, Lucie did the same, though the look on her face as she tied the dagger and sword sheath to her backpack spoke volumes about what she thought of the whole thing.

“My name is Ysolde,” the woman said.

“I’m called Reaper, this is Lucie.” I held out my hand. “Sorry about before, comes with the territory.”

Ysolde gave my hand an almost bone-crushing squeeze, which was either to warn me or just how she shook everyone’s hand. “Interesting name.”

“They’re legendary,” Lucie said quietly. “Legendarily unlucky at times, but that name’s well earned.” She was starting to calm down. Good. This was probably as calm as she was going to get while we were here, but I much preferred her attempts at making casual conversation over her fear. And being called legendary, even if I usually waved it away, was nice once in a while.

“Thanks, Lucie,” I said with a bright smile. “But don’t let that bother you, Ma’am. Like I said, we’re here to deliver the diary, not to pick fights.” Especially not ones we couldn't win. I'd been sent on hunts doomed to fail before, challenges meant to kill me if the talk at headquarters was anything to go by, and while I'd considered those hunts to be really, very unlucky days for me, some of them hadn't even left scars. I had gotten very good at judging my opponents, and so had Lucie.

Ysolde gave a curt nod, then walked to the open door. Faint firelight shone through the frame. Lucie and I picked up our backpacks and quickly followed. Slowly, small lights came on in the other houses, the imminent threat taken care of.

The inside of the house was clean, and warm from a fire crackling happily in the hearth. Ysolde motioned to an older man leaning on the windowsill and introduced him as her husband Leopold. He nodded his acknowledgement of our presence, but otherwise remained still as a stone. I wasn't even sure if he blinked. Then, Ysolde introduced her oldest son, Valentin, who was just placing another log into the fire, and his younger sister and brother, Roslyn and Thomas, who both mirrored their father in their stillness, though their eyes tracked our every move. I felt like prey, but tried to push that thought aside. I was here to deliver the diary, not to fight or get myself killed.

Upon Ysolde’s invitation, both Lucie and I hung our bags over chairs and sat down at the table. Silence fell over the room for a nigh unbearable length of time. Lucie kept looking over her shoulder at her weapons. I found time to study the flower patterns embroidered into the tablecloth.

Ysolde finally saved us from the sound of our own hearts racing. “They have news from the capital,” she announced. She motioned for me to open my bag.

Valentin almost fell upon me when I reached for it, his hands landing right beside me on the table so hard the wood groaned. He smelled it, I was sure. Maybe the dried blood above everything. His eyes flashed with barely contained anger. And fear.

Lucie reached back for one of her daggers.

I fished the diary out of my bag.

Valentin’s eyes widened. He made to bend down to sniff it, but his senses had confirmed his suspicions already. His voice was barely above a whisper when he said, “How did you get that?”

I placed the diary on the table. “I’m sorry we don’t bring better news. I found it when I investigated the house after the capital was attacked.” Delivering notice to grieving families had always been the duty I dreaded, and shirked, the most. Lucie, too. We had specialists for that, people who were good with words and people. And we had never had to deliver sad news to werewolves. To my relief, though, none of them tried to kill us.

Almost as if he was afraid it would crumble under his hands, Valentin picked up the diary, brushed a fingertip over the large bloodstain soaked through its back cover, the damaged pages. His hands shook, and then an inhuman howl fled from his throat.

Within heartbeats, a large grey wolf erupted from where Valentin had stood, nearly smashing the door off its hinges on the way out. He held the diary like a fragile flower between his fangs.

“Valentin!” Ysolde shouted after him, but she made no attempt to follow. Her other children bolted after their older brother, changing to their wolf forms as they flew out the door one by one, human underneath the frame and wolf on the front step.

Ysolde stared at the open door for an eternity before she moved to close it. “He’ll be okay,” she muttered. “He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay.” Over and over as she began pacing. The room suddenly seemed very small.

I slowly raised a hand. “Um, ma’am? There is a chance the diary has an echo.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Echo?”

“Yes.” I took a moment to sort the words out in my head. “There is a chance that the lady’s soul is attached to the diary, and that she’ll be able to talk to him, maybe even show herself as a... an echo of who she once was. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. She may just relive the moment she died.”

Ysolde nodded. Then, she flung the door open and, changing into her wolf form, leapt after her children.

Lucie and I exchanged awkward glances, and then dared to look at Valentin’s father, who was still looking through the window. I was sure he hadn't moved at all since we had been introduced.

“Uh, sir,” I started, but he interrupted me with a shake of his head.

“You gave my son a semblance of closure,” he said in a low, heavy voice. Howling rang through the forest outside. “I hate to do this, I can tell you would rather leave,” he continued, “but I must ask that you stay in our guest room. If you go outside now, he might...” His voice failed him, and he took a steadying breath. “It’s a small room, right there past the bookshelf.”

“Thank you, sir.” I stood, grabbed my bag, and walked the few steps over, then held the door open for Lucie.

As soon as the door shut, we heard another wolf bolt out the front door, and it slammed shut with such force that the walls shook. A glass shattered on the floor.

It was too dark to see outside. Lucie found and lit a candle, then held her dagger up to the light. “Do you think we’re gonna get out here alive?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “For now, let’s get some rest, just in case we gotta run for it.”

She nodded, and sat down on the bed. The wood creaked in protest.

“No secrets here, then,” I said.

“Timing, Reaper.” Her face sent a shiver down my spine.

I walked over to the wall with the window and looked outside. “Sorry.” The howling rose in volume. It seemed like other villagers were joining, too, the number of wolves I could make out in the choir grew. Had Viviane meant so much to this family, this village? She hadn’t written much about any interactions with other villagers. Maybe the other villagers shared the grief, no matter their personal connection. If shared grief meant half the grief for this family, maybe it was a good thing.

I looked over to Lucie. She held her dagger in a death grip and kept looking from the window to the door.

“Lucie.”

She nearly hurled the dagger at me. I held up my hands. “I'm here, Lucie. We'll be okay. Seriously. I don't think these people will hurt us.”

“They're werewolves, Reaper. Werewolves!” Her shoulders shook. “They'll kill us the moment we try to leave.”

I walked the three steps to the bed, but leaned against the wall next to it so Lucie couldn't stare holes into the door behind me. “I've been meaning to ask,” I said, “And I know the timing isn't great, but I think it's important. When you were doing your magic training, what happened?”

She glared at me. “You mean why can I stare down a ghoul, but freak out the moment someone mentions werewolves? I know it's not... reasonable. I'm sure I've met people who were actually werewolves, and just couldn't tell. Do you think I like being so damn scared?”

I shook my head.

Lucie sighed, forced herself to roll her shoulders and sit up straight. “I don't want to tell anyone, honestly.” Her shoulders sank again. “I still get nightmares about it.”

“Report,” I said. “As much as you can. I want to know how much I owe you for making you come here with me.”

“You didn't make me,” she protested. “I said I'd come with you. I made that choice myself. I couldn't forgive myself if I let you go alone and you ended up dead.”

That gave me a good idea about what might have happened, but now I wanted to hear it even more. I sat down next to her, and held out my arm. Lucie grabbed it, her hands closing around it so tightly I was sure I'd have bruises the next day.

Very quietly, she said, “I've never had such a failure since then, and never before.” After a steadying breath, she continued, her voice now not trembling, but flat, like she was reporting to a superior. “My bunk mate at Master Hilgram's school became cursed. She became a werewolf. I never figured out how, I didn't go with her that day, but all the signs were there. She became erratic, lost all her patience, her eating habits changed, her way of speaking, even how she moved. It must have happened during one of the expeditions into the forests nearby, we were—I'm not supposed to talk about how Master Hilgram teaches, but we occasionally went on solo expeditions to certain locations she picked for us, to see if we could reach them with the magic we had learned until that point. Most of us teamed up anyway, since we'd be doing that as Hunters. But I wanted to do it alone, and so she also had to go alone.”

“Venna came back from one of them days late. We were all worried sick, Master Hilgram's scrying couldn't find her. She told everyone she'd gotten lost and that her magic wasn't at the level she thought it was, so she'd failed the test. Master Hilgram chewed her out for not using the bauble she gave us. Uh, that's one of those things other schools don't see. It has an enchantment to shoot up a beam of light when you break it, and Master Hilgram has a large bell in her office that chimes through the whole school when that happens. We had special cases for the baubles so they wouldn't crack on accident. They had an enchantment so only we students could open them. Venna's was empty when she unpacked. She told Master Hilgram she lost it.”

Lucie shook her head, and reached for her backpack. She dug around in it as she continued, “I still have my bauble, I never used it, and I was allowed to keep it after I finished training, as a memento. It's in here somewhere. I'll show you later.”

“Did Venna lie about losing it?”

“Yes. When it was just us two, she told me she'd used it when she ended up in a part of the forest that wasn't on our maps. It was enchanted, or cursed, or something. Had to be cursed, really. The light didn't go past the tree tops, and Master Hilgram's bell probably never chimed. But after that, Venna said she didn't remember much until she was suddenly walking out of the forest almost a week later. She wasn't injured, just hungry and thirsty, and it was all good until the first full moon after that. She was in so much pain she couldn't move, but our healers couldn't figure out where it was coming from. She didn't transform then, maybe all the protective enchantments at the school prevented it. Every full moon she was at the school, she felt that pain, and her temper and everything else got worse. Healers still had no clue, they didn't even think it was a possibility.”

“Then, she ran off one night, and when we all went out to look for her, we found her tearing herself apart, half wolf and full mad.”

I placed a hand on Lucie's trembling shoulder.

She took a few deep breaths, then swallowed. “We killed her, all of us together. Master Hilgram yelled at me for not noticing sooner, and I should have, but no one ever documented what the early stages of a werewolf curse look like, or what would happen to the person if the transformation was prevented by magic several times, or what the changes meant for the person. None of that was written down anywhere. No one taught us what to look for! No one took Venna seriously after the first few times her pain went away without any visible consequences. Not even I did. I just thought her cycle had changed because of the stress of getting lost in the forest, and that the pain just came along with that. Even though I've never seen or had anything like that myself.”

Again, her shoulders shook, and she began to cry. I pulled her close and rubbed slow circles on her back until she calmed down.

Quietly, I said, “So every time you think about werewolves, you remember that?”

Lucie's reply was muffled by my shirt sleeve. “I wish I didn't know they existed. I wish I could just pretend it was some stupid evil magic that happened to her, and not know what it was. I hate that I didn't notice anything.” Finally, she pushed me away. “I don't want to talk about it any longer.”

“I won't ask about it again. Let's try to get some rest, I'll keep watch.”

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Letters

Diary Entries

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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Viviane's Diary

Written by Viviane after the letters, leading up to the beginning of the actual story, which starts here.

Wolventraum, October 30th

They wouldn’t even deliver my last letter. I asked why, and they said it was too dangerous, but they’d send the letter as soon as they were able. I took it back home with me. Might as well keep it in my diary until then, so it doesn't get lost in any corners.

Wolventraum, October 29th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

Valentin has proposed marriage. In such times! No one has left the village in days, not even the hunters, everyone rushes about between the houses like they fear the sky might fall on them if they stay out too long.

Valentin’s mother often comes over to visit, and she keeps talking about these terrifying stories. It feels easy to believe her, now. She treats me like her own daughter already, but Valentin’s father still seems to have some dislike for me.

I was torn whether to tell you, but it seems that the whole village is expecting something to happen in just a few days. People are building barricades. Still, no one is telling me what is going on, not even Valentin or his mother.

I am afraid, Marie, but even more afraid of leaving on my own. I wish I was back in the city, where gossips and papers run their mouths so much that no one stops to think which tales are true.

Viviane

I still don’t understand what’s happening, or why. I wish I got replies to my other letters, other than Carter's complaints. I wish I had any word from mother about how everyone is doing in the city.

Valentin barely sleeps anymore, he paces around the house like a caged animal, but keeps telling me not to worry. How is that meant to calm me down?

I just heard a wolf outside, so close I was sure the windows would shake. It’s still daylight out, barely past noon.

I think Valentin went outside, I can’t hear him pacing anymore. Where did he go? And here I thought he trusted me enough to tell me at least that much.

October 31st

I spent all night alone. It’s getting cold, and I can’t tell if the howling outside is wind or wolves today. The windows are shaking, and Valentin is nowhere to be found. Tonight will be a full moon. I am too afraid to continue my manuscript. I barely dare to leave the bedroom.

Valentin returned while I was cooking. Being near the fire and the knives feels oddly calming. I wish father was here with his books and his axe, and mother and Marie. Their chatter would turn my mind to different matters.

Valentin still tells me not to worry, that storms like this are normal for this region and season. I know autumn storms, but this is not like them at all. The autumn storms at grandmother’s home were less frightening, even to the child I was at the time.

I saw an injury on Valentin’s side. He refused to let me look at it and insisted my eyes tricked me. He went outside again. There was nothing there when he came back, and he had a new shirt on. Maybe it was my imagination.

It is night now. I have a row of candles lined up on my desk so I can see what I write. Never before in my life have I been so afraid. My biggest kitchen knife is right by my hand, and I keep wanting to grab it.

I can hear a pack of wolves howling over the wind. How many are there? It seems like there’s more and more with every passing moment. I have long since drawn all curtains shut and barred the windows and doors. Still I fear they will come for me any moment now.

I took my candles and knife and everything I can carry into the basement. I didn’t even know there was one under that flower rug, but now I’m glad I bothered to clean it the other day. It is much quieter here, and the candlelight doesn’t flicker as much. I will wait for Valentin to return, and then I will demand he explain to me what is happening.

November 1st

It is just past sunrise. I dared to leave the cellar for some food, and found carnage outside. Wolves torn apart, everywhere. No matter what window I look out of. I haven’t spotted Valentin among them, but he has yet to come home.

Finally, Valentin has returned. The dead wolves outside have disappeared, pyres have been built to burn them. I saw them drag the bodies over. Some of them looked more human than wolf, like the beasts from the stories.

Valentin confessed that I am the only person in this village who is human. Everyone else is a werewolf, he said. He didn’t want to scare me, so he kept it a secret. All the dead wolves outside are also werewolves, from this village and from a different one. He said they were threatening the village, so they fought. He didn't tell me why the village was threatened.

I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around it all. All these people I talked to, the children I saw playing during summer, they are all the cruel beasts from the stories? How can I stay here, now? What if this happens again?

I paced around the house until it grew dark outside. The pyres are still burning in the centre of the village, and Valentin has gone to watch them. A funeral, he said, for Wolventraum and the intruders alike.

What if the other monsters are real, too? What if I run afoul of them? Will this village even let me leave, now that I know their secret?

I want to go home. I’ll pack up my bags and walk to the town down the mountain. I should be able to make it within a day, maybe less, if I hurry. From there, I will take a carriage. Even if it’s a postal carriage that shakes my bones all the way. I will go home.

November 2nd

All bags are ready. Almost out of ink for my travel vial, but I prepared another one. Valentin didn’t want me to leave, but he said he understands, and that he'll accompany me into town so I don’t have to carry all my bags alone.

It was a long, awkward walk, but Valentin and I are at an inn now, waiting for a carriage bound for the capital. He has been pacing around our small room for an hour now.

This entry is written on a new page in a rough hand, despite there still being plenty of room after the last entry.

I’m sorry for keeping these secrets, Vivi. I’m sorry for writing in your diary after you’ve gone to sleep, but you did say that sometimes it’s easier to write than to speak.

The truth about Wolventraum must have been a bigger shock than I or my family imagined. They’re all sad to see you go, even father, but they also agree that it’s best for you to be with your own family.

Be careful while you travel, our conflict wasn’t the only one. Something seems to be happening to wandering packs and even settled ones all over the country. They warn us whenever they pass by our territory, but anger flares up before we can talk to them. They’re afraid, and so are we. I think they're being driven out of their territories.

Be safe in your city, be safe with your family. I love you. – Valentin

On the road home, November 3rd

I cried all morning on the carriage. I’m not even sure why. Because I’m afraid, still? Because I’m leaving Valentin behind? I can still see him waving the carriage off, I can still feel his last embrace. I’m tired, I want to see my family, I want to see Valentin again. What he wrote does little to ease my worries. What could possibly be frightening such people as his family? What in the world is scarier than a werewolf? Scary enough to run them out of their homes?

When I remember what I saw, how big those wolves were, I shudder.

The inn the carriage stopped at smells bad, the people are rude, and the room is dirty. I can’t wait for morning.

Home, November 17th

I finally made it home. All bags are safe, nothing broke. I left much behind in the house for lighter travels. It is late, yet I cannot sleep. The noise of the city even at night feels unfamiliar now. But I am home, Liza nearly crushed my ribs when she welcomed me, and mother and father were so relieved to see me safe and sound that they both cried. I wish I could introduce Valentin to them, but I doubt he would like it here.

November 25th

My birthday was celebrated like never before last night. Even now I can hear the cheers ringing in my head. It’s like I was gone for years without a word.

I received a letter from Wolventraum, but it must have gotten caught in rain. The ink is all muddled, I can hardly read a word. The only ink that survived was the little signature from Wolventraum's post station. I don't even know who sent it, but it must have been Valentin. I miss him as much as I missed my family.

December 20th

So much has happened that I hardly found time to keep my diary. Elizabeth and Tomlin had their little girl, Mister Carter told me to never move to such a backwater village again if I want him to keep publishing my books, Marie has received two marriage proposals, and my hands have never been more stained with ink.

For all his temper, Mister Carter is desperate for my books, they sell like festival ribbons the night before the lanterns are lit. He's such a pain to work with, I'm considering finding someone else. Maybe I could even create my own little publishing house. Well, I doubt that would work in the city, too many would oppose it. But a girl can dream. If I did, though, maybe I could be close to Valentin again.

I almost wish to go back to Wolventraum, what withhow the city is changing. More guards, every place closes at nightfall, a curfew no one was told about but everyone follows. There are whispers, too, and not the usual rumours. It's more than a little concerning, but we don't talk about it at home.

Letters from my grandparents have become rare, too. I heard the roads even this close to the city are dangerous now, and not because of the winter storms. We all know the winter storms. We weathered the worst the country has ever seen, as a family, as a city, just a few years ago. There is talk of brigands taking over whole villages. I hope that's all exaggerated.

Liza and I will go out for tea and cake today, to a small shop nearby. We both need the distraction.

December 25th

December 28th

Everyone is afraid. Before we were locked in, Elizabeth and Tomlin and their little Lydia made it here, just in time. No word from my grandparents.

I dread to think how Liza must feel, with her birthday in just a few days. I want to give her something, but I can't go out. Maybe I'll write her a poem.

Liza’s suitors withdrew their proposals before the lockdown came, and I can hardly blame them. She didn’t seem all that upset about it, either.

December 30th

They went up two hours ago and haven’t come back. I didn’t hear anything, no one did. We have little hope, though no one dares to say so.

Winter child,

And yet your hair is sunshine and your laugh is warmth

Year-end child,

Your smile brings promises of spring

Sister, friend, heart,

May your joy forever sing

I cannot keep Liza and mother calm any longer. I am on the verge of tears myself. I wish Valentin was here, I’d feel safer with him. I wish I’d stayed in the village, maybe then I wouldn’t have to hear

The entry cuts off, and the rest of the pages are stained with ink and blood.

#dreaming goblin writes #Wolventraum #my writing #writeblr #werewolves #vampires #fantasy #fantasy writeblr #fantasy writer #fantasy writing #dreaming goblin rambles #dreaming goblin writes books #writer tag game #writers on tumblr #original writing #creative writing

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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Letters from the Village of Wolves

I wrote these and everything that follows from 2020 to 2022. Admittedly, I got sick of editing at some point, and my writing process has changed much, so I will share the whole of Wolventraum here in bits and pieces.

First up: Viviane's letters to her publisher and family.

First Letter

Wolventraum, March 28th, xxxx

Dear Mister Carter,

I have reached the village of Wolventraum, and every bag and suitcase arrived safely. I have almost finished putting the house in order. You can expect the new manuscript before the month is out. The village has a post station and seems to maintain a regular postal service to the nearest town, so I am sure that our communication will continue as before.

Best regards,

V. Walkers

Second Letter

Wolventraum, April 2nd, xxxx

Dear Mother, Dear Liza,

I have arrived safely in Wolventraum. The name gives me pause whenever I read or write it, but you know how small villages in the countryside are. The house is almost in order, and I know you’d love to see it for yourselves, but the journey would take too much time for a simple visit, so I shall describe it for you both.

The house is half-timbered, red brick and dark wood, and the roof has dark tiles. You’d fall in love with it the moment you saw it. The front door is similarly dark, but the interior is bright and welcoming. The windows let in sunlight from dawn until dusk, and the view of the valley is breathtaking. Even now, after almost a week, I still spend so much time simply looking out over the trees and distant river that I forget I need to write my next book.

The furniture is all old and simple, but I brought out the tablecloths you gave me, and they add life to every piece. Even the vase made it in one piece, it’s on the dining table. I have yet to pick flowers for it, but it sits on the table as a reminder every day.

There is a rug in my writing room in the shape of a flower, it was here when I arrived, and I left it by the window where I found it. It's faded, but it used to be a bright red, and the shape makes me think it was maybe a poppy.

The kitchen and living room both have fireplaces, and I can cook over both. I make my tea in the living room, and my meals in the kitchen. They are the warmest rooms in the house, but the attic will surely take that title come summer.

My bedroom is right across from the bathroom, and the bed creaks when I move too much. I brought my blankets and pillows, and had to stuff a mattress the day I arrived because only the bed frame remained. I sleep well every night, listening to the song of wolves at dusk and the song of birds at dawn.

I shall write more letters when work has loosened its grip on me.

With love,

Viviane

Third Letter

Wolventraum, May 3rd, xxxx

Dear Liza,

Don’t show this to our mother, she’ll want to come visit immediately, but the roads are horrid and bumpy even in the best carriages, and it would still take almost two weeks just to get here. If she asks what I wrote, tell her I’m complaining about the manuscript or Carter's attitude.

I can hear wolves outside my house, howling at the moon at night. I used to hear them from far away, now they sound like they're right by the village edge. I even saw them out the window once, running into the valley after a deer. They got it, I think.

It’s hard to sleep, knowing wolves are so close, but the house is brick, the doors are heavy oak, they won’t come inside. Aren’t they even rather shy? I heard stories about wolves running away from people, not the other way around.

I met one of the village’s hunters the other day, a fine man, just a little older than us. Yes, he looks quite dashing. If I was any good at it, I’d draw you a portrait of him. He told me that most of the meat people eat here is hunted, not raised. I have yet to buy any from the butcher, his shop looks quite frightening with that huge knife hanging above the door.

I wanted to write this quickly, but the hunter came to visit. He told me I was looking a little pale the last time we met, so he brought me some meat from the butcher’s and taught me how his family cooks it. I have yet to get used to the taste, I admit.

It’s late now, but expect another letter soon.

With love,

Viviane

Fourth Letter

Wolventraum, May 23rd, xxxx

Dear Mother, Dear Liza,

I received quite the tongue-lashing from Mister Carter about the manuscript I sent him. Not the writing, he liked that well enough this time, but the state it arrived in. The packaging was torn up, he wrote. Can you believe it? What postal service tears up their packages? I hope my letters reach you in a better state.

I am once again getting busy with work, so excuse my brevity. I miss you both. Send my regards to Tomlin and Elizabeth, they must be seething because I haven’t written to them yet.

With love,

Viviane

Fifth Letter

Wolventraum, May 23rd, xxxx

Dear Liza,

Again, I send you a secret. Not as secret as I would hope, I’m sure mother knows you get letters addressed just to you. I hope you keep her from reading this one, too.

The hunter, his name is Valentin, and he insists on cooking one of his family’s meat dishes for me at least once a week. Can you believe it? You don’t think he’s courting me, do you? I can hear you laughing as I write this. I can even see you grin like a child, ear to ear, about to run to mother and tell her. Don't think I don't know you well enough.

Don’t tell her. Not yet. I still find myself unsure what to think about him. He wants to introduce me to his family soon, he said they were asking why he suddenly wanted to learn how to cook. Maybe I’ll meet them. I’ll write to you again soon.

With love,

Viviane

Sixth Letter

Wolventraum, June 20th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

I know I took my time writing again. A lot has happened, and I shall summarise.

First, I met Valentin’s family. His father seems very strict, but his mother is very kind and welcoming. He has a sister and a brother, both younger than him. His sister was very interested in the city, and I told her all the reasons I miss it, and all the reasons I don’t. His brother is the youngest, and full of energy, like a puppy on a sunny day.

Second, Mister Carter sent me a small wooden chest to use for my manuscripts from now on. The one I sent him at the end of last month again arrived torn, so badly he had to piece it back together before reading. Whatever letter I sent him with it was lost, it seems. He told me to rely on his private messenger, rather than the postal service.

Third, my current manuscript has hit a wall. I think it might be the usual problem, so I shall take a short break from writing, and instead wander around the village for a few days, meet other people, maybe take a walk through the woods with Valentin.

I hope you and mother are doing well. Send me a letter soon, will you?

With love,

Viviane

Seventh Letter

Wolventraum, June 24th, xxxx

Dear Mister Carter,

With this, I send a copy of the manuscript from last month, with the changes you suggested. I hope it arrives safely. Surely nothing can tear up a wooden chest heavy enough to make a dent in my floor boards.

Best regards,

V. Walkers

Eighth Letter

Wolventraum, July 14th, xxxx

Dear Mother, Dear Liza,

Are you well? No letters have made it all the way to Wolventraum if you sent any. How is father doing? Has he come back from his travels yet? How are Elizabeth and Tomlin?

The old lady at the post station said that many towns closer to the capital refuse to forward mail all the way here because it's too far out. I shall take a trip soon to see if any of your letters have been kept there. Mister Carter has his own messenger who keeps coming all the way to Wolventraum's little station, though I've yet to meet and apologise to him for all the trouble.

For a time, I found the howling wolves to be almost endearing, hunting in the moonlight like in the stories. But lately, they sound like they're on my doorstep. There was one night when I had to ask Valentin to stay over, I was so afraid.

Mother, Valentin is a hunter from Wolventraum I befriended. His family has been very kind to me, but I have no intentions of marrying him. Don’t get any ideas, please. I’m married to my work, after all.

Summer is at its height, but the air remains pleasant up here. I can still sit and write half the day, and the forest scent wafts through my open windows. I feel like I’m writing underneath a tree, with birds singing around me. I hope you can stave off the heat in the city.

With love,

Viviane

Ninth Letter

Wolventraum, July 14th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

Don’t be jealous, I caught a glimpse of Valentin without his shirt on. When he stayed over that night, after I had gotten ready for bed, he went into the garden for a moment. He said he wanted to chop some firewood for me because I can’t hold the axe properly, and he took it off while he was chopping.

He is a fine man indeed.

His parents raised him to be all clean and tidy, too. I don’t know what aunt Phoebe was going on about, people in the countryside are just as well-mannered as us. Even better, maybe, because they are more welcoming, even to outsiders like me. I have met others now, thanks to Valentin's family. They share vegetables from their gardens with me sometimes, and some fruit from their trees, and the children help me with my own gardening if I tell them stories.

I have been to visit Valentin’s family many times since my last letter, I'm sure you can tell. His mother is a fantastic storyteller, it is an honour, as a writer myself, to witness her.

Please write soon. I’m already thinking about getting you a trinket from the village for your birthday this winter.

With love,

Viviane

Tenth Letter

Wolventraum, August 12th, xxxx

Dear Mister Carter,

Has my manuscript reached you? I have yet to receive a reply. I was told your messenger has not been to Wolventraum's post station recently, and I do hope the roads are not too troublesome to travel this summer.

Please let me know what changes you would like me to make.

Best regards,

V. Walkers

Eleventh Letter

Wolventraum, August 12th, xxxx

Dear Mother, Dear Liza,

I was told in town that your letters were forwarded to Wolventraum, but no one at the postal station here wants to know anything about it. I thought about sending this letter from town, but the day I went there, the whole town was awash with news that someone was attacked by wolves. I’m afraid to go out now, even with weather as picturesque as today’s.

Valentin stayed over again so that I would be calm enough to sleep. The howling is getting louder and more frequent, too, but no one else in the village seems to mind it. Maybe it’s a common thing in the countryside when summer is ending?

I hope your next letters reach me. I miss you both terribly.

With love,

Viviane

Twelfth Letter

Wolventraum, September 12th, xxxx

Dear Mother, Dear Liza,

A whole month has passed. I got used to the howling, and Valentin is always by my side these days. It is reassuring to have him here, even if I just sit at my desk and write while he reads book after book on my humble shelf.

I haven’t heard from Mister Carter in a while. Do you know what happened to him? I received my payment as usual, delivered right to my door by a messenger I didn't see, but no further instructions or requests for my next manuscript, so I am left writing what comes to mind. Maybe I shall write about wolves, now that I no longer find their presence as threatening.

Valentin’s mother told me stories about wolves in the region, but they were so frightening I dare not tell them to you.

But I am safe, so you need not worry about me.

With love,

Viviane

Thirteenth Letter

Wolventraum, September 25th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

Don’t tell mother yet, but Valentin asked me if I wouldn’t like to live with his family, or if I would mind terribly if he moved into my house. I have room enough, but you can imagine what this proposal makes me think.

Not that I mind, of course.

Don’t tell mother this, either, but Valentin told me that all of his mother’s stories are true. Do you believe in werewolves? They were just folk tales to us, but here, they are easy to believe, don’t you think? Woods and mountains and wolves howling in the night, isn’t this the ideal soil for such stories?

I’m not sure I believe them myself, but it seems everyone else here does.

I’ll write again soon. No letters have arrived from you, but none of mine have been sent back yet, either, so I shall assume they have reached you and you are doing well.

With love,

Viviane

Fourteenth Letter

Wolventraum, October 13th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

I have grown afraid once more. Still I have no word from Mister Carter, and now, Valentin is always on edge, his temper has grown shorter, and yet he keeps telling me it's fine, the season brings that upon this place, he says, and not to worry. Everyone in the village is nervous. It’s like they’re waiting for something horrible and inevitable to happen. The children don't ask me for stories anymore.

No matter how tightly Valentin holds me at night, I cannot shake this fear. I want to return home, but there are more news every day of wolf attacks on the roads. Whenever I go to the baker's or the post station, I hear about them. And I don’t want to leave Valentin behind, either.

I wish you were here to talk some sense into me, Marie. I miss you. Tell mother I’m doing well, don’t make her afraid.

I love you.

Viviane

Fifteenth Letter

Wolventraum, October 29th, xxxx

Dear Liza,

I am afraid, Marie, but even more afraid of leaving on my own. I wish I was back in the city, where gossips and papers run their mouths so much that no one stops to think which tales are true.

Viviane

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Wolventraum - Chapter 10

Julia told us about a town two weeks west, where Hunter Aelis had taken up residence over the winter, and had stayed to train the town's militia after the snow melted. She had received a letter from him asking for news and, hopefully, Hunters she could ask to assist him.

I vaguely remembered Aelis, and racked my brain about facts on him on the way there. He had been two years my senior at Sword Master Lydia's school, and routinely wiped the floor with me in training sessions despite being barely bigger than me, and just as skinny. But each time he had noted some improvement or other, and more than once treated me to meals. Back then, I had always felt he was too kind to become a Hunter, but kindness never meant someone couldn’t be good at ridding the world of monsters.

Aelis looked very different from the boy I remembered. His hair had grown long, and grey streaks were showing here and there through the brown. He had more muscle than me now, had more scars. He carried two swords on his back, and one on his belt, all of fine quality, none of our order's smithy. He looked tired, too. Worry had drawn deep lines into his face.

“It's good to see you two,” he said when we first arrived at the town's training field. He told his trainees to take a break and took us to his office in the small tower next to the field.

I looked around the room. It was sparse, there were a few maps of the town on the walls, and one on his desk. A shelf held a few books, a basket held wooden training weapons.

“How's the situation?” I asked.

“Managed,” he said, and fell into his chair. “We have been able to fight back during the last two attacks, one two weeks ago, the other at the very end of winter. There are still people missing from the first attack, we were able to track them through the snow. I doubt any of them are still alive, but we need to give the townsfolk some closure.”

Lucie frowned. She seemed to agree with his sentiment, as did I. Food or thralls, the two fates of someone captured by a vampire. It was rare for a new vampire to know how to create another of their kind, the process usually happened while they were unconscious, if our archives’ bestiary was to be believed.

“Where do you think they are?” she asked.

“If you haven't seen it, you came in the other gate.” Aelis got up and walked to one of the town maps on the wall. “Here, this used to be a fairly well-off merchant's home, but an echo took up residence there a few years ago, and it was abandoned.”

I groaned. “Of course. Didn't the priests in town try to do anything?”

“They did, but the echo returned, and they didn't try again.” Aelis pulled a thin leather string out of his pocket to tie up his hair. “Winter in this region is unforgiving, even this far south, so I spent the season getting to know the town and its people. The priests are cowards, but the thralls were a bigger problem than the echo, so I started training people instead of dealing with it. It hasn't done any harm that I know of.”

“Who's paying?” Lucie asked.

Aelis sighed. “The priests emptied their own purses to get me to stay in this tower and make soldiers out of civilians, since the town guard refused to take more volunteers. The local lord doesn't like that, but he's too afraid of more thrall attacks to do anything about me.”

I joined him by the map and picked out a way from the tower to the haunted house. “Julia mentioned you could use some assistance.”

He smiled. “So she’s doing okay. I was worried my letters hadn't gone through, I sent them with a courier just before a snow storm hit. I've been to the house once during the day, and someone in the council hall gave me a plan of it.”

After a bit of rummaging through a pile of papers, Aelis handed me a scroll. “Here. The echo is said to be in the main hallway. I doubt it has much interest in the thralls. People said they heard screaming from the house, as well as growls and such, and it's also where the last two attacks were started from.”

Lucie looked over my shoulder to see the plan. Her frown deepened. “That's a lot of rooms. How many thralls do you think there are?”

“If all the people who are still missing have been turned, around thirty.”

That didn't sound too bad for three veteran Hunters, but if the thralls themselves were strong, so was the vampire that had turned them. And Aelis had no information at all on who the vampire was, or what their powers might be. And even if only a dozen people had been taken from a town of almost a thousand, the impact could be felt everywhere. When we had arrived, we had been ushered to Aelis' tower by scared, tired men, and they had left praying aloud for the house of horrors to finally be cleared of its ghosts and monsters.

“For how long can you leave your militia alone?” Lucie asked. “I like our odds better with the three of us.”

“As do I,” Aelis said. He sat down on the edge of his desk and thought for a while. “I have a room here you can stay in. We'll prepare tomorrow, and the day after, we'll finish this.”

“Understood,” Lucie and I said. I added, “Make sure you get enough rest, too.”

“I will, I will.” He gave me a tired smile. “I'm sure the men will appreciate a day off, too.”

I halted in the doorway. “This somehow reminds me of my first hunt.”

Aelis looked up. “I hope the three of us will be better prepared than you were that time.”

“I suppose I did make a big deal out of it back then,” I said. “I still blame Vrehden.”

He laughed. “Everyone talked about it for a month. It was like with my first hunt. Vrehden doesn't like it when we're too good at our jobs, it seems.”

Lucie pushed past me back into the room. Anger flared up in her voice. “He sent both of you into death traps?”

Aelis nodded. “Seems like it. Did he blame you for not doing enough scouting, too?”

“Yeah.” I looked at the maps on the wall. “Were we better with swords than he was at the time? I thought he wanted to cripple me back then.”

“Who knows why he did it,” Aelis said. “Not a quality I look for in a leader. How has he dealt with the attack on our home?”

Lucie replied in my stead. “He's taking things from the archives. Not even Master Hellene knows where he's taking them. Looked like he'd keel over if you tapped him, too, when he ordered us away.”

Silence fell over us. Back then, I had thought Vrehden just had a particular distaste for me. He had been an instructor until the year I became a Hunter, and though he'd done some swordsmanship training, and was good at it, when I had come back from Master Lydia's school, I had wiped the floor with him in front of the new recruits. I had fought earnestly then, proving to our strict teacher that I took my duty and training seriously, but he had looked like he wanted to bash my head into a wall by the time he had gotten up again.

“By any chance,” I began, “did you also beat him in front of the new kids?”

Aelis nodded slowly. “Maybe he had a particular dislike for our generation. We didn't join that long apart, and a lot of us are excellent Hunters now.”

“Excellent Hunters that he orders away from headquarters as much as possible,” Lucie said. “Dirk said, and Master Hellene, too, that most Masters were also gone when we were attacked.”

“I don't like the look of this,” Aelis said. “He was endorsed by Headmaster Varden to become his successor, but Varden wasn't doing well in his last few months.”

I tore my eyes from the lines of houses drawn onto the maps. “So we might be thinking the same thing, then.”

“We might be,” he conceded. “But we have work to do tomorrow. I'll return to headquarters when this is over. Master Hellene needs some assistance, from what you've told me, and Vrehden can hardly send me away when I have reports to make for the archives. Maybe I hurt my arm a little on the way home, and my writing is slow because of it.”

“I like that thought,” Lucie said. “I don't think we can stay in contact while Reaper and I are still on the road, but if you're still there when we get back, I'd like a report on him.”

“Of course.”

We left his office, and spent some time in the guest room preparing our gear for the hunt before eating with Aelis and getting some rest. I struggled to fall asleep for a while, thinking about what he had said. It was true that Vrehden was an accomplished Hunter, and it was true that Varden, our ageing headmaster at the time, had endorsed him. But it was also true that Varden was going senile, and despite the ban at headquarters, often found comfort in wine and spirits. It would have been easy for Vrehden to set something up. But how long in advance had he been planning for something to happen, while playing his part?

I rolled over on my bedroll and stared into the darkness of the room. Aelis was right, we had work tomorrow, I needed to sleep. With some effort, I closed my eyes, and kept them closed until I fell asleep.

The one thing that stood out to me about the echo was her age. She was a child, barely ten from the looks of it, and considered the thralls that had infested her home interesting pets that were fun to play with. It took a lot of convincing for her to allow us to put them to rest, but we didn’t have to fight her. In truth, Lucie did most of the talking.

Because the echo was bound to the house itself, the local lord decided to burn the whole thing down in the presence of priests. That took care of the thralls, too, though the vampire was nowhere to be seen, even when the house went up in flames. If they moved on after the last attack, I hoped they got caught in a ray of sunshine somewhere and died before they could to more harm.

“That was an interesting one,” Aelis said as we watched the fire. “Thank you both for your help.”

I patted his shoulder. “Let's go get something to eat.”

“I'd love to know more about the history of the family,” he mused. “For a little girl to become such a strong echo, something significant must have happened.”

Lucie, already ahead of us, called back, “Do you even have time for that?”

“You're right, there are more pressing issues. Maybe when I have some time off, then,” Aelis laughed. “But I know a decent inn, so I'll treat you to a meal.”

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Wolventraum - Chapter 9

The first group we joined was in a town two days north, a day out of the forest. A small wooden watch tower overlooked the hills, but this town, too, had been hit by thralls without warning, and many had been dragged off kicking and screaming to the dungeons under the tower. The thralls that had attacked us would have likely hit this place first, but if that was the case, we had never heard about it. Our headquarters were so close, and yet we hadn't been there to help these people. It was not surprising that the townsfolk didn't welcome us with open arms. They didn't know about the blood that had soaked into our own watch towers. I would have expected insults and even stones and rotten fruit, but it seemed they didn't have that strength or anger in them any more. Or maybe they were afraid of what we'd do. We carried our swords openly, after all.

There were a handful of recruits led by Hunter Julia, one of Lucie's seniors when she was getting specialised training in magic. I was about to ask what her magic was like when she saw us in the market square and pulled Lucie into a tight hug. “It's so good to see you, Lucie! It's been forever. Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, I'm glad you're doing okay, too,” Lucie squeaked.

Julia finally let go of her and looked her over like a worried mother. Then, she asked, “How's the situation at headquarters? I haven't been able to go back yet.” She motioned towards her recruits standing awkwardly a few steps away, trying not to stare and failing. They were all under fifteen and undergoing training here while they still lived with their families. They had made the choice to become Hunters despite knowing the risks, and Julia had been unwilling to force them away from their parents. That was what had protected them, in the end. But it had to weigh on her like it did on us. We could have helped.

I shook my head to clear that thought out, and looked at the market goers. There was a stand selling tools. “We're rebuilding.”

Julia followed my gaze. “I see. Rebuilding is good.” She waved the recruits over and introduced us, then took us all to a house on the outskirts of town she had rented for training purposes. It had a garden with two dummies set up, a few trees for climbing, a small shelf with training weapons. It reminded me of a place I had stayed at with Isharn on my way to Sword Master Lydia's school in the mountains.

The house itself was practical, but it still had a feeling of homeliness to it. Two guest rooms went off from the main hallway, there was a small bath around a corner, and shelves in the hallway held anything from towels to pillows to books. A dagger leaned against a small crate of onions, the blade carved with what I recognised was a permanent force enchantment. If anyone got struck by that, they'd be flung a few feet away, the best way for a mage to get out of close combat. There were more weapons more or less hidden throughout the house, just on the first floor I saw a walking stick with a sharpened top in a corner and a dagger hilt peeking out from under some pillows stacked on a chair. That, too, made it feel like home. Julia wouldn't let anyone hurt her charges while they were in her house.

Julia brought us into the kitchen, the largest room of the house. She busied herself with making a simple meal while one of the boys set the table. Lucie and I quizzed the recruits on their theoretical knowledge and listened to their version of what had happened in town. One of them had lost one of their grandparents in the attack.

Everyone agreed that there still had to be captives in the tower to feed the vampire that had taken control of it. Those captives would end up as thralls sooner or later, drained dry by the vampire and not given any of its blood, only the curse from its fangs, but Julia hadn't allowed her recruits to come with her when she scouted the tower, and she hadn't dared attack it alone, despite her considerable magic skills. The kids were full of praise for her, but also eager to prove themselves.

“I don't want any of you to get yourselves killed before you've had a chance to see headquarters and finish your training,” she said sternly as she put the pot of soup onto the table and began filling bowls for everyone. One of the girls cut a loaf of dark bread into chunks and handed them out.

I broke off a piece of bread and dipped it into the soup. “I understand how eager you are to fight something other than dummies and shadows, but Julia is right in holding you back. Even experienced Hunters get jumped on.” I pointed to my scarred cheek. Lucie had been right, the hair on that side of my head wasn't growing back, the scar stood out even if I combed my hair over to cover it. “I got this one less than a year ago because I was feeling too confident. A small group of thralls ambushed me, and one got their teeth in real good.”

The poor kids looked a mixture of shocked and disgusted. But it was a necessary lesson, and it probably brought their egos down to earth as much as it had done for me. We all needed that from time to time. If we became too sure of our skills, we could easily end up dead.

After dinner, Lucie and I reported to Julia and her students about the capital and headquarters. Not the full, detailed reports we gave to our superiors and wrote down for the archives, but in the same tone, with no emotion, hard as it was. Being able to distance yourself from these experiences at least when reporting helped to learn from mistakes, either your own or those of others. And your own mistakes and shortcomings were as much part of the report as your victories and strokes of genius. We spared them the more brutal details until Julia sent her students home. As soon as the door was shut, we reported fully.

“It's as bad as people are saying, then,” she said quietly. “I'm glad you two are here to help me with this tower. It hasn't been in use for years, and is little more than a ruin now, but it still makes for a decent hideout, and it has a basement level, according to the old folks who used to man it. We'll go at sunrise tomorrow.”

“Understood,” Lucie and I said in unison. We treated ourselves to a nice hot bath and went to sleep early to make the most of the comfortable beds and soft blankets.

After a quick and simple breakfast the next morning, we set out for the tower. Julia's students joined us, but agreed to stand back until the fighting was over, for their safety and our peace of mind. After my little lesson yesterday, they didn't seem too eager to get up close and personal with a thrall.

The tower stood dark and imposing despite the rotting fence around it, looming over us as we marched towards the closed wooden doors, weapons at the ready. Flames flickered in Julia's hands, and grew brighter almost as if in anticipation. She busted the doors open, and set a swarm of thralls on fire the moment she stepped through. Lucie and I followed, dispatching what hadn't been burned, while the recruits stayed back, keeping watch on the other doors in the rooms we had already cleared. They eventually freed the captive townsfolk who hadn't yet been turned.

The vampire that had created these thralls was nowhere to be found, but the people said it was an older man, small and hunched over and desperate for blood. Maybe he had been promised a return of his youth, but that was a myth. No matter how much blood a vampire drank, how powerful they or their creator were, they only stopped ageing from the moment they were turned.

A recently turned vampire, if he hadn't figured that out yet, and not a very strong one, given how frail the thralls had been. He hadn't given them good orders. But he needed to be taken out, and so, while Julia and the others escorted the civilians back to town, Lucie and I got to tracking.

Though Julia had mentioned a basement, we found no door leading to it, so Lucie kept watch as I focused on the tower, the presences within it, the energies left behind by those that had left. Vampires had a particular energy, and I saw it as a thick red mud where there was a lot of it. This vampire had spent much time in the tower before we came, and his tracks didn't leave it. He was still here, hidden away somewhere behind a false wall or under a trap door. The red mud climbed up a wall to an empty candle holder.

“Twelve steps left, candle lever, he's waiting,” I muttered, and opened my eyes again. “Let's go.”

Lucie ran her hand along her sword. The blade began to glow faintly, imbued with a simple but effective enchantment. On my mark, she pulled the secret lever, and we walked down into a dark chamber behind a sliding piece of wall. This town had to have been prosperous once to afford a trick like that in a watch tower.

The vampire jumped at us, claws outstretched on gangly arms. A burst from Lucie's blade slammed him into the wall, and I hurled him out of the secret room into the light of the sun shining through the tower's main door. He burned to ashes screaming at the top of his lungs.

Lucie dispelled the enchantment on her blade and rolled her shoulders. “I keep forgetting the force of this.”

“It's one of your main spells for a reason,” I said, shrugging. “Let's head back to Julia and report.”

The townspeople were overjoyed to have the vampire disposed of. His screams had been heard well into the town itself, and the survivors, after being treated by Julia and the local healers, now felt justice was done, and they could begin mourning those they lost. They treated us a little more warmly now, and Lucie and I made sure to be kind and pleasant on the rare occasion one of them spoke to us. But we didn’t stay much longer. There was more work to do, so we bought some food for the road and set out again without saying goodbye to the kids and townsfolk. We usually didn’t, out of habit as much as necessity. The people we helped often didn’t want us to leave because they felt safe with us around, and recruits and stationed Hunters missed the company of their own.

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Wolventraum - Chapter 8

Smoke rose from the bones of towers and barracks as we passed under the broken gate arch. Bodies of our own recruits littered the rubble and the paths, the emblems ripped from their uniform shirts. Almost all of them were years younger than us. Still scattered among them were bodies of thralls crumbling to ashes where the embers caught them.

The scars on my face began pulsing, then burning so painfully I was sure they would reopen and soak the red mud with my own blood. Smoke stung my eyes, and I felt tears running down my cheek.

Next to me, Lucie took a deep breath. Her voice quivered when she whispered, “What in the actual fuck happened here?”

“We will find out,” I said quietly, forcing my eyes away from the bodies and up to the remains of the buildings. Nothing had been spared. I could only hope someone had made it through, that someone had been here to fight for these kids.

Lucie took my trembling hand as we approached the central training field and the still smouldering main building behind it. Makeshift pyres already burned there on this cloudy day, a ray of hope, when the sun wouldn't burn piles of thrall bodies to ashes. There were so many of them I thought it would take weeks to burn them all if the sun didn't break through. They were piled in the corners, waiting to be thrown into the single fire. And even if the sun did come out today, we had to burn them, just to make sure. Just to be safe.

It wasn't the first thrall attack we had seen the aftermath of after leaving the capital and Wolventraum. There had been farms, villages, any building out in the open that wasn't surrounded by stone walls was at risk. But never had I seen one so coordinated. Our headquarters weren't easy to find. The forest's winding paths deterred most of the uninvited and unknowing. Someone had to have shown them the way. And all Hunters gathered here before leaving on new missions. There were always some experienced fighters here, Masters, instructors who didn't go hunting themselves any longer but had not lost their edge. We were anything but defenceless. An attack like this wasn't a lucky coincidence for the thralls.

Someone rushed towards us from a shadowy doorway, and we had our weapons in hand before we recognised the kid. Dirk, barely sixteen, one of our newer students, third son and thus not inheriting anything of his parents' farm. My brain rattled off what little I knew while he ran towards us, not registering we were sheathing our weapons. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

“Reaper! Lucie!” He said our names almost like a prayer. I saw tears well up in his eyes when I closed the distance to give him a hug. His shoulders shook as I held him. Mine did, too.

I drew slow circles on his back with one hand. “We're here, you're here, you'll be okay, we'll fix this,” I said, over and over like a prayer of my own. “We're here now, you'll be okay.”

Lucie wrapped her arms around both of us. “We'll fix this, and we'll do it together,” she said, but her voice almost cracked. “We are a family.”

“We are a family,” I echoed, and gave Dirk's shoulder a final squeeze. “And you're family, too. Who's here right now?” The confidence in my voice belied the trails of tears down my cheeks.

Dirk took a few deep breaths before he fell into the report mode we were all too familiar with. More than anything, we learned to relay as many details as possible at the drop of a hat, with as little notion to our own thoughts on it as we managed. He did well, considering what he had been through. “Master Vrehden and Master Isharn are gone, but presumed alive. We have built an improvised infirmary in the mess hall, Master Hellene is tending to the wounded there. She... she will be glad to see you're back, Hunters.”

I frowned. “Are there no other Hunters here right now?”

Only Hellene. If only Hellene was here, then it was a miracle anyone had survived. She was a master of the healing arts, and though she had gone through our combat training, she hadn't done anything besides teaching medicine and basic healing magic in many years.

“None.” Dirk's grief flared up into anger. He spat into the mud. “All conveniently gone. The Masters, too. We didn't even get a warning from the watch towers in the forest.”

When Lucie and I investigated the towers later, we found our sentinels dead. Not all were without defensive wounds, but most had been surprised, stabbed in the back or with their throats cut. We brought them all back home for burial.

“Easy, kid,” I said, though I wanted to agree with him. It was hard to tell just how long ago everything had happened, but it couldn't have been more than one or two days. “Track and observe before making decisions.” My tone was harsher than I had intended, and startled the boy.

“Sorry, Hunter Reaper.” I shook my head and patted his shoulder.

“Come with us, get some rest. Lucie and I will take on duties.” I walked to the mess hall in the left wing of the mansion's main structure. The air around it seemed to glimmer with the healing magic being used within. Seemed Hellene hadn't gotten any rest, either.

When we entered, Dirk first to announce our return, the groaning and laboured breathing in the hall seemed to quiet for a moment. This building may well have been the one that made it through the onslaught the best, but the roof was burned away and the walls were dark with soot. There were clear traces where it had been swept out.

Hellene stood and slightly adjusted the coat on one of her patients, a young girl who hadn't been here when I last left. Her hair had gone almost white with the effort of her magic, and her face looked decades older than she was. “It's good to see you two unharmed,” she began, then her eyes landed on my face. I reached up and felt blood on my cheek.

I shook my head. “Don't mind that, Master, it's tended to. Just tell us what to do.”

For the rest of the day, we dug graves and kept the pyre burning, barely saying a word besides empty promises that things would be okay, that we'd somehow fix this, spoken to what was left of our home more than to each other. Empty promises, but the kids that heard us clung to them, assured us they would do whatever they could to help us. Many burned for revenge, and tossing a body into the fire did nothing to quell that flame. Most of them weren't yet in a state to help at all.

After the thralls were all burned, Hellene brought us back to a sense of normalcy. She had us write reports on what we had seen and done since last we left headquarters, properly chastised us for not informing her of our locations as we travelled, wrote her own report on the attack, and asked the same of the survivors who were in a state to write. I felt like I was drowning in ink and paperwork at times, but this, too, was part of Hellene's healing magic. If we could write and give reports, we could do everything else, too. We still functioned, as people and as an order of Hunters. We just needed time and materials.

When the mountain of reports was spoken and written, we assisted with cleaning and surveying the damage done to our buildings. It was as much to help as to distract ourselves. The exertion of it turned frustration to determination and a hunger for vengeance.

“I still don't want to believe it,” Lucie said as we broke what was left of the barracks' windows out of their bent and charred frames. Stuffles, her stuffed donkey, had miraculously survived, and now sat in her almost empty backpack. “And when the real threats to them weren't even here!” She smashed a hammer into the warped glass and watched the shards scatter outside.

I brought my own hammer down on a corner of the frame to break it out of the wall. “That's probably why. They wouldn't have tried if they'd believed even half of our Hunters were here.”

“How did they even know how to get here? Most people in the nearby towns don't know which path to take.” She wiped her forehead and moved on to the next window. I followed.

“Maybe they tracked a scout, or a new recruit,” I offered. “That's the only thing I can think of.” Or the only thing I wanted to think of. With both Headmaster Vrehden and his right hand man Isharn gone, we were missing some of our most important people, no matter what they were like when you actually spoke to them.

“Let's finish here and check our supplies,” Lucie interrupted my thoughts. “They should have made it through okay. I hope the enchantments held up, at least.”

The buildings themselves were badly damaged, but the enchantments on the individual crates and items had protected our archives and storages, for the most part. Just not the walls or roofs, so we had to clear out a lot of debris before we could properly take stock.

We found a few weapons and books missing, and reported as much to Master Hellene. None of them were crucial to our history, training, or secrets, so she just took our report and added it to a growing pile of paperwork on what was left of her desk. Thankfully, we weren't short on food yet.

“Can you two take a night watch tonight?” she asked in a dry, quiet voice.

Lucie nodded. “Of course, Master Hellene. Get some rest, please.”

Master Hellene offered us a weak smile as we left her office. The roof had been covered with oilskins in case it rained, but that was as much restoration as we could manage for now. It would take weeks to even get the materials here, if the towns outside the forest had any to spare that we could afford. They'd lost children in this attack. I wouldn't blame them if they pelted us with rocks for not keeping them safe.

Two weeks after our arrival, Vrehden returned to headquarters. Lucie and I were clearing out the last debris on the training field when he walked through the broken gate. He looked tired, his usually thin face gaunt, his sour expression replaced by fatigued apathy. He barely acknowledged us as he brushed past us to find Hellene, and then stalked into the archives and vaults without a word to any of the recruits that had come to greet the master of the order. “Not now,” he said to Lucie and me when we asked him about what had happened.

He didn't answer Lucie's questions about Isharn, either. Again, he just said, “Not now.” He latched the trap door to the underground archives behind him, and emerged hours later with a heavier pack than he had entered with, whispering to Hellene about bringing some of our most valued weapons and spells to a place less likely to be struck by our enemies. With that, he was gone, while the rest of us stayed behind and rebuilt or recovered. I tried to follow him for half a day, but he was faster than his condition or luggage had made me think. And he was good at hiding his tracks. I vented some frustration on a tree trunk, imagining the cuts of my sword were to his body. But there was still work to be done, and I did no one any favours by not doing it, especially not myself. Helping was part of my job, and so, with a last shouted curse into the woods, I returned home deep in thought.

It made no sense for him to move our stuff. Headquarters had the best protective enchantments, the best protection from theft, as you needed specially enchanted emblem coats to even enter the archive. Vrehden knew that. I decided to take stock of what he'd taken, but the archive records were gone. Master Hellene chastised me for swearing in front of the recruits.

Hellene oversaw our assistance in the infirmary until she was satisfied we hadn't forgotten any of our training, then followed her own advice and finally rested more than two hours for the first time since we'd come back. Her hair would never regain its colour, and the wrinkles would remain in her skin, but perhaps the rest of her body could stave off the pains of old age for a few more years if she allowed herself as full a recovery as she granted to her wards. We'd have to make sure of it somehow, and pulled one of the more recovered kids aside as soon as she was gone to tell them to search the crates for her favourite tea leaves. It was a small thing, but the boy, David, jumped to it like it was his first hunt, and prepared the tea himself to give it to her when she woke up.

When we were working on the mess hall roof, I told Lucie about the missing records. She was fuming, and put that energy to use hammering nails into rough wooden boards on the mess hall roof. I heard her mutter over and over how none of this made sense unless Vrehden was to blame for at least what happened to our headquarters. He was making himself look like a traitor, and the older kids were starting to look past his reputation. I tossed a new bag of nails up to her, to warn her without words that someone could hear. One of the younger kids was coming around to call us to dinner.

One evening, as we were sitting on a watch tower in the forest, sharing a small meal, I said, “Careful the kids don't hear you.”

She knew what I meant immediately.“Can you blame me?” She huffed before ripping a chunk out of a piece of bread with her teeth and chewing angrily.

I shook my head. “Not really, but the kids still look up to him. The young ones, anyway. They think he's trying to protect our knowledge by taking stuff elsewhere and not telling anyone where exactly.” I hoped we'd find them again. If our headquarters were properly staffed, no place was safer for our documents, and no place was safer for our recruits.

The younger recruits really did look up to Vrehden, they kept talking about him even after he was gone again. The ones that had made it through, anyway. The new girl I'd seen when we first arrived was only slowly recovering, she could still barely sit, let alone register what was going on beyond the confines of her bed. I hoped she didn't remember anything. I wished none of them remembered anything from the attack and the days that followed. We hadn't told their families yet, or at least I hadn't been tasked with delivering the notices. There was much suffering yet to come, and I wasn't looking forward to any of it.

Lucie slammed her fist into the wall next to her, and I heard wood splinter. “He's stealing it,” she spat. I agreed. I hadn't dared to say it at headquarters, but out here, we could speak freely. Vrehden stole, and not only had he taken from our archives, he had taken from our – his – family. For all I knew, he had spent his entire run as our leader squirrelling away small bits and pieces of our home. But I wasn't ready to believe that he betrayed the family he had found in our order. Not yet. So many of my generation and those older than us had little beyond this. I had no family to speak of, Lucie rarely saw hers, and as far as I knew, all our instructors either had no one left, or found their family in other members of the order. Though Vrehden wouldn't be the first to betray us. I shook my head. If he had, he wouldn't get away. No one got away for long after hurting our family.

Lucie finished her bread. “We shouldn't have let him get away. You'd have gone for his throat three years ago. We both would have.”

“Yeah, true.” I chuckled. “Guess that comes with growing up and learning the hard way. You don't rush into a demon-plagued ruin without preparation, either. Who knows what he's secretly been learning.”

She looked out over the forest again. “He shouldn't have left. We should have forced him to resign the moment he showed up. Isharn could have done a better job. He'd have stayed and helped and pretended like there weren't ruins around the training fields.”

“He'll come back, or we'll find him,” I said. “Let's go back and switch with Jana and Flynn.”

As spring came to an end, headquarters began looking like home again. The kids had fully recovered from their wounds, or were well on their way to recovery. Physically, at least. We kept torches and mage lights burning every night to help them sleep, and didn't stop those who wanted to from returning to their families. Hellene spent many, many hours reading and writing letters, to the point where some of the young ones started writing their own messages to their friends and relatives in the closest villages and towns. Lucie and I spent many nights dropping off the letters, and many days escorting children home. Some promised to come back eventually, and to some, we said goodbye forever.

The order carried the full cost of funerals and material deliveries, and our coffers drained quickly. Some of the older kids who hadn't gone home, or who had nowhere to go home to other than us, went into the towns and villages to work, now that the craftsmen were paying decent wages to helping hands running errands and carrying equipment. Lucie and I wanted to go, too, but Hellene held us back. “We need you here,” she said, and though she didn't explain what for, with most repairs done to the best of our abilities by this point, we stayed.

It rained heavily on the day Vrehden returned. He snuck into the mess hall and snatched some bread from a basket before realising we were watching him there. Our old teacher and current leader, the shining figurehead of the order, our face and voice with the lords, mayors, and high-profile clients, now looked more haggard than ever before. His clothes were torn and muddy from long travels. He looked more animal than human, hair and beard wild and dirty.

I was sure he would have devoured that bread like a starved beast if he hadn't felt our eyes on him as he retreated to the remains of his office. We'd had neither materials nor urgency or motivation to repair anything in it while he was gone.

Two days later, he ordered Lucie and me, as veterans, to join our scattered solo Hunters and those who had just been lucky and had been assigned for training or monitoring elsewhere. We should have been tending to our own little fields and gardens to ensure we'd have enough food to harvest to make it through winter, but I stood silently in front of his desk, and it took a great deal of discipline to not shift and fidget and stomp my feet as he explained what he wanted us to do.

“They are keeping track of thrall numbers and movements throughout the kingdom, and likely need assistance in taking out threats in their assigned territories. Many are on their own, or have a handful of recruits with them who aren't suitably trained yet. I wouldn't want to lose anyone to avoidable encounters if veterans are there to solve the towns' problems.” He sighed, as if just talking exhausted him. “I have no direct positions or town names, but you know how to find your family.”

That much was true. Hunters always ended up finding each other, though by chance and hearsay more than some innate instinct, much as Vrehden liked to tell our recruits that we were somehow superior to regular people by virtue of being trained as Hunters. I didn't like the way he had said the word family. It sounded like an insult coming from him. He should have known where his family was active, at least have a list somewhere of the towns he'd last received reports of.

“The thralls are now our priority,” he continued, and his voice took on a warning tone. “Anything else you find on the way, unless it is a direct threat to a settlement, is to be ignored. Yes, Hunter Lucie, even werewolves and demons. Get Hellene to refresh the enchantments on your armour and coat, and then move out.” He sank back into his chair and waved towards the door frame. The door itself had been destroyed in the attack, and we had broken the remnants off the hinges while he was gone. Lucie kicked a small piece of wood out of the doorway on the way out.

Both Lucie and I were angry at the orders, but Vrehden's lack of knowledge hadn't been surprising as much as just another nail in his coffin. The other Hunters would appreciate having us report in person and sending them home if they could leave, though that wasn't part of our orders, and we had no way to know for sure if they'd even heard about headquarters yet. Especially for the Hunters stationed further away, it was likely that they hadn't been told yet. And so, we left reluctantly, but we left. We had our orders. Master Hellene was recovering from the strain of her healing magic, and checking and reinforcing the protective enchantments on our armour took a lot out of her, even though we insisted just checking was enough. She wanted to be extra sure we didn't break anything if we got sent flying by our prey. Dirk and the others who had stayed and were in good enough shape tended to our gardens and further minor repairs as the materials came in, or as they found and improvised them. Some had started training again. A few of them had come from farms, and they had taken control of our fields without bothering to ask Vrehden's permission to skip lessons. Not like anyone was there to give lessons. Some of the older kids, Dirk among them, tried to impart what they'd learned to the younger ones, but it didn't come close to Isharn's lessons.

Lucie kicked a fist-sized rock off the road. “I hate this.”

“Yeah, me too. He's too eager to have us gone.” Now that we were outside of headquarters, I allowed my suspicions to stew in the back of my mind. Lucie and I were headquarters' best bet if there was another attack, but we were also the greatest threat, should someone of our own try to betray us. For Vrehden, it was probably for the best to have us gone. He knew I'd tracked him through the forest, I was sure of that. And he knew Lucie and I would challenge him if we caught him away from the others. He was scared of that. Especially in his current state, we'd have no trouble taking him out, and the kids and Hellene looked to us more than him for advice and help, even if he was still our leader. We were taught to have no mercy with the monsters we hunted, he'd drilled enough of that into us himself. And we had no mercy for traitors, either.

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dreaminggoblin · 8 months

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Wolventraum - Chapter 7

We got caught in the rain that evening, and it was mostly through luck that we found a small farm house off the road that still had lights on.

“I'll sleep easy knowing you're here,” the old man at the door said. A merchant's cart stood next to the stables, shutters closed and oilskin covers pulled down and fastened to glinting hooks.

Lucie peered past the man into the home. “Have there been any monster sightings lately?”

He scoffed. “Have you been living under a rock?”

“Besides the vampire thralls in the capital,” she said. “We know about those.”

“That's hardly my problem,” he said. “They're too far south to care about one old farm. Well, get yourselves inside and fed, I s'ppose we can talk then.” He opened the door a little wider and let us into the small room.

A man about the same age as the farmer but dressed in finer clothes sat by the fireplace, a bowl of stew in his hands. He was as drenched as we were, and nodded to us when we sat down on a rickety bench next to him. “Even Hunters get caught in the rain, huh?”

I shrugged. “Weather's the one thing we're powerless against.”

The farmer brought two more bowls and ladled stew into them for us. “Put your coats up there on the hooks, they'll get dry enough,” he instructed, and Lucie and I stood up again to do as he said.

When we sat back down to dig into the stew, he said, “You're both proper Hunters, yes?”

I swallowed. “Yes. Has there been anything that troubles you?”

Lucie continued eating, though slowly and quietly, as the man explained, “There's a wood not far, between here and the village. Someone comes by that way every few days to check I haven't kicked the bucket yet.”

“Ah, youngsters,” the merchant said wistfully. “They don't give us enough credit.”

“Used to be my son,” the farmer continued with a nod to the merchant. “He stopped coming last summer, his wife had a message delivered he'd passed. She came by to help with the harvest, and a few young folk, too, and then every few days someone would come by. Not since winter now, and I've seen strange light in the woods of late.”

Strange light in the woods could mean anything from Echoes to imps or just people trying to scare someone. I straightened up a little. “Did they have any specific shapes?”

“Looked like lanterns, the ones with the thick candles in them, but there wasn't anything holding them that I could see from the farm.”

That narrowed my suspect list down a little. “Did they start appearing before or after people stopped coming to visit you?”

“First the lights, then suddenly no one came by anymore.” He ladled himself a second helping of stew and leaned back in his chair. “Thought they'd gotten scared if they saw them from their side.”

“Have you ever investigated the place yourself during the day?”

“I'm old, Hunter, not mad. I've never gone and looked.”

Lucie joined in the questioning. “Do they only appear at night or at a certain hour?”

“All night long. You won't see them tonight, not with the rain. But all night, every night, since before the snow-melt.”

“We'll check it out in the morning,” Lucie decided. “We have to pass through the woods anyway.”

“I appreciate that,” both the farmer and merchant said.

We were given old blankets to sleep on from the farmer's closet. He only had one extra cot, and that was taken up by the merchant, but I didn't mind sleeping next to the fireplace. I'd had worse, and at least it was warm. By morning, our coats were mostly dry, and the sky promised to be reliably clear for a few hours, so we headed out towards the strip of forest the farmer pointed us to.

“We need more people out and about,” Lucie said as we walked around puddles in the road. “More than a month of strange lights should have gotten a Hunter's attention, or at least a scout's.”

“We'll put it into the report to Vrehden.”

“He'll just claim we don't have enough people for every village along the road.”

I snorted. “And whose fault is that? Not like he'll admit to it, though.”

Lucie nodded. “We probably have enough room to train a few dozen more recruits if the new barracks are done, and now more than ever we should find paid informants in the towns instead of just relying on our own people.”

“We probably have the funds, too.”

“If we do, he's making sure most people don't see that.”

We fell silent again. For the last few years, any talk of Vrehden had ended the same, no matter who was talking. The more experienced Hunters disliked his handling of difficult jobs, my generation hated his disregard for us. Only the recruits looked up to him as our leader and a Hunter of renown. I was sure half the stories I'd heard of him were false, or he hadn't gone on the hunts with as few people as was claimed. He never disputed or downplayed events, either. To the recruits, that meant the stories were true. They'd learn the hard way eventually.

Noon was still a few hours away when we reached the forest. At first glance, nothing about it seemed suspicious. We searched between the trees that were visible from the farm, but felt and found no signs of ghost lights or objects or places Echoes might get attached to.

“Go and do your thing,” Lucie said. “I'll keep watch, just in case.”

“Gotcha.”

I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes. It didn't take much groping around with my magic to find the cause for the mysterious lights. There was an old cemetery near the edge of the forest, in all likelihood forgotten for decades, and when we explored it, we found a fallen tree that had crushed the rusted fence.

“I don't think we can do that one alone,” Lucie said, inspecting the trunk. It was almost as thick as my arm was long. “Let's tell someone in the village. It shouldn't be hard to find, but let's mark the trees on the way, just in case.”

“Good plan. Maybe they'll start taking care of it again, that would prevent a lot of hauntings.”

“Might even stop them altogether, at least until the next storm breaks the fence again.”

And so, we trudged through the forest, cutting chunks out of trees on eye level with our swords. Not what they were supposed to be used for, but the best option at hand. We informed the first person we saw once we reached the village of how to get rid of the ghost lights: cut the tree, repair the fence, clean the grave sites and tombstones, and that should do it. If it didn't, they were to get a priest or send word to the nearest town where a Hunter was stationed.

“We told one of 'em already,” the unlucky man we'd stopped on the road said. “No one came by before winter, and no one since, 'cept for you two.”

That wasn't good. Even recruits would be able to handle something this simple, with a Hunter there more for protocol than anything else. Simple grave care during the day has basically no risks.

“Do you have something to write on?” I asked.

He nodded towards one of the finer buildings. “Healer lives there, he'll have something.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, and Lucie and I went over to knock on the healer's door, write a short report with the village's name, assumed location, since we couldn't find a map, and then went on our way, the report tucked into my coat pocket. As we left, a few men and women were gathering on the road with axes and a large saw.

It became evident that we really needed to hurry up and get back to headquarters to get new orders and insight. We were so out of the loop that we didn't even know if a place had trouble with any monsters if we didn't come upon the scene of an attack or happened to find a fellow Hunter already on it. Most of them worked alone now, sent to towns by Vrehden's orders to scout, not recruit, and they weren't welcomed in most places. Our information network had fully collapsed, it seemed, and we stuffed a lot of reports and requests into our packs and pockets as we headed south.

“The hell do you want, buying before you even fixed our problem,” a merchant in a village we passed through said when we were browsing her assorted foods.

Next to me, Lucie sighed. She put on her best polite smile and said, “We weren't told about any problems, ma'am, but if you can tell us what exactly is troubling this village, we'll do what we can.”

The woman spat. “Whole damn world's the problem.” We shared that sentiment, it seemed.

“The whole damn world is a big problem for only two people to solve,” I said. “Anything in the area you want us to take care of?”

“Chapel up the hill,” she said, and shoved some wrapped smoked meat into my hands, snatching Lucie's coin in the same motion. “Fix that. God knows you people have failed at everything else so far.”

I was about to argue that we could hardly have predicted any of this happening, but Lucie saw me opening my mouth and dragged me along with such force that I thought better of it. Starting fights wouldn't do anything to fix our order's reputation, and it wasted time we could spend doing our job. I knew that, of course, but the way the merchant had called us useless had hit a nerve. She'd sounded almost like Vrehden when I came back from my first hunt, that same dismissive tone. I dug my fingers into my coat until they hurt.

Lucie didn't say anything until we had left the village. When we approached the chapel up the hill, a low stone building with a small bell tower, she said, “It's probably not actually as bad in the countryside yet. Not in a way they would notice. There isn't much prey for thralls here.”

I sighed and finally relaxed my aching hands. “Rumours grow with each ear that hears them, as Master Hellene likes to say. And even if there's no problems with thralls nearby, they'll find us an easy scapegoat for everything else that's going wrong. Not like they have lords and guards who're supposed to protect them.”

“Like we can magically be everywhere all the time,” Lucie muttered. “Alright, let's get the chapel ready for service again.”

“Yeah. And thanks for earlier.”

She shrugged. “Someone has to stop you from being a pain in the ass. Better me than angry villagers.”

“Fair.” I stretched, checked the position of my sword belt, and turned to take in the chapel.

The doors stood wide open, inviting the midday sun to shine upon the single row of pews. This didn't seem like there were thralls here, unless this place had a basement. But even then, it was too clean, and the townsfolk hadn't seemed terrified so much as they had seemed annoyed. That narrowed our suspect list to small demons, or maybe echoes and ghost lights again.

Behind the chapel stood a small house I assumed to be the priest's. Its doors were shut, the windows barred with wooden boards. One household, at least, was treating this as more than an annoyance. Or maybe they were just more scared, living so close to it.

Lucie and I stood on either side of the doors for a while, listening, and I deployed my sensing magic, extending my awareness to the ground underneath my feet, the stone of the doorway, the chapel interior. Something caught my attention behind the statue of a saint in front of the pews. It sensed me the moment I sensed it.

“Minor demon,” I managed to inform Lucie before the little imp dashed through the door and screeched into our faces. Two sword strikes later, it lay dead and bleeding on the ground.

I poked it with my sword. “I'll go get the priest.”

“Yeah. I'll keep an eye on it in case it's one of those little reviving bastards.” Lucie glared at the imp as if to warn it. We'd both dealt with reviving and non-reviving demons, mostly small, weak ones like this. The key was to strike it in the head or heart as it was getting up, but it always caught you off guard the first time. They were unfortunately common nuisances that could cause serious trouble if no one was equipped to handle them, even if they weren't good fighters. I had never taken the time to research where they came from, but my guess was either summoning rituals gone wrong, or some portal somewhere had been left open too long ages ago, and now they were nesting in places with easy access to food and people they could menace.

I walked to the priest's house and knocked on the door. There was no reply, nothing moved inside. I knocked again, harder. A man cussed as he hit something inside.

“Excuse me, sir, Father, the demon in the chapel is dead,” I called, hoping he would open the door. I heard shuffling footsteps approach. Then the lock clicked, the door opened a crack, and the priest stuck his head out through it. “You killed it? It's really dead? Blessed Ivenna!” Then, he saw my face, and paled. He hurriedly looked down to his feet.

I turned away to hide my scar, and looked back to the chapel. Something moved by the doors, and I saw a flash of sunlight on metal. “Yeah. Made it easy for us, too. Came right out. Do you have any instructions for disposing of it on your own? Otherwise we'll burn it.”

The priest trembled as he opened the door further. He shook his bald head to my question, looked at his beloved chapel, and then followed me back to where Lucie had just stabbed the imp in the chest again. It was one of the little reviving bastards.

With the priest's help and blessing, we burned the imp in the village square, to prove to everyone that the monster that had plagued their chapel was actually dead and wouldn't steal any more offerings or chickens. They had been lucky. Small as they were, if an imp thought you were a threat, it would try to tear you apart. They were clumsy, sure, but their claws were dirty, ragged things that could cause serious injury.

The priest even performed a blessing on us, calling upon the Saint Ivenna to grant us smooth travels when we left. I appreciated the gesture, even though Saints meant little to me. They were all dead, and hopefully stayed that way. The last thing a faithful little community like this needed was their revered Saint Ivenna going around again. Her blessings would be of a very different nature if she did.

Lucie elbowed me in the side and whispered, “At least pay attention when they see us off.”

I muttered an apology and focused on the last step of the blessing, after all the prayers and praises. The priest stuck a dried, strong-smelling herb sprig into one of the button holes in my coat. To his credit, this time my face didn't shock him quite as much when he then placed his hand on my shoulder and said a final blessing.

After we had left the village, I ran a hand over the scars. They were still thick under my fingertips, and hurt when I pressed down, but they hadn't bled since before we had arrived in Wolventraum, and I had started parting my hair so it covered the scars on my scalp.

“Does it look that bad?” I asked.

Lucie looked at me for a long moment. “It's still a bit red around the scars, but the priest was probably just not used to seeing anything like it. Most of the villagers tried really hard not to look at you.”

“Thanks.” I grimaced. “But really, how bad does it look?”

“Do you never look in the mirror?”

I gestured around us. “What mirror? Fine, I'll check for myself at the next puddle we find.”

We found a pond, not a puddle, and I didn't think my scars looked bad enough to frighten a grown man into near fainting. There were thick lines and a few ugly nubs where the teeth had gotten deep into my face, and there was the bald spot where it nearly ripped my scalp clean off, but I'd seen worse on other Hunters. And I had taken good enough care of it to avoid infection, so I'd kept my eye. Most of the recruits would probably think it looked impressive, once they'd gotten used to seeing it. Not many Hunters who got hit in the head with anything survived for very long after, especially not when the weapon that struck them was teeth or claws. Another time I'd gotten lucky.

We spent most of our nights outside, taking turns keeping watch, though no danger ever approached. And as we travelled along main roads or narrow footpaths, passing through this hamlet or that village, killing an imp here and helping a priest with a haunting there, we gathered rumours. We would have liked some good news after all that we'd seen, but the rumours were at least a good enough basis for our assumptions as we continued to travel south, and we wrote all of them down to report to Vrehden.

The capital had been the first major city that was hit with such destructive force, probably to demoralise and disorient the less influential lords and townships. It hadn't been the first settlement, that was the one thing everyone could agree on, but it was impossible to find out which villages had been the test runs. Nobody had made it out to tell the tale, but an attack of that scale couldn't have worked without establishing some other strongholds nearby. There had to be towns that had been in the hands of vampires months before the capital was attacked, steadily building up the numbers of thralls, and they had to have scouted out places to hide during the day. A winter attack had given them the advantage of long nights and weak daylight, so the stronger ones might have been able to move without ever taking shelter. Thralls needed no rest, any sense of self-preservation was gone from them. If ordered by their creator, they would walk into a fire without hesitation. The only intelligence left in them was that they knew how to gang up on prey or Hunters.

Lucie and I assumed that the vampires behind it all were getting cushy in the capital, with all major trade routes at their fingertips and all long distance information going through them. They certainly had to have some of their stronger, better connected nobles there, if not all of the ones their leaders considered valuable. There had to be more than one older vampire pulling the strings, we were sure of that. The weaker, younger ones in our order's report archives couldn't make than many thralls, and order them that far into a large city without being noticed. And, adding to our arguments for the older vampires being behind it, a great banquet sat huddled in the hastily fortified city's buildings, as if waiting to be devoured or turned to yet more thralls.

There were still people living there, even after we had left, trying to make sense of the new world they were facing, but the rumours about those that had escaped after the initial attack painted a bleak picture, worse than the aftermath we had seen. They weren't as exaggerated as I would have liked. Many people just didn't have anywhere else to go, no distant relatives in the countryside, no old farmland that they'd left barren. I doubted smaller villages would even welcome them. The movement of refugees would be like torches guiding the way for thralls and other monsters, and would bring attention to the places that were still relatively safe.

No human liked to think themselves equal to the pets or livestock they kept, but it seemed like that was what they were becoming in the capital, and likely the towns we skirted around as we travelled. There was more open hostility towards us the further south we went, and we began to hide our emblems under hastily secured scarves, and our swords under our cloaks. Having learned to mend our clothes came in handy when we stitched down the scarf so it wouldn't flutter away from the black sword and red shield. I had often felt the coats were too long, but now all that extra fabric made our lives a lot easier.

If not cattle, then the people became as dogs kept on a tight leash, or some entertaining lap dog, under better watch than the royal treasury. There were many council halls and fort towers people avoided, we learned from the few who talked to us, not just in the capital, but all over. There was also much talk of folk going about at night with gold and silver glinting on them, and fine cloaks and dress. None who tried to rob them ever survived, according to the stories we picked up, but many were heard screaming and begging for mercy.

We were blamed a lot when we revealed ourselves as Hunters, even after killing thralls that had been harassing a village, or solving the imp problem in a town's council hall attic. After all, were not Hunters like us supposed to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place? Had we not sworn to protect the people from such monsters? By royal decree, even, we had been granted free lodgings and meals while we were on a mission somewhere, the sole reason we wore coats embroidered with our black sword across the red shield and carried our orders with us on strong paper. Not that those decrees were worth anything now.

Now, as the world seemed to be overrun with thralls following the orders of old and new vampire nobility, some long established in their positions, others just gaining power, the people suddenly remembered those stories from decades upon decades ago, and wondered if their taxes had just filled the enemy's coffers all these years. If my feelings about Vrehden were anything to go by, they couldn't be entirely wrong.

Nobody knew what the king was doing in all of this. He had been little more than a figurehead and scapegoat in the public eye for the last decade or so, a doddering old man trembling in his throne room even in summer, so nobody honestly expected him to do much about anything. If he was even still alive, and it seemed the people didn't much care about that last part. Some now suspected him to be a vampire himself, or long aware of their plans, and unwilling to prevent them if it meant he could gain some kind of profit out of it. Maybe he was just so old and senile that he hadn't even thought to try doing anything. Maybe he remembered the stories he'd heard growing up, and was too scared.

More and more rumours sprang up like weeds wherever we went, some even because we passed through. None were very flattering to us or the king, and I hoped that most of them were still exaggerations. Some king of old had created our order and granted us rights, but we had been independent for almost our entire existence, and even now our leaders sought to establish real bonds with the people in towns we were stationed in, relying on their aid instead of that of the nobility that sat safe and content in their castles and fortified manors. It became very obvious that Vrehden had failed to do so. Most towns north of the capital didn't have Hunters stationed in them. Some hadn't seen one of us in years.

“I think,” Lucie said grimly as we finally reached the Southern Forest, the dense canopy of ancient trees that was home to our headquarters, “We need to get Vrehden replaced. Or ousted. Ousted is better. Exiled from the order, really. He's failed completely.”

I was about to agree with her when we stepped out from under the trees. After more than a month on the road, we had made it home just in time to watch the last smouldering tower crumble under its own weight.

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Wolventraum - Chapter 6

We were rocked about in the carriage, squeezed between two nervous travellers and their mountain of luggage. It was awkwardly silent as the horses trotted along the road at an easy pace, and the driver seemed determined to hit every single rock jutting from the unpaved ground, every rain-filled hole. Every time he stopped the carriage, Lucie and I were nearly flung into the other two, or got bruised by their suitcases and boxes. After two days, we decided to continue on foot for a while, much to everyone’s relief. It would feel like it took forever, but at least we'd end up with fewer broken bones.

When we started it, the march back to headquarters felt much like it had the first time I had gone there, barely thirteen years old, only this time it wasn't my guardian who walked with me, but my friend.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Lucie said and clapped my shoulder. “Are you getting sentimental on me?”

I gave her a half-hearted grin. “Just feels like way back when I first came to headquarters. The walk is easier this time, though.”

“Must've been rough on a kid,” she said. “I got there by carriage, mostly, and horseback. Isharn tried to make it as easy on me as possible.”

“Isharn? Really?” Our stone-hearted weapons master had personally picked up a recruit? “You're joking.”

Lucie shrugged. “Not like I asked him to. He was passing by my village on a hunt with Edwin, and saw me mess about with my illusions, and then told my parents he was gonna take me somewhere I could learn how to use them without causing anyone trouble. They said that as long as I got to send letters home sometimes, they'd let me go. I think they were relieved to have some peace and quiet.”

“They just let you go with a stranger? Even if he was a Hunter, that's still, you know...”

“They probably thought I could just escape with my illusions if anything went wrong. Not their best move as parents, but in hindsight, it was the right decision. I mean, they did both stay for a day or two at our home to explain what the order was all about and what I was going to do and learn.” She shrugged. “Isharn even did a lot of paperwork for them about it all, and informed our mayor, and Edwin stayed behind to visit someone in the farms around.”

“Still,” I said, but didn't finish the sentence. Lucie was from the countryside, which was a much safer place than the town orphanage playing at being a boarding school I'd grown up in, unless monsters or bandits showed up. But with those, you could always tell when something was about to happen.

We walked in silence for a while, until I eventually said, “I'll have to rethink my opinion of him, huh.”

Lucie shook her head and laughed. “He wasn't much different outside the training sessions, but at least he fixed my Stuffles up every time I tore him.”

“Why am I only now—what is Stuffles?”

“My stuffed donkey. He should still be in my room, I'll show you. Would you expect Isharn to be good at sewing?” She made motions with her hand like she was stitching something back together. “Like this, every other week. Never taught me how to do it. Vrehden told him to at least take care of me, since he'd convinced my parents to let me go at that age.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten, I think. Not much for a small girl in a small village, not when everyone already thought I was weird and scary because of my magic.” She kicked a pebble off the road. “I do go back from time to time. The kids love me now, they always go on about wanting to see my magic, and everyone else appreciates some distraction from their routines.”

“Heh. I can imagine.” I'd always loved when someone secretly put on a magic show in my town. Not that I was ever allowed to see them, but I got good at sneaking out, and even better at sneaking back in.

Lucie's eyes wandered over the horizon, for a moment lost in the memories. Then, she said, “What about you?”

I looked at my feet as I talked. “Thirteen, freshly kicked from the boarding school for being a menace to the teachers. I saw a recruitment poster in town, and went from there. Don't remember who took me to headquarters in the end, a few older recruits and the Hunter training them, I think.”

Lucie chuckled to herself. “Somehow, I can't see you menacing your teachers. You were basically our model student.”

“I learned something I cared about,” I said with a shrug. “I don't care about cutlery etiquette, but even back then I thought monsters from the stories were fascinating. I think the only teacher who liked me was the one who taught us reading and languages, she kept using these stories for us. Can't remember her name, though.”

“Shame. Ever wanna go back and show them what you made of yourself?”

I laughed. “Gods, no. They wouldn't even recognise me.”

“Not with that face, yeah.”

I elbowed her in the side for that one. “Not with this name, either.”

Lucie perked up. “What'd they call you?”

I shrugged. “Nothing I would respond to now.”

“When did you pick Reaper?”

“When I was a stupid kid on the road to becoming a monster Hunter. They always had such descriptive names and titles in the stories, Lucien The Beastbreaker and stuff like that. I wanted one too.” I smiled bitterly at the memory. A name that sounded less like impending doom would have made hunts on which I actually had to talk to people a lot easier. But if a child gets to pick their own name for the first time, they're bound to come up with some weird things.

Lucie nudged me. “What other options were there?”

“Horrible ones. I won't tell you.” I laughed. “Reaper is the most harmless of them. And the shortest.”

For a full day after this, Lucie tried to get names out of me that didn't make the cut, but I held firm, and in retaliation made her tell me what it was like being adopted by Isharn The Stone-hearted, our chief instructor when we were older, and one of the most famous Hunters I had ever met. He had no mercy for his students, and his prey surely got the impression he didn't even know what the word meant. For someone who was worse at magic than me, he had an impressive record, achieved with swordsmanship, wit, and probably good luck. And he wasn't that much older than us. Lucie and I had come to headquarters at almost the same time, and Isharn hadn't been a certified Hunter for more than a few years at that point. I hadn't seen him much when I last visited, but he looked like he was in his early forties at most.

When Lucie and I had gone to separate outposts for specialised training, he had gone with me, rather than being among mages. He hated them, as far as we knew at the time, so I struggled to wrap my head around how he had managed to raise Lucie into the woman she was now, with all her quirks and all her magic. But when we had met again at the headquarters manor, after the incident at her school, he almost, almost, fussed over her like a worried father.

“It's so weird how we still have our rooms at headquarters when we're staying there maybe once a year,” I said. “All recruits start out there, they should use our rooms for the new kids.” We often sent in our status reports by letter, after all, unless we were close enough to drop by. But most of us hunted at least a few days' march away from headquarters.

“We need a safe place to come back to,” Lucie said. “I mean, it was a manor with a few buildings when we were kids, but last time I went, it looked more like a fortress.”

I thought for a moment. It was summer when I last left. “Weren't they even building new barracks? Wonder when we'll hit the outer wall with our fields and houses.”

She shrugged. “Give it a few years and Vrehden will have to grovel before the local lords for more land.”

I frowned. “Didn't go well last time he did it.”

Lucie nodded. “They don't like him.”

“Neither do you.”

“You don't like him either,” she shot back. “I'm surprised Isharn gets along with him.”

“Well, they are both kind of arrogant,” I said, holding up first my index finger, then more as I added, “they're both around the same age and probably know each other from training. Before Vrehden became boss, he and Isharn often hunted together, or at least in the same region, and someone needs to look big and scary behind Vrehden, so he'll probably have some reason or method to keep Isharn around.”

Lucie glared at me. “They'd both smack you across the training fields for talking like that.”

I laughed. “I know. Good thing they're not here. Honestly, I try to stay out of the higher ups' business as much as anyone with sense, but Vrehden isn't doing a good job. Especially not with new Hunters. He basically sent me to a death trap for my first solo hunt, which he shouldn't have done in the first place because rule number two, and blamed it on me when I complained.”

She sighed. “Not just you, I think others had pretty much the same experience. Linea didn't come back from hers. I'm pretty sure Elias almost didn't, either. Fucker's been ignoring our no-solo-hunts rule since even before he became boss,but until enough people get sick of him and call for his demotion, he'll stay where he is. And at least he's keeping up with the paperwork. Which, I remind you, we'll need to fill out extra forms for because we've been gone from headquarters for more than six months. Or did you write letters in that time?”

I groaned. Our Masters and senior Hunters chose our leader, usually, but Vrehden's predecessor had specifically called for him to take his place, and no one had an official opinion on why. I was still a year from my first hunt when that happened, but I vaguely remembered the old headmaster being wilfully ignorant of our no booze rule the years that I'd been at headquarters. Only rumours, of course, no investigation had ever taken place when the old man suddenly dropped dead one evening. He had been very old, at least by our standards.

We continued our walk in silence until we reached a small, rundown tavern by the roadside. It was evening, and getting cold, so the light coming out of the windows and the crack under the door was inviting.

The owner of the tavern almost had us kicked out the moment we walked in. “The hell does your kind want here? Ain't no monsters here, get out!” he shouted from behind the safety of his counter top.

“We're paying customers,” I said, and held up a purse that very obviously contained coins. “No hunting in these parts, anyway.” Not yet. It was likely that this tavern and the handful of rickety houses around it would encounter thralls eventually when they spread out from the capital, or some other kind of monster. Any collection of lives eventually ended up with something going bump in the night, whether it was of their own making or something wandering in, curious or hungry.

The tavern keeper begrudgingly accepted my money, and pointed us to a table in the corner, furthest from his other paying customers. “Food will be brought soon,” he said. “Wait there. No rooms left.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” Lucie said, and made a point to place her sword well within sight when she sat down on the old chair.

I lifted my chair and moved it next to Lucie's so that the only things behind me were a dirty log wall and our backpacks. “Such friendly atmosphere, don't you think?”

She kicked me under the table, then whispered, “They probably think we lure monsters in just by existing.”

I shrugged. “Can't be helped. Run me through the detox spell again?”

“You're actually worried they'll poison our food?” But she went through the motions again anyway. It was a basic running your hands over the plate or glass and mumbling something, one of the first things any recruit was taught before going off to specialised training, but it was very close to the limits of my magic skills. Studious as I had been, I had never had patience for the heavy tomes like Lucie and other students of magic did. I had always preferred swords and monster trivia.

The food we were brought wasn't poisoned, but we made sure to detox it just in case. It was a simple, sad meal, stale bread with bland soup, way worse than what other people were served, but a warm meal was a warm meal, and I even found a few bits of cooked chicken and potatoes in the broth.

We slept in the stables that night, and moved on after breakfast, not stopping in the tiny market to buy more supplies. We still had enough for a few days, and Lucie said she'd rather get water from a stream than the village well. It didn't seem like the people would have sold us anything at fair prices, anyway, judging by their spitting and cussing as we passed.

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Wolventraum - Chapter 3

We set out just as the sun was rising, hoping its light had scared the thralls into hiding places like the one we just crawled out of. Lucie kept her head on a swivel, eyeing the dark windows and empty door frames, while I kept one hand on the hilt of my sword, and my eyes on the road ahead.

“I don’t like when it’s this quiet,” Lucie said. She stopped under the remains of a beautiful stone arch, and a ray of sunlight turned her hair into a shining crown. I stood still for a moment to admire her, and to admit to myself that I felt much the same. Over the past few days, there had still been the sounds of people during the day, shouting and crying, the sound of wood breaking in fire. Smoke was still rising in some parts of the city, fires committing the victims to their afterlives and keeping thralls and ghouls at bay.

Lucie flickered for a moment, then three of her ran down different streets, drawing as much attention as illusionary clones possibly could without being able to touch things.

I watched one of them disappear around a corner. “How long can you keep this up?”

“They’ll keep running until they’re a mile away, give or take.” She shrugged. “Then they'll fade.”

“Let's hope the townsfolk are smart enough to avoid them.”

“They're pretty obvious to normal people. Should work on the monsters, though.” She started walking again, and I followed her through the arch and down one of the many streets that led out of the city. We now occasionally heard snarling in the distance, thralls fighting something or maybe each other, but the sounds never got closer, and we never got curious. It was better than the silence, at least. It kept us on our toes.

And then, finally, we were between smaller houses, lit up by the sun, the shadows behind them drawn long until they covered the gardens. There were hedges, bare trees, dog houses, a great number of dark hiding spots for thralls and everything else that had befallen the good people of this city. And hiding spots for us, easily defended, with enough space to make a run for it without too much risk.

Lucie finally relaxed a bit, and I stopped messing with my sword.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, turning around to inspect me.

“Face hurts, but I’m good, aside from that. Want to get a sense of the place?” I gestured towards a row of trees helpfully planted next to the street. Snow still glittered on their branches.

“You keep watch.”

I smiled to myself as I leaned against a brick garden wall, remembering the many times we'd climbed trees during training. All for scouting, of course, not to steal apples to snack on before dinner. They'd just conveniently been right there, or fallen right off when we got to their branches.

Lucie hopped first onto the wall, then onto a low shed roof that provided a good, if creaky, way to reach the nearest tree. I heard her cuss once when a branch wasn't as strong as it looked.

After Lucie had confirmed we were going somewhat the right way to get north, using a distant bell tower as a marker, we continued walking. The houses became few and far between, replaced by barren farmland and the occasional patch of trees. Out here, the risk of attack decreased dramatically, at least during the daytime, and we found a nice, abandoned shed as the sun sank below the horizon. There were piles of straw scattered around, old and smelly but better than the cold ground.

I put down my sword and bag. “Want me to take first watch?”

Lucie dropped her stuff. She used my bag as a pillow and her cloak as a blanket, and switched watch with me halfway through. “You need the rest more than I do,” she said.

We stayed on that road for a while, following it north, reminiscing about old times, catching up, and spinning exaggerated tales of our shenanigans. Lucie regaled me with her exploits further west, near the coast, where she hunted down a whole village full of ghouls, all on her own, of course, and I likewise misreported the numbers of my enemies. Not like our superiors were going to give us trouble for it. Some evenings, as we sat around a small fire or in an abandoned building, we read the diary. I wanted to get more of a feeling for what we were going into in Wolventraum, and Lucie had gotten a little invested in the story. There had to be something that had made the lady like the werewolf, after all.

“At least she was determined,” Lucie said. She had been reading over my shoulder. “I wouldn't have let a werewolf that close to me again.”

I flipped through the pages as I held the diary closer to the fire. “Seems like she cared for him a lot, but that didn't stop her leaving.” I took a deep breath, and read out loud in my most theatrical voice, “What if the other monsters are real, too? What if I run afoul of them? Will this village even let me leave, now that I know their secret?”

Lucie frowned. “Don't make too much fun of her, she might be bound to it.”

“She hasn't shown any signs of being upset at us reading it,” I said, but continued a less dramatic reading. “It was a long, awkward walk, but Valentin and I are at an inn now, waiting for a carriage bound for the capital. He has been pacing around our small room for an hour now. Oh, so he did come with her.”

“You skipped a bit,” Lucie pointed out. “He wrote in it, too. Almost as chicken scratchy as you.” She snatched the diary from me and read aloud, “I’m sorry for keeping these secrets, Vivi. I’m sorry for writing in your diary after you’ve gone to sleep, but you did say that sometimes it’s easier to write than to speak.

Be safe in your city, be safe with your family. I love you. – Valentin. Ugh, should've read that over before saying it out loud.”

“Second hand embarrassment?” I took the book back and stuffed it into my backpack. “That's enough drama for today, I think. We've got a few more days before we get there. Let's get some rest.”

Lucie nodded, but I could see from the line down her forehead that she was thinking about this a lot more than me.

As we continued our travels and meandering conversation, whenever the topic moved towards thralls, the still healing scars on my face twitched and I winced. It looked mostly better and had stopped bleeding days ago, but the pain didn't quite go away.

“Honestly,” Lucie said as we were finishing a small meal. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a thrall sense from that.”

I shrugged. “Doubt it, but we’ll see when we encounter more.”

She looked up from the bit of bread she'd been working her way through. “We will. There's more and more these days, if the city is any indicator. Are you itching for a fight that much?”

“Not really.” I swallowed my last bite and shrugged. “I mean, it’s hardly their fault, right?”

“Becoming a thrall? Can’t say it is.” It never was. They never wanted it.

I kicked some dirt over our little campfire. “They didn’t have a choice. If I ever end up one, make it quick.”

Lucie frowned, then spat onto the coals. “Don’t say that. Unless you’re doing me the same favour.”

“’Course I would.”

She glared. “Why’d you make it sound like you’re more likely to turn?”

“I’m marked now,” I said with a dramatic gesture. “Doubt it’ll be easy to hide from the big guys with that on my face. They’ll have an easy time finding me.”

“Bullshit. We both have the emblems on our coats. That’s what any monster with some sense is hunting.”

“Coats can be ditched.”

“Yeah, but you could’ve been mauled by a dog. Where'd that talk about being marked even come from? Are you sure you're okay? Did you hit your head when I wasn't looking?”

I sighed. “Fair point. I'm tired. Let’s get some sleep, and hope we don’t get caught off guard by anything.”

Lucie shot me half-hearted grin. “With me covering you? Never.”

We finally reached a fork in the road another few days later. There was an old wooden signpost nearly fallen over, desperately in need of a fresh coat of paint, but we could make out the words with some squinting and running our fingers along the grooves. I nudged it a little, then pushed it upright and shovelled some dirt to the back to keep it standing.

“Wolventraum’s up that way,” Lucie said, looking at the forest ahead of us. “You sure you want to go?” She sounded like she would be happy if I changed my mind.

I adjusted my sword belt and gave her a confident smile. “I’m sure.”

She nodded. “I’ll stay with you. Don’t get us killed.”

“I doubt they’ll flat out attack us. I still have the diary, too,” I said and patted my bag.

“He might get angry at you for reading it,” Lucie said. “Or she will.”

“She hasn't yet. 'Sides, they’ll both be happy to be reunited, I’m sure.” I wasn't as confident in that as I hoped I sounded, but anything that put Lucie's mind at ease about going into a village of werewolves was a win in my book.

She frowned. “Are you aware that people handle grief differently? Some very badly, in fact.”

I looked at my bag. “You think he’ll kill the messengers?”

“Maybe.” Lucie followed my gaze. “Maybe we should just leave the diary at some doorstep and leave. Very quietly, and very quickly.”

“They’re werewolves, they’ll track us by scent. They probably could have tracked her all the way back to the capital, even if she took carriages.”

Lucie ran her hand along the hilt of her sword to reassure herself of its presence. “Right. Yeah. That’s why we should leave again as soon as possible.”

“We’ll see when we get there, okay?” I held out my hand, and she took it. Together, we took the path into the forest, commenting along the way about the work needed to make it less of a pain to travel in an attempt to lighten the mood.

It wasn’t a well-maintained road, though wide enough for a carriage to pass through. I didn't think it got more than a handful of travellers a year. Branches and even a few fallen trees were blocking or reaching out across the trampled dirt and snow after months of neglect. Winter storms up here had to be strong.

Lucie kept squeezing my hand until it hurt, and jumped at every other noise in the bushes, Hunter training forgotten. I had never really asked why werewolves specifically were such a big deal for her, we’d only ever talked about other things when we met again after our specialised training was over. I didn’t expect it to be a good story, but she had no serious scars that would suggest she'd been attacked by one. She certainly hadn't fallen victim to the curse herself. I had my theories, of course, but I wasn't going to bring them up while walking into a village full of them.

I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and kept my eyes on the road. There were no tracks, not even of deer or birds, but that didn't mean we weren't alone.

I wasn’t very enthusiastic about going into a wintery werewolf wood either, no matter how much I wanted to return the diary to that Valentin guy, and no matter how decent the people of Wolventraum seemed from the entries. We were still monster Hunters, emblem and all, trained to deal with thralls, werewolves, and whatever else the world saw fit to spit out at us. They were our prey. Technically, at least. More often than not, with a whole pack or village, it was the other way around. And usually the Hunter's fault that it turned out that way. A village that worked as well together as the diary suggested meant that several packs, several families, had come together, and though that wasn't very common, at least in our resources, it spoke volumes of the bonds that they shared. If we ticked one of them off, we wouldn't get out there alive.

We walked in silence. Our steps sounded incredibly loud under the watchful branches. There was rustling in the brush nearby, snow fell in chunks and flakes from the trees. I saw movement from the corner of my eye more than once, and my hand went to the hilt of my sword each time.

And yet, we reached the peaceful village of Wolventraum unharmed as the night crept in.

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Wolventraum - Chapter 2

The entry cut off, but the stains ink and blood told me what the writer couldn't. That gave me a good idea of when exactly the city was attacked. It took some careful poking and pulling to get the bloodstained pages to part without tearing, but I didn't get much of a chance to read the entries from the beginning. Those weren't important, anyway. What was important was that there had been a few days between the initial attack and the fall of the city. From the nearest town, it took less than a day on a good horse to get here, and we had some Hunters in most towns across the kingdom. I racked my brain, but couldn't for the life of me remember who had last been stationed in the capital.

Heavy steps broke debris behind me, intentionally loud, and a familiar, cheerful voice called out, “When was the last time I saw you with a book? Years ago? Must have been years ago.”

I stuffed the bloodied diary into my bag and turned to glare at the woman who'd dared to interrupt my reading time. The letter tucked between the pages got crumpled in a corner. “What’s it to you?”

She frowned. Deep lines appeared in her dark face. Lucie, my oldest friend in this line of work. “Last thrall hit you in the head?”

“Have you seen my face?” I gestured wildly at my cheek, where a thin line of blood trickled out from under some scabbing. It wasn't healing as quickly as I wanted it to.

Lucie laughed. “Glad you don’t have to?”

“Good to see you, too,” I said, and finally stood up to give her a tight hug.

She squeezed me until I felt my ribs complaining, then spun around, arms wide, taking in the destruction I had gotten used to. I followed her around the piles of rubble and ash, watching for anyone who'd dare to approach two monster Hunters with their weapons clearly in sight. Had it been dark, monsters might have made that mistake.

I had been in the capital for almost two weeks now, and the situation was still dire. There were still thralls about, enslaved by the vampires who had made them. They stopped attacking civilians after the initial rush into the city, but if anyone got too close to their hiding spots, they still made a meal of them, even though they needed no sustenance unless they were injured. Other corpse-eaters, too, ghouls and weaker demons.

“It’ll be dark soon,” I said.

“Yeah.” She turned to me. “Hey, Reaper, you got a hole to hide in? I don't want to freeze to death tonight.”

I pointed to the house I'd spent the last few days in. “Basement’s clean in that one. Easy defence, too. Not really warm, though.” I didn't mention the bloodstains in the hallways upstairs. Lucie probably expected those, they usually came with the territory. Just usually not this bad. Or in this many houses. Mindless though thralls were, they attacked with such ferocity that it left a horrid mess. And if anyone fought back, it always ended up even worse. What they'd lost in wits, they made up for with brute strength.

Lucie skipped ahead of me to the house, then turned around at the door. “Mind if I crash? I haven't had a roof over me in a while.”

“Do you even need to ask? Couch’s mine, though, it was a pain to drag down there.”

She pouted. “Keeping all the best stuff to yourself? Fine, I’ll be generous this time.”

I laughed. “Because of my face?”

“It’s still not healed properly,” she said, with that unmistakable line of worry on her forehead. “Gotta at least sleep well. Have you slept at all lately?”

“Not as much as I need to.” I demonstratively yawned as I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and sauntered past her to the staircase that lead to the basement. “No one there to keep an eye out. Not like the thralls are super active right now, but carnage like this draws other attention.”

“You don't have to tell me that. I almost got jumped by a ghoul on my way here last night.” Ghouls, the plague of every overcrowded cemetery and battlefield, had been the first scavengers to follow in the thralls' wake. There weren't many, and though they usually contented themselves with eating corpses, they weren't easy to fight.

“Have they decided that debate yet?” I asked.

Lucie stopped at the top of the stairs. “Whether ghouls are demons or undead? Nope, still going.”

I suddenly heard Lucie’s light steps everywhere around me, then leaving the cover of the building.

“Don’t overdo it,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to see a shimmering copy of her dip around a corner. “What’s left of the capital isn’t exactly fond of us.” And that was putting it mildly. They blamed us for everything from not saving their lives to the bad weather yesterday. But at least they followed our instructions on how to deal with the dead thralls. The sunlight helped, but there was so little of it in winter that it didn't have the desired effect. In summer, cleaning this city out wouldn't take anywhere near as long. “Don’t make it worse.”

She walked down the stairs with me.“We’re keeping them alive, though.”

I shrugged. “We were too late, in their eyes. Whatever we can do isn't gonna be worth much if half the city’s dead or being eaten.”

“Why, aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.” I heard the grin in her voice, and then felt a small gust of air. I turned around to see her illusionary copies morph back into her and disappear in a small shower of dancing lights.

“Show-off,” I said. She stuck her tongue out at me.

Once we had settled down in my little basement hideout, I got Lucie caught up on what I’d learned about the city and its fate since my arrival. Best way to start the new year was with the dawn of an apocalypse, apparently, but I had my suspicions about the root of the problem. Vampires were usually the root of the problem in cities, after all. They brought the destruction, and everything else came to eat the leftovers.

“Thralls aplenty,” Lucie summarised, “but their creators are keeping hidden, as usual. And ghouls coming in, probably a bunch of vengeful echoes in the near future. But no werewolves. Yet.” She shuddered at the thought of werewolves getting involved in this, unlikely as it was. “But still, the pattern of the attack...”

I reached out to pat her shoulder, then thought better of it. “Still scared of them? You can at least talk to them half the time.”

She frowned. “Yeah. You can talk to vampires, too, if you kill all the thralls on the way in.”

“And get past the traps alive.” I leaned back in my couch. “I’m glad you’re here, Lucie.”

She smiled. The scar above her lip stood out as she did. “Glad I found you in one piece. Want me to fix your face?” She made the offer more out of politeness than concern. There was little she could do about it, healing magic was as much her forte as it was mine, which is to say we were both useless at it. We had both specialised in other aspects of our jobs as Hunters. It was too late now, anyway, the bite was mostly scars and scab, and barely ever bled nowadays. It would never fade, but that was a problem for future me.

I shook my head and replied, just as much out of courtesy, “Already on it. Got as much treatment in as I could, the rest is up to time.”

Lucie shot me a stern look. “And proper sleep. I’ll keep watch, you keep the couch some company.”

“Sure you don’t wanna join me?”

She smacked my arm as she dragged a rickety chair to the basement stairs. “Sleep. Better now than forever.”

I woke up to find Lucie reading the diary. Slowly, I got up and stretched life back into my sore body.

“Must’ve been out cold,” I mumbled.

She didn't look up. “Almost a whole day. It’s getting dark again.”

“Did you go out?” I dusted off my boots and coat. “How's it look?”

“It’s a mess, no different than yesterday.” She finally came over, shoved the diary into my hands and me back onto the couch, and sat down next to me. “Glad this lady didn’t have to see it. She had such pretty handwriting.”

“I’m not sure her current state is any better.”

“She’s not a thrall.” Lucie's gaze swept about the room. “Or was her body gone?”

“I don't know, but nobody working the pyres mentioned seeing her roaming around, so I'll assume they tore her apart instead of bringing her to their masters.” The central plaza and many of the wide streets had been almost entirely covered in pyres. Still burning, just being lit, already burnt down. People kept adding anything that would burn as fuel. Some people tried to keep track of who was dead, but they didn't have it easy with all the carnage, even this late after the attack.

Lucie frowned. “I smelled them before I even reached the city. She might have been lucky, then, huh.”

“A lot of people got dragged off, I heard.” I glanced at the diary. “Did you find anything interesting in there? 'Side from the attack details?”

“She was almost married to a werewolf, I think?” Her voice took on a note of fear. “Who does that? Give it here.”

I handed her the diary, and she flipped to one of the first pages.

“She wrote in the letter that he proposed to her. Shame on you for getting it all wrinkled, by the way. And here, she writes, Valentin confessed that I am the only person in this village who is human. Everyone else is a werewolf, he said. He didn’t want to scare me, so he kept it a secret. People handle the truth better if they don't learn it the hard way. He should have trusted her at least that much. She didn't run screaming after he told her, either, or after all the other things that happened in that village. Must have actually liked the guy.”

“Guess so,” I said. “I kind of want to go give it to him.”

“The diary?”

“Yes. If word has gone out to the nearest towns, and it has, by now, and probably all the way up north, then it'll have reached him, too. He'll want to know what happened to her.”

Lucie's face fell. “Have you gone mad?”

I reached for my pack by the couch. “You don’t have to come with me.”

She quickly shook her head. “I’m not letting you get mauled again.”

“They seem like reasonable people,” I protested. “If they hid their nature so well from a stranger, they are true, not cursed.”

“Probably. I hope so.” With a heavy sigh, Lucie placed a hand on my shoulder and held me back. “But you’ll heal up first.”

“I can heal on the road.”

She glared at me. “You can die on the road.”

I held her stare.“Or I can die in this basement.”

She sighed again. “That bit of hair isn’t gonna grow back, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “Won’t grow back on the road, either.”

Lucie's eyes remained on my face, and I briefly wondered if she was trying to look past the angry red lines. “Do you think we can just roll up there and say, hey, sorry, your wife is dead, but we found her diary? They’ll smell us coming a mile upwind and either run or attack.”

“I don't think they'd run. And they'll probably appreciate the closure. Probably.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “Besides, if they're really true werewolves, not cursed, they won't just transform the moment they get upset. And we can cover the emblems on the coats, just pose as travellers.”

“They’ll think we’re bandits or grave robbers.” Lucie's frown deepened. Even the notion that these werewolves were in full control of their transformations did nothing to reassure her.

I rolled my shoulders and stretched. “Official business, then. I don’t have any hunts waiting right now. And I need to get out of this city. They know their stuff now, and others should be arriving soon. Or do you have any hunts?”

“No. But at least get some more rest tonight. I’ll see if I can get us some decent food.” Lucie pushed herself off the couch and started for the stairs. We could both use something that wasn't hunt rations.

I smiled. “I knew you’d understand me.”

“No, I don't understand why you'd want to go to a village full of werewolves. But I'm not letting you go there alone.” She turned around. “Does the diary have an echo?”

“I appreciate that. And no, not that I’ve noticed, but we’re strangers. If she's bound to it, she might only come out once she sees this Valentin.” Echoes were like that, at least the ones that didn't try to drag you into their death repetitions with them the moment you touched the object they were bound to. If she had become an echo rather than a thrall, the lady Walkers had gotten lucky. If something like this, something so violent, happened to a city, there were bound to be many, many echoes, forced to relive the moment of their death every night. Until a priest did their prayers to get rid of them, anyway. I had seen churches of different faiths all over the city. They would be very busy in the weeks to come.

“Maybe she's not even bonded with the diary,” I suggested. “She might be stuck in her house. Haven't heard anything from it, though.” Such violent deaths usually had screaming echoes, and some even captured the sounds or appearance of whatever killed them. That the house was quiet was a good sign.

With a grim nod, Lucie turned back around, and I didn’t see her again until she came back an hour later with bread and a chunk of cheese for both of us. Gods only know where she got it, but it was the best meal I'd had in days.

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Wolventraum - Chapter 18

Finally, we moved from the carving hall to the throne room. It lay at the end of a short dark hallway, and its walls were bare, rough stone that grew into a domed ceiling. A few pillars where the stone hadn't been hewn away supported the weight of the mountain above us. These pillars were carved with crude depictions of vampires drinking the blood of humans. Burning braziers stood around each pillar and in every corner. The air was thick with smoke, and the light was unsteady. Viviane had retreated into the walls before we entered, whispering that she would surprise our opponent and flank her once the fighting started. We had agreed.

On the throne itself, which was as crude as the walls around it but had a thick red cloth draped over its back, sat a woman. Reclined may have been a more fitting word, for she looked as though nothing could ever bother her. Silvery blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders and to her waist, a stark contrast with her black dress, and her eyes, more white than blue, tracked us as we entered. Her pale lips curled into a wide smile, revealing long, red-tipped fangs that stood out like sores against her almost white skin.

“Welcome, welcome, my dear pests,” she whispered, but her voice carried throughout the entire room. Her smile faltered. “I see Vrehden has proven useless, in the end. Such a shame, he was a rather useful tool these last few years. Not that I can fault you.” She chuckled. “I would hate to be betrayed as you have. How your poor little hearts must have been broken.”

Valentin growled. The sound was loud enough to drown out her giggles, until they turned to uproarious laughter. It felt almost like a storm had entered the room. Dust and tiny bits of stone rained from the ceiling.

The vampire rose from her throne, dress rippling like river currents, and threw her arms wide as if to embrace us. “I shall introduce myself, for you have proven to be rather tenacious. I am Rosamunde, Lady of this fortress, First Bride of Blood. And I will decorate the halls with your entrails.”

She lunged at us, faster than our eyes could track, and slammed me into the nearest pillar. I nearly fell into the braziers, trying to force air back into my lungs without choking on the smoke.

Lucie unleashed a barrage of strikes from all sides onto Rosamunde. Her illusions were becoming solid only in those moments, and I was surprised that I noticed it at all. Black dots still danced in my vision.

Rosamunde dodged every last strike, becoming shadow and darkness where the blades touched her as naturally as breathing. Even Valentin's claws and teeth found no purchase in her flesh or dress. She swatted at him as though he was a fly.

“Really,” Rosamunde said, sounding honestly concerned. She had appeared next to me, and her hand held my sword arm in a vice grip. She could break my bones if she wanted to. “I expected more from you. Vrehden was so afraid,” she purred. “But you are hardly any trouble.”

With that, she flung me across the room. This time, though, I managed to catch myself. My legs protested, but I kept my breath in my lungs.

Rosamunde raised a pale brow. “I suppose you might be useful yourselves, you two.”

Lucie raised her sword as she stalked towards the vampire. “Shove it, Rosy. We will not shame our family like he did.”

An illusion sank its sword into Rosamunde's back. To no effect, the darkness swallowed the blade and reformed into the black dress as Lucie's magic shattered into embers.

“Oh, darling, I mean it,” Rosamunde said. “Though you do seem a little less cracked and bruised.” She laughed. “And you're still so young, too. Maybe I should raise the next generation of your ilk myself, first? To make you envy and hate and fear them?”

I spat. “Is that how you got him? Because he was too full of himself? Thought we shouldn't be better than him?”

Rosamunde smiled, revealing her fangs. “It was so very easy, dearest. How far a few words of praise can go. I shall never cease to be amazed by how weak your mortal will can be.”

Lucie cursed, and it was in that moment that Viviane unleashed the greatest ink beast she had ever created, a dragon so big it filled half the room. She slipped out of the wall on the dragon's head, and black ink dripped from her fingers to pool into a pack of massive wolves.

Rosamunde flinched. She regained her composure very quickly, but I saw her eyes widen, her shoulders tense. “Oh, darlings,” she breathed, “How adorable. You brought me an echo to haunt my fortress?”

Viviane smiled bitterly as she slid off the dragon. “Oh, I will haunt you, I can promise you that.” She raised her hand, and the wolves charged, Valentin in the lead. Behind them, the dragon launched itself into the air as though the ceiling didn't exist to block it. Its size belied its speed and dexterity. When Lucie and I re-entered the fight, it seemed to be everywhere we needed it to be in just the right moment, bringing a claw down to block an attack or give us an opening to take a breath.

Still, it seemed Rosamunde was faster than the dragon, faster than Valentin's wolfish reflexes, and certainly faster than Lucie and myself. She seemed unbothered by the wolves coming for her heels, and struck like lightning. She slammed into us with the strength of a warhorse, tore our armour with her bare hands like it was paper.

Viviane sent smaller beasts to join the fight and take hits for us. Her wedding dress tore at the hem, the seams, until it was barely covering the black ink stains that spread from her hands to her chest. Ink soon covered us and the floor, but it didn't seep into the gashes Rosamunde had left in my chest and arms. I only discovered in the aftermath how far Viviane's control over the ink truly reached.

Valentin's healing could barely keep up with Rosamunde's attacks, but determination kept him standing. He wouldn't let this creature touch his Vivi, not once, even as blood poured from his flanks and head.

“Ah, young love.” Rosamunde cackled. She leaned back, bursting into bellowing laughter. And was struck true in that moment for the first time. Lucie and I plunged our swords, stained black from the splattered beasts, into her chest. Her laughter turned to enraged screams that shook debris from the ceiling.

The dragon lunged, sank its inky fangs deep into the vampire’s flesh. I almost found the sound of it satisfying.

Valentin tore out pieces of her, time and again.

We stabbed her, time and again.

Until she was silent and in bits and pieces on the floor, not bleeding, not healing, not moving.

Lucie lit two matches and held one out to me. We dropped them onto Rosamunde, and then more. By the end, all of Lucie’s matches were gone, and we stood over a pile of ashes.

“I need sunlight,” I declared in the pressing quiet. I felt like the walls would crumble and bury us, but they remained standing as we made our way outside. Viviane stayed with us until we reached the gates, gave Valentin a kiss, and disappeared into the diary. His wounds were almost healed now, lucky bastard.

When it had become dark, after tending to our injuries, we went back inside to turn the place upside down, recovering as many books and scrolls as we could, all that Vrehden had stolen from headquarters, all Rosamunde had amassed that still seemed fit to travel, and brought it outside. Then, we spilled oil and wood and everything combustible that we found in the castle cellars throughout every room, took long dead torches from the walls, lit them with my matches, and threw them into the oil. Flames roared inside the castle until the sun rose again, and we sat leaning against the trees outside and watched.

Not far away, Valentin and Vivi sat under a tree. He had turned into a wolf again, head resting on his paws, and she leaned against him, watching the flickering light.

Lucie nudged my shoulder. “We should get going. Someone’s gotta tell Hellene the good news.”

I grinned. “Think she’ll win the vote for next leader?”

“By a landslide, if Aveline refuses.” She stood up and hauled me to my feet. “Can’t wait to sleep in a proper bed again.”

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Wolventraum - Chapter 17

The door Vrehden had come through led to a dimly lit hallway lined with armour sets. They didn't match in make and age, not even in crests. A trophy collection, gathered from the unfortunate souls that made an enemy of Rosamunde. Most of the chest pieces had deep claw marks in them, or were torn apart and later haphazardly tied or stitched back together, or held in place by innumerable thin wooden sticks.

There was armour I recognised from our archives, a chain shirt weighed down by now empty metal hooks that once held potion vials. The cloak that hung in tatters around it still had our crest stitched into it, the black thread of the sword grey with age, the red of the shield fading and frayed.

I searched my mind for the stories that spoke of this armour. It was impractical, having vials hanging all over armour like that, but the Hunter it had belonged to had rarely fought on foot. “This was Master Frundsberg's armour,” I said. More alchemist than Hunter, definitely a little mad, but committed to our cause. He had vanished on duty more than a hundred years ago, but there was still a plate in the lab at headquarters honouring him. And urging people to be cautious with their experiments.

Lucie gingerly touched the cloak, frowning at the fraying fabric. “They put our armour up here like a showroom,” she muttered. “Disgusting.”

I nodded. “Let's keep moving.” I didn't want my own gear to end up here next.

Valentin still heard and smelled only us. It was either an enchantment, or there was really no one here. We all agreed it had to be enchantments. There was no way an Elder Vampire left their lair undefended.

And yet, as we advanced, clearing room after room that led us deeper into the mountain, we found no resistance. Instead, we found weapons, scrolls, old wooden chests filled with trinkets and coins, jewellery taken from the fallen. One room mocked us by having our crest on heavy tapestries that hung from every wall. It was the most cluttered of all of the rooms we had checked. What Vrehden had stolen was here, stacked in crates and open chests and hanging from racks. There was not a speck of dust on anything, and despite the clutter, I could tell it was visited often, like a favourite trophy room.

“Sick bitch,” I muttered.

Next to me, Lucie bent down to a small box of dark wood, embossed with gold. A delicate key still sat in the lock. Carefully, she ran her hands along the box, gently pressed here and there, checking for traps and enchantments. There was nothing. She turned the key, and lifted the lid.

The box was filled with rings. Not the thick, jewelled ones that held protective enchantments in their gemstones, worn by our new Hunters on their first hunts, but thin silver and gold bands, glinting in the torchlight coming from the hallway. Wedding rings. Some had names engraved in them. Those were all polished and clean. One silver ring had Hellene's name on it.

Lucie closed the box and slipped the key into her pocket. “I am going to tear this monster limb from limb,” she said, her voice flat.

“Oh, we will,” I said.

The hallways and rooms were quiet, smelled only of dust and indifference, like not a thing had moved there in centuries. Despite our caution, we saw and heard no thralls, no other vampires, nothing.

Until we reached the inner sanctum of the fortress.

Detailed carvings covered the walls, telling of the history of its lords and ladies. Once, there had been rulers with compassion for the people, if I interpreted the carvings correctly. But generations of cruelty followed. Then, there had been intrigue, an uprising of peasants, the desperate birth of the first vampire. A blood curse, the darkest magic known to man, brought upon a young woman wearing a crown holding a sleeping, or more likely dead, infant in her arms. As I followed the carving through the hall, I learned that the first vampire had been made by drinking the blood of her infant child, in a circle of candles, starved from a long time hiding within the darkness of the inner sanctum as peasants revolted against the rulers. In her bloodlust, the woman killed almost all those desperate nobles who performed the ritual, until four were left when her thirst was slaked. Those, she made her own with her own blood, and thus, five Elder Vampires were born that day.

The last image, carved into the wall near a large gate arch, showed the four others leaving the fortress, though there was no sign of why. Thus, the first Elder Vampire was left alone in the darkness of her besieged home. I assumed she came out in the night to kill the poor villagers. Her child never showed up again, either. If this was truly how these monsters came to be, I could only hope the kid hadn't experienced any of it.

Thralls descended on us the moment we stepped through the gate arch. More than we had ever fought before, and stronger. They communicated with each other, used tactics beyond swarming, watched us and learned our attacks. We were trapped with them in the dark hallway. They had waited for us there, protected by the magic that kept them concealed from Valentin's senses. They dodged faster than any I'd met before and found openings in our patterns to strike.

Viviane's ink beasts formed protective circles around us to buy us time, or tore into the thralls to create openings, while she herself remained hidden within the carved walls. It seemed Rosamunde hadn't prepared for an echo, and her thralls never once took notice of the source of the beasts.

When the last thrall lay unmoving, we allowed ourselves a moment of rest. Viviane fussed over Valentin's already healing injuries, oblivious to the tears in her dress. Lucie and I patched each other up, straining the limits of the first healing kit. But the ink beasts had been formidable, there were few injuries that needed more than cleaning and a few stitches under a thin layer of bandages. Lucie was better with the needle than me, but I had more gashes that needed stitching with the healing thread Master Hellene had given us.

We shared water. Then, we shared matches to burn the thralls, and watched their ashes scatter into the draft of the hallway.

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