"Wren, are you sure you don't want us to come with?" The hunting party asked, and Wren looked over to them.
The bright red hair and grey eyes of his people–the Songs–met him, but they were all tired from their last skirmish with the Sols that had pushed them into Valk territory. Some had scratches and other aches from wounds that had been sealed with magic but needed time to recover fully. Those Sol vampires were bred monsters and they avoided them if possible, but treading the borders between their territory and the Valks wasn't much of a choice for safe travel.
Both burned them alive. It was just a matter of with which medium: Fire or Lightning.
The Sol deserts weren't safe but neither were the Valk mountains. At least the desert was open so vampires couldn't drop on them from the trees. Even in the daytime when the monsters were weakened, the things still roamed their borders to watch for intruders, and they pounced on light magic with no intent other than to savage and drain blood. Humans were just beverages to those grotesqueries, and he would kill every last one if he had to.
"You go on ahead. I need to finish scouting to map the borders. It's only around the end of the canyon, so I should join you in less than thirty minutes." Wren was their strongest, their leader, so it was his job to take on the most difficult tasks. Sweat beaded his brow even in the waving evening sun, and it reflected off water and sand alike, making it hard to see much. More men didn't make the job easier.
"Watch yourself, general!" the younger men said with a wave, and he nodded as they disappeared into a spell to go home. The light magic would normally attract vampires but down here in the gulley, it blew by with the wind, obscuring their exact location.
Wren walked down the river and marked the curve of the landscape as he progressed, the cool wind from the ripples of water flowing against his back in an easy sigh. They needed to know the lay of the land if they were to infiltrate. Nothing like running into an unknown cliffside to end up in death. The edge of the canyon was just up ahead, and relief flowed over him in a wave that eased his tense muscles. On the other side, the desert climbed up to the peak of the canyon and the Sol Territory stretched forth. This side of the river was Sol territory, but the vampires didn't venture into the green ravine often. At the same time, the Valks wouldn't cross the river on their border to come into Sol territory, so it was the safest path for charting.
Marking the extent of the cliffside, he rolled up the parchment and headed to the edge to peek around. It was expected that it was a steep incline up to the ridges, but he needed to make sure before he departed. There was no point in trying to map the Sol territory as it was strewn with anti-magic pillars that blocked transportation magic. Venturing in there was death, but they could map around it.
Gripping the rock, he pulled himself forward to look, and the brush of dark magic was immediate. The ridge had blocked it, just as it had blocked his light magic and he came face to face with the red eyes, tan skin, and dark hair of a Sol vampire. Instinct took over, and he breathed the tune of his spell into place immediately.
The vampire was too close to get away as his shadow chains burst from his feet and wrapped around its legs, reaching for its tainted soul with light magic. By the time he registered the fear-ridden expression and the gentle female features, it was too late to stop his chains from plunging into her eyes.
A screech shook the sands with dark magic, but it wasn't from the woman. Another vampire? Wren had already stopped his spell the moment he'd noticed the one he was attacking was a Mother, but it was too late. The puppet spell was irreversible, and the light magic gutted the insides of vampires and fought to get out, tearing them apart from the inside.
Something struck him over the head from behind and he fell onto the narrow incline of a dune. His vision blackening as rolled and the hot sand burned his face, but the blow was hard enough that his consciousness slipped away and left him vulnerable to whatever fate lay with this beast.
Wren woke in darkness and he shifted to try and make sense of his surroundings, but all that did was rattle the chains of his confinement that connected to a manacle on each wrist. This was a dungeon, and by the overwhelming Sol magic, it didn't take him long to figure out where he was. Dammit. With a groan, he lifted himself onto his elbows and recoiled from a puddle of warm water that soaked into his arms. It was dank down here, and the other cells around him were empty.
This was his end.
Mothers were the females who sired the majority of any house's vampires, and they were protected, cherished, and sacred. Human women fought the change to vampires as life creators, so they more often than not perished, but when they lived, their ability to sire new vampires was potent. Where a normal human without magic in their blood had a fifty-fifty chance of accepting the change with a male sire, a mother raised that to nearly ninety-five percent for a male, and fifty for a female.
Mages knew better than to attack females because it would rain hell down on their houses. Vampires fought and avenged their fallen kin, but they'd sacrifice half their people to protect a Mother. That woman hadn't even looked like she'd intended to attack him, more surprised that he'd been there at all.
It made him sick to think about it.
Every vampire he'd ever fought had been vicious, fangs bared, hissing, and claws ready to rip his throat out. This one had just seemed frightened, and he'd felt her soul with his magic as it had burrowed into her for the puppet chains. Most fought the Song magic that controlled vampires like marionettes while killing them at the same time, but not this one. She'd seemed resigned, saddened, but she'd been too weak to fight someone like him.
They were going to make him suffer.
Wren watched the end of the hall for so long that his eyes ached, and when he fell into sleep, it was fitful and he barely lasted a minute unconscious without fear of being attacked. When he dreamed, it was that woman, crying as he wrapped his hands around her throat and strangled it away, like his chains had with their insides. He couldn't say how many days passed because there were no windows down, but it felt like weeks before someone came down.
He was starved but alive, so it couldn't have been that long, but it felt like it. After a while, he'd been happy that water dripped into his cell from the walls, but it was disgusting to lick it from the sand bricks packed with mortar. It kept him alive long enough, but everything he had hurt and his body begged him to eat. His clothes were looking like an appealing appetizer when the door to the dungeon finally scraped open.
A man came down the stairs, and Wren's eyes widened as he met with the pitch gaze of Shan Sol, the first general of the Sols. There was power in the man's gaze, so it took some doing to follow his pitch hair to where it ended at his shoulders, glide past his bare chest as the vampires of the sands preferred to be, and find men in Shan Sol's grips.
Wren's men.
Lieder was in his forties which was more like the early twenties in mage years compared to humans. The man was a battle experienced general with short-cut red hair around his crown and knowing dark grey eyes as they found Wren's. But Adagio was only fourteen, his light grey eyes terrified as he trembled in the Sol general's hand and looked around in fear of every whisper. Both were shackled in a way that kept their hands together and them from fighting back.
Shan lifted Lieder by the back of the head to shove his forehead into the bars of Wren's cell, and Lieder groaned as Wren looked to the vampire general for what he wanted from him.
"Enjoy his face, Wren Song. It will only be around as long as you can keep him alive." Shan turned away before Wren could curse at him and threw both of the men in adjacent cells opposite of Wren's in the corridor.
Wren kept his eyes frozen on Shan's shoulders as he walked back up the cold stone stairs, and only after the door slammed, did he speak. "Lieder," Wren rasped, and the man dropped his head in shame. "What happened?"
"It's chaos out there, Wren," Lieder said, a sob from Adagio shaking the boy as he huddled in the furthest corner from his father. It was strange enough that they were apart, and Wren looked from the Adagio to Lieder for an answer. "The Sols are out for blood, but they're taking us alive. I know what that means, so when they descended on us, I slit Adagio's throat."
"Hell, Lieder!" Wren growled, but the man continued to speak as if he hadn't heard him.
"Some idiot healed him, and then was butchered by the Sols. So here I am, in a dungeon, waiting to watch my son tortured in front of me." Lieder's shoulders shook and tears dripped down his face and over her chest. "What did you do, Wren?" Lieder's anger came like a storm, and Wren sank back.
"I'm sorry." Those were the only words he could say, the only ones he got out as the door opened at the top of the stairs. This was his fault, and his people would fall because of it.
The vampire's steps were quiet on the stairs because they were solid stone and the desert dwellers wore softer shoes to move easier and navigate the shifting sands. To make it worse, the man was intentionally languid as he headed down the final trek to stand in front of them.
Talamayas Sol turned to him in all of his glory, muscled and bare from his waist to his broad shoulders. A red depiction of the sun blazed on his right shoulder, stretching the triangle spikes of the sun's rays onto his pectoral muscle, and claws of equal ferocity curled each side of his abdomen. Unlike Shan, the man kept his hair short around his face and left only a thin tail to trail down his back. And his eyes were red. Crimson flashed to Wren, and they were hollowed. The mother had died, his mother.
This was the Sol house head and Wren taken from him.
Talamayas didn't linger as he was drawn to Adagio's whimpering and turned from Wren. The boy couldn't remain silent with how his fear had taken him over, and Wren rattled his chains as he pulled to their limit to get as close as he could. It didn't distract Talamayas at all as he took a step toward the boy's cell.
"Please don't," Lieder begged, something Wren had not bothered with. Asking this man not to do anything guaranteed he would. Talamayas Sol wanted him to suffer, and he had the means to do so right in front of him.
"A child, Shan?" Talamayas asked as if puzzled, and his general appeared out of nowhere to stand next to him.
"You instructed that all the Songs were to be annihilated, sir, and as many as possible brought here alive without risk of our own deaths," Shan answered curtly.
"Yes, I did, didn't I." Talamayas voice was a deep growl that promised the pain to come, and Wren trembled as the man eyed the boy ahead of him. "In the future, kill the women and children. I'm not deranged like the mages and glean no pleasure from torturing such helpless things. Lucky for you, I guess," Talamayas said the last to Adagio as he opened the cell door.
Lieder slammed his body against the bars to try and reach his son, but Adagio had pressed himself to the wall to get away from him earlier. It left him at Talamayas' mercy as he stood over him.
"Don't, please!" Lieder begged, tears dripping down his face in mass. "Don't hurt him!"
Talamayas reached down and picked up Adagio by his collar, and the boy struggled and shrieked, but he'd always been quieter than the kids his age. The noise sounded like the last squeaks of a cornered animal before it was taken to slaughter.
"Dad!" The boy cried out for his father, even after all he'd done, as Talamayas rolled his lips back and his fangs lengthened.
"Adagio! I'm so sorry," Lieder said as he collapsed onto the lowest bar and cried into the ground. "So sorry..." The last was a hiss of pain.
Talamayas moved then, bringing Adagio closer to Lieder, and Wren wanted to rip out the man's throat as he lowered the boy to the ground and held him just out of reach of his father. How far did this piece of shit need to take the suffering?
"You are kin?" Talamayas asked Lieder, and the man lifted his face to stare at the vampire in confusion.
"N-no... please." Lieder sobbed, dropping his forehead to the bars with bitter tears. Children made it easier to torture their parents, and both of them knew that. Adagio was too young to have known not to say such things aloud, but he was terrified.
"Say goodbye to your father." Talamayas dropped the boy at the bars near Lieder, and Wren had no idea what was going on as Lieder pressed his face to his son's through the cold cell that split them up.
"Dad, I'm sorry I was mad at you," Adagio said like any child would, afraid of losing their parent. Through the bars, Adagio reached his fingers up to twine with his father's.
"No, you had every right to be. It's okay. I love you so much. Just close your eyes. It will be okay. It will be okay." Lieder repeated it even though he knew it wouldn't be, and Adagio trembled so hard Wren could see him shaking from his cell.
"I love you, Dad," Adagio rasped.
"I know. We'll be together always, even after," Lieder croaked as Talamayas pulled Adagio back from the bars and turned him around to face him.
The boy's eyes widened as he looked up at the vampire who was about to kill him, and both Wren and Lieder held their breath. Talamayas' red eyes glowed, and Adagio's shaking stopped as the man controlled him with the power of vampire allure.
"It's all right. You're safe." Talamayas murmured lies to the boy, and Adagio relaxed under the grip of Talamayas' hands on his shoulders. "A better place awaits you. Do as your father said. Close your eyes."
Adagio surrendering to the vampire's control shook Wren, and he was unable to look away as Talamayas lowered his mouth to the boy's neck. With the allure controlling Adagio, the boy didn't even make a peep as fangs sank into his throat and Talamayas took long draws of blood into his mouth. It didn't take much time at all for Adagio to pass out in Talamayas' arms, and Talamayas cradled him as he continued to drink until Adagio's skin turned pale as a ghost and there was nothing left to take.
When he was done, Talamayas lifted Adagio from the ground, and Lieder let out a cry of agony as he looked at his son dead in the man's arms.
"Bury the boy. He didn't deserve this," Talamayas said, and Shan nodded his head before taking him and disappearing out of the cells.
"Thank you," Lieder said into the cell's floor. The words were bitter, but despite Lieder falling apart from his son's loss, he understood that this could have been much worse. Allowing Adagio to pass in peace was a mercy that Wren had not expected from a Sol.
"I didn't do it for your gratitude," Talamayas said down to the man. "Some in this war shouldn't be forced into our fights, and contrary to what you Song's believe, we do feel things and have our own set of morals. I don't torture women and children, but I'm going to torture you. Thank me then, when I'm peeling off your skin for my pleasure."
Talamayas smirked in the dark, but Lieder's expression of gratitude didn't change. It took away some of the vampire's enjoyment, and he frowned as Lieder bowed his head and sank to the floor.
"I'll be back shortly. Wait for me," Talamayas said in a taunt as he disappeared.
Wren was left alone with Lieder, but his thoughts were too lost to do much speaking, nor was the man likely able. His son had just been right in front of him, but Talamayas hadn't been cruel about it at all. The vampire could have easily made the boy suffer, used him to torture his father, but instead, he'd given them a final moment together and eased the boy into his end without fear.
Why?
They were all monsters, so why?
Word Count: 2959