“We fight.”
Nex wasn’t about to waste time arguing against her princess’s order. She quickly scanned the men: their clothing, armor, weapons, and gait.
“One hero, presumably. Four footmen. The fodder won’t be a problem, but the hero is an unknown. Keep your guard up.”
Liliene nodded, clenching her jaw. She had no idea where she was borrowing her courage from; she could only pray it would last.
“Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Why would we?” the man in the middle answered her. “We got time; look at that nice, sunny morning, Miss Vampire. Why don’t you join us?”
With the sun perfectly at their backs, still low in the morning, the two girls had a few meters of shadow to work with, at best.
“Surround the entrance,” the man ordered. The four soldiers formed a semicircle around the cave’s entrance. Nex and Liliene would have to walk several meters under the sun before even reaching them.
“Meanwhile…” the man trailed off, lazily nocking an arrow and aiming in their general direction. “I’ll play.”
Liliene formed a shield using her blood, just a round, slightly curved disk she held with her left hand. Nex didn’t have that luxury. The man loosed the arrow. Nex moved to flick it aside with her blade. Her cheek stung. When she touched it to check, her fingers came back bloody.
“Nex! Are you o—”
Liliene didn’t have time to linger on Nex as she heard a second snap of the bowstring. She raised her shield on instinct. Another grunt came from Nex. It grazed her leg this time. Liliene was certain the arrow had been aimed at her.
“He can alter their trajectory,” Nex hissed.
Another arrow came. Liliene threw herself in front of Nex, stretching her shield as much as she could. Pointless. The arrows curved, never landing cleanly, but nicking Nex every time.
Nex gritted her teeth. “I only need to get in range, Lili. Command me.” The men’s shadows didn’t touch the cave’s; she had no path. She’d have to run, and the second she charged, the hero would stop playing around. Could she take two, maybe three arrows, and still fight?
“Why? I’m the one you want, right?” Liliene screamed at him.
“You are. But you refused my invitation to join us. I’m just providing some extra motivation for you to walk out.” He paused his assault. “You’re the only one we want. My ticket home. Come out, and I’ll let your friend live.”
Staying huddled in the cave was pointless. They would suffer the slowest and most boring death imaginable.
A step, then another one. Liliene walked toward the cave’s entrance, holding her head high. What else could she do anyway?
“Lili, don’t! He’s playing with us.”
Liliene silenced Nex with a raised hand.
“I can’t bear to see you hurt,” Liliene said without looking back.
“Oh? Finally!” The hero grinned and relaxed. He let one end of his bow rest on the ground, his posture open, using the bow as a cane. “Never seen a vampire burn. I’ve heard it’s almost instantaneous.”
The four men didn’t share his confidence and kept a loose semicircle around Liliene as she advanced, their guard up and swords at the ready.
Having finally reached the line between sun and shade, Liliene stopped and held the man’s gaze. “I want to do it myself. That’s what you want to see, right?”
“Yes! Please do!” the hero said, opening his arms as if welcoming her.
Liliene took those steps. One, then two, then she stood barely a meter away from him. She grunted and frowned at the first signs of the sun biting her skin. His smile widened.
How glad she was for the misunderstanding. She swung her right arm, an improvised curved blade blooming from her forearm, and aimed it at his torso.
“How?”
He tried to block with his bow as he scrambled backward, a useless reflex. The strike split the bow in half and opened his shoulder.
“Nex!” Liliene screamed. “K-Kill them.”
Nex understood the plan a heartbeat later. But the moment she did, she was ready and extended a domain just past the entrance. With the sun low as it was in the morning, Liliene’s shadow merged with the cave, offering Nex a way out. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
A dome appeared behind Liliene, then a black blur rushed past her. A head flew; a body hit the ground. Nex dove between the three remaining men without hesitation.
“So fast!”
“Demon!”
The men screamed, trying to corner Nex as she danced between them.
Meanwhile, Liliene’s gaze burned a hole through the man. She didn’t know his name and didn’t care.
“You’ve hurt my family.”
She formed a spear and aimed for his face. The man tilted his head, avoiding the strike by a hair’s breadth. The spear shifted into a hook. She pulled back hard, the tip sinking into the back of his neck.
Panicked, he reached for the back of his neck, but Liliene yanked him to the ground. The hook melted when he gripped it, reforming as a blade poised above his skull.
“I’m sorry! Please… Please! I… I just wanted to go home.”
Nex strolled back toward Liliene, four men, now eight parts, behind her. She stopped and looked at Liliene silently.
Giving that final strike was harder than Liliene thought it would be. She had fumed when he hurt Nex, when he laughed at her. Taking it out on him felt deserved, good even. But killing…
“He didn’t just want to go home. He was taking pleasure in toying with us,” Nex said.
Liliene gulped, her focus solely on stopping the tremors in her hands.
“No! I wasn’t, I swear. I was just following orders!”
“Lili.” Nex’s voice turned gentle. “He knows what you look like; he knows you’re not truly a vampire now and can walk under the sun. We’ll lose every advantage we have.”
Liliene inhaled, filled her lungs to their limits, and winced before closing her eyes.
“No, no. I won’t talk, I swe—”
The sword fell; his eyes widened, pleading, then closed.
Liliene stood motionless above the corpse of the man she had just killed, her blood sword still embedded in his neck. Her skin dried, tightened, and blistered under the sun; yet she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She didn’t even know his name, his story, or his—
“Lili,” Nex’s calm voice shook her out of her torpor.
Two hands fell on her shoulders and guided her away. Before following the unspoken command, Liliene let the sword melt over the corpse. She didn’t feel like taking it back in, not when some of his blood might be mixed with hers.
She let herself be guided under the canopy's shade and rested her body against a tree trunk.
“Lili. Never do that again,” Nex said, hugging her charge, her princess, her little sister, her last memento of Theresa. Her everything. “It was a dangerous plan, nothing short of reckless, suicidal, even."
“Sorry… I just… He hurt you and I… I panicked, I think.”
“How do you feel?” Nex asked.
“Dizzy.” Liliene’s gaze drifted toward the dead hero. “Hungry.”
Nex followed Liliene’s gaze.
“You wasted a lot. Why’s that?” Nex’s voice held no judgment, just the need to understand.
“I… I got scared. I killed him. And I didn’t feel that much.” Liliene shook her head, creating waves in her blond hair. “No, worse. For a moment, I wanted to take it in. His blood.”
Nex stayed silent for a while, then nodded to herself. She moved in front of Liliene and lifted the girl’s chin. Nex’s fingers ran across a patch of peeling skin.
“Look what happened to your pretty face.”
Liliene shrugged. “It’ll heal soon.” She didn’t even know why she stayed there, like she deserved to be hurt, too.
Nex sighed and looked between Liliene and the now-dead man. She hated what she was going to suggest.
“No pressure. You can say no. Do you want to take this opportunity to train your powers further?” She nodded toward the corpses and let her words sink in. “Or we can respectfully bury them.”
“Fresh corpses aren’t exactly commonplace. There’s a lot you can learn. Only if you want to.”
Liliene said nothing for a while, and then, “What should I do?”
“Eat something for a start,” Nex said and gave Liliene the rest of their rations. “I’ll bring him here.”
Nex dragged the only corpse still in one piece under the shade; no need to torture Liliene beyond what was coming.
“I’m only going by the few times I saw your mother fight. Your real one.”
“Mama’s my real mother,” Liliene corrected despite herself, then kept chewing on her jerky. She lowered her face. “Sorry.”
“Theresa loved you fiercely, Lili,” Nex said gently. It wasn’t the time, and she understood that Liliene never knew her. “Back on the topic. She could take control of her opponent’s blood. I’m not sure how. All I know is that she didn’t take it in. She held a sphere and used the collected blood as ammunition, in a way.”
Liliene nodded and pierced her skin, the blood crystallizing into a spear; she then pierced the man’s back. The sensation of pushing past unresponsive meat felt wrong somehow. Worse than fighting the living version of him.
At first, nothing much happened; no instinct took over. So she tried mixing some of her own blood and figured that she could pull the mixture out.
“Hm. I think I understand.”
She repeated the process, mixing blood, drawing off the mixture, and letting the orb grow slowly.
“Takes ages, though.”
“Your mo— Theresa used to do this when her targets were alive. A beating heart helped the process a great deal.”
“Anything else?” Liliene asked unenthusiastically. Crafting weapons was one thing; the rest of her powers started to reach yucky territory.
“She could make thralls. I think the process involved giving them some of her own blood.”
Liliene closed her eyes for a moment, then tried injecting some of the mixture plus her own blood into his veins. For an instant, she imagined the man’s eyes opening again. The vision made her lose all control, and everything she had achieved was a bubbling mess leaking into puddles around the corpse.
“Sorry,” Liliene said and turned away, not wanting to look at this anymore. “It’s… too precise for me. And it’s sort of disgusting.” She breathed deeply, unable to look at anything other than the trunk in front of her. “I… I want to stop.”
Nex came up behind Liliene, wrapped an arm across her upper chest, and reached with the other one to pat her head. “I’m the one who should apologize. You did well.” A quiet, proud smile bloomed on Nex’s face, her voice dropping lower. “So far, you have all of Theresa’s gifts. And we don’t know what your father left you with. Soon, you’ll surpass them both, Princess.”
“What should we do now?” Liliene asked, relaxing into Nex’s embrace. Her sister’s praise was reason enough to try.
“With your power, we could mangle them further and pass the attack off as the work of wild beasts.” Nex felt Liliene tensing in her arms. “But in ten years, we’ve never seen a wolf in that forest… that wouldn’t hold. Let’s give them a proper burial.”
“Hm.” Liliene nodded. It wasn’t how she had pictured the start of her journey, yet she knew it wouldn’t be the last time she’d have to bury someone.
The walk from the hills, now with five little mounds, to the clearing was a silent procession. Digging was surprisingly tiring. And all the while Liliene dug, the man’s last words echoed in her mind.
“Nex. Would he really have been able to go home? If he had killed me?”
“Unlikely.” It wasn’t empty reassurance. She wasn’t the type. “I don’t remember the whole explanation. But Luna conjectured they had no way of going back.” She hummed and rubbed her chin. “Something about an arrow of time?”
“So they were lied to?”
Nex shrugged. “Either that or it’s ignorance. I don’t know.”
Liliene fell silent for the remainder of the trip. Maybe they were just trapped here, maybe even hunting her against their will… If that man was from the same batch as the heroes who killed her parents, he had been there for close to twenty years. Maybe that explained why he had been so eager, though it didn’t explain the cruelty.
She stayed deep in thought, but looked up when she heard the distant rustle of bushes.
“How do I look?” Liliene asked, turning to face Nex.
“Terrible. Like you forgot to sleep, eat, do your hair, and even take a bath.”
“Really?” Liliene tried in a panic to smooth her hair and smell herself in the same motion, which achieved neither.