The past few days had seen me and my two new companions settling into a routine of sorts. Every day at about nine, the rail car came around the vicinity of my tower. Sometimes it was empty, other times it was not. The guards had a regular patrol every two days, and they made sure to jeer and make fun of me every time they passed.
Though every time they came by, I would usher in Teluna and Nisi into the tower and have them seal the entrance with a thin layer of earth, to keel them hidden and give an impression that I was still sleeping outside and on the ground. The guards; as long as they could see me haggard and miserable were quite happy and contented.
So I made it a point to always look dirty and hungry.
So far it has been eleven days, my two weeks of pseudo freedom, where I was exempted from working and mining like the other prisoners was almost over. And during that time Asare has only come over once, and even then that was to bring me the rations that my, or should I say the weekly quota Asare took care of got me.
It was not as bountiful as the first bundle, just a few flasks of blood, some bread and water, a basket woven with strips of metal with a strap to hang it on your back, and a mining pick.
And then he left before I could say anything, which would have been extremely frustrating if I was not hiding Teluna and Nisi. So I just made do with what I had and kept my questions for another day. I didn't once doubt that Asare had superior senses than most if not all the guards I had seen so far, but I like to believe that I was crafty enough to outsmart him.
As for Teluna and Nisi, after much trial and error, I was able to make my old prison clothes fit them both. Though a lot of it was damaged in the process. Teluna got the trousers but his upper body was still bare, while Nisi got the shirt. It was a welcome improvement for the both of them though, even if it wasn't much. I also had to lay some ground rules; Nisi was not allowed to be a construction worker for not more than two hours everyday.
Thanks to the stopwatch that was part of the first bundle we were able to tell the time. So far she has actually completed the reception area I had asked her to build, and she was about to get started on the hallway and the four huge rooms. With the sheer size of the tower Nisi could keep the residual sand and dust in the reception room, keeping with our ruse of this just being an ordinary tower.
Also during this period of eleven days, I had noticed Nisi's ability with her magic increase and became refined. Even she had confirmed it, unfortunately for her, much like the prisoners here but much better she could not see or interact with the WAY. She had an almost similar rune to mine. But hers read BLOCK THE SIGHT TO SHAREATH'S WAY.
It was captioned in a more simple and straight forward way. The WAY or the system actually was still connected to her, it still helped her access the ether and refine Mana. But she could not see it or interact with it. It was much like someone walking around in a dark room and relying mostly on instincts to get by.
I was impressed by her growth so I convinced Teluna to also practice his dark magic everyday for two hours. But only after Nisi was done with her Construction or carving out the tower. That way should any unwanted situation arise, one of them would always have enough strength and Mana to escape.
But as far as I was concerned I had made more progress than expected, but I had not moved very far. When it comes to weaving, to properly have the symbols interact with the natural world, the writing instrument used has to be imbued and guided with soul energy. According to the book soul energy could be accumulated by different means. Inside of every weavers body, there's a point at the base of the spine that served as a doorway to the realm or the space your soul inhabits. And after that, for every joint on your spine a conduit is located to store the soul energy. With every joint you could fill all up to the very base of your skull, your strength and abilities would increase exponentially.
But, the soul of every living being is not infinite. A soul grows larger with everyday that passes and every memory you have. But all this things have an end. Maybe it would be different for me since I was now a vampire and could probably live forever. But for a human, who I should mention where the only race capable of weaving. Could not live past a hundred or a hundred and twenty years old. So in the end it will get to a point where their souls would be to limited and can no longer grow with them.
So there was another way….. Killing. Every living thing has a soul, even a plant with sufficient time or in special circumstances could also have a soul. Weavers are also peculiar in a way that they passively absorb the souls of the dead. It was not nearly as creepy as it sounds, but the soul of anything dead could be used to fill the conduits and keep less strain on the personal soul of a weaver.
But souls did more than just provide energy for weaving. They provided new pieces of the language of the WAY. The way could be read, and most of those words could be replicated by the weavers and structured into phrases that possessed great power and abilities. But the true way for them to get true symbols of power is from the absorption of souls. Every soul is unique and different so they would be in possession of a unique rune or seal. But not every soul would provide a rune or seal to the weaver upon absorption, it was completely random.
The weavers themselves could have access to new runes from their own souls and unique to them only. It was why the souls only gave runes at random. Every weaver had an area of specialty due to everyone having different souls, no two weavers are the same. While they are some of them that could achieve similar results as another weaver, the symbols used are always different.
Much like how the WAY was seen and experienced differently by people, much so were the weavers different as they each used a rune and seal unique to them, almost like having a personal rune language.
But there was nothing for me to kill here(not that I wanted to kill anything), so I had to be contented with drawing power from my own soul. So far even with the seal restricting me, I have had limited success. Every time a weaver channeled his or her soul, the conduit or equipment being used glows.
The color it glows is also unique to every weaver. So far I have been able to make my finger tips spark a deep and dark blue multiple times over the past four days. But each time I was left with such a splitting headache it felt like my head was going to explode. It did not take much for me to understand that my mental energy was not enough to carry me through, not to mention the damn seal was still restricting my access to the way, so it was a lot harder for me than any other human that has had to learn how to weave. And the fact that I was a vampire had to be considered, I had no idea how weaving would be like for me since I was no longer human.
But something else has come up in the past few days. A name actually. The name of a girl. Ever since I could connect to my soul, the name Rhea has been on my mind. I thought maybe my memories were coming back, but with only a name and no face to it, things has been a little freaky.
It got so bad that every time I went to sleep, I would somehow end up writing the name on the ground, and in symbols and letters I did not recognize. I felt like this was my own personal runes or seals, but they were weird looking. They were all formed by a combination of half circles and strategically place lines. I called this language on a whim English. But that still did not bring down my curiosity on the name Rhea. It got so bad that I would even wake up with my fingers torn open from writing on the ground all night and a groove made with the name Cassie carved into the ground and filled with my blood.
So far I have been able to keep this a secret from Teluna and Nisi, but I had no idea how long I could keep it up. Because quite honestly I am scared. Very terrified. But I relegated all this to the back of my head and chose to think of and find a way to increase my mental energy since the book did not tell me how. It had said it was cultivated by means only understood by the weavers themselves.
That was just as abstruse and vague as everything weaver like I had come into contact with since I woke up a vampire. I think weavers had a fetish for riddles.
"are you ready?" Nisi asked from behind me.
I shifted the basket on my shoulders and picked up the mining pick, spun it in my hands a few times and said to her.
"Do I look an less ready to you."
"did you remember to take a flask of blood Mr. Hero?"
I had to turn my head in shame as she said that. Over the past few days my relationship with both Teluna and Nisi has only gotten better. Of course they were only children, but with no other person around we had to depend on each other. We would spend hours talking while they both told me stories of my past. They helped me come to terms with my lost memories and they have helped me to the best of their abilities, sometimes even doing more than was expected.
It was inevitable that they would find out about my missing memories. And even then all they had chose to do was try to help me remember. It even got so annoying at times when either Teluna or Nisi would just come up from behind me and ask, do you remember when this happened or when that happened.
It was an aspiring effort on their part, and with the constant repetition of the questions and the onslaught of information from them. I learnt a lot about my past and was able to form an appropriate image of each event in my head.
But today I had decided to head to the mine a few days early and very much against Asare's wishes. Nisi had volunteered to accompany me, but we had to leave Teluna behind and sealed in the tower for his safety.
I really just needed to move around and find out about some things that Teluna and Nisi could not explain. Like for example how did both the vampire race fall from grace and became nothing more than slaves to humans. So far I understood there was a war, but I had no idea how it went, who started it, how did it end and how in the hell did the vampire loose. Also a more serious question, the vampires are a race of the first night but they were all here serving as prisoners and slaves.
And from what I have seen the Vampire race used to be really powerful and close to other races. The different mixtures of vampires I had seen so far were proof of that. Vampirism was like a parasite, it attached to a person changing their souls and minds, giving them great power at the expense of an unquenchable thirst for blood. Ultimately anybody can become a vampire regardless of what race you were.