Capítulo 66: Long grudge
927 AD, in a modest, rustic wooden cottage built on a limestone foundation.
A young man was kneeling in front of a middle-aged man tears and snot covering his face. He said in a trembling voice: "Father, the muggles have taken Hilda! They're accusing her of witchcraft!"
The middle-aged man turned away his face and said: "Mircea, there's nothing we can do about it. I've already heard word of it, she was captured by Duke Mayweather's men. If we were to act now, our whole family would be beheaded for rebellion before getting our corpses burned for witchcraft."
"There has to be a way! Isn't there something in the family's Grimoire that could help? There must be a lot of wondrous magic in it! Just, let me see it. I'm sure I'll find something that will let me get her back without revealing that our family was involved!"
Godwin's face softened at that. He figured giving Mircea the Grimoire for a few days might not be such a bad idea so the boy would realize that the 'book full of profound and powerful knowledge' was just wishful thinking by those not in the know.
Once Mircea had gotten his hands on the Grimoire, he didn't sleep and barely ate for a week straight, only pouring over what had been written in it. Occasionally, increasingly more agitated mumbles of "Useless, weak or meaningless!" could be heard from him. Until one day, he stopped, took a piece of parchment and started transcribing from the Grimoire, then got up and left the house.
Mircea returned only three days later with fresh wounds, torn clothing and darkening bruises visible here and there. He didn't explain what he'd been through, but instead, with a feverish gaze, begun concocting something in the family's cauldron, mumbling to himself once in a while or taking another look at the piece of parchment like a man possessed.
Godwin was getting worried over his firstborn's health, but him doing something was better than just sitting around and moping over what had already been lost. He was confident that whatever Mircea was concocting would fail, and even if it didn't, there was no way it could be used to act against the duke's men.
However, even after the fourth and fifth failure, Mircea hadn't given up, and by the time two weeks had passed, it seemed that he had succeeded. In a state of insomnia-induced stupor, he wandered out of the house again and returned by the evening.
"I'm going to sleep, so I would appreciate if nobody disturbed me.", he had said.
However, barely ten minutes later, Godwin was trying to break down Mircea's door – there were screams of agony mixed with animalistic growls coming from the room. In an act of desperation, Godwin managed to move the latch from the other side of the door, thankful that for once, magic had worked the way he needed it to.
What greeted him in the room was a torn bed covered in no small amount of blood, an open window and an empty blood-red phial on the bedside cabinet. Mircea's infant firstborn was screaming his lungs out, startled by all the commotion.
---
Duke Mayweather's manor, the same evening.
The patrolling knights were alerted by the sound of metal colliding with something equally as hard, followed by tearing sounds. They drew their swords and rushed towards the commotion. However, before they managed to identify the culprit, they were swept off their feet by something heavy colliding into them and thrown back almost twenty feet before landing and coming to a skidding stop.
It was only then that they managed to see what sort of a projectile had struck them – it was the body of a fellow knight, torn in half from the waist.
Both knights looked around in fright, waving their swords in air aimlessly. A few moments later, they heard heavy footsteps heading towards them. Then they saw it. It was the ugliest person they had ever seen, if it could even be called a person – its skin was covered in thick scales, it's feet had three toes and hands had three fingers. The creature's toes and fingers ended in long, sharp-looking claws. Its head had three or four tangled-up horns. It's eyes were large, with slit pupils, and its nose and mouth resembled a snout, as if it was a cross between a lizard and man. There was thick smoke rising from its nostrils. The most terrifying thing about the creature was its size – it was standing at nine feet tall, with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks.
One of the knights shouted while holding a crucifix in front of himself: "In lord's name, begone you vile demon!"
At the next moment, however, that same knight could've sworn he heard the beast growling: "I'm an atheist."
Unfortunately, the knight would never be able to warn the church of the immunities of atheistic demons, as one would need a body connected to their head to speak, or live for that matter.
The creature's rampage continued, slowly moving closer to the manor, until it was met with a wall of knights blocking its path. However, that didn't last long – it used the throwing technique from earlier to disturb their ranks, then charged in seemingly without any regard to its life, biting, slashing and tearing at anything in reach while the knights tried to keep a tight encirclement on it, slashing with their swords at every opportunity.
Bloody gashes started accumulating on the reptilian creature's body, but the wounds seemed to seal unnaturally fast, not allowing for much of a blood loss. Within five minutes of intense struggle, only a few knights were left standing. Suddenly, all three of them came to an agreement that they needed to go and call reinforcements from the nearby garrison.
Meanwhile, the bipedal beast made its way to a thick oak door and managed to open it without any commotion, as it turned out to be unlocked.
Behind the door was a small dungeon with around twenty cells, and from one of them, a woman's protests and crying could be heard.
The beast made its way to it, and finding the door locked, started punching and kicking at it, causing its fists to become raw and the door breaking down.
Inside, duke Mayweather was mounting a woman with torn clothes from behind. It seemed that the duke had only now noticed something was off, as he took a glance behind himself and saw a creature of nightmares staring back at him. In an unexpectedly swift movement, he had pulled a dagger and held it against the woman's neck.
"You come any closer and she dies!"
The only response the duke got from the beast was that its eyes became completely bloodshot and the next instant, it had closed the gap between them, thrusting its hand toward the duke's neck. The next instant, the man's head was crushed into low-quality mincemeat with a lot of bone fragments in it.
The creature let out a roar that caused the walls to tremble, its wounds seemed to heal at a rapid pace and its body bulked up even more, growing taller by a few feet. A few moments later, it had entered the cell completely, tearing and stomping everything in it into paste.
---
The following day, Vywin cottage.
Godwin's second son had just returned from an errand in the village. He spoke excitedly: "Father, the people in the village say that there was a massacre in the duke's manor. Not even the servants or the garrison's soldiers were spared. They say it was a demon that did it! I wonder, will we be able to see that demon?"
Godwin's heart got even heavier than it had been during the previous night. Mircea had yet to return, but he was certain the 'demon' had been his firstborn. It seemed that he would have to do a lot of explaining, and for the sake of the family, take some harsh measures.
Just as he thought that, he heard noise from Mircea's room, followed by his infant grandson's cries.
He rushed up the creaky wooden stairs to Mircea's room, only to see what could indeed aptly be described as a demon holding the child.
Still, Godwin had seen stranger things in his life, so he asked in an uncertain voice: "Mircea? Did you find Hilda?"
"No.", came a low, growling reply.
Since the duke was no longer around, Godwin decided to try and find Hilda's whereabouts. He used a modified blood compass spell, with a drop of the infant's blood as a medium.
It wasn't until evening that Godwin returned, and when he did, he found Mircea and said: "Son, we need to talk."
The man-beast rose from his seat to an imposing stature and snapped: "What is it?"
"I found what's left of Hilda. It was you, wasn't it? You killed her and trampled her into the floor, not a single piece left intact."
"So what? What are you going to do about it? You might be a member of the Midnight Watch, but you have no guts."
With his heart squeezed by the weight of his emotions, Godwin spoke: "There is no place in our family for a monster that would be so blinded by rage to kill the one they vowed to save. Leave before I banish you, and never return."
Mircea didn't like what he was hearing. He was the only one suitable to be the head of the family, he was the only one that would be able to raise the family's status to greater heights, instead of a meek man like his father. He roared: "You have no right to order me around! You were weak before and you are weak now, you are just a coward!"
With a look of regret on his face, Godwin took out a lumpy wand and pointed it at Mircea, then shouted: "Incarcerous!", causing thick ropes to sprout around the beast-man's body and tighten to the point where he was forced into a crouching position, with his arms held close to his thighs.
After that, Godwin took out four candles of different colors and the only gemstones the family owned. Then he drew a knife and cut his right index finger and started drawing runes onto the floor, followed by strange geometries.
Once he had finished with the 'artwork', he laid out the candles and gemstones into the positions that seemed to be meant for them, before he started chanting in a language that none but himself could understand.
Slowly, wind started picking up in the room, followed by sand flowing up between the floorboards. The candles lit up one after the other and the gemstones focused the light from the candles onto the now struggling Mircea's body, making him go completely stiff, unable to even blink.
Finally, water started dripping down from the ceiling, landing on Mircea's horned head, drop after drop, soaking into the sand that had covered his body.
"With the spring breeze of the east, the autumn rain of the west, frozen earth of the north and summer heat of the south as witnesses, I hereby banish you from Britain until the day of your death. My blood shall no longer be your blood, my flesh shall no longer be your flesh, and my name shall no longer be your name. ᚹᚩᚱᛚᛞᛚᛁ ᛋᚻᚪᚳᚳᛚᛖᛋ: ᛒᚪᚾᛁᛋᚻᛘᛖᚾᛏ!"
By the time Godwin finished speaking, Mircea was completely covered by mud. Suddenly, the small mound of mud sunk through the floorboards, followed by the blood that Godwin had spread onto the floor.
Half of Godwin's hair turned white and deep wrinkles appeared on his face, as if he had aged several decades in a mere moment. The gemstones on the floor cracked and turned to dust and the flame on the candles disappeared.
Just as Godwin was slumping onto the floor, his wife finally dared to come out and asked: "Was that really necessary?"
Godwin smiled bitterly and replied: "That was the only way for him to live on. The coven, they don't take such things lightly."
The room fell into silence, until the lady of the house asked: "Where is Harold?", referring to Mircea's infant son. However, no matter how much they looked, the baby could not be found.
---
Somewhere in Greece.
On a lonely meadow in the mountains, the ground suddenly bubbled up, as if it had eaten something bad. An egg-shaped rock made its way aboveground and started crumbling. A while later, the figure of a reptilian humanoid emerged, half-buried in a pile of white sand. Beside him lay an infant that started to scream as soon as the sun's warm rays landed on his eyelids.
The creature beside the infant was awakened by the noise and rose up. He growled: "I will never forget this. No matter how long it takes, I will make you pay!"
Stomping and kicking anything that caught his eye, he looked around the area until he found a cave.
That cave became the two's home for the following years, with the reptilian beast hunting and stealing from the local farmers, the two never went hungry.
Mircea had already decided to entrust his revenge to his son – the boy didn't have the shackles of banishment on him, he could return to Britain whenever he wanted to. With the stories Mircea had told his son about their former family, he carried just as much hatred for them as his father. However, there was a problem with the boy – his magical talent was subpar, barely passable to become a wizard at all.
One day, during his usual hunts, Mircea discovered a small and reclusive family of vampires, the Anguaq family. A plan quickly formed in his mind – he would not only extend his own lifespan to see the revenge come to fruition, but he'd also give his son power that would change him from a weak wizard into a powerful vampire.
A few weeks later, the family of vampires was butchered and drained of blood and another batch of the bloodline potion was brewed. The result, however wasn't completely to Mircea's expectations – he ended up dying from the complications of the bloodline merging, but not before managing to blame the Vywin family for it.
With his father dead, Harold set out on a path of revenge against the Vywin family, but he was thwarted by Godwin who had found the corrected recipe for bloodline merging potion Mircea left behind and just like Harold, had taken on a vampiric bloodline.
Licking the wounds of defeat, Harold returned to Greece, finally finding some merit in the proposal to marry into the Kaurit clan. Years passed with Harold producing offspring for the clan with the special ability to turn their entire body into liquid blood to avoid any blows, and finally it was time for the old clan head to go into slumber, and for the lack of any more capable candidates, Harold was appointed as the new head.
Within the first year on the seat, the clan's name had been changed to Anguaq, the name stolen from a family of true vampires along with their bloodline, the name that Harold had sworn to carry with him in remembrance of his father.
Three years later, Harold had obtained the unquestioning loyalty of every strong clan member and made a second attempt at getting revenge on the Vywin family. To his utter displeasure, he discovered that he wasn't the only one that had grown in power. In addition to Godwin, there were three more members in the family with modified bloodlines, while Godwin had grown powerful enough to contend with Harold and ten of his best single-handedly, allowing the rest of the family and their guards to hold their own against the rest of his forces until reinforcements arrived.
Over a century, Harold made many more attempts at the Vywin family, but was thwarted every time. Among those attempts were ones specifically directed at obtaining the recipe for the bloodline merging potion – the only version of it that allowed the use of other bloodlines beside pure human.
Finally, Harold grew tired of the role of a clan head and chose to go into slumber, entrusting the duty of scheming against the Vywin family and keeping an eye out for anything going on in Noble House Vywin, as it had become known by that time, to his firstborn.
That duty was passed on to each successive clan head after that, until, one day, news broke that the most recent Guardian of Most Ancient and Noble House Vywin, Grant, had perished in a duel with Voldemort.
Harold was awakened from his slumber with those news, and he put to good use his centuries of power accumulated in his slumber, obliterating the Vywin clan, not even sparing infants. He was enraged after being unable to find the Grimoire, spoils and proof of his victory, but considering his long-awaited revenge complete, still returned to slumber.
Yet, barely a few years later, he was awakened once more, with news of Vywin family, of a child with beast blood in his veins.
PENSAMENTOS DOS CRIADORES 
DemiLich
DemiLich 3
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder