2 DAYS AGO
LYSANDER POV:
Its evening, my son, my dear boy, Nigel, is finally 15, which means he will be granted usage of a moon stone. What a joyous occasion it is. The ritual will begin as soon as the sun fully sets. My wife, Ada, is currently at the Chief's place, probably still trying to fix an alliance between our son and the Chief's daughter.
Nigel arrives home from school in high spirits, probably due to excitement. He tells me all about his day with such enthusiasm. As I see him smiling as he tells me all about the silly pranks him and his friends did to his teachers, I can't help but laugh heartily knowing the fact that I was just like him when I was in the stages of adolescence.
My wife returns, beaming with joy.
"What happened honey?"
"The chief has agreed to the alliance."
Did I just hear that right.
Having read my mind "I'm serious Darling, The chief has agreed to fix her daughter's alliance with our son. As fate will have it, the chief's daughter has feelings for Nigel."
Wow, just...wow.
"That's amazing news, so when will it be finalised?" I ask as I hug my wife
"The chief said that he will announce it exactly after the moon stone ritual."
Wow, his daughter must really like our son.
"Come on honey, let me go and cook before we starve." My wife kisses me and then heads to the kitchen. As she leaves, I look around and spot my son eavesdropping.
"What's your take on this?" I ask my son.
"Take on what?" He replies with a question, probably to pass off as ignorant.
"The alliance, son."
"oh, that, uhm well I have no problems with it, after all she is the prettiest girl in the village."
Is that the reason why? I thought I taught you better than this. I shake my head and head to the dining room for dinner. Shortly after dinner we dress in our best clothes and head for the annual moon festival.
The festivities take place in a grand manner, truly a joyous occasion. My son successful becomes an official pack member. Shortly after that, the chief being a man of his word, announces my son as the future chief and future husband to his daughter.
One of my closest friends, Ezra along with his little boy, Nick who's just turned 8 come to congratulate me.
I receive their congratulations warmly when suddenly a troop of Imperial knights riding horses arrive, coming for an inspection? something about vampires? What? Vampires, our natural enemies, in our own territories? Never.
But it seems fate just wanted to prove me wrong. As the leader of the knights is debriefing us on the procedures, A red flare like object crashes into one of the nearby buildings creating an explosion, that would trigger events that will be forever etched into my memory.
Vampires from literally out of nowhere come rushing in, slaughtering my people, children and elderly alike while smiling with glee like the psychopathic sadists they are.
The Imperial Knights along with our finest warriors, with the inclusion of myself, resisted greatly, however the tides of this fight soon changed the moment he arrived.
A pale man, white spiky white hair, blood red eyes, dressed in a black outfit, giving off the aura of a ruthless warlord.
He easily killed all the Imperial knights like it was nothing more than mere child's play. The remaining survivors lost hope due to the frightening power shown by this one man. as if on cue, the man addresses us.
"My name...is Kalen. And I've come here with the sole purpose of spreading the beautiful message that is the absolute reign of our master and esteemed Demon Lord, Dracula."
"All hail Dracula." The other vampires say in perfect unison.
Kalen then looks directly at me, smiles and points his finger right at me.
"I will give you two options, either you kill everyone here sparing only up to five people or resist and die along with the masses."
Drenched in cold sweat I questioned as to why I was the one who had to choose. His reply caught me off guard as he had just supposedly chosen me at random. I hesitated for a while not knowing what to do, so he made the choice for me in the worst way possible. He killed at random with his blood tentacles by piercing through their chests and one of those chosen happened to be Ada, my wife.
I felt my soul leave my body as I became completely numb, but it seems my son had a different set of emotions. In a fit of rage, he transformed into a wolf and attacked Kalen.
Which resulted with a tentacle through his chest. I remember seeing the light fade from his eyes with a single tear flowing from the left eye. With just two motions from Kalen, I had completely lost the light I had once had.
Kalen, seemingly bored decided to leave but not before instructing the rest of the vampires to finish us off. The vampires rushed us, and it was in one word, bloody. It was a major slaughterfest. with most of our buildings burnt and destroyed. We fought back as hard as we could, killed most of them, whilst the others fled. But the damage was done, families were broken, lives where lost, The future was no longer bright.
**********
JACOB NIGHTINGALE POV:
How horrible. Dracula, the king of the vampires, what does he want, war? How can anyone be so cruel. And Kalen, I thought I had killed him in our first encounter. Could it really be him? (A/N: Oh it's him alright.) Or maybe its another vampire named Kalen, no it must be the same Kalen, after all, he used the same blood technique right? Regardless these vampires must be stopped, now.
After eating dinner and having a brief session of trauma retrieval, Lucy and her friends set up magic tents for the villagers which are way more spacious and comfy in the inside than they look on the outside.
Lucy offers space in her tent but I decline, feeling that Selene wishes to talk to me, and it might take a while. As all of them go to sleep, I find Selene sitting on a fallen trunk while gazing at the moon.
"What happened out there?" She asks without shifting her gaze.
"What do you mean?"
"You were barely keeping up with the werewolves."
"I was just having an off day that's all." I shrug.
"Really? Alright tough guy....." She then gets up and places my arm on her abdomen.
"....Punch me."
"What? Why?"
"Just do it or I'll use thunderous Overdrive on you."
Say less Selene. I ready my fist and punch her with all my might, resulting in it having no effect on her or the surroundings. What? Something's off here.
"It's like I thought." Selene vaguely remarks.
"What are you talking about?"
"Do you know about mana reinforcement?"
"Yeah, but what has it got to do with anything."
"Do you know how enhancers channel their internal mana?"
"Yeah, they channel their internal mana in their mana circuits to augment their body parts."
"Do you know the difference between an emitter and an enhancer?"
"...."
"It's the usage of the negative and positive mana terminals found in the circuits. You see the negative terminal is responsible for the large mana reserves and quick emission of purified mana while the positive terminal is responsible for the utilisation and allocation of purified mana in the body. hence why emitters have more negative terminals and enhancers have. more positive terminals in their circuits."
"So what does that have to do with me?"
"I'm assuming your body is not as strong as it should be right?"
How does she know.
"That's because while aether and mana are fundamentally different, they have the same principles."
I nod in understanding signalling for her to continue.
"You see, you were trained in the spirit realm, right?"
"Yes."
"And while training you expelled all of the mana in your body naturally developing aether circuits in the process, right?"
"Well, yeah...of course." I realize now what she meant.
"Your aether circuits function in the same way as mana. But because you're so used to a place which has aether in excess, your body is finding it difficult to function properly. It's like if an emitter was to find themselves in a place scarce of mana. The problem with you is that you're too used to fueling your body with external aether, that you have neglected utilisation of your internal aether."
I see.
"Jacob I'll give it to you straight, right now your internal aether utilisation is, in a word, ass and the only reason why your senses, movements were extremely high was because you had consumed large amounts of aether in the process."
I frown at this revelation.
"I remember you saying that you could withstand 10 gigatons worth of explosives."
How does she know about that?
"With your level of aether reserves it's doable but that's only if you channel of your aether into your entire body. Remember Jacob the things you used to do casually in the spirit realm were due to excess aether, here you'll have to rely heavily on your internal aether or you will die, even if you have an absurd healing factor. Do you understand?"
"Good. First lesson for tonight, reinforcing your body without high energy consumption."
She then punches me in the abs, causing me to land a good 20 meters away. The pain in a word, excruciating.
"If you're like this, this is gonna take all night." Selene shouts, joy evident in the tone of her voice, damn sadist. You know what, I blame it on Ivy and the other spirits. I get up as I prepare myself for the hurt I'm going to experience, all in order to master aether channelling 101.
************
BLAZE ADAMS POV:
I'm in the bedroom of my lovely mansion, lying atop my king sized bed, in the comfort of my soft, silky bedsheets but even with all these, I can't fall asleep. I can't stop thinking about the vampire attacks that have plagued us for the past year but even with the increasing casualties, the council is still not giving us the go ahead. Some thing is very wrong here.
At least now I know my old man is on the case but even so, I understand the need to keep balance and everything as an Emperial but I just feel like we're not doing as much as we should be, all thanks to those greedy higher ups monopolizing their power over us. Maybe they have something to do with this.
Wait, what if they do? As my mind delves further into this vampire situation, I hear a knock on my door. As I permit entry one of the young kids of the maids enters and gives me a letter before hurriedly leaving but not before I give him a couple of silvers to go spoil himself on some candy. What? I'm a really generous guy.
I open the letter and it reads:
"Dear Blaze, I hope you've been doing well. I just got back into the city and I bring dire news. One of the major cities in Alekay has been ravaged by vampires. Not only that, but there are several reported cases of small towns and villages destroyed by vampires in Zephrit. As it stands Daria has suffered the least damage of the three continents but I fear this could be it's calm before the storm. I've organized an Emperial meeting 5 days from now to discuss on what to do next, as a collective. Hope I see you there, with lots of love, Vanessa."
I then fold the paper neatly and place it in one of my drawers before returning to the comforts of my bed.
Calm before the storm huh? I just hope those worse don't come into fruition. I then snap my fingers switching off the lights. As the moon
illuminates it's luminescent light at my window I fall asleep in the comfort of knowing that it's not just me that wishes to take action on the matter at hand.