07|Seven

The cemetery remained quiet and safe. Hemlock suspected it had to do with something in the air, because even the wind quivered in his ear and the headstones offered no hint as to who rested beneath his feet. Almost as if they were afraid of speaking their names in the presence of whoever—or whatever—lurked in the shadows. It couldn’t be Hemlock, he had no drop of power to his name, but the danger that kept him safe refused to poke or prod at him. Not a single nervous spider’s crawl up his spine. Curiosity itched beneath his skin in its stead and begged him to stick his nose where it didn’t belong, but hesitation picked at him too.

Gaining his freedom had been a moment of desperation fueled by the unanswerable nips at his heels urging him to go. Death spoke to him in his dreams and a weirdly aware raven with magic in its feet guided him to an impossible crack in Dregan’s defenses. That the gods ruled Kaskan was such an ingrained fact that even Hemlock still knew it despite his lost memories, but even those interventions felt strange.

He remembered Dregan’s backhand the first time he heard Hemlock whisper a prayer. His hissed words. Don’t waste your breath on what’s forsaken you. They lost all ears the moment your veins tasted my venom. Numbly, he wondered if Dregan had simply been upset that Hemlock cried and fought the first time he was summoned to his bed. He didn’t know what truth would feel better.

Still, though, Hemlock had gotten free and then… And then what? What was he to do? He found an eerily unkempt cemetery that provided just enough shelter to keep him safe from Dregan, but then what? Keep running? Until Hemlock crossed the threshold of Dregan’s territory, he’d be running every night and begging the sun to keep him safe during the day. He had no means of food, water, or even a plan as to what to do with his life beyond survive. Sure, he had thought about it before, but reality had quite a way with dashing all kinds of thoughts of plans the moment it became apparent you had no idea what to do. Hemlock was alone, and scared, with no instinct for survival, no capability of making decisions on his own. He’d be doomed by the end of the week.

Scrubbing his face with a groan, Hemlock surveyed the cemetery with a stressed pinch to his eyes even he could feel. Nosing about would do him no good besides act as a distraction and… and maybe let him pretend to have a normal life for once. The life of someone who could be nosy and investigate trivial matters. Realistically, too, he could do nothing until the sun went down and no longer stood as a threat to his still-healing state—her scorching touch continued to pull uncomfortably at his barely stitched together skin, though the sluggishness of his healing started to lessen a bit. Maybe he earned a bit of poking around. A treat.

Before he could comfortably settle on his decision, his feet already started moving.

A good portion of the headstones had names long since worn away by time, but the relics of their origin persisted—immortal in their own right. Hemlock crouched in front of one such nameless grave and pressed a hand to the cracked but beautiful stonework of the towering statue. Whoever rested beneath him had to have been important, or at least loved enough to receive such an intricate memorial.

Three tiers tall, the top-most part of the grave contained a detailed stone sculpture of a weeping winged man hunched over a cloaked figure. Multiple colors swirled within the stone, like it had been hewn from the earth specifically for its unique visuals and textures. The statue itself sat on top of a slightly bigger middle section, a faux plaque likely carved into it from the weathered but precise indentations and the remnants of a name and dedication. Around it were more carvings, some more visible as florals and others less discernible, and more carvings that he couldn’t make out. The main base had a carved mural covering the entirety of it, on every visible side, and Hemlock picked out a few different aspects—more florals, some feathers, reaching hands, all an elegant blend along with others. Perhaps this person had a personal connection to the mural’s contents, or it was an artwork they liked.

Whatever its reason for existing, Hemlock pressed a reverent touch to the mural and whispered a prayer of good will, then stood.

More littered the cemetery, all crafted in a similar style if not the same grandeur, and Hemlock had enough untainted memory to recognize that none of them were of the current style for burials. Between that and the weather-erased names, he thought it safe to assume that he stood on an ancient burial site, now untouched and out of use by the living. A true home of the dead.

A shiver ran up his spine, and he sent out a quick all-encompassing prayer just in case.

The plot of land wasn’t large but not quite small either. The trees that surrounded it, however, gave it the illusion of being smaller as if it was curling up into itself. Their thick and leaf-burdened branches loomed from above and blocked out most of the sun, a happenstance Hemlock appreciated immensely, which left only dots of sunlit freckles all over the overgrown grass and flora. Across the cemetery, one grave had a wall of his namesake protecting a shallow sarcophagus. Right by his feet sat a cluster of small, low to the ground flowers with iridescent petals that shimmered in a rainbow. Various bushes of strange berries barricaded one side of the tree line while a thicket of thorns curled up and around gnarled trunks and crawled along the ground nearby. The only bird to sing a song was a lone raven somewhere above.

Nothing stood out to him as particularly eerie, though, especially for being a place full of the dead. Nothing, that is, except the temple.

Standing proud and grand in a beam of direct sunlight, the building he had seen just a corner of the night before taunted him with the promise of mystery and shelter. No windows let in the curious sunlight, leaving the golden glow to grapple at the unwavering marbled walls with slippery fingers. Pillars held the arching ceiling of a large porch aloft, while the wings of the temple shot up into spiraling and jagged spires. The main body mimicked the style of the branching wings, but stood taller, with what Hemlock assumed to be a glass dome peeking out from the middle of the spires. With the way the sun glared, at the very least, he thought it to be glass, but the framing stone spires and carvings of several creatures blocked it out too much to really tell.

He itched to get it, to see just how heavy the double doors were as he slipped through them, to find out what the dome was, to see inside. What did the words carved into the porch’s arched ceiling say? He assumed it to be a temple from the painstaking care that went into the construction and design, as well as just how proud it stood in the middle of a hidden cemetery. Was it a mausoleum for an important family long forgotten? Hemlock could already taste the dust and mothballs on his tongue. Surely it would be undisturbed. No other sign of life betrayed itself. But if this place could be his salvation…

Curiosity aside, he also knew that he needed a place to hide before dusk, or else Dregan hunted him down after the last failed attempt. And the sealed temple would do just the trick—once he broke in. For the time being, though, he picked a safely shaded area to nap under and hoped the sun wouldn’t hunt him down too, back for another taste of revenge.

**

Beneath his careful touch, the polished double doors were cool and empty of the sun’s warmth, as if the rays had spent the entire day scrambling for purchase but never quite found a grip. The cold stung Hemlock’s palm but didn’t thwart him like it did the sunlight. With just a single push, the door opened on a whisper of a gravel groan and let its vampiric visitor slip inside.

Once inside, Hemlock paused. The door swung back into its place at his back and pushed a small breath against his body, but he didn’t move. “Gods above,” he whispered.

The building wasn’t a temple or a mausoleum or even a simple graveyard church to one of the Dead Council—it was a memorial. Down the stretch of the main room and beneath the arching dome high above, paintings decorated the walls on either side. Scattered throughout the room in an organized chaos existed elaborate stands that housed various items—held them aloft and drew the eye to them, told the viewer ‘These are important, pay attention.’ The polished tiled floor reflected the stars from the glass dome and Hemlock had the distinct feeling of walking the night sky as he inched forward and towards an intricate bow. No dust coated any surface. Silence hung like heavy cobwebs.

Carefully, Hemlock ran the tip of a finger down the curve of the bow, felt how the golden metal still gleamed and emitted a warmth that nearly burned. Roaring wyverns curved in a mirror of each other over the limb, permanently leaping into stationary battle and guiding the direction of any fired arrow. Flaring rods of twisting flame spit from their open mouths. Its taut string winked with starlight.

Hemlock’s gaze flicked down from the displayed bow and found a plaque. At first, the words spelled a series of nonsense like the words carved into the building itself, but then they reshuffled before his very eyes into the common Kaskaran tongue.

SPITFIRE

The sacred weapon of Niiden, parotheia of The Sovereign of Cinders

Though he wasn’t familiar with the word “parotheia,” Hemlock could gather that it meant divine-kin. The children of the gods. Which meant—

He spun around and looked to the paintings. The remaining items sitting out as if innocent ornaments instead of still-existing testaments to beings of power. Amulets. Knives. Swords, guns, staves, crossbows, javelins, tridents. A floating book whose pages idly flipped on their own. Sets of jewelry whose gems and metal radiated a feeling of something not quite right. Hemlock weaved between them on his way to a painting covered wall and passed a small, root-covered box labeled BEST BOY. A bright red feather pen and shimmering silver ink sat on the same display table—FLUFFY BASTARD.

He stopped at the first painting he came across. A young man grinned down at him from atop the head of a downed monster, dark skin shining with sweat and spots of blood, his flaming sword held high in the air in triumph. His cheeks dimpled from his grin and his eyes squinted against the spotlight sunlight. Golden armor covered him from neck to toe, and his full-face helmet lay forgotten off to the side, as if he couldn’t wait to celebrate the kill and chucked it off his head the moment he could.

A child. A child grinned down at Hemlock, with the dead head of a too-big monster beneath his feet and heavy armor that should never have been strapped to his body. A child with the pride of a boy who only wanted to impress his elders.

Another shifting plaque beneath it. Hemlock didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.

DIUS OF THE SOVERIGN OF CINDERS

Born as a beloved younger brother of parotheia Nadiir, lived as a great hero who wanted to rid the world of darkness with his fiery spirit, died in battle with his brother at 15 years of age.

Fifteen. Fifteen. Next to his portrait hung one dedicated to his brother, Nadiir, who had died at seventeen. Young brothers, who both looked so proud in their portraits as they basked in their respective victories. Young brothers taken from the world before they could even grow into themselves. Hemlock backed away in silent horror. Looked at the items—artefacts—again.

Spitfire, Best Boy, Fluffy Bastard. More childish names for deadly weapons and objects of power because they were named by children, children who likely didn’t see a reason to be more serious about it. Children who were just having fun with it.

He had known that the divine-kin trained young, got their names whispered across Kaskan at a young age, so that when they came of age, they’d be more trusted to be saviors and helpers—heroes. But to be killing monsters, donning armor and carrying weapons into battle, and dying at fifteen? Hemlock backed away another step, then another, as if he could erase the realization hooking into his heart and threatening to pierce inward. He didn’t stand within a memorial for great heroes—he stood within a memorial for bright souls snuffed out far too early, far too violently.

Who told them to? Who sent them to their too-small graves?

Right as he nearly stumbled back into Spitfire’s sharp edges, a flurry of wind buffeted him away. Hemlock blinked, then blinked again. Wind. It swirled around him, picked up his tangled hair and yanked it to the side, and acted as though it wanted him away from the memorial. Hemlock cast a desperate look around the room and swallowed down the building lump in his throat—he couldn’t do anything for them now, not when they’d been buried for a long time already. He rubbed absently at the scar on his neck and did his best to divert his attention elsewhere, but it was hard when he imagined small ghosts peering at him from behind shelves and tables.

More wind yanked at his hair and clothes, and Hemlock finally screwed his head on just enough to remember the lack of windows. He glanced back at the doors, but they remained stationary and sealed shut. “Where are you taking me?” he whispered into the room. Yank, yank. When he didn’t move, it changed direction and started pushing at the small of his back. “Fine,” Hemlock relented, “but you’re showing me yourself later. I feel stupid talking to wind.” Its pushing eased up, and Hemlock hesitantly followed its urging to a lone archway he hadn’t noticed earlier.

The archway opened itself to a set of spiraling stairs that led downwards, deep into the ground beneath the building. Hemlock faintly smelled the tinge of familiarity—old blood and stone. For a haunting, fleeting moment, he was propelled back beneath the mansion and under Dregan’s thrall. He was locked within a stone-walled cage with nothing and no one with him. Starving and cut open and bleeding but unable to feed, stolen from, giving and giving and giving—

A noise sounding eerily like a person speaking and the clatter of something wooden drew Hemlock from his thoughts. The wind went back to pushing and pulling, more frantic than before, and he breathed in through his nose then let his exhale pass through his lips. No panicking, no Dregan. Safe. He was safe. With one last look at the artefacts and paintings, he descended one slow step at a time.

The scent of blood sharpened the deeper he went, but so did the smoke of a hearth and its partner, heat. Hemlock grazed fingers over the crumbling stone walls that grew more cobbled with every few steps. Somewhere, the scrape of something sharp against wood echoed up into the staircase. Herbal incense snaked up through and lured him down to their origin, toward the flickering light of a fire inside a small room buried beneath the grand memorial. A tomb of its own in a way, yet cozier and more alive than the rest of the place.

He didn’t know when the wind left him, but when his feet hit the cracked tile floor, he finally felt the loss of its pressure against his back. Not that it mattered much, though, when his gaze flitted around the room and realization closed in on him.

On the floor, innocently painted in a morbid dark red, was the sigil Hemlock had knelt on in his dreams. There, on the far wall, sat the stack of cleaned bowls on an empty altar. Candles still flickered, now burned down more than the last time he had seen it, and now he could see the hearth to his right burning on a low flame with little more than brightly glowing embers, the opening tucked into a nook in the wall with a curved stone sill protecting the too-curious from getting too close. On that sill sat various vases, all made differently, with smoldering sticks of incense leaning against their lips, as well as handfuls of bones scattered over it as if someone had tossed them aside while walking past. High above on the opposite end loomed the winged sculpture and the red-tinged window.

The dreamscape.

Just like the hearth, Hemlock noticed more details. To his left, books lay scattered on an old table along with an assortment of papers covered in a looping, elegant scrawl and delicate sketches of various sigils and doodles. Schematics of what seemed to be weapons and objects were pinned to the wall, and near the altar sat an innocent-looking box, but Hemlock could make out a copper tinge from its hidden contents. Up above, drying herbs hung from thin wooden rafters that seemed to only exist for that purpose rather than support.

Not much else decorated the room, as the sigil on the floor took up most of the center while the altar took up the far wall, and the hearth dominated the other. Hemlock hesitantly skirted further into the room, too afraid to touch anything, but being in familiar territory felt—well, not exactly nice given how the place gave him uneasy chills, but better than being left alone in the unknown. He circled around the sigil, careful not to step on any of the lines, then looped the room to come back to the table. More of the strange language, but whoever wrote it possessed writing beautiful enough that he’d spend hours looking at it no matter the contents.

Curious, Hemlock freed one paper from beneath a book and inspected the drawing taking up the entire page. Heavy but flowing strokes of ink depicted a diagram of an open mouth, potentially in a roar or a hiss, with long fangs ending in sharp points. A vampire mouth. Thin lines pointed purposefully to different parts of the mouth, with notes and labels connected to the lines and along the open space along the edges. He couldn’t read the words, but Hemlock guessed it was breaking down the capabilities of a vampire’s fangs, or at the very least looking at their anatomy.

Whoever occupied the room seemed to have some vampiric knowledge. Another vampire, or maybe a scholar? How much did they know?

Hemlock’s nerves lit up in warning just as someone spoke. “Fascinating, aren’t they?” Hemlock spun around and dropped the paper. Across from him, a man lounged over the highest point of the altar, his body draped over the stained stone as if made of languid liquid. His piercing eyes—white? grey? blue? brown?—made a show of looking Hemlock up and down in all his ragged glory. He belatedly remembered he still wore his clothes from the ball, and tears had turned the fabric into little more than shreds.

The man smiled, and it was a predator’s grin. He dragged his body off the altar and stood fully before meandering over towards Hemlock. Lithe and on the verge of being considered short, the aura of his presence juxtaposed his more alluring appearance. An embodiment of the danger of beauty and deception. The man’s lashes lowered, and his voice turned to a conspiratorial hum. “Part of the Ancients, but like no other. Only vampires can turn others into one of them, can unmake and remake, be living lords over death. I’m not surprised they get mistaken for being the creation of my father.”

Hemlock tried to back up but hit the edge of the table. His gaze jumped all over the room, looking for clues, looking for a way out, looking for something. He could make a run for the stairs, but he didn’t think he’d make it in time with how his body still screamed its exhaustion. Out of options, Hemlock scrambled to stall. “Your father?”

The man tilted his head and stopped in the middle of the blood-drawn sigil. There, the hearth glowed a reverent light over him and gave Hemlock a full look at him.

From where he stood, he looked just tall enough to tuck beneath Hemlock’s chin if he lifted his head some to make room, but the look in his hooded eyes dared him to try it and live. His slim build didn’t help his stature either, and it reminded Hemlock a bit of an imp, almost. A pretty imp, with smooth pale skin and rose tints that glowed in the firelight, full lips pulled back into a smirking grin, and thick inky black hair that fell in smooth waves around his face to just below his jaw. The color seemed to suck the light from around him, and his grin was a toothy carnivore’s grin—a full set of sharp carnassial-like teeth dissimilar to that of a vampire.

His fancy black and white robe cinched around the waist and flowed open off his hips to showcase the thin pants and knee-high boots, and the billowed sleeves had deliberate holes that went from shoulder to elbow. Polished white jewelry decorated his neck and waist, and when he freed his hands from his pockets, his wrists and fingers too. Fingers tipped with—

 Hemlock’s stomach bottomed out, and the man’s grin shifted ever so slightly. “You’re… I saw you. In my dreams.”

The man, his dream visitor, hummed and waved his clawed hand in a motion of dismissal. “So he can think, how quaint. You saw part of me, vampire, but now you get to enjoy the full picture.” With that, he bowed dramatically at the waist, arms flaring out and hands turned up in an elegant stretch like waiting for applause. Hemlock could only stare.

When he straightened again, the man eyed Hemlock before moving forward once more. Hemlock stood frozen in his spot as the familiar stranger stalked closer and closer, until they stood nearly toe to toe. He watched as the man deliberately dragged a claw over his own wrist until the skin broke without ever unlocking his stare on Hemlock. A river of blood slid down his hand and dripped on the floor. Hemlock’s mouth dried, then watered as the scent of his blood filled the room.

He didn’t see it happen. One moment, he was tracking every movement of the man’s blood and wishing to take a bite. A blink, and a crimson blade pressed against the underside of his chin and the wound started sealing itself. Hemlock grappled for the table’s edge as that earlier fear spiked through him again and his heart started racing. A mirror to his dream, yet pieces started clicking together as the fire counted out crackling seconds.

As if he didn’t have a dagger to Hemlock’s skin, the man started speaking, though it sounded more like talking to himself than to his knife-point captive.

“My father is a fickle sort of creature. A king by force, so it’s no surprise he does whatever he wants whenever he wants.” A curious head tilt. “But to get involved in a vampiric mess of his own volition is unprecedented. He could’ve left you to die. He could’ve done anything, really, but for once he chose to stick his nose into another’s business. And, not only that, but he dragged me into it. Years of silence and hands-off ‘parenting’, then suddenly—a gift.” Another head tilt, though this one changed focus to Hemlock instead of the man’s musings. Under his breath, he added, “So he does pay attention.”

His father, creator of vampires. Hemlock’s gaze bounced through the room and his heart sped up when the individual details started painting a picture. Bones and blood, blood to weapons. Blood to objects. An altar stained with a dark copper scent and no dedicated god in sight. That terrifying power that had scattered Dregan’s nightmare touch with little more than a hiss. Eyes that gleamed yellow—bone yellow—in the dancing firelight. A rolling and thick iteration of the northern Kaskaran accent that didn’t match Hemlock’s or anyone else he knew.

That red-hued raven.

Fuck.

Only one being in existence still walked Kaskan’s earth and fit the slowly building image. An immortal fiend, feared across the entire continent, whose pseudonym got whispered in the dark and screamed in terror as his shadow haunted above. A ruthless killer and cunning seductor that lured victims into his bed before devouring them in a way that went far beyond the sexual figurative. Only one person bled his own power. Somehow Hemlock had escaped a monster just to run into the lair of an even worse one.

Staring down at the man in front of him, a man who held a blade so close to his neck, Hemlock breathed both in hopes of being wrong and in unfiltered fear, “Chimera.”

The divine-kin’s grin morphed into a manic beam. “Hello.”