By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2024 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
The Corpse of the Cardinal
__________Fruyr swung his legs over the edge of his bed. His hand glided across the soft blanket beneath him and up the smooth bedpost of the canopy bed. He gripped the post and slid down the blanket, until his feet met the cold floor. When he released the post, he stretched out an arm, until his fingers touched the wall. He ran his fingers along the wall and counted his steps, as he searched for the window. He opened it when the side of his hand bumped the edge of the windowsill. He crossed his arms atop the windowsill and recklessly leaned out the window, into the frigid, unfriendly darkness.
__________The fang piercings in his neck burned as intensely as the initial aftershock of the bite. Fruyr bit his lip and turned his head, as if he could snub the pain as easily as he could another person. Nevertheless, the pain lingered.
__________Fruyr’s sightless gaze drifted towards the open window of another room. The Deep Night was too richly dark for him to see anything at all, but somehow, he knew the window was open and that Vujeera rested behind it.
__________A lifeblood link? Fruyr considered. Was it possible with neither a blood relation nor a vampiric conversion? Vampiric venom often contaminated the blood of vampires’ victims. These rose again as slaves or as fledglings. Fruyr was neither.
__________He stepped back and shut his window. He crossed his arms and paced the patch of floor between his window and his bed. Occasionally, he raised an arm and massaged his sore neck. He glanced across the room, where he remembered the door must be. He reached behind himself and gently patted the stitches that kept the older, deeper wound on his back from splitting open. The scabby, axe-wound stripe itched, but he resisted the urge to scratch it. Again, he glanced towards the door. He wondered: What are the odds?
__________Twice since his arrival, vampires ambushed him. Fruyr fended off the first swarm, but Vujeera fended off the second. Countess Reisumae loosely held the leashes for her thralls. She never shortened their leashes when their hunts ranged the manor. She never tightened their leashes when they bounded after unsanctioned prey, unless they panted for her blood. Fruyr trusted the thralls who attacked Vujeera had been executed, because he recognized the repugnant odor of burning flesh. Not long ago, its nauseating smoke seeped through the floorboards from the basement below. Likely, there were fewer wasps patrolling the hive this evening.
__________However, there had been no casualties among Fruyr’s first assailants. When his spell-fire burned holes through their hides, Morgaleath pricked her flesh and juiced her wound. Like a physician administering saline to a patient’s irritated eyes, she dripped her rejuvenating blood into the thralls’ wounds, and they swiftly recovered. Likely, at least half of the vampire clan’s overly zealous drones remained, but these were the pests Fruyr had squashed before.
__________Manageable risk. Infinite possibilities, Fruyr brooded, as he paced the floor, but then he accidentally inched too far towards his bedframe. The bedframe scraped his shins, and his kneecaps bumped into the side of his mattress. He stumbled but clapped his palms against the mattress and steadied himself. He stepped back from the mattress, rolled up the legs of his trousers, and rubbed his shins.
__________I’m not bleeding, Fruyr determined, since his shins were dry. The overhanging blanket had cushioned the crash. Fruyr righted his trousers, and then he reached for the blanket. He climbed atop it and crawled across it. He swung his legs over the opposite edge of the bed and reached for Noveirn’s unkindled lantern. He grasped its metal ring, lifted it, and jostled the lantern. Slosh… Slosh… Some fuel remained in the canister.
__________Fruyr turned the knob on the lantern, released it when he smelled the fuel leaking out, and then snapped his fingers to ignite the wick. The lantern brightened with a puff of smoke and an orange glow. Fruyr tightened his grip on the ring, slid off the bed, and unlocked his door. He reached for the doorknob, turned it, and stepped into the hallway. He politely shut the door behind him and quietly tiptoed towards Vujeera’s room. But the lantern swung as he walked, and it creaked as it swung, eerily disrupting the silence and darkness of the hall. The speedy shadows of several flustered vampires leapt away from the lantern’s aura, but a sole, sullen vampire paused before the transparent, orange globe.
__________With an amber sheen, the orange light of the lantern glossed the sullen vampire’s starlight-bright, white hair. The vampire cradled a cloth bundle in the crook of his arm, but his crimson eyes welled with tears. He bit his lip and tossed the bundle at Fruyr’s feet. The folds of cloth parted and revealed the corpse of a cardinal, whose lifeless feathers were once as brilliantly red as its carrier’s sullen eyes.
__________“Ack!” Fruyr gasped and stepped back. The cardinal’s corpse rolled off his feet and onto the floor. “What was that for?”
__________“That was Aerkidic. She was made for flight, but she died in a cage,” the vampire proselytized. “Barred from her predators and barred from her purpose. Where we are safest, we are stifled.”
__________Fruyr tilted his head, raised an eyebrow, and stepped over the corpse. The vampire reached behind Fruyr, knelt on one knee, and hastily rewrapped the corpse. As Fruyr marched onward, the vampire rose, sped, and pivoted, until he stood in Fruyr’s way.
__________“What do you want?” Fruyr demanded.
__________With both hands, the sullen vampire shoved the bundle towards Fruyr’s chest. “Take Aerkidic to Vujeera,” he insisted. “My apprentice has always wanted to see a real bird. Let him see what he can do for her now.”
__________“All right,” Fruyr relented. “Move aside, and I’ll deliver this for you.”
__________He reluctantly accepted the vampire’s grotesque package.
__________“Thank you kindly,” the vampire replied. “She was my friend.”
__________Another bargaining chip to lay out on the table, Fruyr hoped, as he stuffed the bundle under his armpit, but anything to send this creep packing.
__________“Please be gentle with her,” the vampire requested, and then he turned, stepped beyond the light of the lantern, and sped away.
__________“You’re the one who tossed your ‘friend’ on the floor,” Fruyr grumbled.
__________There was no reply. Fruyr passed through the remainder of the corridor without disruption, but for an inexplicably woodsy scent, which lingered in the air, long after the sullen vampire departed, and itched Fruyr’s nose, as consistently as the scabs upon his back itched. When Fruyr came to Vujeera’s bedroom door, he raised a fist to knock, but he paused before his knuckles scraped it.
__________I don’t need invited in, he acknowledged. Not like they do.
__________He chuckled, unfurled his fist, and reached for the doorknob. Surprisingly, the door was unlocked. It opened effortlessly.
__________I’ll just let myself in, Fruyr decided. He crept into Vujeera’s room and hung the lantern, by its metal ring, from an unused, steel coat hanger positioned near the doorframe.
__________Swoosh! Slam! A shadow swooped behind Fruyr and slammed the door shut. The lantern rattled and creaked, as it swung by its ring, and then settled against the wall. Meanwhile, the shadow breezed past Fruyr’s ear, and it whispered a correction: “I allowed entry.”
__________“You drove your fangs into my neck,” Fruyr blurted, “and you haven’t paid for your meal. I’ve come to collect.”
__________When the shadow stilled, Vujeera appeared in its place. He pressed his chest to Fruyr’s back, rested his arms over Fruyr’s shoulders, and stacked his palms over Fruyr’s heart. “You’re either recklessly bold or uncannily impulsive,” he judged, “although both translate to witless knave.”
__________Vujeera leaned over Fruyr’s shoulder. He aimed to reinsert his fangs where they pierced Fruyr’s neck before, but a few tenacious tears dripped from Vujeera’s eyes into Fruyr’s wound. Fruyr winced, reached over his shoulder, and traced the arc of Vujeera’s lower eyelid with his finger. He flicked the tears that collected on his finger aside. The snap of Fruyr’s fingers sparked, dried his fingertips, and coughed embers into Vujeera’s face.
__________“Right,” Fruyr conveyed. “I’ll char your chalky complexion without a second thought.”
__________Though not as grand as the basement tragedy, the repulsive scent of burning flesh encored in the smoke that trailed, from the sizzling embers that freckled Vujeera’s cheeks, into the boys’ nostrils. Unexpectantly, Vujeera ferociously kneed Fruyr in the crotch. Then, as Vujeera’s leg straightened, and his foot grounded, he bared his fangs, snarled like a wolf, and shoved Fruyr down. Fruyr whimpered and crumpled. The cloth-bundled corpse of Aerkidic rolled across the floor. Again, the folds of fabric unfurled, and the dead cardinal lay exposed to the air.
__________Although Vujeera intended to turn away from the scene, the bird’s bright-red feathers attracted his gaze. He stalked it and dropped to his knees beside it. While his tears streamed down his ember-freckled cheeks, sizzled, and floated away as steam, he shakily reached out and stroked the cardinal’s lifeless wings. Vujeera’s eyes flooded with wonder. His tears stilled, and his skin cleared of burns.
__________“Did Eran bring her?” he inquired.
__________Fruyr slammed a fist against the floor and groaned. Ace discarded.
__________Vujeera cautiously lifted Aerkidic’s corpse and carried it to his desk. Atop the desk was an array of alchemical equipment: Knives, needles, beakers, tubes, etcetera. There was a burner and a distillery. There was a stack of journals and a collection of colored inks and a set of fine calligraphy pens. Everything was sorted atop the desk, inside its shelves, or stashed in its drawers. Positioned front and center was a sheet of glass, which appeared as though it might have originally served as the shield of a picture frame.
__________“It must have been Eran,” Vujeera decided. “The bird’s unspoiled.”
__________Vujeera placed the dead bird atop the sheet of glass, and then retrieved one of his journals. He flipped through it and tore a page out, before returning the book to the stack. The page bore a hand-sketched, original alchemical design, which he slipped underneath the glass sheet. This perked Fruyr’s interest.
__________He dragged himself to his feet and over to Vujeera’s desk. “He only introduced the bird and where to deliver her,” Fruyr explained. “He never shared his name.”
__________“Eranidus Harkela. He’s a self-loathing, embarrassment of a Pureblood,” Vujeera ranted. “He won’t convert his attachments but can’t bear to lose them either, so he doesn’t make any… He stubbornly ignores how his ethics endanger his clan.”
__________Vujeera collected a thin, metal rod and a magnifying glass. With the rod in one hand and the magnifier in the other, he sorted through the bird’s feathers and inspected them for mites. “Clan Harkela is nearly extinct,” he continued, “but Eran only bites to kill, never to claim.”
__________Disinterested in the politics of vampires, Fruyr yawned and gestured to Aerkidic. “What are you going to do with her?”
__________Vujeera rolled his eyes, set down his tools, and retrieved a pair of tweezers. One by one, he plucked the jumpy, cream-colored mites from the cardinal’s corpse and dropped them into a glass bottle. He watched them roll and kick, as the vinegar bath in the wide base of the goosenecked bottle dissolved them. “I’ll soil my fangs, since Eran won’t,” Vujeera admitted, “but without defiling his pet. He’s counting on it.”
__________Fruyr examined what he could see of the alchemical drawing beneath the bird and the glass sheet. The words pulse, spark, and flight were written in Elferan on the edges of triangles and mingled with other symbols and shapes. “You want to see her fly,” Fruyr interpreted, “but your blood won’t revive her?”
__________“Eran detests spreading our bloodthirst, but his precious, ruby-feathered bird is already dead,” Vujeera explained, while he set down his tweezers and uncoiled a tube. He dropped one end of the tube into a beaker, retrieved his plyers, and crimped the other end of the tube to a syringe. He traded the plyers for a short, leather dog collar that was fitted for a puppy. Vujeera rolled up his sleeves, slapped the collar over his bicep, and raised the syringe to a vein in his arm. He ordered Fruyr: “Belt that for me.”
__________New game, Fruyr noted. Deck recompiled.
He wrapped the collar around Vujeera’s bicep, tightened it, and buckled it, as snuggly as he could manage. “That should do it. Next?”
__________Vujeera’s arm reddened, and his veins swelled, as the collar restricted his blood flow. He plunged the needle of his syringe into the prepared vein, and after a moment, his blood climbed up the syringe and sailed through the tube. It trickled into the beaker.
__________“Once the beaker fills, loosen the belt, and wrap those bandages around the pinprick,” Vujeera instructed. “I’ll distill the venom from the blood sample.”
__________Fruyr nodded and obeyed. Deck shuffled. First hand dealt.
__________Vujeera dismantled his bloodletting apparatus and placed the filled beaker atop his alchemical burner. He fixed it to the distillery, waited, and watched. Blood dripped into one receptacle and venom dripped into another.
__________“A miracle cure in progress,” he acknowledged. “Slow and steady, but I’m famished. How devoted are you to seeing this through?”
__________A king played against me, Fruyr noted.
__________Fruyr shrugged. “How indebted to me is the vampire lordling willing to be?” he bluffed. “You already owe me for the first swig.”
__________“Sireling,” he corrected. “Elvish Lords own land. Vampiric Sires own people.”
__________“The borrower is slave to the lender.”
__________“A sip of your blood was a paltry stipend for my charity.”
__________“What charity?”
__________“I saved your life twice in one act.”
__________“How?”
__________“I bit you to bolster my strength.”
__________“You stole from me; thus, you owe me.”
__________ “I fought off the hoard that threatened us both, while you were pinned to the floor.”
__________“That’s a single rescue, not a double, because saving yourself doesn’t count.”
__________“I held back my venom. Thus, you owe me a life debt.”
__________“The Dark-elf woman, the Lord of the Undead, and now you,” Fruyr growled. “How do I keep racking these up?”
__________Vujeera chuckled. “You’re careless.”
__________Fruyr scoffed and changed the subject: “The solutions have separated.”
__________Vujeera switched off the alchemical burner and filled an eyedropper with the distilled blood. The cardinal’s beak was parted in death, so he easily emptied the eyedropper into her mouth and down her throat. Her beady eyes brightened. Her stiffened body flexed. Her feathers rose and fell with her livened chest. She squawked, tumbled to her feet, stretched out her wings, and flapped. She pushed off the edge of the desk with her taloned feet and leapt into the air. Vujeera watched, as she glided, dipped, and swooped.
__________While the bird distracted him, Fruyr reached around him, stole the beaker of distilled blood, and drank a swig in a single gulp. His wounds closed rapidly and his heart pounded fervently. The glass beaker rattled, as Fruyr hastily returned it to its place on the desk.
__________Vujeera turned towards the noise. His eyes widened, as he estimated how much of the fluid remained. The beaker was half as full as it had been. He shook his head, retrieved the beaker, and raised it to Fruyr’s nose in a toast.
__________Fruyr grimaced. “Get that out of my face!”
__________“Cheers!” Vujeera offered, with a wry smile, as he swiped the beaker out from under Fruyr’s nose and drank until it emptied. “That was pure, concentrated, vampire’s blood, and I have no idea what it’s going to do to you.”
__________Fruyr smirked. “It worked on the bird.”
__________“A drop worked on the bird,” Vujeera clarified. “You drank a shot.”
Endlesslore 