Vampiric Interdiction

[38] Beautiful Dreams or Sweet Nightmares

A sudden rage of frustration sends another book full of whirls and symbols that Karolinna doesn’t understand to the floor where a pile of literature lay already discarded. She takes a deep breath, almost choking on the air as her body wasn’t prepared for it or used to the sensation and the oxygen filled up her lungs and then they deflated again. She had been at this for hours, since the crack of dawn; the fresh, rapidly healing paper cuts on her fingers and cast off books evidence of her aggravation.

Villahr would know what to do. Of course he would. He was the reason Karolinna had taken refuge in a pile of ancient texts she hadn’t looked through for the past couple centuries. She wondered for a moment if this was all just an elaborate hoax to get the blonde practicing magic again, or more of a two birds, one stone, kind of deal.

She tried every spell that looked remotely helpful, skipping over anything she couldn’t make out in hopes that it wasn’t something that would have an effect complete opposite of what she was hoping for, but nothing worked. She was rusty. The only supernatural abilities she really used were those which she was born with and they didn’t take much power to work since they were practically instinctual, like taking the occasion breath or consuming food to sustain ones body.

Karolinna  rubbed her eyes, not from lack of restoration or heavy fatigue, but upset and desperation. She hadn’t slept in weeks, her time either devoted to being spent with the low-lifes at the treatment facility or rebelling out in the moonlight with a certain fanger. Perhaps a little bit of shut eye might help revitalize her and make the books innards easier to read and she could finally find something to bring down that damn forcefield.

Villahr had left some time ago for the shop, checking in on her once to find her collapse on top of her sheets, staring up at the ceiling defeated. The pages of information lay partially hidden by the sheets, but she wasn’t really trying to hide them so there was a good chance he saw them and just didn’t care or knew they wouldn’t be of nay use without him there to help her decode them. 

Karolinna was a brilliant vici, even against all the idiotic things she did the underlying thought pattern that leaked out from time to time when Karolinna wasn’t paying much attention, showed him that she really did know what she was doing — she just didn’t care to stop herself from doing it.

Leaning over her bare legs to reach yet another work she had snuck from the family archives without permission, she plopped it down on her lap, flinching a little at the coolness of the leather binding then frowning when her body sucked it all away, like a sponge slurping up every bit of liquid it came into contact with, leaving it unpleasantly warm and suctioned to her skin.

She begins to regret not paying attention all those years ago when Kayya had insisted upon daily studies upon her conviction that the vampires would one day storm the estate and try and overthrow them, using their home as some sort of headquarters. 

She didn’t learn much back then since her mind was always on other things, mainly Villahr and whatever the latest gadget was at the time. She was just a youngling after all, and one of which who did not spend much time in the world and wanted to soak up every bit of it before she was shut off yet again for who knows how long.

Learning spells from scratch are much harder now, as Karolinna’s brain isn’t as absorbent as it once was, and rather than slurping it all up as if she were suffering with severe dehydration and every little bit of libation was fair game, now it was more like hammering nails into a rock. If she tried to do it for much longer her head would split clean in half again and the faelna wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep it up before repairs would start to get sloppy and before she knew it she would end up like a vegetable.

Looking towards the window, the curtains still pulled back so she could see if she had made any progress with her sporadic mumblings and sorry attempts at incantations, but she had hardly managed to make a dent in Villahr’s work. She had managed to thin it somewhat —but we’re talking more like a puncture in a balloon compared to a tear in a piece of fabric — and using a great dear of mental stamina she had at least made it somewhat visible to keep an eye on her progress. It glowed, a strong ray of purple light, and taunted her. She would never be able to get through it without the proper knowledge; which she did not have.