The Children of Arnborg: The Prophecy

Chapter Twelve

Stuart had been thoroughly immersed in Emma's story. However, he was beginning to notice that the route Emma had taken was not nearing the Bowdoin Street intersection and had not been so for at least the last half-hour. Nevertheless, he contented himself with the thought that Emma was, after all, a vampire and was perhaps prone to covert operations for the most mundane things of human life, such as nearing the correct turn-off point on the freeway.

"Hours later I woke up," Emma cut into Stuart's thoughts. "The arrow was out of my head, my wound had healed and Hrodrich sat beside me. I looked around and realized that we were under the church in some sort of sanctuary. Above us, I could hear a commotion of garbled shouting and screams.

'Do not worry,' Hrodrich whispered. 'They cannot get in. They are seeing to the priests' bodies.'

I looked across me and saw that the doors were locked and barred. 'Wolgast?' I moaned.

'Dead,' Hrodrich whispered.

'How?' I asked, feeling the weakness in my limbs.

'Our little one...' he replied, softly.

'Frouuina!' I sprang up. 'Where is she?'

Hrodrich would not answer. His eyes filled with tears.

'Where is Frouuina!' I screamed.

'She fought him to the last, to the very last. She killed him... fed on him... and what strength she had, she gave to us...' he told me.

'What? What?' I cried. 'Where is our little one? Hrodrich, where is our little one?' I cried over and over.

'Albruga, you drank in your sleep, and I drank in mine,' he answered. 'She gave every drop of blood she had and, having fully avenged her family's death, she went into the sun.

'She is nothing but ash now, but as I awoke, her blood still on my lips, her breath barely able to sustain her, she confessed one last thing and asked one more of us and prophesied yet another. She said she had tried to call Wolgast to us with her magicks, his spirit, so she could kill the last great hunter who despised and persecuted her kind and ours.

'I do not know if this is what brought him to us, but she died believing as much. She asked us always to protect the remnants of her family's descendants. I promised her this, Albruga, and you and I are bound by that promise. There is no going back now.'

I nodded at this through my tears. 'And the prophecy?' my lips trembled. 'What of that?'

'She told me that a day would come when a hunter would rise up against us and a descendant of the Kuhnle's would rise up to guard us,' he said. 'She said her descendants and our children whom we would create, and our children's children, were bound together by destiny throughout all eternity. This was the pact made with the Gods and the Goddesses when Gersuinda cut her abdomen and took the blood from our wrist...' Hrodrich's lips quivered with something unspoken.

I pressed his arm. 'Dear brother, what is it? What troubles you?'

'She said we would run afoul of this hunter,' he said, 'and this would all happen at a time when a descendant of Wolgast was the only means to defeat our enemy.'

'A descendant of Wolgast?' I asked. 'How could this be? He's dead!'

'He had a bastard son,' Hrodrich explained. 'Frouuina knew this, but the only one he loved was Fridurih, the one born to the woman he truly loved...' Hrodrich's lips still quivered.

'What is it, Hrodrich!' I said sternly, growing impatient. 'Tell me what she told you!'

'Albruga,' he whispered, his voice breaking, 'the hunter... the hunter whom we must defeat before he kills us all, us and our fledglings... will be one of the last living descendants... of Arnborg...'

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