The Beginning of It All
Seated above the blackened forest canopy was the bluish print of the moon, a half-inked medallion, its watery edges tainting the vast reaches of the sky.
Grey smudges of clouds drew themselves shyly across the stars, blurring but a few while the rest shivered from above. Their twinkled shards floated to the earth as fairy dust, fire flies, little wings humming across the fields. Amelia caught herself looking on in awe, the moon settling gently beneath her gaze.
Reed grass rose nearly to her waist, brushed against her cloak as a summer wind vagabonded from the south. She knew the border must be close now. The skies beyond the Nadi Guild had seen only bleak and sodden morning, years of a sudden rain that had come from no place, and to nowhere would go. The townsfolk had all grown used to it, the passing of dawn through a fog and a film washing out the sun. Amelia had long since abandoned the sun, but she’d forgotten that the night too, had its wonders.
Drawing her eyes back, she continued to tighten the straps of her saddle, checking that her leathers were secure. It was safer to travel at night and remain alert of the dangers that stalked, luminescent eyes that sometimes she could feel tracking her movements across the landscape. If she were lucky, it was only a curious little mammal or passing fowl. And she was careful enough that so far that was all it had been.
Nevertheless. Briefly, she let her fingers run along the sheath of a light sword made of silver. All of her life she had not made such a trip by herself, but she was by no means unprotected.
The moon shone jealously, Amelia decided to stay close to the ground, pulling the reigns behind her. They waded through the grasses, she and the horse, as the symphonies of the cantering wind obscured their passing.
Before leaving, she and Jackson had drawn a map of the path she would take to their sister guild down to the swamp lands, avoiding busy roads unless she needed to get to the city. The only information they could find on southern towns was that there was an old man who lived in a small hut, somewhere, who claimed that the region sprung out like grasping weeds outside his window.
There had been no one outside the mundane congregations in the cities. The wilderness was a den of gruesome spirits, of monsters that wore the skin of a man but fed on his demise. The only people she was aware of brave enough to travel into the deep woods were the hunters themselves, and this proved to be true.
At dawn shadows began to rustle and awaken, bending as the dewy mist melted from their silhouette. Amelia’s horse sighed and heaved; she let her roam, gazing after her a moment before turning to peer about the glistening field.
Amelia found not a hut, but a simple stone, engraved with runes that once said, “Hereto finds the traveler a door to the Nether Realms, a precipice at the bottom of the world.” The stone was uneven and round, jutting upwards like a gravestone. Amelia crouched in front of it, studying its age, turning her head to the miles that still lay before them.
“Come, Nora,” she called. The horse trotted over and and nibbled at her shoulder. “The sun is here. Time for bed.”
The world faded into clarity, and in the distance a starling whistled a morning song.
Waltz of the Damned, the nearly chronological adventures of one Amelia van Reichter, vampyre hunter.
The-Bleu-Bivouac 