Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Journal Entry 1:
I have been keeping a chilled towel on Agni's forehead but it's doing little to ease his fever. His hand is so small clutching mine, no bigger than a human child a few years of age even though these boys are mere months old. Hiding was the only thing I could do to keep them alive, but alone, I do not know how to care for dhampir children. In desperation, I went into the local nomad villages to seek information as discreetly as possible, but there was no real way to ask what a dhampir might need to ease a sickness.
The best I managed was gathering herbs known to help vampires with certain afflictions, but no creatures of the night suffer from fevers. They are cold as ice. I have experimentally combined fever reducing plants for humans with herbs that settle and soothe dark magic, but I have no idea if the scent wafting from the towel is helping Agni or making him worse. Tears water my eyes even as I write. I am failing the children in front of me as much as the one I left behind with Pyre.
Helia was my second birth so my body is less damaged than when I had Horus, but I am still healing and full of motherly hormones. They scream at me to return home, to take Helia in my arms and bring her to my breast, but if I leave these children, they will perish. I am all they have, while Helia has Pyre. It is cruel, but it is what fate has decided for me.
Helia was only a few weeks old when the Cinder elders asked me to come with them for something only I could do. They'd wanted a mother and a grand mage, one who understood what had to be done. The woman who bore Agni and Alev thrust them away like they were beasts, all while they cried and screamed for the mother who rejected them. With gentle hands, I took both the boys, only babies at the time, and they nuzzled against my familiar Cinder magic. It took no more than a little rocking and affection to soothe them into slumber that day.
All they'd wanted was their mother.
The Cinder woman had lain with a vampire under allure, and by the time she was herself again, there was no undoing the pregnancy. So she had carried it to term, but the moment she birthed her children, she cast them aside. That was when the elders had laid down their decree, that the children should be killed to avoid catastrophe, as all dhampirs were said to bring. I agreed to do it because I knew the men would have been cruel about it otherwise, but I never intended to go through with it.
With both boys in her arms, I walked out into the desert and never turned back.
Only monsters could order the deaths of infants and have no remorse, and I want no part of that world. For too many years, I fought and hated at Pyre's side, and though I love Pyre with all my heart and feel as he does toward the creature of the night, these children are innocent. No matter their parentage, they deserve a life, but I am unsure if it will be a long one.
Journal Entry 2:
The wind along the ravine shakes the tent I set up at the cliff's base. The shade and the wind make the heat bearable, but the sun sometimes bakes us even on the ground. It's not an ideal location, but I need the cover from the elements for Agni to rest. When he is awake, I whisper soothing words and hold his hand, but he never manages more energy than it takes to slip his fangs into my wrist and drink blood. His ability to do so is growing weaker each day.
