By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2022 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
As Their Resident Bane
__________Beneath an unfamiliar, unfinished, velvet tunic, Fruyr sucked in his stomach and jerked away from the sharp tip of a sewing pin. If a pinprick drew a droplet of blood from his veins, the scent of fresh, warm, Elvish blood would surely arouse bloodthirst in the smooth-skinned, silver-haired maidservant, who steadily bedecked Fruyr in luxurious, hand-sewn attire, as befit a houseguest of Clan Dafyunesh. Fruyr marveled at how his vampire seamstress unnerved him. He had never been so skittish as to duck away from a needle before.
__________“Please stop dodging,” the seamstress cajoled. “You’re ripping out the pins!”
__________Fruyr feigned an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry,” he lied. “I must not be very good at sitting still.”
__________“I’ll say,” the seamstress expressed. “You’re turning in your skin like a flighty tomcat!”
__________Fruyr straightened his back and tightened his hands into fists. “Maybe that’s because I feel like a caged animal,” he muttered.
__________The seamstress’s crimson eyes narrowed. “Do not treat your cousins as heathens, elf-child,” she scolded. “You’ll have the run of the house once you’re properly dressed.”
__________Fruyr turned up his nose and examined a row of decorative chains, which dangled from a set of steel hooks. He pressed a palm to his chest. The pendant-less chains reminded him that the ornaments of his Elvish birthright were absent. His self-attuned destined weapon, prophecy scroll, and climactic amulet waited somewhere in the bedroom of his childhood home. Could the flames of his messy, alchemical experiment have devoured those treasured tools?
__________No, he decided. I would have felt something.
__________That was, Fruyr realized, the key difference between vampires and elves, even more so than the vampires’ bloodthirst, since truthfully, the civil-warring Katheermor had a bloodthirst of their own. Yet where there was life among the Katheermor, there was hollowness among vampires. The pendant-less chains were a prime example. Their make was mock-Elvish, but they lacked a gemstone imbued with raw, magical energy: the Elvish failsafe. Unlike the elves’ climactic amulets, Clan Dafyunesh’s necklaces were lifeless; they were Elvish only in design. Fruyr lowered his hand and frowned at the silver-haired seamstress, as she corrected the stitches his lurches priorly unraveled.
__________Elves and vampires shared ancestry; they descended from the eradicated Elfera. Some pureblood vampires boasted ears as sharply pointed as the ears of pureblood elves, and both spoke fluent Elferan, which nowadays was commonly known as Elvish. Both elves and vampires recited spellscript in the language of their shared ancestors. Nevertheless, Katheer culture celebrated life; Clan Dafyunesh lived among the dead. Folklore suggested that the first vampire was birthed from a corpse. How or why was lost to history. Nevertheless, Fruyr was not about to let an ancient kinship lessen his guard against bearers of metamorphic venom. He tracked the seamstress’s hands, as he might the bobbing head of a cobra.
__________I almost pity her, Fruyr thought. Kimio would have, but it’s me in the snake pit, not him.
__________The seamstress knotted the end of her thread and snipped the slack that stuck out past the knot. “We’re about done here,” she announced. “You’ll be meeting with Countess Reisumae next.”
__________“What could your countess want with me?” Fruyr questioned.
__________The seamstress rolled her crimson eyes, set down her needle and scissors, and stood. “Lord Draiden sicked you on us, like a guard dog,” she jested bitterly, “so I imagine you think the countess has a bone to pick with you, or maybe a vein to pop?”
__________Fruyr cringed, and then crossed his arms over his chest. His immature voice cracked, which deflated the confidence he feigned, as he inquired, “Does she?”
__________The seamstress laughed, exposing her fangs. “One would think,” she added, “but no. The countess fancies herself a fashionista. She wants to inspect this classy new outfit of yours.”
__________Fruyr sighed. He did not care for fine clothes. Expensive fabrics tore easily and were troublesome to wash when stained or replace when singed. Since Fruyr was bound to Fierey, the Element of Fire, he habitually, and often accidently, burned through the cuffs of every long-sleeved blouse or winter coat his father, Talsis, purchased for him. Fruyr controlled fire, but he did not control the weather. Sometimes, when he snapped his fingers to light a candle or incinerate a circling wasp, a gust of wind redirected the flames towards his clothes, which were simply not as flame-retardant as his Faomekatheer skin. Fruyr could not imagine devoting time, energy, and resources to designing frivolous but flattering attire. He hailed from a war-torn society that shunned his parents for blending with their elemental opposites.
__________Their countess is rich enough to be wasteful, Fruyr pondered. I hate it here already.
__________The seamstress removed one of the pendant-less, gold chains from its hook. She unclasped it, tossed it over Fruyr’s head, and reclasped it behind his neck. Then she laid her hands on his shoulders and leaned into his ear. “You must learn to guard these veins, as you would your heart,” she instructed. “Not all of us are content with stale blood.”
__________Fruyr cringed and stepped out from under her hands. “Back off,” he warned.
__________The seamstress sighed, removed her hands, and gestured to the doorway. “I wasn’t speaking of myself or my lady, but this is the home of a hoard,” she warned. “Come now, the countess awaits.”
__________Fruyr followed the seamstress out the dressing room, through a long hall, and up a flight of stairs. His eyes darted towards every passing shadow. His ears twitched towards every shifting sound. He tried to memorize the few phrases he heard spoken in passing and remember the faces of those he passed by. Although what he saw and heard neither raised significant alarm nor calmed his nerves, he felt hunted.
__________The seamstress stopped before a steeple-style door and fished a key out from under the high collar of her gothic dress. Again, Fruyr’s eyes tracked the seamstress’s hands. She jangled the key in the lock before it opened, and when it opened, the hinges creaked eerily, which seemingly warned those who entered of the sheer darkness beyond the doorframe and the monsters concealed within.
__________Fruyr peered past the seamstress and into the room. Two shadows leapt across a polished, black coffin, they passed each other, as they passed over it, and then they disappeared. Fruyr placed his hands behind his back and cupped one hand over the other. He bent the fingers of the supported hand into a casting position, straightened his back, and smiled.
__________“Is this where I’ll meet the countess?” he inquired.
__________The seamstress nodded. “Do not make the mistake of assuming that coffin is hers,” she warned. “My lady is very much alive.”
__________“She must be,” Fruyr agreed, “if the state of my clothes are the worst of her worries.”
__________The seamstress frowned. “You assume too much,” she remarked.
__________She glanced at Fruyr’s hands, as he stepped through the doorway, shook her head, and shut the door behind him. As she turned away from the door, she added, “My lady is sure to straighten you out, like a steaming, iron mallet to a wrinkled blouse.”
___________Then she abandoned Fruyr to the inhabitants of the unlit room and returned to her regular duties. Behind the door, the vanished shadows emerged from their hiding places. Two sets of light footsteps shuffled towards Fruyr, while sparks danced between the fingertips of Fruyr’s readied hand. Suddenly, two pairs of gloved hands gripped Fruyr’s wrists.
__________Two masculine voices hissed in Elvish, “Emblazon the dry logs with these embers.”
__________Fruyr’s sparks fled from his fingertips, like startled rabbits. The sparks launched across the room and burrowed into a stack of logs. The stacks ignited a stone fireplace, and the inferno brightened the room. The firelight reflected off the polished, black coffin, and behind the coffin, outlined the hourglass figure of a tall, slender woman, with short, straight, auburn hair. The woman spun gracefully, drew Fruyr’s eyes to her, as she met his gaze, and then folded her hands in front, like a ballerina.
__________“It was kind of you to expend yourself to brighten the room,” she teased.
__________Fruyr clenched his teeth, wrinkled his nose, and relaxed his hands, which dammed the stream of sparks and ended his prepared spell. Abruptly visible against the flickering, amber glow of the fireplace, Fruyr’s shadowy assailants released his wrists, skulked away from him, and kneeled aside the coffin. Fruyr glowered at them.
__________“Kinder for your grunts to keep their claws off my spell,” he chastened.
__________The woman contorted her genteel face and pouted dramatically. “It is abhorrent, is it not?” she insisted. “The Lord of the Undead would have us bicker over sparse resources or devour our own to slake our thirst. Though stricken under his rule, he sends us another mouth to feed, a warm-blooded cousin of ours, whom he knows will taunt our dry tongues.”
__________Before Fruyr could respond, the woman relaxed her face into a confident smile and added, “But fear not, Fruyr. We have learned to pool our resources, to share what we have for the betterment of the clan, and you also shall learn this. Consider the loss of your sparks your first lesson.”
__________Fruyr shook his head. “Have you already forgotten why I’m here, Countess?” he challenged. “I’m not yours to toy with.”
__________The countess laughed, and her crimson eyes glistened. She looked away from Fruyr and addressed her grunts. “Open it,” she ordered.
__________The two kneeling, darkly clad vampires stood. They slipped their fingers under the rim of the polished coffin and flipped the lid open. The coffin’s hinges creaked as the lid swung. Fruyr’s sensitive nose immediately caught the scents of stale blood and rotting flesh that gushed from the open coffin. A prickly sensation climbed Fruyr’s spine, but he hid his discomfort and glanced inside.
__________A pale, mutilated, male corpse, pierced many times by many sets of fangs, parted his purpled lips and groaned through a set of yellowed teeth. One of Reisumae’s grunts lifted the reanimated corpse from the coffin and held his limp body before her. The second grunt grabbed a fistful of the zombie’s white hair. He yanked the zombie’s head sideways, exposed and offered its bare neck to Reisumae.
__________Reisumae sighed. Then she dipped her head, pierced the zombie’s neck with her fangs, and sipped his blood. A stream of blackened blood trickled down her chin when she released her fangs and raised her head. Her fingers fell to the knot of a handkerchief, which she habitually tied around her wrist like a bracelet. She untied the handkerchief, dabbed her chin, and then retied it in place. She locked eyes with Fruyr, but he looked away.
__________“Would you like some?” Reisumae asked.
__________Fruyr crossed his arms and stared into the fireplace. “Why would I?” he challenged. “It’s disgusting.”
__________“I second that, Fruyr,” Reisumae replied.
__________She waved her hand dismissively towards her grunts. They nodded, dropped the zombie onto the floor, and assaulted the zombie’s wrists. They drank ravenously, like parched hounds after a day-long bird chase. Reisumae skirted around them, snuck up behind Fruyr, and hovered over his shoulder. She snuck her hand underneath his crossed arms and placed it over his heart. His heartbeat sped from the touch. His gaze jumped to meet hers with a glare.
__________“Take your hand off me or I’ll cripple it,” Fruyr threatened.
__________Reisumae laughed, pulled her hand away, and stepped between Fruyr and the fireplace. “I have a son very near to your age,” she relayed, “but I have taught him not to bite the hand that feeds him, nor scorn the hostess who serves him.”
__________Fruyr placed his hands on his hips. “What is your angle?” he asked, frustrated. “I don’t need blood to survive, and I’m not really your guest.”
__________“You are likely to become famished if you do not partake,” she warned. “Nothing palatable grows in graves. We must all make do with what is available, as neither you nor my clansmen are permitted to leave this realm.”
__________Fruyr rolled his eyes, fanned the flames rising in his honey-yellow irises. “I’m not here to become like you,” he stated. “I’m here because what warms my blood threatens you.”
__________Reisumae sighed. She seemingly ignored Fruyr’s words and examined his clothes. “Tell Noveirn to lower these epaulets and trim their fronds,” she insisted. “They look a little too sure of themselves, despite the roughness of the fronds, which clearly need some straightening out.”
__________Fruyr raised an eyebrow. A not-too-subtle hint, he noted.
__________Reisumae departed Fruyr’s company, but she addressed her grunts, as she exited the room. “Put that away when you’re done,” she ordered. “I won’t have the packaged meat growing maggots.”
__________The vampire grunts dropped the zombie’s wrists and wiped their mouths on the shoulders of their sleeves. They lifted the zombie, who whimpered weakly as they jostled him about. They deposited him in the coffin, slammed it shut, and glowered at Fruyr.
__________“Ungrateful urchin!” they sneered together. “We heard the manners of villagers were subpar, but yours are nonexistent.”
__________Says a couple of bootlicking scavengers, Fruyr thought.
__________Fruyr smirked at the vampire grunts, but he said nothing. Instead, he walked backwards through the door that Countess Reisumae left open. When he exited the room, he shut the door. As he turned his back on the closed door, he looked from left to right and then left again, as if he crossed a cluttered, narrow street. Then, although he was unsure where she went, Fruyr sprinted off in search of the silver-haired seamstress, Noveirn.
__________Beneath the row of stitches Draiden left behind when he repaired Fruyr’s injured back, Fruyr’s slow-healing scab cracked. A few droplets of fresh blood seeped through the cracks, soaked and stained Draiden’s tan thread. Those who crept along the shadowed halls, turned their pale noses and crimson eyes towards Fruyr, like airborne seagulls, curious whether a delectable, sea turtle hatchling, who scrambled towards the safety of the sea, was worth a short, downward swoop off course.
Endlesslore 